A Journey Beyond The Galaxy

8/10/2019 A Journey Beyond The Galaxy

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A JourneyBeyond The

Galaxy

Written By John Baxter


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Chapter One

The professor entered the lecture theatre in the normal way. He noted that,for some reason, the place was packed out, standing room only. The press haddone their work, advertising that this lecture was to be like no other in thehistory of the Society, or likely to be within living memory, and all of thestudents in the lecture hall had to be displaced from the best seats by the

television cameras. Yes, today was a big one. He expected no less. As he approached the dais, a wave of applause fanned across theauditorium. He checked his iced water, his notes, and his slides were all readyto deliver his lecture, his statement, and his findings. Today, things changed,forever. He cleared his throat, and brought the hum of hushed gossip to a close byraising his hand. He now had absolute silence. He knew he had theirundivided attention. He milked the moment a little while he composedhimself. He looked at the many faces that were visible to him, possibly thefirst three or four rows, and thought to himself, wonder how many of thesefaces would look the same after have delivered this lecture. Time forcon!ecture is now over. Time to begin. "#eople of our $arth%, he said, appealing to all nations rather than anyspecific one,% have a little story to tell, a story that may perplex some ofyou, it may thrill others. #lease, no &uestions till the whole story comes to anend. ask only that you listen, with patience, to the first part, as it gives the

background for the next section, and so on. Sort of setting the scene, to steala phrase from our media people here% A small ripple of laughter rang around the auditorium, dying as &uickly as it

had started. " 'hat must do, is ask you to listen very carefully. 'hat am about toreveal is not for discussion, or for any one race or creed anywhere on $arth.%,this being a real dig at the superpowers. He continued,% t is public domain,and shall remain so. As finish each page of the announcement, a copy is

being posted on every website within the 'orld 'ide 'eb that deals with thissort of thing so as to stop any form of data suppression%


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The professor took a small drink from his glass of water, smug that he hadbeen able to fight back the powers that had held him bound for so long, andthen began to address the gathered throng. "n a small galaxy, !ust to the left of what we now call the Andromedacluster, by about eight light years or so, there, among the many stars, lay a

planet, not a particularly important or indeed a special one, being one of eightthat rotated around a small sun. t did have life on it at one time, life that hadevolved there for a good many millennia. (rom single celled, through time, tomore and more complex beings, evolution at it)s best.

n the first few millennia, the many varied life forms developing were moreinterested in their own survival than in their surroundings. They hunted to eat,drink, had sex to sustain the species. t was only when the first of the"thinking sentient% life forms appeared that records started to be kept. Theserecords, though very sketchy from the very early civilisations told of celestial

calendars and events, of life at a crude basic existence, which led to theinevitable beginning of various religions and beliefs. This lead to a *odfearing people, led by power hungry priests, which spanned much of theirearly development. This had the usual effect of leaving science andknowledge to those brave enough to go against the standard religious beliefsfor many centuries, risking their own death at times.

n one such period, the people of the central and eastern part of the ma!orland mass there at this time were known as the "+oligaih%, which in theirlimited language meant the land in which they lived, or literally meaning "theonly home there is%. (rom this we can surmise that these people knew of no

other civilisation on their planet, and as far as we know, at this time, therewas not. They were alone. The actual beings themselves were not unlike the human form, thoughsmaller in height, being about four feet tall at full adult height, gravity there

being stronger than we have here on $arth. Their skin was pale and rough,covered in what we would think of as warts, though these really containedmillions of organisms that converted the lethal rays of the twin suns into a

protective barrier. A sort of symbiosis. Their faces, as we would perceive as faces, were thinner than ours, theirnoses narrower but longer than we humans, and their eyes were slightly more

on the sides of the head than ours, large organs they were, and as black ascoal. They were all pupil really, using one of their eyelids to limit the lightentering them, like the filter on a camera. This still did not make themrepulsive to human eyes, !ust, different They called themselves The adahs, pronounced "radars%, as in soundecho e&uipment, and they had many ma!or differences to we humans, far toomany to go into in the time we now have available, so look only to the


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similarities during this brief visit. They lived in civilised groups, villages,towns, and cities, had governments who were elected, and worked as acollective, all for the good of each other. There were s&uabbles, religious onesmainly. They were what we would deem to be a proper civilisation. This study, unfortunately, is not the reason for our current visit. 'e are nothere to study these people and their culture, but it is the starting point to lookat their sciences, for there are the important answers we seek. The adahs started to study astronomy from an early time in theirevolution, more as astrology than astronomy, following the stars across thenight sky, plotting and drawing the many shapes they seemed to make, also

plotting the star)s apparent travels across the heavens. This drew theconclusion of these early astronomers that helped them learn about theuniverse they lived in. They were not, at this time, far wrong. As said earlier, our visit to these people was not for their culture but for

science, and we have to understand the outcome of the knowledge we have!ust learned, by studying theirs then, starting from the very beginning, and asbest as we can guess, here is where it all began.

-hapter Two

After three millennia, the adah scientists had mapped their knownuniverse, understood the basic rules of &uantum physics, and knew aboutgravity, and it)s effects on the ob!ects around it. After another five millennia, they were travelling out among the near

planets, and were able to travel to places only their imagination could haveknown before. n all of this exploration, they had found nothing. They werestill alone. o other recognisable life form had been found. n a way, thatthere were no other to be found, made them special, but it also doomed themto loneliness. t was after thirty or so millennia that some of the scientists realised thatthe heavens were changing. The changes were very small to their eyes. Theyalready knew that the galaxies were always moving, and always had been.They knew the rate at which the heavens seemed to move, and where it allseemed to be going. /ut was it0 1nly time will tell.

'e now move up a large number of years, a couple of million or so. Theadahs had changed, their appearance, beliefs, and all of the civilised culturethat made them who they were, were all ancient history now. t is lucky for usthat their science hadn)t changed. An archaeology dig in the middle and eastern part of their now hugecivilisation, in an area not now inhabited, or indeed had been for eons,certainly not since the last meteor had crashed into the planet, wiping out


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almost all of the inhabitants in this part of the hemisphere sixty millennia ago,was taking place by ancient historians. They stated that they would put theirreputation on the line to prove that, at one time a full civilisation had existedhere, with culture and science. They even knew the name of the race that hadlived there. The adahs. 'ith their sophisticated e&uipment, they could find things, even readdocuments, without actually touching the soil above it, provided the findswere open to the soil itself, or in the case of documents, inside a pottery typeor based material. 2etal could be penetrated, but only !ust, and if the

precious stones or documents were inside a casing of 3rlite, then the readerrays could not even read the scratches on the lids of the boxes. These had to

be lifted the old fashioned way. +ig them up, and by hand, slowly, so as notto damage anything. 3rlite was an inert metal, very heavy, but &uite soft, and easily damaged,

and the last thing the experts wanted to do was wipe off an inscription ormarker from the top of a ma!or archaeological find by accident, the laserdigger melting the words or symbols so as they could not be read. That wouldreally have caused problems with the historians, and many other high4

powered people in the community. The dig in this area had been going on for some years, turning up finds thata primitive civilisation had indeed existed there all that time ago. A basic,ancient people who worshipped unknown *ods in the heavens, and lived lifein fear of natural disaster. At least that is what was thought until the Septennawas found, high up in the rocks above the plains, where what appeared to be

a temple used to stand. The documents were first considered to be of religioussignificance, and therefore of no use, since religion now was no longer

practiced anywhere and in any form on +oligiah. t was only when the entiregroup of boxes, which together formed the whole Septenna was unearthed,that things became clear. The boxes were of 3rlite, and on the surface of each

box were a numbered code of se&uence. These turned out to be the form ofdating used at that time. -ontained within these 3rlite boxes were whatappeared to be star charts, and other astronomical data, all beautifully handdrawn, and detailed. The whole sky was charted, from east to west.-onstellations with names too. A ma!or find for the archaeologists working

there. 3nfortunately, the charts seemed to be wrong. 1dd stars, the dimmerones, were about the same, but the rest of the charts were total drivel, or so itappeared. This temple had been, as they found out later in the dig, anobservatory. These ancients appeared to be more intelligent than first thought.The e&uipment found and the contents of everything in the whole place would

be moved and reconstructed at a museum, for all to see, both live or virtual.


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The historic finds themselves were hailed as a breakthrough, though ofcourse, these ancient star charts were ignored, and merely put on display, intheir tubes on desks, as part of the exhibition that was eventually made of thefinds. The glory of this historic breakthrough eventually faded over time, andother things became of more interest to the scholars, this exhibition then

becoming something of a specialist field, since all that could have beengleaned from that old civilisation had already been catalogued, listed, filed,

photographed, treated to preserve, and now occupied a tiny little corner of thevast museum. There it stayed.

-hapter Three

The passage of millennia can be so swift, it becomes but a moment in timewhen viewed in hindsight. That)s why it becomes history. That little corner of that museum existed for many thousands of years, firstas a museum exhibit, and then when the museum was replaced by a much

bigger and better facility built over the top of the old one, it became a storedexhibit in the inner corner in the original building, obsolete, andoverlooked

by everybody and everything. t remained that way until the eventualdemolition of the original museum was to take place, so the exhibits fromwithin had to be moved to some drawer or store room in another part of thenewer building. These star charts, still in their original leather4like tubes were

to be sent to the astrophysics people, at their 'orld -entre, to be used astraining exercises in finding out why the ancient got it so wrong, The idea

being to learn from their mistakes. This is where things started to become clear, and it is from here that we aremost interested. The Scholars studied the star charts as if they were rough sketches at an artexhibition, giving only cursory glances to the information mapped out acrossthe heavens. They knew they were in an expanding universe, having studied itfor eons, but these charts showed that the universe was in fact in contraction,and not expansion. t was like looking at something on a bend ahead of you.

s it moving towards you, or away from you0 /ecause it)s a curve, viewedfrom one end, the ob!ect would move left or right, elliptically, so as to appearto be going away, to the left or right, when in reality, it)s getting closer. Thistheory was completely debunked, and was to remain so for yet another manymillennia. 'e move forward in time again. 'e must travel in time by ma!or leaps, fartoo large to comprehend, but it is the only way to explain.


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/y now, this race had travelled to most of the points within their knownuniverse, travelling at speeds almost that of light, their technology at a highlyadvanced stage. They had made their own star charts to enable them tonavigate in and around the many places within their &uadrant. These chartswere updated at nanosecond intervals for pinpoint accuracy, mean, wecouldn)t have a ship slamming into a planet that orbited into their course

because the maps were inaccurate in real time. The body shape of this race,though descended from the adahs, now bore no resemblance whatsoever tothem, and were, by now, almost all brain, with mechanical transport tofacilitate any movement they might have to make, though they might movetwo or three times in their very long life. t was while they were in this part of their evolution that informationcollected by them over the vast time that they as a race existed was reviewed,mainly out of total boredom as there was little else of interest, and many

theories were put forward as to the meaning of life, and all that purilenonessential theorising carried on, relentlessly, more as a pastime thananything useful. t was all proving what had already been proven. That is, until one of these "brains% decided to overlay their current starcharts with the ones from the previous thirty millennia or so, and came upwith a shift pattern, which didn)t seem right somehow. t didn)t &uite followthe then believed trend. ather than dismiss the inaccuracies as faults in therecording of the skies due to faulty machinery or atmospherics, and includingthe many two dimensional photographs, he decided to go back to the

beginning of their civilisation and overlay the ancient maps drawn by the

adahs all that time before, with the charts from the mid4time people, as theybecame known, and then the charts of the current race. 'hat he founddisturbed him. t went against everything he had been brought up to believe.He needed a second opinion. 2aybe two.

-hapter (our

There was much confusion about the outcome of the recent findings,sceptics still insisted that the status &uo was still correct. The ancient maps,

over layered by the mid4period maps, and then the current maps on top allshowed the same movement pattern. A steady movement across the heavens.t was now undeniable. -onclusive proof that the universe was contracting,not expanding, the galaxies all coming together in a form of slow dance. n afew billion years, who knows what will be left. t is strange that all life, no matter where and of what, on being sentient,will &uite happily live out the millennia as long as there is no threat to the


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species. Any threat, no matter how small though, invokes an immediatereaction to preserve, even though the threat is millions of years into the future.Save at all costs. These creatures set about, using their superior knowledge tosee if they could come up with a solution to the problem of surviving theinevitable extermination of everything, alive or inert. They started to devotetheir time to this end. To survive (or our study purposes, we must move on another billion years, and stop toview what is happening in that cosmos. Time had marched on, millions of years saw the galaxies colliding, thoughat first the gaps between the stars and their planets were so big, that nothingactually physically collided, hence the almost undetected merger of many ofthem. t was when the black holes at the centres of each galaxy !oinedtogether as the galaxies themselves collided, then the stars and all of the

planets and the gasses, now all being drawn to that centre point, to disappear

into an unbelievably big black hole, which then swallowed another galaxy,and it)s black hole and all of it)s surrounding matter, each piece glowing withfriction as it accelerated to near the speed of light, the light itself vanishing,

becoming prisoner of the gravity of the growing black hole. must point out, at this point that we are dealing with enormoustimescales, billions of years, so very hard to comprehend. Things weremoving near the speed of light, but the distances they were travelling cannot

be even imagined, they are so vast, n yet more time, there was very little left on any of the outer rim, the lastremnants of a huge cosmos gone or going. $ven light itself could not escape

the gravity of this now massive black hole. The end of everything. All gone.o light, no sound, !ust empty blackness. Total At some point in the next few millennia, the black hole itself hit an eventhori5on. Sort of indigestion. $ither the last little bit of matter overloaded it, ora chemical reaction started inside, and suddenly, the whole thing exploded,throwing gas debris all over the heavens. *ases cooled, became differentchemicals, became solid, !oined together, formed new galaxies, stars, suns,

planets, as our theory of the /ig /ang would explain, this taking place overbillions of years.

As to wanting to study the history of the adahs, and their many offspring,

stated that we were interested only in their science history. The reason forthat course of study is that the /ig /ang, which ended their cosmos, totally,was not the end of life. (ar from it.

-hapter (ive


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The latter descendants of the adahs had set about to preserve theirculture, their science, and hopefully their +A, should the worst happen.They designed and built a sort of space ark containing all of the informationabout themselves, in an attempt to give some future race that may find thecraft, all of the information about themselves. They tried to design this ark towithstand even the pressures and heat of creation itself. As the universecontracted, they themselves understood that, at some time, this ark coulditself be destroyed as the whole universe, and everything contained in itvanished into that final black hole. They built it anyway, and included theircurrent theories of surviving the death of the cosmos, all placed inside the ark. Their home planet was eventually destroyed when one of their suns wentnova, swelled up and swallowed most of their solar system. They had longleft that area in space. Their colonies suffered similar fates, though the

inhabitants had already long before, got off the planets and onto others saferand farther out. /y doing this, the species were able to survive for many moremillennia. They still eventually died out as the cosmos shrank down,travelling ever faster and faster to it)s own destruction. t was said that this ark was designed to, though in a way yet unproven, of

being able to survive any astral catastrophe, and theoretically, come out of theother side unscathed. A wild theory. The heat and pressure in a black holewould turn everything back to it)s original hydrogen state, containing nomatter of any type, and destroy any trace of the atoms, never mind theremains of this civilisation.

3nder normal circumstances, am sure you would agree, that nothingwould or could survive creation. These, however are not normalcircumstances.% The professor paused, and took another drink of iced water, and thencontinued, "Two weeks ago, to the $ast of the what we know as $thiopia, an ob!ectwas found, an ob!ect that was examined and studied by the world)s foremostscientists. t was opened, and the contents deciphered and read, inmathematics. 'e learned that this was that ark. The ark was found totallyintact. t contained complete and detailed information of the adahs, and all

of the races which followed, right up to their final destruction, it had theirculture, their science, their history, right up until there was no4one left torecord it. That is how am able to tell you all about these people. They didinclude something else. Something that mankind may never use, or want to,

but it is there if we want it. nside this ark are the plans on how to build a sort of time machine, weknow that)s what it does, we have already built and tested it, so that we could


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also go through some sort of portal and appear elsewhere not only in space,but in time.% "*entlemen, the separate +A boxes had been opened, and the microbeswithin released. $mpty phials tell a story. 6udging by the soil microbes foundon the inside of the phials, they were opened between thirty and twenty fivethousand years ago, there in $thiopia.% "$volution at it)s best.% The professor stepped back from the microphone, and looked at theshocked faces of the students and press within his range of vision.

He knew what was coming. The &uestions. Time to go.

John Baxter 2009

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A Journey Beyond The Galaxy