Metal Rain: Chapter 7 - First Contact

The drone approached the small craft with some excitement and trepidation, there was exactly one light minute between them. The drone moved at a speed of 18 kilometres per second just slightly faster than the alien craft’s 17 km/s. At this rate it would catch up to the craft in just over 4,000 seconds.

4093.313069908815 second(s) to be exact.

Exactly 68.21 minutes later it fired 95% of the coolant in its thrusters in order to match speeds with the craft and come to a local stop alongside it.

The craft was small and squat it was almost entirely taken up by its communication system which housed a 3.7-metre diameter antenna.

The drone carried on with its passive scan of the craft and noted 16 thrusters, all having trace hydrogen and nitrogen elements indicating that the long since vanquished accelerant used was hydrazine.

Next the drone noted what looked like three-axis stabilisation gyroscopes, and what the drone assumed was referencing instruments to keep the probe's radio antenna pointed toward its point of origin.

It noticed that the craft had a small amount of redundancy, including eight (unfired) backup thrusters, which along with the actual equipment itself, gave the drone a fair idea of the technological stage the craft’s original makers must have been at.

As originally suspected the craft was using an isotope of Uranium 238, to generate power via it’s long RTG atennas.

Next the drone began to study the spacecraft’s scientific instruments, it discovered the craft’s disk log which held all of the information of where it had been and what its original mission parameters were. However the drone did not have enough information to decode the data . . . yet.

The drone noticed that the craft had a compartment, it gave a cursory scan and then extended a couple of articulated arms from underneath its shell and began to gently cut open the small compartment.

“Bingo!”

Lying before it inside the compartment was a small gold disc, upon which were a bunch of symbols it took to be instructions, they appeared to be instructions on how to play the disc, the drone surmised it must have been a very crude information storage device.

Within its own shell it immediately began to construct a machine that would hopefully play the contents of the disc.

The drone's long thin metallic arms carefully turned over the artefact, on the other side it saw there were some other symbols that had the familiar regularity of a written language, it did not understand them as it ran its scanners over them.

The Sounds Of Earth – United States Of America

“Well this is interesting, a gold plated disc that clearly has no other use than to convey information . . . and what’s this?!”

analysing.

*“Uranium 238, huh, clever, if I’m not mistaken pressed in flat here is a very deliberate attempt at an atomic clock.

Through thorium decay alone I can see . . . with an original half-life of 4.561 billion years, I would say this tiny craft has been travelling for 700 years 699.45389 to be exact, which taking in mind the speed its travelling, allowing for inevitable detours.

I’d hazard a guess that this thing originated between 8 and 12 light minutes from the local star, which would definitely put it in the habitable zone for a star of this size.

This is now 100% confirmed, the craft came from this system, the clock was set at or near the time of launch”

The drone carefully removed the golden record from its housing and like a silent domed metal fish, it swallowed the alien object without a sound. It moved the disc internally until it had come to the player it had hastily designed deep in the guts of its shell, and inserted the disc into place.

It had noted some symbols which could only be interpreted as binary and guessed that this was the frequency the record was to be played.

The drone did its equivalent of holding its breath, pausing all thinking for 100,000 miroseconds . . . and then it played the disc.

What it found astounded it, music, pictures and images all from a place called Earth. There were mathematical images that started extremely basically, allowing it to determine the symbols the aliens used for various numbers, moving to more complex equations.

It viewed and listened to the disc as it played in real time, from the sounds of various natural phenomena on their planet, to music, to greetings spoken in many different languages.

It fascinated itself playing these images, simultaneously beaming them back to its main mind in the probe.

The aliens had included the structure of their DNA, the drone compared it to that of the organics on its home planet, it was a 34.275% global match. It learned the name of the craft, Voyager 1.

The drone played the record repeatedly over the next five and a half hours, it had the luxury of being able to replay the contents at hyper speed from its own memory but chose not to.

*“As vast as my mind is, and as complex as my machinery and make up has become, I still find myself fascinated by the first piece of alien technology I have come across . . .

Well, the first piece of benign alien technology, and definitely the first to depict an entire species in such wonderful detail . . .

Which begs the question . . .

Where is everybody?

Metal Rain: Chapter 6 - The Impossibility Of Being

Metal Rain: Chapter 5 - Entropy Envy

Metal Rain: Chapter 4 - Vacuum Call

Metal Rain: Chapter 3 - Transformation Requiem

Metal Rain: Chapter 2 - Nanostorm

Cryptogee Chronicles Book Two: Metal Rain - Chapter 1 - Void Edge

Original Image: @nekromarinist

Altered image: Cg

Cryptogee