The cave appeared small from the outside but when we entered, it was massive. Rocks, and what appeared to be gems, sparkled off of our torches. "This cave appears to be endless, I can't see another entryway anywhere." said Gillian Veers, the ships designated geologist who had a specialty in speleology. "Well just remember hun that you wanted to come in here. Just teasing, I know that there was no other way for us to move forward. ADA could you do some sort of scan thingy and see if there is a way out." ADA turned towards me and tilted her head as if she was confused on what I had asked. "I hope you know Captain Veers that I am not a robot. I do not have a function that would allow me to scan. I am a cybernetic organism meant to help out the ships needs while the crew is in cryosleep." I just laughed at his response. "And a fine job you did maintaining the ship. You did it so well that we crashed on a planet we know nothing about with no way out in sight." "Captain, I'm sorry to have interrupted but my drones might of found something." Andrew Wattley was the chief engineer for the mission. "What do you have Mr. Wattley?" "Well Captain, scans of the cave show 3 potential entry points, but that's not the most interesting part. Captain down the first entry point to the west the drones are picking up scans of lifeforms, but theres nobody down their." I thought about it, maybe if I had thought harder the things to come might not of happened the way that they did. "I think we should take a look. ADA stay by the ship just in case any more of the crew wakes up or if any communications come through." ADA nodded and we headed down further into the cave.

"Captains log: We have crash landed on a planet of unknown origin. As far as I can tell from data specialist ADA, the planet is not on any known star chart. Also we have discovered what might be an ancient civilization that lives in this cave that we are exploring. Data will be collected and scanned for signs of intelligent lifeforms. Veers out." I saw Gillian looking at what appeared to be a cave drawing. "Jean you have to look at this. If my interpretation of this is correct, these drawing depict a species that is far more advanced than we could ever dream to be. A species that has already navigated the stars and has even discovered galaxies that no one on Earth has even thought of yet. It also appears that their language is not that far off from English." She was right, the drawings showed a technological marvel, stuff we were probably centuries from discovering, and they discovered it in what appeared to be days. If we were able to get access to this tech, we could usher in a new era for the human race. We continued down the cave but when I turned back to check on Andrew, he was gone. "Mr. Wattley come in. Andy do you read?" Andrew stepped out from behind the corner. "Oh I'm sorry for the fright Captain, but I had to take a wiz." I nodded and we moved on. Then we came across the entry point.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The entry point was small, too small for a human sized species to walk through on a regular basis. As far as I was concerned, we were stuck again. Gillian was examining the wall around the entrance way when she came across something interesting, the wall was not a wall at all. "Jean if scans are to be believed, this wall is some sort of interplanetary door from one side of the universe to the other. Look at these scans they are showing different atmospheric levels, gravitational fields, and even potentially a different size sun. I'm no doctor but I can hypothesize that the people who live over there are extremely intelligent and that the intelligence spike is due to the size of their sun. This planet might be a location that they found and expanded their civilization but then something happened to eradicate the colonizers of this planet." I was shocked by this discovery. See we are not the smartest people back home but we have experience in our fields. This discovery would change humanities understanding of the universe, this discovery answers the ultimate question that people have been asking for nearly a thousand years, are we alone? "You said something happened to the people that came here, what?" "Unclear, not without further inquiry. I suggest we go back to the ship and maybe wait for further contact from the base." I nodded but as we got ready to leave there was a big flash of light coming from the cave wall and then nothing.

We made our way back up to the ship and ADA was standing on the bridge talking with command. "ADA, I told you to radio me if anything happened, especially if Commander Lashore made contact." Both of them looked shocked and confused at the same time. "Captain Veers, we at command central are amazed to see that you, your wife, and Engineer Wattley are alive." This is where our confusion came into effect. "Commander? I am happy to know that you are shocked to see that we are alive, but we made contact with command 18 hours ago when we entered that cave, so pardon my bluntness but where does your confusion come from?" Commander Lashore looked troubled as he said his sentence that changed my life forever. "Captain you have not been in that cave for 18 hours, but in reality you've been there for 18 months.