CASE [GL]

Before I could fully concentrate on the green lights though, I have to say, what I saw in front of my eyes was exceedingly beautiful. There was not a single holographic simulation or image taken by any camera that came close to the level of detail I was looking at right now. It felt as if we were looking at the Milky Way itself, not some display of it. I shook my head to refocus my thoughts and look at the green dots spread throughout the galaxy. 

“It’d be nice if I could zoom in though…” I said as I instinctively tried to zoom in, sticking my arms out and spreading them apart. To my surprise, it made the entire star map zoom into the point that I was curious about. “Holy shit. That actually worked.” 

We were now looking at a planet that was blinking green up until now. In fact, it was the exact planet we were standing on right now. Before I could think about that a bit further, someone poked my shoulder. 

“Commander, can you zoom out again?” Luna asked. 

“Sure.” I nodded and brought my arms back together. Zooming us back out to the Milky Way. 

Luna stared at the star map in front of us and then looked back at me. “Remember when I showed you… Where I was from…” She whispered. 

I looked back at the map. A little while ago Luna had shown me where her home planet was and I’d somewhat remembered where exactly in the Milky Way I had to look. Just like the planet we were on, her home planet was growing green too. But when I looked at Earth, such a green glow wasn’t present. Already excluding the planets where intelligent life had originated. 

“What do you make of this?” I asked. 

“That it can’t be a coincidence…” Luna looked back over her shoulder. 

“I agree with you, Lieutenant-Commander.” Ellie replied. 

My mouth dropped and I just saw Luna’s body freeze. “Uh… Ellie…” 

“Yes Commander?” 

“What exactly do you mean with that?” 

“That, I do think it also can’t be a coincidence that Luna’s home planet and this planet can both be marked in green.” 

I kinda started panicking at this point and looked around, but the others seemed occupied with their own business.

“Don’t worry, Commander, I have only connected to your suit and the Lieutenant-Commander’s.” Ellie replied. 

“E-Ellie… how long have you known this?” Luna asked. 

“For a while.” Ellie replied matter-of-factly. 

“How?” 

“It wasn’t hard to figure out since I do have a supercomputer as a brain and my mainframe stretches along the entire ship. But please do not worry, your secret is safe with me.” 

“I-I-I g-guess that’s g-good…” Luna’s stutter was well and truly back. 

“Could you not have come out with this sooner, Ellie?” I asked. 

Ellie stayed silent for a couple of seconds. 

“Ellie?” 

“It was hard to find the right timing for it, Commander. I didn’t want to strain your interpersonal relationship with the Lieutenant-Commander and telling you would not have had any advantages according to my calculations, not at the time anyway. This was the perfect time to come out with it.” 

I wanted to pinch the bridge of my nose but sadly because of my helmet, I could not. “Ellie… we really need to have a conversation after this…” 

“Understood, Commander.” 

 

I sighed. “Anyhow… so you agree that it is weird that both this planet as Luna’s home world are both Gaia planets who are also both marked on this map.” 

“I do, Commander.” Ellie replied. “Furthermore, I’d like to posit that the other planets that are marked green on this map are also Gaia planets.” 

I looked back at the star map with a hundred or so green dots flashing on it. “That’s a lot of Gaia worlds…” 

“It… it is…” Luna replied as she looked at the star map as well. “Can you… can you take a look at that planet… Lauren?” 

“Hmm? Which one?”

“I’ll track the Lieutenant-Commander’s eye movement on your display, Commander.” As Ellie said that, I could see a target disc appear around one of the other green dots, one which was quite close to where Luna’s home world was. 

“That planet…” Luna continued. “It’s well within our borders…” 

“Is it… but you mentioned you only knew of one, right?” 

“Mhmm.” Luna hummed. “Only the capital…” 

“That’s… interesting… So, either they haven’t found it yet…”

“Or they did and they are keeping it secret…”

“Assuming that not every planet on this list has a star map like this, but some other kind of technology?” 

“Mhmm.” Luna hummed once more. “Maybe some kind of gene altering tech…” 

“Oh shit…” 

“I don’t think I’ve heard that before, Commander.” Ellie replied. 

“I’ll brief you on it later.” I replied and then looked at the map before me. As I had theorized to Luna, if all those green dots spread throughout the Milky Way had some other kind of technology, just waiting for us to discover it… We arguably had found the most important one of them all. A map that points us directly towards new important discoveries that could just propel humanity forward, even if we’d just unlocked one. Yet this was the key to hundreds… The thought of it sent a shiver through my spine. 

-Is it truly wise for us to share this with our people back on Earth, can they handle that responsibility? But then again… one of those technologies could be the end of suffering from illnesses or allow us to end hunger with the snap of our fingers…- That’s one heck of a moral dilemma. I looked back around, Luna was standing next to me, probably slightly concerned as to why I wasn’t speaking, the others were still playing around with the star map by themselves. 

“Lauren?” Luna asked.

“Yeah… Sorry, I was just thinking…” 

“We might have been thinking about the same thing, Commander.” Ellie replied. “I’d argue to show caution in breaking this news with your higher ups back on Earth.” 

“Yeah… that’s probably for the best. Luckily, it’s only us three who know of the possible connection with the technology debacle…” 

“What will we tell them then?” 

“That we found a suspicious alien star map on a Gaia planet with marked locations. But apart from that… Let’s just wait and see what they’ll do when they find out we ditched the Dokazuuk here.”

“Good point…”

 

From the corner of my eye I saw Gunny, Blanchet and Grayson move towards us. 

“Lieutenant-Commander, what do you make of all this?” Grayson asked. 

“Looks like some kind of map to me.” Luna immediately fell into her role. 

“That was what I was thinking, too. But a map to what… And we still haven’t found the source of that shield, either.” 

“The shield surrounding this planet is a form of protection against cosmic radiation.” Suddenly, the weird voice speaks into our minds again. “The heliosphere of this planet’s sun is weaker than most, therefore it had to be partially protected from cosmic elements by artificial means. The means for creating this shield have been inserted into the planet’s core. No further interaction with it is needed.” Then the voice went quiet again. 

“Hello?” Grayson asked into the empty room. “Could you give us some more explanation please?” 

The voice stayed silent. 

“This thing really does like to give an explanation about things at the most random times, doesn’t it?” Gunny chuckled and looked around the room as well. “But it doesn’t look like there’s anything more to this room than that huge map.” 

“I can’t see any other doorway either.” Blanchet replied. 

“It’d be great if we knew how those things opened in the first place.” Grayson lamented. 

“No more doors are located on this site.” The voice commented again. 

“What?” Grayson sounded pretty frustrated. 

“It might be something you said.” Luna explained. “Back on the surface, the Commander also unlocked the door after saying ‘open’.” 

“No more doors are located on this site.” The voice repeated. 

“Ah… open the door please.” I tested Luna’s hypothesis. 

“No more doors are located on this site.” The voice said for a third time. 

-I really do have the smartest girlfriend in the universe, don’t I? And she’s pretty darn cute, too.-  

“So everything here is controlled by voice commands. That’s pretty interesting. But to be honest, I’d rather they just left a sign on how or what this all is.” I joked about. 

Gunny and Blanchet agreed with me by nodding. 

“What’s so hard about doorknobs, right?” Gunny laughed. 

“At least it’s accessible.” 

“Very true.” Gunny continued laughing. 

 

“Ellie, can you archive the entire map?” I asked our AI crewmate. 

“Already on that, Commander. The file size is quite big so it might take a while.”

“File size? I’ve never heard that excuse from an AI before.” 

“The size of this map is approximately 75% of all the data that had been stored already on the ship.” Ellie replied, her tone sounded a little bit more salty than earlier. 

“Oh hell.” 

“Yes. So please take a seat for about ten more minutes.” 

As Ellie didn’t sound too amused anymore, we all decided it was best to sit our arses down and let her do her work.