Four Pillars

Amber cavern walls covered in dusky roots, a golden ray of sun from above, and a shimmering coffee pool. And the Four Pillars in the middle of it all, of course.

Despite herself, Dr. Ellen Azwani gasped. The photo on her tablet was perfect, rivalling the real thing.

“Oh my, my, my,” she said, grinning. “Oh, Curtis. You’re going to love this. I bet you never thought I could be a photographer.”

The photo held little research value, she knew that. Particularly compared to the thousands of hours of video, the ground-penetrating 3d scans of the cave complex, the countless chemical analyses, or the other myriad bytes of hard data the project had generated. But the photo was pretty. It would make people care. Maybe even make them care enough to dig into the rest of the research.

An alert popped up on her tablet. Evening departure in: 30 minutes.

“Already?”

Ellen took one final look at the photo and then put the tablet away. Most of her things were already packed up, and the rest would remain in the cave. Like the console – the sturdy table with a secure compartment for electronics – and the power unit. She approached the console and keyed in a soft-shutdown for thirty minutes from now. Then she folded the monitor down into the secure compartment.

In half an hour pretty much everything would go into hibernation, other than the nav beacon. And of course, Nancy would remain behind too.

Ellen squatted beside the metre long ovoid drone, resting on its treads by the console. “Hey Nance.” She pet it. “I’ll be heading off soon, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Probably not for a few months though. That’s the plan, but… who knows, right?” She took out her tablet and connected to Nancy, reviewing her programming. “I’m going to need you to watch the house while I’m gone. Okay?”

Nancy’s diagnostics indicated all systems were functional.

With a few minutes to go before lights-out, Ellen approached the Four Pillars one last time. They were arranged in a line, from shortest to tallest, in a shallow pool in this exact spot in an otherwise unworked, unremarkable cave. The tallest pillar was made of four segments, each about a half-metre cubed. The next tallest, three segments. Then two, and then finally one.

When she looked at the Pillars in profile, like the photo, the segments kind of made a triangle. And they were all covered in carvings of interlocking spirals. Some of them seemed to repeat in patterns, others were unique.

That’s what the Four Pillars were. What they meant or why they were here, Ellen had no idea.

“I wish I knew, Nancy. But I’m no archaeologist. That’s more Curtis’ wheelhouse, and he’d tell you to stick to the facts. So let’s stick to the facts, Nance.”

Her tablet indicated five minutes until departure. Ellen slung her pack over her shoulder and then picked up the two boxes too precious to leave behind. Mostly they were filled with backups of things she had already submitted, but as any good scientist knew, you could never have too many backups.

It wasn’t a long walk out of the cave and the sun was already setting in the crimson sky. Bingo was somewhere up there, but on the other side of the world. Just outside the cave, on the grassy patch where she ate most of her meals this past month, Mulberry was waiting for her.

“Heya, Mul!”

Mulberry replied by automatically opening its driver-side hatch when she approached, its cabin lights turning on. Ellen got in and set her backups on the back seat.

“You would not believe the amazing photo I took.” Mulberry’s control panels lit up with information displays. “It’s just beautiful. If this was a movie, it would be the poster for it.” She checked the connection to the nav beacon in the cave – fine – and the nav beacon back at home – also fine. “The lighting is perfect, and you can see so much detail on the Four.” Mulberry estimated it would take about twenty-two hours to drive home, which meant an overnight. “I wonder who they’d get to play me?”

This place was far too trackless for full-autopilot, so Ellen put Mulberry into manual control, grabbed the wheel, and started the long drive. For a short while the only sound was the faint rustle and pop of its gargantuan wheels crunching over stones and shrubs, and the almost imperceptible whine of its powerful electric engine.

“Let’s have some music, Mul. Something… new-ish.” The cabin filled with Jakub’s playlist.

***

Just over thirty hours later – the trip and a sleep – Ellen and Mulberry arrived home. Home was a broad, flat hill, covered with gardens and a couple free standing structures. The two biggest were a Long-Range Reconnaissance Crawler Maintenance Garage – Mulberry’s house – and a broad white hemisphere, a Class-8 Environmentally Sealed Field Habitat. Ellen’s house.

When she got out she stretched and looked up at the endless blue midday sky. Bingo would come by today, but it was still too early. She still had time.

“I’m home!” she sang, entering the habitat. It had been state-of-the-art when they bought it, a safe place to live for up to twelve intrepid scientists for a period of up to five years.

There had been six of them back then. Kent said it would mean more room for everyone, so it’d be more comfortable. Less chance they go nuts and kill each other over the bathroom. Ellen couldn’t deny she had a lot of room but she didn’t know about comfortable. Some days she would have killed to have an argument over the bathroom.

She didn’t regret the purchase though. The Class-8 was good quality. Sure, after five years the environmental seals gave way, and since then the odd thing here and there required maintenance, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. Twenty years later, and still going strong.

“I’m going to make mac and cheese,” she told Roberta. Roberta wasn’t a specific thing, more the general spirit of the kitchen. Roberta was the oven when she needed to be the oven, or the fridge, or the fryer, or the scale. Roberta had many talents and she was a great listener.

“Mac and cheese is Curtis’ favourite, and today’s a special day after all.”

She dug out a handful of what she called pseudocheese berries. They looked like plum sized olives, but their insides were a savoury yellow mucus that in no way tasted like cheese. But she had learned that if she added water and let it sit for a while, it would form a paste that kind of melted when heated, and it didn’t taste half bad for what it was.

The macaroni was the u-shaped bean – or seed, or nut, or offspring or whatever – of the noble macaronish tree. It wasn’t really macaroni, but that was okay, because the plant wasn’t really a tree either. More like a giant fungus, according to the genetic analysis. But again, the rubbery bean things were tasty when seasoned and heated, so she didn’t complain.

Pseudocheese and macaronish were two of the staple plants of her gardens, and by some trick of luck they contained a lot of the nutrients her body needed, and they weren’t poisonous to boot.

When the food got to cooking she did a once over on her research again, but her eyes glazed over. There was so much of it, decades of it, and it was such a jumbled mess. Every time she said she’d organize it she got distracted. Usually, with another incredible new discovery. And were any more incredible than the Four Pillars? It was hard to believe two years had passed since she found them.

Organizing and compiling the research had always been a do-it-tomorrow, and now she’d run out of time. She’d have to settle for an overview and her awesome new photo to do the talking. Ellen submitted the last of her Four Pillars research to the autosorter, which dumped it somewhere in the massive pile of digital data.

“Look at it this way, Roberta. It’ll give grad students something to do. See? I am contributing to the enrichment of the next generations.”

Roberta the oven dinged. Ellen took out her pot of mac and cheese, set out six bowls, and spooned her portion into one of them. It was a lovely day so she decided to eat outside.

***

The far side of the hill rose to a panoramic view of the valley. Most of it was long, windswept grass, but a river meandered through as well. The water wasn’t quite potable, nor was it quite water, but it was close enough that the Habitat’s filters could turn it into something fit for human consumption.

Large, knotted bulbs of roots dotted the countryside, vaguely resembling trees, and distant mountains rose into the horizon. If she squinted, it could almost be somewhere on Earth.

And then of course there was the corpse of the Asimov. Even now, more than twenty years after the accident, its name shined brilliantly in the sun. The paint truly was indomitable. The underbelly was a mess of blackened wreckage though, but at least the two kilometre long divot it had carved into the planet during the crash had mostly healed.

“Hello, Asimov.”

She unrolled a blanket near the others, as it was pleasant to eat in good company, and greeted them in turn.

“Hello, Arwa,” she said to the first grave marker at the overlook. “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?”

Arwa never woke from cryo sleep. An undiagnosed heart condition. Just one of those things.

“Dr. Huang. Kent.” She nodded to both markers. Huang and Kent were in the maintenance bay when the Asimov’s star drive melted down. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. They were rated at 99.8% safe, it’s just that space travel always carried a risk, and when it came to the Asimov, well. Just one of those things.

Both Huang and Kent were presumed instantaneously vaporized.

“Jakub!” she said moving on. “My goodness, I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I just recently tried out some of your music, and I have to say, it’s simply marvelous. Thank you so much for having such good taste. I just wish I listened to you earlier.”

After the explosion, the Asimov lost its orbit and began its unplanned descent. The gaping hole the star drive left caused a ripple effect in the hull, and the plating protecting the navigation bay tore off. Jakub’s fate is unconfirmed, but it’s assumed he was incinerated on re-entry.

Ellen turned to the last marker. She touched it, tenderly ran her thumb along the display which read, “Curtis Azwani,” and smiled.

“Hello, love. I made your favourite.” She gestured her mac and cheese.

Curtis had been with her in the control module, which by some stroke of luck landed right-side-up and didn’t careen headlong into the ground. But it was still an immense shock. His security harness couldn’t handle it, hers could. So, she survived and he… didn’t. Just one of those things.

She sighed. “I have some bad news.”

Almost as if on cue, her tablet chimed that it just got a connection. Ellen looked to the sky. She still couldn’t see anything up there, of course, but now she knew Bingo was in range.

Bingo was the only satellite they managed to launch before the Asimov fell to its death. Bingo, who was her shy friend these twenty years. Bingo, who visited her every now and then when he passed overhead, and gifted her with maps and surveys and global positioning. Bingo, who warned her when bad weather was inbound. And Bingo, her one line to the rest of the universe, her one chance of rescue.

“Bingo is dying. I wish I was wrong, but the data doesn’t lie.”

She thumbed her tablet, starting the transfer of her mess of research materials to Bingo, who would then pass it on home. Hopefully someone would be listening.

“He’s sick. His orbit’s been shrinking and he doesn’t have the power, or the capability, to correct it. I think he’s only got a couple more weeks before he hits the atmosphere and… well.”

Bingo responded that it got her orders. It cautioned her that the closest recipient was over thirty light-years away. Nothing Ellen didn’t already know.

Thirty years by light, just for information to travel one way. Over a century by star drive, to move frozen humans across the void. And then that was on a good day. The stars were antsy, they kept moving. She hated star math.

“Rescue was never a real hope anyway. And besides, there’s enough research here to occupy me to the end of my days. My goodness, Curtis, if you only knew. This planet is amazing. It’s so earthlike I can breathe here. I’m compatible with the local flora and fauna. And the discoveries? Back when the Casablanca Expedition first found alien life, it changed everything for us. But this planet?”

She pulled up her photo, showed it to the others. “Look!” She grinned even as tears welled in her eyes. “Look at those pillars! Look at those carvings. There’s simply no way that happened by accident. There’s patterns here. Craftsmanship. Proof of alien intelligence.”

She set the tablet down on the blanket, watching the upload to Bingo progress.

“I just wanted you guys to see it.” She wiped her eyes. “In the end, it mattered. This whole trip, it mattered. We mattered.”