SciFi Contest Entries

The Heart of Ajs An'hlj

Awareness started with a sensation of being weighed down. Surrounded by the gentle tickle of the universe's pull. It could feel nothing, yet still it was.

Whispers floated through the awareness. No waste. Think of the lives we could save...We don't know what it is. Its dangerous...Not if we contain it. The whispers grew stronger until they were accompanied by something else. Those fools in the Tower. If only it was ours. Brown. Our child is the first of the new world. Pink. We can always dream bigger with unlimited energy! Gold. The awareness recognized these as desires, and found meaning in the emotions of the thoughts' originators.

As the number and complexity of thoughts grew, so did the awareness. So many desires flashed by, it began to crave desires for itself. It struggled to comprehend the strange creatures that felt such a range of emotion. More and more whispers filled the quiet until it became a barely decipherable hum. The awareness longed to meet these originators, but its desire could not bridge the gap between them. Unable to do so, it screamed its thoughts into the void of space, utterly alone.

*****

Ian slammed his particle fuser onto the table with a resounding crack. Trial 3,458. Another failure. The lifeless crystals on his work station seemed to mock him. Why couldn't he reproduce it? The Inventor glanced over his notes for the thousandth time, hoping to find a crystal structure or atomic bond he had missed from the over 800 scans he had taken of the source of the planet's power.

He could hear the mocking whispers of the other Inventors behind him as he marched once again to the Chamber. "Must have failed. I bet any other Legacy would have solved it by now. What a waste of resources. Why need to recreate something that works so well?"

Ian grit his teeth as he stepped into the Heart's Chamber, activating the energy-diffusing nanites in his blood. As the Legacy of the First Inventor who harnessed the limitless power of the Heart of Ajs An'hlj, Ian was one of six people in possession of the life-saving nanites that were now required to get close enough to examine the Heart.

The other Inventors were all fools who had only ever seen holograms of the Heart of Ajs An'hlj, the aptly named energy source that was the center of humanity's survival on the once inhabitable planet in the Kelser galaxy.

The Ajs An'hlj had crash landed on the planet almost 1,000 cycles ago, the Ark's engines burnt out from a hostile encounter with another Ark. After all, there were a lot more Arks than habitable planets in the universe.

All that was left of the ship and her crew was some mining gear and enough rations to last half a year on the surface. With no way to call for help and nothing to do but try to survive, the mining crew began to bore into the surface in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

What they found was a round crystal the size of a child. It was smooth and emitted light of varying strength from inside it's emerald-like surface. The miners were both awed and afraid of the crystal but Ian's ancestor, the First Inventor, harnessed the energy inside the crystal by building the Tower and saving the colony of Ajs An'hlj.

On his deathbed, having still not discovered how the Heart produced energy, the First Inventor lay down the First Law: Do not touch the Heart of Ajs An'hlj. Other Legacies had disproved other laws of physics, but no one could explain why the Heart's energy grew the more energy the city used, always providing just enough excess energy to begin building new structures.

Since then the colony transitioned from a refugee grave into the most technologically advanced and powerful planet in humanity's history thanks to the each generation's Legacy Inventors. From below the Tower came the energy from the Heart. The Tower became the center of the sprawling city of Ajs An'hlj, and Ahs An'hlj became Pinnacle of Humanity.