King's Inheritance

Technical Archaeologist Shawn Priors picked his way through the dark tunnel. The walls of rock around him were smooth, butter carved by a hot knife. He was always amazed at the precision of the Molecular Reorganisers—known informally as MRs, or Emers—to produce these perfectly formed tunnels in solid rock. The hulking Pathfinder vehicles up ahead had carved the passage mere hours earlier, Emers mounted to the face of their snub-nosed cabins. They’d been working their way through the mountain for the better part of a day until they found the anomaly. Which was where Priors came in.

The cavity, a rectangular box with a high ceiling, lay not too far off the centre of the mountain. The Pathfinder pilot was surprised to see such a large space hidden within the rock, but Priors wasn’t. He had sent a few Pathfinders off burrowing into the mountain at different angles of attack, hedging his bets in case the map wasn’t as accurate as he suspected. But he knew this would be the one to find what he was looking for.

So here he was, important work to be done. He would keep the development low-key for the moment. If the commander of the army escort he’d been given got too interested it could become awkward later down the line. The TechArchs had a very particular brand of secrecy; a way of making ground-breaking discoveries in plain sight, then keeping it quiet until they deemed it absolutely necessary their military cohorts be informed of their technological advances. Tell them what you’re after, and they’d dismiss it out of hand. Let them know from what you found and you’d have phone calls twice a day asking if the TechArch investigation was ready to give them their “tactical advantage” yet.

In theory, the TechArch ministry was neutral. Any discovery they made would become available to all of mankind; such was the remit of order. Whatever organisation helped them uncover a discovery would simply get the revelation a little earlier than the rest of the known universe.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, he could make out a sliver of cool light streaming in to one side of the silhouette of hulking metal, blocking the entrance to the tunnel.

Priors tapped on the side of the Pathfinder. “Can we get this thing moving?” he called, his voice recorded and simultaneously blasted out of a speaker in the side of his headgear. “I’ve got delicate instruments, here!”

“Oh. Yeah…” the mumbled response came from the other side. “One moment, TechArch.” Electric motors spun up, a high-pitched whine reverberating around the chamber and back down the tunnel. Then the machine lurched forward, cab bouncing lightly off of the tunnel’s ceiling as the pneumatic suspension bobbed in response. The vehicle rolled forward until it left a man-sized gap between it at the hole in the rock, and Priors squeezed through, careful not to catch the sensors and antennae on the rocks.

The man on the other side stood at attention. “That’ll do, thank you sergeant,” Priors called to him, walking calmly past. Such military favours were not part of TechArch etiquette, though it was always amusing to see the peons trying to figure out if they should salute the man they were to take orders from, despite his being a simple civilian. As long as they did as told, Priors was fine with a little awkward posturing from time to time.

It seemed the Pathfinder had tunneled to one corner of the chamber, and now obscured all but the wall to one side. Only as he rounded the end of the machine did it become clear to him that this was no simple cavity in the rock. He gazed in awe at the towering dark walls, ornate carvings climbing all the way to the ceiling and across to the other side, light glistening off the forms and details.

The carvings consisted of exquisitely-detailed reproductions of machinery, cables and plates. They were similar in design to those found on the surface, though more pronounced, more ornate somehow. The structures he’d been studying atop the mountain had been made from an exquisite metal, as yet unknown to the TechArch Ministry, and by extension humanity. Such a heavy atomic substance was rare indeed out here on the galactic rim, and he suspected the previous explorers must have brought it with them. It seemed they had taken more of the material down here to decorate the walls, ceiling, and even floors with. It must have taken weeks to create all this; perhaps months or even years depending on the level of tooling used to carve the designs.

The room was at least a hundred feet tall, metallic imitations of cabling spidering across the vast expanse. But it almost seemed— Yes. There were real cables bolted to the ceiling, too, weaving in and out as if part of the same pattern. It led toward the other end of the room, longer lengths hanging down here and there, until it reached the throne and the giant king that occupied it.

The figure was humanoid in shape—two arms, two legs—all nothing but bones, now. It wore a large swath of purple; a robe of some sort, though he couldn’t scan from here to divine what it was made of. It was strange to think that even in this remote part of the galaxy, purple was still the colour of choice for royalty. Some inherent property of light, perhaps? From out the top of the garment, a huge, elongated skull poked out. It tipped back slightly, as if staring up towards the light that shone down from above.

There were large, mechanical installations that seemed to brace themselves to him, as if installed there by some third party. The explorers, perhaps? Three large pipes protruded from the floor, merged into one smaller channel at the knee, then thinned still until it reached the face, two offshoots splitting off to either side of the head. The central pipe flanged a little, as if shaped to the giant’s face; a breathing apparatus of some kind. Which would make the two other protrusions vents. Just like Priors and his army chaperones, it seemed the giant also needed help breathing down here to survive. Clearly, the help hadn’t been enough to save him.

Starting a slow walk across the great hall, Priors eyed the walls intently. It was uncanny how similar they looked to those on the surface, and yet how unique and spontaneous it all seemed.

The metal they used was strong stuff; it had withstood the constant barrage of sand and grit blasting across its surface for years, after all. Though with a careless knock, the material was surprisingly brittle. Priors surmised the alien species who had brought it here held it with reverence, bringing it specially to bless each and every structure, or to show special respect for a place, attaching each carved work of art to the framework, creating the very walls. It had to cost them to haul such a fragile material across the galaxy, and then spend days or weeks carving it into these ornate patterns. Priors found it odd it was the only material left behind, however. He would have thought they would take such religious artifacts with them to adorn whatever structures they built next.

There was little else left behind in the camp they had found. A few seemingly biological substances they may have used as a food source, though their high carbon content would have made it impossible for any human to consume without serious health consequences. There did not seem to have been any electronic device usage; no residual electromagnetic readings in the area. Nor had any discernable landing site on the entire surface been found in the weeks they had been here. How did they survive in this place without instrumentation? How did they get here in the first place? And why did they come? In fact, the only signs of intelligent life were the carvings covering every wall, every outcrop of the exotic metal, and the map they had left behind.

At first, the TechArch had dismissed it as a simple chunk of the exotic metal left over from the structural work, but on second inspection, it was so much more. They had somehow recreated, with remarkable accuracy, the entirety of the mountain they stood on, without any scanning device to map the area. Readings indicated there was a second part to the map, unseen from the outside. An energy signature—a spark of energy, or some sort of heat source—was trapped inside the rock. It didn’t dissipate, even in the weeks it had taken Priors to figure out what it all meant. And finally, it had led them here.

The energy source mapped perfectly onto this cavern-turned-cathedral. Had the explorers come all this way, only to find a huge mountain obstructing the way to their prize? Judging by the wall carvings, they must have made it this far. But just how did they get in here in the first place?

Military personnel milled about the foot of the giant king, Projected Computing Units showing holographic visualisations and readouts, hands pawing at the air to interact with the data. The PCU advancements weren’t from the TechArchs, but came from centuries of pure scientific endeavour. However, since mankind’s expansion into the stars, and the discovery that they were not alone in the universe, the Technological Archaeologist Ministry had discovered many other civilisations. Turned out they were all dead, which wasn’t the most encouraging news for a fledgling race venturing out into the stars, but their technology remained intact, waiting for the TechArchs to pick it up and unravel its mysteries.

It always amazed Priors how far ahead the rest of the galaxy seemed in some respects, and how far ahead the human species was in others. In some cases, man had even managed to pick apart the technology of these other species and repurpose it as their own. The Emers, for example, were found by TechArch Harrison on star system 591, evidently the abandoned home of an entire civilization that lived underground despite the verdant paradise that grew on the surface.

As he reached the feet of the statuesque giant, Priors booted up his own PCU. Light flickered in the air before him, wisps of projected manifestation appearing and disappearing like ghosts in smoke. He gazed up at the king. It was clear from here that the cables and breathing apparatus were ancient; perhaps millennia old. The special metal had not corroded, its shine only dulling to some degree; perhaps due to some oxidation-like process.

As he looked up further still, he squinted at the light streaming in from five distinct holes, bored into the ceiling. Each were perfect circles, and they seemed to go on forever. They must lead all the way to the surface, Priors thought. But how? Even the Emers would have trouble making such straight tunnels though so much rock and the veins of metal common in the mountain.

But there was something else up there, glinting in the white light. Priors stepped back a few paces, finding respite from the harsh light that lit the king and his throne. There, hanging above the giant were five glass pods. They were cylindrical in form, with rounded bottoms and reinforced with metal brackets. Dropping down from each of them were thick, black tubes, easily mistaken for more cables from a distance. They bowed out in a curve and ended at the giant, seemingly piercing his body at strategic points.

“What the—?” Priors breathed. He looked back down at the projected interface hovering in the air in front of him and began to work.

Priors didn’t need his hands to work an interface, holographic or otherwise. None of the TechArchs did. The neural mapping technology had come from one of the earliest discoveries the first Technological Archaeologists made. They had come across a civilisation millennia ahead of mankind. They had advanced so far ahead it took decades to decipher and repurpose the simplest of their technologies, one used for interfacing the brain with an outside computational observer… and even then it only half worked for humans.

There was evidence to suggest the connection was two-way for the alien species; they could input commands through thought, but could also see and hear output from a connected system in their mind, thus completing the experience. The Ministry suspected that the computers—quantum-based as they were—would have allowed this kind of super high-fidelity visual and audio output, and near-synaptic processing speeds. But for now, the TechArchs had to make do with simply controlling computers with their brains.

The TechArch went through the menus at super-fast pace, diving deep into the system’s capabilities. With such a fast, almost one-to-one input mechanism, he could fine-tune settings as he went, recreating the system to fit the exact requirements of his current investigation.

He targeted the unit’s sensors on one of the pods hanging above. It performed a spectral analysis of the materials, even picking out minor imperfections in the glass molding. There seemed to be something else, however. A material of biological origin; a few small smudges, groups of cells, dotted around the inside of the glass.

Priors zoomed in on the residue, the program’s interface morphing around him, unnecessary sub applications disappearing and new ones taking their place, ready for further analysis. Was that a—? It was.

A fingerprint, denoted by just a few long-dead cells, still clung to the inside of the glass pod. Instead of the human whorls and arches, the print showed tiny horizontal lines down the length of the fingertip. The pattern mutated towards the centre of the pad of the finger, lines wiggling and warping as if the finger had been burned, or— No, Priors thought. It’s part of the pattern. The zigzag-like pattern would give more purchase when holding objects. Fascinating…

The alien explorers came to the planet and set up camp on the surface, just as Priors had, presumably to investigate the king. Then they somehow made it to the middle of the mountain. Could they have made those five holes? Unlikely. They’d need miles of rope to rappel down far enough. But however they did it, the carved walls showed they revered this place. Was the king some kind of god to them? Had they made a pilgrimage across the stars to worship the giant?

Priors glanced back up at the pods, light refracting, sending a hint of rainbow down with the white light from above. Some of them climbed up into those things. Were they sacrifices, perhaps? There was no sign of a grisly death; no bio-material besides the fingerprints was detected. Maybe that was what the tubes were for? The king consumed them in some way through those tubes; maybe some sort of molecular disassembly like the Emers.

He looked back at the interface and zoomed back out from the fingerprint. This time he targeted the tubes, a little tricky as they swayed gently in the mild air currents that snaked around the throne room. He took a snapshot, all sensors capturing the same moment in time. It would be easier to analyse the data in freeze-frame.

The tubes seemed to be the only things in the room not made from the exotic metal, apart from the giant himself. From his readouts, the tube seemed to be made of something akin to rubber, and had tiny ridges along its length, hinting at a more complex structure below. Cutting a cross-section through the bilateral showed him the inside of the tube. Strangely, it seemed to be solid all the way through, though the rubber on the inside was less dense than that on the outside. This was clearly not just some tube used to drain the pods of their occupants. Then what could this all be for?

Priors stared up at the pods once more. They had a quiet beauty in the cool light, their tubes bobbing gently left and right, casting dancing shadows into the room. And above each of them, a perfectly round hole, leading all the way back up to the surface. Wait.

The TechArch looked back at the interface, wiping away the tube and its structures and bringing up an overview of the room itself, twisting the view to look down from above. It was longer than it was wide, almost rectangular with the corners rounding off unevenly. He changed the view to show the outlines of the space, as well as the five pods hanging above the king at one end. Then he zoomed out a little, outlining the holes. They matched perfectly. With the pods spaced out a few meters from each other, each bored hole was centred on its own pod, its diameter at least a third larger than that of the pod below it. Each hole cut through the mountain in a perfectly straight line, up to the surface.

No, Priors thought. It couldn’t be that simple… He zoomed in to one of the pods. How could they have lined up so perfectly? As he gazed intently at the alignment of the pod with the tunnel above it, he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. He switched views, going back to full-colour mode. There was something on top of the pod; on top of each of the pods. A covering, seemingly made of the same metal as everything else. But it didn’t look like they were simple lids. There was a curve to them—

He angled the view down a little, getting a three-quarter view of the construction. The metal was buckled and twisted, a barbed hole protruding from the centre, as if something had burst out of the glass chamber.

Priors stumbled back a couple of steps. This was unlike anything they’d seen so far. He fell back to the floor, sitting and leaning forward, sucking in the processed air from the mask. This was looking less and less like science and more like fantasy. It seemed to him the only explanation was that the explorers had found the dead king. They had carved the ornate, mechanical-looking walls, a shrine built in reverence to the giant. They then hooked up cables to the throne, perhaps to feed power to whatever apparatus they had installed around it. They hung the five glass pods, tubes hanging down and piercing the king at particular points. They then sat inside the glass chambers, flipped a switch, and consumed what life was left in the monolithic body. Its essence or power, or… whatever, drawn through into each of the five. And then, filled with this new power, they burst from the pods, soaring through the mountain itself, and on into the atmosphere. Perhaps they continued into space. On to a new planet to explore, with new powers to harness.

A half-remembered quote from a writer born centuries back floated into his mind. Maybe it was magic. Maybe magic was just technology they hadn’t reverse engineered yet. Maybe the Ministry was a group of exploring wizards, trying to remember the old tricks of the universe. All he knew was they weren’t ready to figure this one out quite yet.

While the commander would not be best pleased about the lack of new technology with which to better kill people, Technological Archaeologist Shawn Priors had found something that meant so much more than a simple tactical advantage. He had seen the other side of the curtain between what was possible and what was thought impossible. To know such wonders were in store for future generations of mankind to unlock was awe inspiring. He would likely never see the day this marvel was picked apart and pieced back together again. But one day…

Priors smiled. “Alakazam,” he muttered.

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” —Arthur C. Clarke