The Failed Experiment

Archive Log 222 - October 2^nd, 2051

The heat was unbearable. That much I remember. The agonising waves of the sun burning into skin already coated with three layers of plasticky factor 100… yet still so burning. Global warming has spiralled out of control, and the world is so burned in some places that the population has been decimated. Countries so ruined we can’t talk about them now. It’s too horrific. I remember the days when there were penguins and polar bears outside of the zoo, but now there are none. Almost all of the fish populations are completely gone, boiled to death, or forced to go deeper and perish down there. The world’s a mess – I could write entire essays on it… but that’s not the point of this statement. This log. In July, something strange happened, and not a single Archivist knows what to think about it. I’ll give some background first.

We’re all fairly scared of what’s out there. The other planets explored as part of ‘Planet B’ all failed, and no-one’s really acknowledging the weird things that have been happening since the ice caps melted and the monoliths came. The monoliths were a strange phenomenon about thirty years ago, but most of us believe they were a warning sign of something coming. Back when we had a chance to change this mess and put the world right again.

Historically, the northern hemisphere’s summer period is May to September, and Winter November to February. The periods of change are autumn, September to October, and Spring, March to May. In the southern hemisphere, it’s the opposite – winter is May to September, and summer is November to February. As the climate changed and the world reached boiling point, the southern hemisphere burned. Countries along the equator ceased to exist, crippling economies and populations. We are, at present, acknowledging what is known as the post-modern Warming Age. We’ve basically become stone agers again. The northern hemisphere had a bit of time to adjust, but as most of the main world powers in the northern hemisphere had only mild seasonal changes, we survived with only minor losses to the countries of the new world. Granted, the lower halves of America and Europe are gone…

Anyway, back to the monoliths. Those were important because, shortly before we reached the point of no return, they started popping up without reason. Some said it was an art exhibit, others something more sinister. Turns out, the latter was right. These monoliths are not human. Groups of Archivists and Teachers have put together expeditions to them, to try and sus them out… but almost all of them went missing. It’s human curiosity that sends five teams to their deaths at different points in time, but then the space race was the same. Humans won’t change in that regard. We recently discovered that these monoliths were alive. I know, that’s a weird concept for a few lumps of rock, but they are alive. There are caves in the coldest parts of the world lined with the same runes chiselled into the monoliths, but none of us can fathom what they might mean. It’s not a living language, although there’s talk of a translating tablet being found somewhere, but I personally think that’s just a hoax. There’s also talk of a single tribe who knew how to read them, but we’re hesitant to reach out to them. Why? Well, because the last time we reached out to tribes like that in the wilderness, they either died from the lack of common microbes which the crews passed on, or they sent arrows sharp enough to pierce the bottom of helicopters. That’s why.

This is all fairly worrying, yes, I know. We have monoliths, an ancient language, and some unseen killer literally wiping people in groups off the face of the earth. But it’s more worrying because the planet should be dead completely in about… three to five more years. As in, literally no human will be able to live here in three to five years. It’ll be that scorched… yet there are pockets on the earth, in both hemispheres, which are cold. Most people don’t understand it fully, that’s why they put the Archivists on the case, because we’re the experts left in human history. We have the best chance at figuring out what’s happened. Cold spots aren’t normal on any dying planet, especially one where summer is regularly hitting sixty Celsius non-equatorially. It’s snowing. It was snowing in July – that’s the point! It shouldn’t be snowing anywhere! The average temperature in the northern hemisphere was twenty Celsius – it’s now forty. It’s double what it used to be. Winter used to drop below ten, below freezing! There’s not a spot on this planet that’s close to ten Celsius! Not anymore! Yet we had snow in July. People have been going missing if they try to translate the monoliths in person. We’ve had to covert-ops photos of them, just so our Translators can have a stab. We’re reluctant to let any of the official, expert code-breakers have a crack at it because we’re terrified that if we lose them, we’re truly screwed. So, we’re trying to keep them away from it all. President Harvey doesn’t know what to do. Neither does the European President… no-one really knows where she is these days, actually. With any luck, she’s already gone underground.

Snowing in July. It’s just not normal. There’s another cold spot though, one the politicians don’t yet know about. We’re keeping it quiet. We’re going to find out what’s happening there. If we see another monolith, we’ll turn back.

Archive log 223 - December 9^th, 2050

We found the cold spot. We found a monolith. No, we actually found about fifty monoliths, all of them sentient. Yes, you read that right. Sentient. They were aware. Of everything. Of it all. They knew we were there… but they didn’t hurt us. The only thing we did differently this time was not telling the world media. This was our secret ‘trip to find the tablet thingy to translate the monoliths’, and we got funded well for it too. But the monoliths didn’t have writing on them at this place. There was nothing to translate. They were rounder, softer, and the biggest ones entirely jet black with a blue hue. Angela thought they looked like alien spaceships, which we’re not entirely ruling out. I keep thinking back to July. What was happening in July? July was the month we managed to put the last of the fires out close to the equator… at least, that’s what we tell ourselves as humans. When I think about it, the world just burned itself to such a crisp that even the ashes couldn’t burn any more. Everything is reduced to carbon. This cold spot had some signs of returning life, but that couldn’t have been possible… July. July… what was it about July that was so special?! It snowed everywhere. I didn’t make that clear in the last log, did I? No – I didn’t. It snowed everywhere. Like the whole of the northern hemisphere, where people live, was like the arctic and Antarctic. At first, we thought it might have been the Russians messing with us, but they got a full coating of snow, too. It really threw everything off, to be honest. I can’t believe I downplayed that… Jeez. Anyway, lots of snow. And at this cold spot, lots of snow. Lots of life. Lots of monoliths, literally with the diversity of humanity. It’s crazy. We don’t know what they’re made of, or anything like that. Rajeet got close enough to one of them and said it was like ‘living rock’, as though there was something inside it, growing. Pulsating was the word he used but that’s knocking me sick.

We have therefore come to the conclusion that the monoliths are either spaceships (viable), eggs (viable), or portals to another dimension. Hippy Chris came up with that one. He reckons they’re portals because crystals designed like that concentrate energy.

Archive Log 224 – 17^th January 2051

They weren’t spaceships, or eggs. Nor were they portals to another dimension. I wish they were, truly. I can’t quite believe what I’m about to say, but I’m obliged to in the likely event that future humans, or other sentient species, find this. It’s our only legacy left. We’re all currently underground, trying to stay quiet. Another snow came, although it wasn’t snow. It was deadly. It wiped out so much of the population… we had healthcare in place – shit like that’s easy to handle when half the world literally burns to death – but it was still overwhelmed. We had the medicine to treat people, but those who didn’t make it inside died. They’re dead. We can’t go up to the world because there are dead bodies everywhere, it’s like a damn zombie apocalypse hit! As people left the hospitals they were forced into the tunnels we started building while the world burns. We’re not even at capacity, that’s the sad thing. About half the population made it into the tunnels. We’re trapped. I don’t think we should have come down here, but the other experts say that if this is truly what we think it is, then… then it’s best for us to be down here.

Angela’s dead. They can’t find her and she didn’t fingerprint when she came into the tunnels. She’s dead. Shit, she’s dead.

Alright, alright. Back to work. It’s not alien. It’s been with us the entire time. It’s as old as time itself. We’ve not been sitting on a rock. There isn’t a sphere of solid iron, then molten iron-nickel. Then lava. Then crust… God, if only that were true. See, humans evolved at a very steady pace, with a casual burst here and there of brilliance that made tools easier. But did we honestly think some smart cave-Alec ‘realised’ one day that wine and beer were possible?! Or that melting metal was possible, much less that we could shape it into weapons to hunt with?! And what about religions, hmm? Random people who have these powers, who always come from the sky?! That’s the thing, there are so many random coincidences that have catapulted us forward and tested our respect for the resources this planet provides for us – and each time, we’ve failed. But it all makes sense now. The paintings of deities in the sky were never in the sky! It was the ocean! It was always the ocean! The ocean which just happens to be the same colour as the sky! We’ve barely explored five percent of our oceans, because we crudely looked to the sky, the stars… look at the ancient Egyptians! How did they manage to engineer with such precision with sorely unprecise tools?! And more to the point, if each of these civilisations were so bloody amazing, how did they all die out?! The Ancient Greeks didn’t give two figs about being LGBTQ, by the way, they just loved whoever and whatever, and valued intelligence over who stuck their dick in who – why did we suddenly decide that was immoral and unnatural?! Hmm?! Why did females, the creators of life on this planet, suddenly become the weaker sex, worth nothing aside from housekeepers and child bearers. Why did disability mean inequality?! Why did skin colour become such a divisive issue?! Why did it become illegal to love?! None of it makes sense!

Only it does make sense! It makes perfect sense! When you consider that each civilisation wasn’t ‘evolved’ – evolution doesn’t regress a species, it improves it – rather, was ‘filtered out’… you’ll start to see the bigger picture. The monoliths, the strange languages, the way other civilisations have simply ‘vanished’, leaving behind only a few material goods… all of it has been a thumbprint left behind in the literal and figurative clay of the earth. We’re not humans capable of amazing things, not at all. We’re creations of the thing that’s lived on this planet since the dawn of existence itself. We’re a biochemistry experiment in a biochemist’s back yard. We’re the result of hundreds, thousands of failed attempts to create something magical to inhabit this earth. We’re a project. And we’ve failed.

But, unlike other less-ambitious societies, we had a chance. We had a lineage from way back… and we had a few more chances because we showed promise. We made medicines, we formed alliances, and the world wars were probably pretty fun to watch from a distance. Watching global politics unfold like that had to be amazing to watch when they’re your own creations. But we failed. We burned our environment out. We neglected those which we had a duty of care for. We positioned ourselves at the top of the hierarchy, and we placed too high a value on our lives at the detriment of other beings on this planet. Species died out because of us. Races faded because our prejudices influenced how we chose to breed. Plants perished… and in the end, we burned it all. We had our chances, and we blew them slowly, one by one. We destroyed our peace and divided ourselves. We killed ourselves slowly over time.

We’re not alone on this Earth. We never have been. And we certainly are not at the top of the food chain. Those which own this planet have come for us. Some here are calling it ‘God’, others ‘Allah’… the Sikh folk can’t decide who it is. And I don’t blame them. It’s hard enough meeting your maker when there’s only one maker you believe in. Buddhists can’t figure it out either. I’m lost, really. I don’t believe in religion. My faith was karma, the universe, fate… but that all turned out to be a lie. It turns out the higher-power people were right all along. When they bring us from these tunnels, perhaps they’ll show us mercy. We are the experts, the ones who’ve been crying about the state of the planet for decades… perhaps we might survive. Perhaps not. I’m not expecting anything because, if I do… well, I don’t want my final bit of time on earth to be disappointment.

So, to any future humans who read this log… don’t make the same mistake we have. Don’t throw away your chances. Don’t fail the experiment. Love with abandon those who cross your path. Treat the earth and its treasures – big and small – with respect and care and love. And if your end comes, if your experiment fails too… meet the keepers of this planet with respect.

Yours with faith, courage and honesty,

The human race.