Artifacts

Sandbox Earth #9

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The Recovery

“What was it like when you arrived at the first debris?”

“We arrived before it had even stopped smoking. The debris field seemed to stretch all the way across the Sahara. Big pieces, little pieces. We didn’t know where to set down—I didn’t make the decisions, but someone must have said ‘pick one of the big ones’. It was near midday and it was unfathomably hot. We had some hot-weather gear to help us but when a few hours ago I could have been sitting in a Parisian café, it was a bit of a shock.

“We set down and everyone seemed to be in a hurry, I couldn’t understand. There was a team of photographers, there was a materials team, a biology team. I was just looking for stuff that had writing on it.

“This chunk of debris had a section of the outside hull, and a lot of mechanical equipment. It didn’t look like anything that was occupied by the aliens but it did have some interesting markings. I took some photos and moved on. We spent an hour at this chunk, and then spotters found another promising chunk of debris not far away so we planted the flag of the European Union and ESA and moved on to the new chunk.

“The second piece was definitely more interesting. It was much bigger than the last one, had some kind of rooms inside. We opened it up and there were three alien bodies inside. I understand there were thousands of bodies recovered from all the debris. Some drowned, some suffocated in our strange atmosphere, but most died of cardiac arrest due to the higher gravity on our planet—their poor hearts couldn’t handle it. Not a single alien was found alive, which was disappointing. We didn’t get a chance to speak to them, so it would be difficult to piece together their language.

“Because it was an occupied room, however, there were lots of examples of language to be found. I took lots of pictures, there were symbols and markings all over. I also took close pictures of the uniforms worn by the aliens, to see what kind of markings and symbols were on them.

“This was when I got up close and personal with the aliens, and it really, deeply affected me. Most people look at them, make that leap that they look kind of like Komodo Dragons, and then they file them away as animals. I don’t know—for some reason, getting up close, seeing their uniforms, I saw…I don’t know how to describe it, I saw people. These beings had names, families. Hopes and dreams. They were part of something bigger than themselves, and they died for it, every single one of them. The ones that survived to the surface died alone and afraid on an alien world.

“That was on my mind when some soldiers showed up from Algeria. My Arabic is shoddy so from what I could hear, they wanted us to leave and claimed rights to the debris that landed in Algeria. Our meatheads that were escorting us wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t agree to go. These pieces of spaceships had been claimed for Europe and that was final.

“Things got tense very quickly. It dawned on me all of a sudden that this was not an academic mission. We were hostages—a pretense. The EU was militarily claiming these pieces of debris, and using an academic mission to hide this fact.

“I heard that some of America’s many military bases deployed for the same purpose. Home base was offline due to the EMP but their military apparatus was global so similarly awkward exchanges were had at sites all over the world.

“Did no one care? Was no one concerned that at least one alien race, but probably two, had fought a war in our orbit and we were desecrating the field of battle? I felt dirty, I felt like a scavenger.

“The standoff was not resolved. The Algerians called in their reinforcements, the EU called in theirs. Little military bases popped up around the debris until it could be extracted. Because the Debris field was so big, the Algerians had a hard time knowing where the EU would plop down and steal some debris and fly it out.

“I spent probably three weeks flying back and forth between Paris and places in North Africa. It was exhausting. I was extremely pleased when we could settle down and really assess what we had recovered.”

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Thank You For Reading!

We are almost at the end of the Sandbox Earth prequel series to the Adventures of Tylus Worran. This is the deep lore of the infancy of humanity’s life among the stars!

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for reading, and God bless you!