PS2 Historical Archive - Audio Recording: February 11th, 2738

An audio recording left on board the Grand Venture. Time-stamped February 11th, 2738.

98.3 years. It’s been a long wait since humanity’s fateful trip through the wormhole. Now, 34 hours beyond the moment the wormhole leading back to Earth should have opened again, we still sit, collectively staring into empty space where the anomaly should have occurred. Nothing has happened. There is no way home.

After the trials Auraxis has subjected us to, the promise of returning to Earth was a dream held by many, though I suppose by now I’m the only one left that remembers what Earth was really like. It’s sad to think about really – all they have left of Earth are the holovids and a debased shadow of the TR.  These are empty reminders.

The situation is tragic, and I truly wish there was something I could do to ease the pain of these people, but it is not lost on me that everyone seems to be missing whole the point. I find it endlessly frustrating that I am the only one seeing the pieces fall into place.

Let me tell you a story.

Once, years ago, before we settled Auraxis, there was a flawed but brilliant xenobiologist named Henry Briggs.

Henry was callous, awkward, and socially inept. It took a man like Tom Connery to see the potential value that lurked beneath that rough veneer, and because of Tom’s vision and faith, Henry was at his side when the first Vanu artifact was found – a strange device, half embedded in stone, floating in the Moon Belt.

Contact with the device changed Henry – it imparted visions of the past, and the future, and provided insight into the joy and pain of everyone he’d ever known and many he had yet to meet. It left Henry improved – more – than what he had been before. After the encounter with the artifact, Henry was suddenly at ease with other people; he was empathetic, funny, charming, and for the first time in his life it seemed that people actually started to like being around him.

Over the following years, Henry became a close friend to Connery, and he did not think twice about joining the mission that would end up stranding the seed of humanity so far from home. When Tom was murdered in a terrorist plot, some looked to his trusted friend Henry for leadership and guidance, and Henry did what he could to protect Tom’s legacy of exploration and scientific discovery. Auraxis proved to hold many gifts for those with the will to take them.

Within a year of excavations on the fleet’s new home, Henry located a second artifact, seemingly identical to the device he and Connery had found years before. As Henry approached it, he heard a voice calling to him. The words were indecipherable, but conveyed powerful emotions – righteous anger, desperation, and hope. Dark visions assaulted his mind and then peeled back to reveal an entity – something so terrifying in its power, so beyond Henry’s limited understanding, that it shattered his mind.

Those standing with Henry would witness him scream some gibberish, pick up a high powered welder from the site, and place it against his temple. His companions tried to stop him, but Henry struggled free. Howling like a mad thing, he squeezed the trigger. As the side of his head blew free, what remained of Henry fell into the alien device. His comrades fled the scene looking for help, but as soon as they cleared the area, the device began pulsing violently, causing tons of stone and rock to cave in on the dig site.

The dig site was destroyed in the collapse. With the apparent danger of the device, leadership seemed relieved it had been destroyed. Funding was soon diverted elsewhere, and there was no effort to reclaim the ruined site or recover the body. And that was the end of Henry Briggs.

All the records state that the man, Henry Briggs, took his own life that day. In many ways they are quite correct. I died, but I was reborn. There is no one still living that would look at me and see Henry.

I, the man that was once Henry Briggs, woke up over a year later. I was over 200 miles away from the original dig site, sitting within another artifact device. It had somehow breathed new life into me, and once again I had been made more than I once had been – though now the device itself stood inert, devoid of what power it had once contained.

It’s been more than half a century since I was re-awakened through the power of that alien artifact, and I haven’t aged a day since. I often wonder if I could die at all. Would a bullet or explosion end my existence? Fear and uncertainty have always won out over my curiosity. Fate may test my limitations in days to come, but I have no intention of forcing her hand.

It does seem there was a price to pay for this gift – I woke with an itch in my mind, questions that had no clear answers. They have haunted my thoughts and dreams ever since – visions of that entity, prodding me to understand.

Why, after a history defined by war, did an anomaly at the far end of Earth’s solar system cause the unification of mankind? Humanity had a proven record of living for the moment – putting aside old grievances to look toward a threat 100 years off seemed starkly... inhuman... to that point in history.

Why, after establishing a predictable pattern, did the wormhole collapse unexpectedly in 2640 as humanity tried to travel through?

Why, after the mere months of hardship that came after traversing the wormhole, did a volunteer crew led by Earth’s most beloved leader suddenly turn on itself, after knowing nothing but peace and unity for 200 years?

And now the wormhole hasn't opened at all. Perhaps after the previous early collapse the wormhole is simply no more; some natural phenomenon coming to a natural conclusion.

But the visions suggest something else.

Now I am nearly convinced that we are not alone. Either the ghosts of Auraxis’ former inhabitants linger, or another unknown alien power is still at work, manipulating events as they see fit.

They did not want us, or at least part of our initial fleet, to cross through the wormhole in the first place. Yet now, curiously, it seems they are not allowing us to leave at all.

Is Auraxis a quarantined zone? A prison? Or is humanity merely an unexpected variable in some experiment, an element to be studied and catalogued?

Conflict is once again gnawing at the fabric of our society here. The aversion to the destruction of other people that has defined mankind since the inception of the Terran Republic has almost completely evaporated within a generation. Is this more manipulation? I can only hope so, or we are truly doomed.

Clearly, mysteries remain. If there is any hope for mankind here on Auraxis, I must find answers. There must be more artifacts, more devices. Each one I’ve found has revealed more to me, made me better, and made my connection to the entity stronger. Perhaps the entity will show me more, help me to see the truth. I will not be broken this time – it has seen to that.

Beyond the melancholy trip back to Auraxis, the next step of my journey will likely be an arduous one. Without my name, getting access to the appropriate archeological resources will prove an exercise in tedium; I’ll have to earn my reputation all over again. I have so much left to do – another lifetime of toil.

Ah, but that is the irony, isn’t it? It appears I have all the time in the world.