Note: I've gotten two bits of C&C on chapter 2 and both mentioned
that they hadn't seen chapter 1. So I thought I'd best repost it. C&C
on this is welcome, as I've done some tinkering.
Disclaimer: Moldiver is the property of Pioneer, inc. No money is
being made from this and no such intent should be inferred.
Inspiration is drawn from "Moon With A View" by Richard C. Hoagland,
available at http://www.enterprisemission.com/ if you're curious.
Morning dawned clear on Tokyo in the year 2048. With long fingers,
the sun chased away the shadows, summoned the citizens from their
beds and houses, and watched them as they went to work, or to school.
Or in the case of the Ozora Household, Tower Three, Level 29, Ichigo
Street, being lazy.
This morning, only two people were in residence; Hiroshi Ozora, age
24 and his sister Mirai, age 20. Their parents and younger brother
were in Australia, visiting family and looking at possible schools.
Hiroshi was skinny, with unkempt hair and eyes that squinted behind
his glasses, while Mirai was slightly shorter, with long brown hair
and a figure that was partly genetics and partly the result of
borderline masochistic exercise program. Though just as smart as the
rest of her family, Mirai craved the spotlight. She thrived on the
flash of cameras, the hum of the video recorders and the roar of the
crowd. But to live that life, she had to be in top physical condition
and she was. Her stomach was flat and hard, her arms and legs toned
and tanned, and if her skin was any clearer, it would be transparent.
But Mirai had a sweet tooth and so she had to work even harder then
most to stay on top.
Hiroshi, on the other hand, only needed to keep his brain in shape.
He was an engineer, currently between jobs and keeping himself busy
with consulting work . . . usually.
This morning, he sat in the dining room, a spoonful of cereal in his
mouth, a palmtop in one hand, and the morning paper in the other.
With one ear, he listened to the news, the other, he listened to
Mirai, who was in the living room working out on the Isokenetic
machine with weights added in.
"One ninety-eight, one ninety-nine, two hundred!" he heard her call
out and then the whine as the machine powered down and the clunk of
the weights being placed back in their holders.
Moments later, she walked in, wearing a sweat-soaked one piece outfit
that left nothing to the imagination, and a towel around her neck.
Her hair was tied back from her forehead and she was mopping her face
with a small hand-cloth.
"Wha!" Hiroshi gaped. "Mirai!" He loved his sister, but she had a
tendency towards casual nudity that shocked him. He suspected she'd
work out naked if her figure didn't need support and binding when
doing physical activity.
She rolled her eyes at him and vanished into the kitchen. He heard
the fridge open and close and then Mirai returned, bottle of water in
hand and wearing a lightweight robe.
"Prude," she chided, opening the bottle and drinking deep.
"I'm not a prude," he replied, setting the paper down. "But really,
Mirai, don't you think you--" he broke off as the door bell rang.
"Who could that be?"
Opening the door, he stared at the two men. Both wore identical dark
suits and one of them carried a briefcase. "Hiroshi Ozora?"
"Yeah?"
"My name is Tom Smith and this is William Lee Jones. We're with the
International Space Commission and we'd like to speak to you and your
sister. May we come in?"
"Sure," Hiroshi said and stood aside. "Mirai! Company!"
He led the two men into the living room and moments later, Mirai came
out, now dressed in a blouse and jeans. Her hair had a slight frizz,
indicating that she'd stepped into the sonic shower.
"We'll get straight to the point," Smith said.
"We know about Moldiver," Jones said. "We know that Amagi was
Machinegal, and did not, as Amagi Corp said, die in a jetcoptor
accident."
Mirai's face was as hard as stone and and she had slipped one hand
into her pocket.
Smith held up a hand. "We're not here about that. We know what he was
up to and the world's better off. Quite frankly, you should be
commended."
"What do you want?" Hiroshi said, grabbing his sister's wrist. "Like
you said, get to the point."
"Are either of you familiar with the writings of Richard C.
Hoagland?" Jones asked.
"I've seen him cited on a few conspiracy theory sites," Hiroshi said.
"He popularized the face on Mars theory, didn't he?"
Smith nodded. "He and his team were considered crackpots, but they
maintained their position until the very end. The point, Mister
Ozora, is that he was right, and we need Moldiver's help."
"But there is no face!" Hiroshi said, "I've been to the Cydonia
plain. There's no face there."
"No, you haven't," Jones said. "The real Cydonia is about a hundred
miles southeast. You should both feel special, you're about to be let
in on one of the biggest secrets in history."
"There is a face?" Mirai asked.
Smith nodded. "A face, a city under the Martian Ice, evidence of
ancient astronauts, the whole thing. Fact is that so far, Hoagland
was one hundred percent right, and there's just one thing left to
prove, which is where the two of you come in."
Mirai removed her hand from her pocket as the siblings exchanged
glances.
"Go on," Hiroshi said in a guarded tone.
Jones opened the case, revealing a holo projector.
"July Twentieth, Nineteen Sixty-Nine," Smith said. "Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings on the Moon. During
their moonwalks, they found the remains of a structure several miles
north of the landing site. Radioing back to Earth for instructions,
they were instructed to take photos and then return immeditly to
Earth. Under the mandate of policies in effect at the time, as the
goverment believed that the public would be unable to handle the truth."
"But how could something this big be hidden?" Hiroshi asked. "Even
after all these years, surely someone would have said something."
"The public hid it themselves," Smith said. "It wasn't until the
Nixon scandal that the public as a whole realized that they could no
longer completely trust the goverment. But by then, the so called
official version had already taken root. Aldrin and Armstrong landed,
took pictures, planted the flag, collected samples and returned to
Earth. Simple, straightforward and easy to swallow."
"And they did," Jones said. "The few who asked questions or disagreed
were dismissed as crazy."
Smith nodded. "By the time the goverment realized that keeping this a
secret might have been a mistake, they'd been lying to the public for
so long that to tell the truth would be akin to cutting their own
throats. So they continued keeping the secret."
"History records that were seventeen Apollo Missions," Jones said.
"But in reality there were twenty, three launched from Russian soil
in order to hide their real purpose, which was to find out that
structure was."
"The only clues we found were several samples of writing," Smith
said, "in what we now know to be an archaic and extinct form of
Sumerian but with elements of Akkadian and Elamite, which are also
extinct languages. It's suspected that those three languages
descended from this one mother tongue."
Jones took up the tale. "In Twenty-Seventeen, when humans landed on
Mars, one of the first priorities was to verify the Face. History
says that no face was found."
"But in truth, we found way more than Hoagland ever suspected.
There's at least three cities on Mars, all demonstrating a clear
Sumerian architecture and more than enough writings to prove that
there's a connection," Jones said as he leaned forward. "At least one
of those structures was a spaceport. There's also what appears to be
an underground subway system, possibly covering the entire planet.
The buildings were also patrolled by guard robots of some kind. Very
fast, programmed to kill. Some very good people died before we could
figure out how to kill them."
Smith took a deep breath. "We also found several functioning vid-
screen, showing humans or human appearing entities issuing warnings,
or at least that's what we think they're saying. All we really have
to go by is the tone of voice."
"Wait," Hiroshi said. "Are you telling me that human beings at one
point had the technology and ability to go to the Moon and Mars, and
build cities? What the hell happened?"
"We wish we knew," Smith said. "What we do know is that it happened a
long, long time ago, and devastated the entire solar system."
"You still haven't explained what this has to do with us," Hiroshi said.
"Hoagland maintained that Saturn, or more specifically, its moon
Iapetus, held clues to our own origins. He cited it's unusual orbit,
its strange 'yin-yang' coloring, hexagonal shaped craters, and that
Iapetus itself was hexagon shaped. He said that Iapetus was an
artificial object created for some purpose. He suggested an Ark, a
seedship from somewhere outside the solar system, a warship, or
perhaps some kind of resort."
"Now that the manned colony on Ganymede is up and running, the ISC
wants to start exploring Saturn. Those of us in the know want answers
to what we've come to call Hoagland's Riddle."
"And for that, we need to go to Iapetus."
"I see," Hiroshi said. "You want Moldiver along in case Iapetus is
really an artificial world and there's more of those guard things."
"Actually," Smith said, "we're more worried that whatever knocked
humanity back into the Stone Age is still around and wants to do it
again. We need to be able fight back, and your invention is our best
shot at that."
"So why not steal it?"
"It was suggested, but on the other hand, what's better? Wasting time
and energy trying to reverse engineer and duplicate the work and then
training someone in its use, or recruiting the inventor and someone
who already knows it backwards and forwards?"
Hiroshi frowned. He couldn't argue with that.
The two men stood up. "We understand that this is a big decision,"
Jones said. "So we'll leave you to think this over." Smith closed up
the projector and Jones set a card on the table. "If you decide yes,
call this number."
The two men let themselves out and the Ozoras stayed where they were,
staring at the table. The business card and the briefcase stared back.
Night had fallen when Mirai finally spoke. "Let's do it." She turned
to look at him. "I mean it Hiroshi, let's call the number, say yes."
"I dunno . . ."
"Oh come on," Mirai cajoled. "Think about it. This is like, the
scientific discovery of the millennium! Even if it's not aliens, it's
still so cool."
"Be serious, Mirai, this is a trap of some kind. It's absurd."
"Look at me, Hiroshi, look me in the eye and tell me you really,
honestly, believe that.
"I . . ." The words died in his throat and he found himself unable to
maintain eye contact. "I want to believe," he whispered as he stared
at the card on the table.
Abruptly he stood and picked up the briefcase.
"Mirai, it's late, we should get some sleep. I'll decide in the
morning."
* * * *
Mirai stretched out on her bed, teddy bear hugged to her chest. She
wanted to go. As much as she loved her work, she missed being
Moldiver. Of flying free, of being free. There was no greater joy
than flight than to soar high enough above the earth, to see the
curvatures, to see the clouds and the seas.
She missed that.
But her final battle with Machinegal had left its scars. It seemed
wrong somehow to use the unit for something frivolous like flight or
be a vigilante when the police were doing a fine job already.
Still, she kept the unit with her, eyes alert, hungry for an
oppurtunity to use that power, to be Moldiver once more.
But there was none. No chances, and so Moldiver slept in her pocket,
ready, waiting.
But this. This somehow seemed right. She'd never spoken to Hiroshi
about it, but she sometimes thought that the mol-unit was alive, in
its own way and it had its own notions of what to do and when.
After a while, Mirai fell asleep as well. But it did not come easily
and as she laid there, she made her decision.
She was going to Iapetus. With or without Hiroshi.
* * * *
Hiroshi did not sleep. He spent the entire night searching, trying to
find any verification of Smith and Jones' absurd and insane story.
The first step was to dismantle the holoprojector. It was a stock
model, no bugs or recording devices and there was nothing in its data
module that could be called malicious, that he could find anyway.
Leaving that alone for a bit, he dove into the information mines of
the 'net. He checked forums, searched using any terms he could think
of and dug as deep as he could.
Finally, he was forced to admit that if Smith and Jones were part of
a clever, well laid trap, the trap-setters had done their homework.
Hoagland had written extensively on ancient astronauts and conspiracy
theories. There were also plenty of rumors and theories that the maps
of Mars had been tampered with to hide the existence of the Face.
He'd also found rumors that Armstrong and Aldrin had found something
on the Moon. So that matched what they'd been told.
There was also no rumors about Moldiver's real identity. Which begged
the question of how the ISC knew about Mirai, and if they knew, who
else?
He wanted to believe them, God, he wanted to, but a tiny, paranoid
part of him refused. The story carried no logic, no basis in fact,
and the very paradox that they had kept this hidden for so long
against impossible odds defied explanation. He was almost sure it was
some kind of perverse trap.
But yet, the story appealed to the scientist within him. If humans
had made it out to space before, somewhere in the ancient past, if
there was some birthright, an inheritance hidden on Iapetus, just
waiting for humanity to come and claim it, then it was the chance of
a lifetime. The scientific ramifications alone were inconceivable.
IF it was true.
Sighing, he stretched out on the floor and took off his glasses.
Occam's Razor combined with Shrodinger's Cat. The simplest
explanation was that Jones and Smith had told the truth, but the only
way he would know for sure is to open the box. That is, call the
number and follow through.
On the other hand, if it was a trap, he'd be handing them the Mol-
unit on a silver platter.
And he still had no idea how they knew about Mirai.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, Mirai was
standing over him.
"Hiroshi," she said. "I'm going. At the very least, I'm going."
"What if it's a trap?"
"What if it isn't? What if there is something out there waiting to
destroy us? I'm not going to sit here and wait for it."
He thought of the reasons he'd created the unit in the first place
and sighed.
"No," he said and grinned. "No you can't, and damnit, neither can I.
All right, I'll call the number. Leave the mol-unit with me, would you?"
She smiled, and set the card-sized device on his chest. "I have to go
to work, bye!"
Hiroshi sat back up, made himself a cup of extra-strength coffee and
went back to work.
Step one was give himself some insurance. There was a subculture on
the internet where information was the coin of the realm, and for the
right info, you could get anything you wanted. Hiroshi stayed at the
edges, but he was owed a few favors and called one in. He transmitted
the data module along with an explanation, leaving out the part about
Moldiver. The bargain was straightforward; If you don't hear back
from me in two years, assume I'm dead and do what you like with this.
They agreed on a password and that was that. Hiroshi then reassembled
the briefcase and set it aside before making something to eat.
The next step was the mol-unit. First, he reconfigured the unit to
only activate in the presence of his or Mirai's brainwaves. It wasn't
iron clad , but it was the best he could do given that they were
headed into combat.
Then he removed the limiter. He didn't care for the idea and was
putting an awful lot of trust in his sister.
After all, the limiter's sole purpose was to prevent abuse of the
power the mol-unit bestowed. But that had been when he thought it was
going to be used only on or around Earth, where it would've been easy
to find a safe spot to land if time ran out. For her safety, and
because where they were going was no place for time limits, he took
it out and prayed.
Finally, he retrieved the card and made the call.
"Jones."
"This is Hiroshi Ozora."
"Mister Ozora, you've decided?"
"Yeah . . . yeah, we'll go."
"Excellent. Tell no one."
"Not a problem," Hiroshi lied.
"You'll get tickets and vouchers, along with instructions in the
mail. We appreciate this, Ozora. Welcome aboard."
Jones hung up.
"Yeah," Hiroshi said to the phone as he hung up. "I bet we are."
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