New Hope: Book 1
7

At first, Ellie stood there frozen as she looked from some distance at the stationary metallic sphere hovering freely above the Moon’s surface.

She couldn’t believe her eyes! “How is this possible?” The orb seemed to levitate motionlessly, and although there weren’t any visible openings that would suggest some kind of a reaction engine, the object was not falling. It’s as if gravity, weak as it is, does not affect it at all, she thought. She took a few steps toward the mysterious object to look at it up-close.

Ellie thought that it couldn’t hurt to try and contact Julius at New Hope at this point. She’d only waste about fifteen seconds of her time, at most.

“Julius, do you read me?” she said. “Captain Cousteau!” she tried again, and again to no avail.

The only response she got was the familiar cracks and screeching.

The astronaut approached the orb carefully and stopped only when the object started spinning round its axis and giving off a low, at first, and then a more intense blue light. And a hum. A hum! Over the vacuum of space! How could that be? Perhaps it was vibration, making it across the distance and then, having reached her helmet, translating into acoustic waves that she could hear? Mere seconds ago it was impossible to see the object in the dark crater without shining the helmet’s light directly at it. Now it would surely be visible from several miles away. Perhaps it would even be visible from Earth if one knew exactly where to look and had a sufficiently powerful telescope.

She flinched and sighed. I’m not supposed to take risks, she thought. So much for keeping my word. Then she carefully walked around the suspended orb. What could this mysterious object be? And where is it from? Who could have left it here? More importantly: why? Ellie wondered, looking closely at the intricate hieroglyphic-like patterns on the orb’s surface. At first glance, it seemed perfectly smooth so she thought the symbols are being somehow displayed on it. Perhaps from the inside, like in a projector and a screen? Or simply painted on there. But what did they mean? If they mean anything at all and weren’t left there by some madman to confuse anyone who encounters this ’ball’, she thought.

She noticed that some of the symbols had at one point come together and shine up more, then they created a circle, forming... “Exactly... What? An inscription?” Ellie was under a spell.

The symbols seemed to flow like water on the object’s surface. They were inviting her to examine them from up close. She couldn’t take her eyes off of them. The desire within her to touch the symbols kept growing, and growing. To the point she felt an immeasurable desire to just let herself go. She wanted to immerse herself in the symbols, learn their meaning; feel them. She also simply wished to touch something extraterrestrial, out of curiosity. Albeit she had no grounds to think that this object was alien-made - it could just as well be a sophisticated prank by her colleagues from her competing space agency, transported to the Moon some time ago and left to be found by someone, someday.

Ellie felt a growing urge to reach out her hand and skim her fingers over its surface. Julius’ warnings and his command to maintain caution were for nothing. Ellie was destined to succumb to the temptation as soon as she saw the bizarre sphere. She had to approach the hovering object, now pulsating with intense blue light. It was as if someone had taken over her body and she was standing somewhere nearby watching the event unfold. Just seconds before, she remembered reading an article in some magazine about magnetic fields and electrical brain stimulation. It wrote about how they could lead to the feeling of being outside one’s own body - perhaps the orb was emitting similar waves? The whole situation was surreal, making it almost spiritual. Ellie could not resist the desire to overcome her own fears of physical closeness to something so incredible and unexpected, rejecting her deeply hidden instinct in her subconscious: her flight or fight response.

These thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Ellie realized she was clutching the orb with both her hands. Nothing happened at first. It literally stopped moving and emitting any light. Ellie even had a moment to think she shouldn’t be doing this, that she might have broken something. But then the orb flared up as swiftly as it went out. The blaze of colors gave off such a bright light that Ellie unwittingly squinted and then shut her eyes entirely. The strength of the light was so powerful that Ellie suspected it could be seen on Earth by anyone watching the Moon. Even with the naked eye.

It started vibrating in her hands. She felt a tremendous force emanating from the object. Such a small thing, yet so much energy! For some reason, the astronaut was absolutely certain that the orb’s energy could supply a large modern city with power for many months. The vibrations were growing rapidly, and when Ellie started to regain a little control of her mind and understood that holding an unknown, vibrating, illuminating object wasn’t exactly sensible, she decided to let go of it and retreat to a safer distance. At least that’s what she wanted to do.

The mysterious orb clearly had other ideas and just as Ellie started to loosen her grip, the sparkling object exploded in the brightest light the astronaut had ever seen. The flare that could only be compared to looking directly at the Sun with the naked eye emanated in all directions. Even though she had shut her eyes tight, there was so much light reaching her pupils, Ellie screamed in pain. She felt as if her hands were welded to the orb’s surface and she couldn’t let go.

“Argh!” she cried, trying to set herself free. For God’s sake, what is happening?! What is this light?! The orb then exploded with the inexplicable energy again. But this time, it presented something more than just light. There was a screech so horrific that even the Moon’s lack of atmosphere did not stop the noise from reaching her ears. How is that possible?! she thought again on the verge of consciousness. Then she felt her entire body penetrated, wave after wave, by the peculiar energy.

It was something she’d never felt before. On the one hand, all her senses were being violated by a piercing and painful light, her ears felt as if they were about to pop from the extreme volume of the sound, and the force coming from the device seemed to cause vibrations in all the cells and molecules in her body.

On the other hand, despite being blinded at first, Ellie could never see more clearly than now. This vision was more than meets the eye. Ellie felt as if her mind was seeing different images, sounds, smells, and emotions. The glyphs and symbols that were shimmering on the object’s surface before became even clearer to her. Their hidden meaning became more understandable. It’s a language! she realized. And more! Ellie understood what each symbol meant and how they are combined into sentences, sentences into phrases, and phrases into entire stories! She also saw an exquisite rocky landscape, a green landmass overgrown with low vegetation, and a sea. Or an ocean? Anyway, they were surely scenes from life on Earth. There was some enormous structure - a building? Maybe a bunker... Ellie couldn’t tell. All the images were scrolling through her mind like a roll of film in an old, analog camera. She also saw people. Except that they seemed different. They were more primitive-looking, dressed in hides and some simple linen clothing... Are they ancient people? Ellie wondered. Am I looking at some historical record or is this only a dream?

This was the last thought that went through her mind before she lost contact with reality. A sensory overload of the brain tends to cut off all consciousness and that’s exactly what happened. Ellie’s body fell to the ground at the foot of the orb that was still hovering 1.5 meters above the Moon’s surface.

A little while later, it went out and fell hard to the ground, right next to the motionless body of the astronaut.

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