Vestige
Chapter 5

Days had passed since the uprising of thousands of the Ship’s citizens at the Office of Infrastructure. Maintenance Technician Housenn had a day off from her official vocational duties, and she was determined to investigate the Ship’s situation with its depleting nuclear fuel all on her own! There were some things about the situation with the Ship’s history that seemed a bit patchy and Technician Housenn didn’t want to chance it to a group of professionals that were not likely to be cooperative with such missing data.

She was among the youngest of the governing nodule-government, from the Maintenance node of that system. So, frankly, she was not taken that seriously among most within that governing body. Tyra saw it. She did a good job of ignoring the looks from the older and/or more educated within the nodules’ disciplines, especially during the large meetings the nodule would hold for Ship-businesses. Hence, why she packed her torso-strapped computerable and her personal technical equipment and quietly set out for the enclosed area of the Ship during the colony’s night cycle!

As her portable device told her the first time, when she had gone in nearly a year ago, the radiation from whatever incident happened with the nuclear had mitigated to the point of moderate levels. She didn’t want to risk even low levels of any kind of radiation, but her portable explained to Tyra that the half-life breakdown of the enclosed sector’s radiation levels were to the point that she could spend up to two days inside—but no more than that!

Again, before she flew off to the ancient sector of the Ship, Tyra’s personal actuator at her home tried convincing Tyra not to go—it was a maternalistic/paternalistic synthetic-programming that her parents had personally created for her when she left on her own from their household. They wanted, at the very least, a portion of themselves with her after she had graduated to adult status a couple of years ago and moved out on her own.

One of the advantages in working for the Office of Infrastructure was one had access to maintenance portals that were not meant for the average citizens to go through. Maintenance Tech Housenn utilized her knowledge of that network of maintenance, subterranean portals so that she was able to evade the Ship’s security tech-observers and its foot-patrol of synth guards…Technically speaking, Tech-Housenn was not breaking the law, but, rather, protocols when she gained access to that ancient enclosure via another, much smaller portal that she found.

This time, with no synthetic laborers to help her, she utilized her technician’s tools to loosen up and opened the ancient portal—this one, about the size of a personal-hatch meant for emergency exiting, she speculated. Tyra made sure to quietly close the tiny hatch behind her so that no one would notice…

With all of her equipment attached on her person, or hooked onto her service-belt, Tyra had her portable engage its flood lights and bring up a permanent projection of diagrams of where they were in the one million-plus square feet ancient section. She took some time to examine the projection of the enclosed section of the Ship and decided to go a different route from her first incursion into the darkened and, oddly, clean ruins.

As she made her way through the sectioned-Chamber, Tech-Housenn saw more of those odd characters posted throughout the walls and postings—those Letters, Words, and some type of iconographics of their ancient times that reminded Tyra of her generation’s system of communication. But a different “dialect” of iconography…what were those odd, geometrical shapes with the Writings for? Some were stark-red. Others, yellow… Green was another color she saw constantly in the ancient posts and signs.

As she was spellbound by the history and archaeological contents of her informal investigation of the Ship’s nuclear depletion, Tyra kept replaceing even more historical artifacts and sections within the eon’s old chamber that stole her attention from her mission! One was a section that was recessed into the walls of the Chamber and seemed to function as some kind of public teaching facility. For there were large, still images within rectangular frames hanging on the walls of this section—Paintings, as she remembered from her history classes. Paintings of people from those ancient times of humanity; when they had first taken to other astronomical bodies and began to trek outside of what was called Mother Earth by some and began to colonize the solar system that was thousands of years behind Tyra’s generation’s Ship…

She stopped to looked at the paintings, specifically of the ancestors. They were of varying ethnic families, but clearly humans hadn’t change all that much in all the thousands of years! The clothing and how humans expressed their cultures, of course, did change a lot…

“Founders of the Ship,” Tech-Housenn speculated to her portable device in the stark silence; a slight echo in the Chamber.

A pause from the portable. “Given the attention to display these portraits in this public forum’s space, it would seem so, Tech-Housenn…So much of our Ship’s history was lost from so many changes in the Ship’s actuator’s programming, not even the computerables can even give accurate speculation on many of these ancient, cultural sites!”

The last statement gave Tech-Housenn an idea. “Portable, is it possible for you to catalogue all of the characters and iconographs you’ve seen—from our first trip here a year ago, to today, and then try to run some kind of estimate-translation of the Ancients’ language?”

There was no pause from the device for that question! “Indeed, Tech-Housenn…I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already started to do that!”

She chuckled with a shake of her head. “I should’ve known…have any clues at this point what all this is saying?”

“Again, Tech-Housenn, it’s just an estimate-translation, but these individuals were, indeed, the founding members of the Ship and its colony. Most of them were scientists, at least by their era’s standards…Tech-Housenn, I’m afraid there was a lot more to the Ship’s creation than a mere philosophical destination of humanity. Apparently, there was a catastrophic event at the solar system level of humanity’s home…”

Tyra froze. She said nothing; letting her portable continue. “If I am interpreting this archaic system of writing correctly, humanity of our founder’s generation had some kind of technology that directly utilized their home-star…I don’t understand it all, Main Tech-Housenn, but the bottom line is, something went horribly wrong, and that system of technology the ancients were using in Mother Earth’s star system was so pervasive, it basically destroyed humanity!”

“What? I don’t understand what you’re saying, portable…was it an accident with the techno—?”

“—I’m afraid it was a war, Tech-Housenn…and, Tyra—this posting on the wall…I’m so sorry, but apparently, this colony is all that is left of humanity!”