Angela, was watching the video of their rescue. It has been three days since their argument, they all promised to talk more to each other, but, she was still having trouble interacting with Alex. She knew that he was trapped here with them, but, she still couldn't forget what this situation did for them. He basically robbed them of their future. All her plans, her career, she couldn't even have a family here.
All they could do was slowly waste away in this flying metal coffin.
Alicia was burying herself in trying to understand the science behind everything. Paul was the one making a lot of effort to interact with Alex, she couldn't understand him, it's like he forgave Alex too quickly.
Paul asked Alex how to operate and possibly repair the shuttle if needed, the only reason she even decided to learn as well was because there was an interactive program to teach you.
What amazed her was when she discovered that he had basically most of his people library of knowledge in the ship. When she asked how it was possible to have that much info, he explained her the basic process. It basically involves manipulating group of molecules to have a read only memory. It was basically what Richard Feynman suggested. Earth was doing it, but not at this scale.
His people had a centralized library of knowledge and they created copies of it this way to reduce the need of a lot of people to access it all the time. The ship searched the local library before trying to access the central and more up to date one.
She also spent some of her time trying to understand the ship's AI, the library had the knowledge, but some parts were simply a basic explanations, she suspected it was a security feature, the only simplified information was the learning algorithm, and from what she could understand you could actually create Skynet with it, and that is probably the reason why the safety system was not simplified but explained in detail.
She also found some 3d games and simulations but she got bored.
It was frustrating, these things would be the things that should be enough to get her addicted because the quality was beyond anything she has ever seen even the ability to interact with the environment was off the charts, but, her mind always came back to the fact that she didn't have a future.
She was now revising the video of their rescue, there was something about the video that was bugging her, but, she couldn't see what.
She restarted again and then it clicked. The box Alex was working with before the wormhole opened, he placed the box near the wormhole after it opened the first time. After the rescue when the wormhole shifted it was pulled into even before they went inside, so, it either got destroyed inside the wormhole or it arrived on this side before them.
She got up quickly, and ran toward the shuttle's exit. She was so excited that she practically jumped to the flying cart they had on the side of the shuttle to use as a step.
It was a very bad idea, because she overbalanced with the tablet in her hand and for so e stupid reason instead of letting go of it she grabbed the tablet even more, and tried to turn around to grab anything. When she was beyond the point of no return all she could think of while she was falling is 'oh, fuck'
Her left foot was still on top of the flying cart which made her spin and going toward the ground head first.
Just before her head hit the ground, she felt herself floating, and after a while she realized that she should have already hit the ground. She looked around and realized that somehow she was suspended in midair, did Alex see her plight and turned off the ship's gravity? She pushed against the cart to get herself somewhat vertical, and when she was better positioned gravity started to increase gradually giving her time to get a good hold on the ground before it returned to normal.
She then heard Alex's voice come from the ship's intercom, "Guys, would you please come to the bridge? We arrived at the planet, and there is something you have to see."
She turned and went to there, she decided to at least thank him for saving her. When she arrived at the bridge, Paul and Alicia were already there
"What happened?" Paul asked
"We are in orbit on the planet, and something is strange" Alex responded
"What?" Alicia asked
"Look for yourselves" he said, and they saw an aerial view of the planet,
"It has forests!" Angela stated the obvious, whatever was in her head completely forgotten in Liew of what she was seeing in front of her. This planet has forest, which means that her future changed, she didn't know how, but, it no longer was spending the rest of her life wasting away inside this flying tin can.
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"How can that be?" Alicia asked. It was obvious this was not earth, Angela has seen aerial view of earth forests, they were green. This forest was only part green, some trees were purple, others blood red, it was a very alien assortment of colors for trees, but, it didn't matter, it was trees.
"Can we go there?" Angela asked,
"I don't see why not" The angle they were looking the trees from suggested that they were not on top of the forest, or else they would only have been able to see the top if the trees, not their trunks as well. From this angle all they could see was forest, and mountains.
"Wait, you said that your people has never reached this far" Paul said
"Yeah, we haven't really gone more than 4000 light years from earth, too much power required" he answered
"So, what is this doing here? We are much further than that" Paul asked
"I have no idea" Alex answered "We can try to see if there is anyone from up here" and with that he guided the ship to go on top of the forest.
Most of the planet's surface was covered in a big ocean, but there was a massive forest covered continent on it.
The continent that came from what Alex defined as the north pole to halfway between the equator and the south pole.
The continent was completely covered with forest with a few mountains. There was a break in the middle that separated the north and south, the two parts were only connected through a small passageway like a natural bridge. Of course it was a matter of perspective and the size of this passageway was probably a few kilometers wide.
"What is that?" Angela pointed to a section of the screen, it looked like a patch of the forest with trees that had blood red leaves, and some purple ones "Those are not normal trees. Are you sure that it's not an alien world?"
"Those are normal trees" Alex answered "They are engineered to survive harsher environments, some are engineered to not require sunlight and can work with infrared"
Alicia got up and went to the screen squinting at something "Can you zoom in this area here?" She asked
He did and what they saw astounded them "Is that a city?" Paul asked
"It looks like it, can you zoom further?" she said
"No, we are at max", Alex said "it looks inhabited"
"Yeah, but at this distance we can't say with what" says Alicia
"What's strange is that I have been scanning looking for radio signals and I still can't find any" Alex said
"Why would that be strange?"
"The only worlds where you can't find a trace of radio signals are uninhabited worlds"
"What if they don't use any" Angela asked,
"Why wouldn't they use radio signals?" he asked, then continued "This world was clearly terraformed" Isn't that a big assumption on his part, from this far up they couldn't see if they were humans or not, after all she has learned ever since they crossed the wormhole she decided to keep an open mind in cases of Aliens
"We can just go down there and check of ourselves" she said, whatever they were it was better than staying here in this coffin with civilization so close
"We better be careful" Alex said, why was he so scared aren't they his people?
"Why? Do you think they are dangerous?" Alicia asked
"Not necessarily, but we don't know anything about them, like how did they get here, why it seems like they don't use technology, how they managed to terraform a planet, because it requires a lot of resources"
"So, they might not be friendly" Alicia said "Are there any groups from your people that would do this?"
"If it wasn't for the terraforming and lack of technology I would say wanderers, but they rely heavily on technology to survive and don't have the resources to terraform a world, much less get this far"
"What are they, these wanderers?"
"People who decided to live outside society, they don't have a planet, or a centralized government, they live mostly in carved asteroids or dome cities"
"Dome cities?"
"It's something we use when exploring worlds that haven't been terraformed, they come in various sizes, from house sized to small city sized, you deploy it in a world and fill it with oxygen, it has air and water filters, airlock to get in and out"
"So, it's like an airtight tent you deploy in a planet so you can live there, why not terraform the planet?" Angela asked. Mars colony was situated in a dome city, but that was constructed there and most of the infrastructure was underground, but from what he said their dome cities were portable.
"They usually only go to planets that we wouldn't consider terraforming, and if they are in a planet, we can't simply tell them to leave because we want to terraform"
"Ok, if these are wanderers what can we expect?" Paul asked
"Well, wanderers are not only one group, but they are multiple groups, some more friendly than others, but they distrust strangers, it takes a lot for a stranger to be welcomed by them"
"Have you ever interacted with them?" Alicia asked
"Yes, my last girlfriend was one" It was the first time they learned anything about his personal life aside from his experiments,
"If they don't trust strangers how could you get one to be your girlfriend?" Angela asked, it was curious
"I have no idea, she saved me and some friends who went to one of their planets without knowing, we were trying to scout it for tourism, we didn't know that a new colony of wanderers was scouting it too, after a lot of misunderstanding we found ourselves in a fight with some guys there, obviously we lost, she decided to break the fight and escort us back to our shuttle" when he was telling the story it looked like he remembered it fondly even the part about being beaten up. When he said he had no idea how she became his girlfriend sounded like he was surprised for her to accept him
"Why did you say it was obvious you would lose?" Paul asked
"We were three they were a lot more" he answered simply
"Ok, so, they don't like strangers?" Angela said
"No, it takes a while for them to warm up to any stranger" he answered "so, we better proceed carefully"
"We could get closer and observe from the sky" Angela sugested
"This shuttle is big, if we are close enough to be able see their day to day activities we are close to be seen from the sky"
"How about we settle down somewhere and walk there?" Alicia proposed
"The only place we can settle down is the ocean and the walk to there would be very big, it's possible but"
"Is that the only city?" Alicia asked
"We could look for more, maybe we'll find a better spot to park as well" said Paul
And with that they spent their time scanning the forest, they decided to start from the south and go up.