29/04/24 The Universal Translation Project: Part I

One thousand years from now, to the very nano-instant, every intelligent life form of the universe as achieved permanent contact with each other. Various reciprocity institutions come together and build a Universal Space Station in the hope of fostering universal peace. The various astronauts inhabiting the premises are numbering in the millions.

Their first mission: generate technology that will enable all intelligent beings to communicate across all mental barriers.

…

The pod sprang open as Biota aimlessly clawed at its hatch; the air outside was not any fresher, merely distinct enough to be the most important piece of information to be received by a man whom had woken up from a profound 64056 years of cryogenic sleep.

His lucidity remained largely unavailable for a few more minutes, during which Biota grasped at various objects within his reach; his attention was ultimately retained by a tactile screen displaying various pictures which felt as if they were intended to be emotionally charged. His eyesight rose from the grave in a thoroughly nauseating dance of afterimages, a transition he wished to reject, yet his body gave him no choice but to endure its tortuous awakening. Soreness in the limbs… shrank testicles… blood flow in the left leg… the intense urge to vomit… and the air, the air, it smelled oh! so wrong.

“My wife!” Biota exclaimed to himself! A muffled sound escaped from his lisps, submerged in gargled foam. “She is Biota! She is my wife! We loved each other so much! I was made to leave her! I was deployed to the Universal Space Station! I divorced her before leaving, so she would have no choice but to move on! I was cryogenized! I am alive! I could have died yet I live!”

Biota flung the digital book faster than he could possibly process any of the individual images, in an almost juvenile elan of excitation. Yet they meant something to him. He had chosen these pictures, and even a small fragment of the ambiguously gray upper corner of a drape provoked within him the instantaneous realization that he had, indeed, experienced something his kind called “Life”. He had been there. He had done these things. He had felt these emotions; even now he could bring back in full force the specific configuration of his brain at any of those given - cherished - moments.

It was as if he was there still.

It was as if all the people he knew had not been long dead.

…

An hour later Biota was fully conscious; he had further performed a basic medical self-checkup and physical therapy. Biota originated from a small and somewhat impoverished civilization; as such he was alone inside the space ship “Hypermax”, which had successfully locked itself to its destination, the Universal Station. The air he was currently breathing was pumped into the ship from the station’s stores. Biota did his best to follow his instructions, which now called for him to dress into his hazmat suit, manually unlock the ship door, which would then be opened by the station operators; a small welcome committee fluent in his language would be present to direct him for further processing.

Biota griped the bright green garment. He sighed; then he laughed; then he paused. He jerked himself out of his emotional paralysis - not without muttering “fashion contact” to himself - and carefully inserted himself into the very last suit he would probably wear in his entire life. He would have to work, eat, sleep and otherwise exist within the bounds of this thick, heavy armor; the smallest rupture would kill him, as it would expose his fragile constitution to harmful alien materials equivalent to viruses or bacteria. “I will never feel my own skin again”, he thinks as his legs drop down the pools of solid lead. He had been hounded again and again, that he could not remove the suit within the ship, for reasons that were very obvious to him. The ship would actually double as his lodging arrangement, and an engineering effort had been perpetrated to make the space generally pleasant yet resilient. He had a camera, and could coordinate with the station operators to send as many messages as he wanted back home; officially he was required to report everything he did, or even felt, to “Hugebig”, the institution for which he was employed. Beyond official reports, he had the expressed right to specify targets such as his living descendants, or any other category he was capable of summoning from the aether; then Hugebig would attempt to redirect his transmission as wanted.

Of course Biota had no guarantee that his civilization still existed, let alone that his great-great-great-great-thousandfold-great-bored-teenager-descendant would receive his mail after it went through Hugebig’s hands. He knew it was pointless not to have faith in his own kind, and he had to do his best. His situation was harsh because he could take it.

Biota plugged his suit into the material exchange membrane - or mem - a sort of cable that could not tangle itself. Through this cable he would breathe, eat, … and all the rest.

Thus he had completed all his preparations. Yet, surprising himself, he froze.

Part of him was intimidated by the sheer scale of what he was doing; what he was about to achieve. Another part of him felt insecure, insufficient. The larger part of him was unexplainable:

“I have permanently sealed my body into a sarcophagus. I was frozen for millennia. I will die atop a small spatial object with no route of escape. Every single commitment for which I have sacrificed the most have been decided by someone other than myself”, he silently pondered, trying to bask into some spiritual significance, and feeling nothing but emptiness and distress.

The moment, as any other before and after itself, eventually escaped this mortal realm, and Biota was finally free to move.

Biota floated to the ship’s door; there he found and disarmed the lock. In what appeared a seamless transition, the door vanished, and Biota took his first swim into the unknown, ready to be the green one.