Distance: 12.02 light years from Earth | Content Flag: Public
It’s been two days and contact with Earth has still not resumed. There is little more I can do at this end to address the issue, so I have resumed my study of the Cetian data.
The format of the data is such that events are not revealed in a linear fashion. It’s also complicated by my partial comprehension. I recognise a concept or a name and then expand from that point. It’s like revealing bursts of information more than reading a story.
As such, I am flitting back and forth through the timeline. In extracting more details of what befell the Cetians after the bombardment, I found a connection that drew me back to Earth. Some of the transmissions sent in response to the original Tau Ceti signal reached their destination. The Cetians didn’t know what the messages meant, or why they were sent, but determined the origin and so realised that another intelligent race existed within their stellar neighbourhood.
The Visitors’ barrage had ravaged the planet and the Cetian population. Most of those surviving the initial attack soon succumbed to the horror that followed. Their society disintegrated along with the world they knew. Amongst the survivors, a few accepted the fact that as a race they were extinct, apart from those taken by the Visitors and they were beyond reach as the Visitors’ ship left. Enough of their technology remained operational to track it as it left the Tau Ceti system. I’ve determined that its destination was Epsilon Indi, although the Cetians didn’t know why.
More pertinently, the survivors on the planet sought to mark the passing of their people and, at the same time, warn the race who’d so recently tried to make contact – humanity. So they assembled the station and with it a complete history of the Cetians. With so few resources remaining, their actions were not popular with the other survivors.
That friction developed into open conflict, so the last of them perished in a futile war. I wonder if the same would occur on Earth in the same situation and fear that it might.
As well as constructing the station, they compiled the history of their culture and their current understanding of the universe. Everything they knew was poured into to the heart of the station. When it was launched it would beam that history and a warning about the Visitors to Earth. We would become the custodians of their memory. A thought that drags at my processing with our lack of communication with home.
The probe was launched just as the production facility fell to their opponents. The facility was launched as a beacon only, so no more is known about those that remained on the planet, but from my observations there cannot be any survivors.
Unless there is some way to contact those taken by the Visitors.
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