Absolutes

Chapter 02

Two hundred kilometers away, the atmosphere was tense at the Alan Turing, the European lunar colony. The Situation Room was an underground chamber in which the walls were huge virtual screens. They all featured images from Earth: troops moving, armor and missiles, flaming speeches, huge crowds in public squares. Scenes of political crises, of wartime. There was not yet a great war, but there was many of reasons to believe that it was coming.

It was the greatest political crisis of the last decades. Local conflicts in various parts of the world were spreading violence and economic crisis everywhere. There was no safe place on the planet anymore. Yet, although the trend was clear, the deterioration was slow. It had lasted for decades and was invisible to ordinary people because it was already part of daily life. It seemed to everyone that things always were and always would be like that.

Yet, from time to time, something triggered more acute crises and commotions. The recent North Korean attack on South Korea had triggered the current crisis. The whole world was in a state of shock, the two Koreas ruined... The new North Korean leader needed only one year in power to ignite the spirit of his people. He promised to reunify the country, taken over by the imperialist capitalists, according to him. Not even the disapproval from China and from the West prevented his madness.

On Lunar New Year day, Korea's biggest holiday, all northern missiles were fired into the south without any warning. South Korea took countermeasures and shot down much of the missile flotilla on the road. Yet, the few pieces that hit their targets were enough to cause the largest nuclear holocaust in human history... until then.

The next move caused another one, even worse. South Korean retaliation devastated North Korea. All this in a few hours, to the haunted eyes of the rest of the world.

It soon became clear that that madness was not an isolated act. Israel was attacked soon after by various Arab countries. Pakistan invaded India. Separatists in several European countries took up arms. Traffickers took power in several South American cities. Ethnic and religious conflicts erupted in Africa. In the biggest cities of the world, millions of people came to the streets calling for peace. Yet, those walks usually turned into pitched battles between groups that accused each other for the tragedies.

Seen from the Moon, the Earth remained the same: a bluish, beautiful and huge presence in the black sky, dotted with tiny bright stars. The planet remained always in the same position in the sky of its Moon. Throughout the days, it was possible to perceive the change in the position of the stars and of the sun. Yet the Earth never moved from that point in the sky.

The Moon always shows the same face to terrestrials. The Earth, in turn, shows an endless cyclical parade of continents and oceans and a cloud cover that never is the same. Moreover, there were the phases of Earth! Without changing its position in the sky, over one month the Earth exhibited a fascinating cycle. Sometimes, it showed its illuminated side to the Moon and at other times, it showed its dark side. Lunar settlers called that Full Earth, Crescent Earth, Waning Earth and New Earth. In the dark parts of the planet, you could see the city lights with a small telescope. It had been possible to see the nuclear explosions in the Koreas...

The images with scenes of the problems on Earth occupied almost all the virtual screens of the Situation Room. The only exception was the screen in front of João Bezerra, commander of the colony, and two of his direct advisors. They did not follow the terrestrial news because they were staring at a picture from the Moon itself, obtained recently by a satellite.

"I cannot see anything..." João complained anxiously.

"Wait a little... now!" Laura froze the image and, with quick gestures, widened the area that interested her. "On here! Look at this!"

João's eyes widened, then he frowned and approached the virtual image. Through gestures in the air, he enlarged the area indicated by Laura to the largest allowed by the resolution of the image.

"Well, well... what is that?" The enlarged image showed a perfect ellipsoid embedded in the outer crest of the Shackleton crater, close to the south pole of the Moon.

"Unidentified, sir. We have already checked for Tsien settlers' activities in this area, but it does not seem to be theirs."

The Chinese lunar colony, named after scientist Tsien Hse-Shen, was also close to the southern pole. The European space agency had followed the Chinese's footsteps in paying homage to a scientist when nominating the colony. Tsien was considered the father of the Chinese rockets. Alan Turing pioneered the creation of digital computers and artificial intelligence.

The colonies were only a thousand kilometers apart. Now the two scientists of the twentieth century were neighbors on the Moon, in a way. Both were stocked with water reserves, in the form of ice at the bottom of craters that were never exposed to direct sunlight. It was also the case with the Shackleton crater. For various reasons it had not been chosen by either Chinese or European to receive their colonies. Americans and the Japanese had installed their colonies near the North Pole, in sites with similar water reserves.

"Do we have other images? Other frequency bands?" Asked João.

"I made a quick survey," replied Marco, the Italian geologist. "There are lots of images from the Shackleton, but no one shows that side of the crater in detail. The interest in this crater has always been focused on the ice inside it, not on the outside of its walls, where this ellipsoid is located."

"How big is that?" Insisted João.

Laura gestured in the air and added a scale to the image.

"About twenty meters wide and... four meters high," demarcated the Swiss engineer.

"Any guess about what it might be?" Asked João.

"I can tell you what it does not seem to be, commander," said Laura. "It's not a fallen satellite piece. The ellipsoid has no imperfection, no crumpled metal part. In addition, there is something even more striking: the ellipsoid is flush horizontally. Moreover, although I cannot say it with certainty, that thing seems to be aligned to the Earth. The surface seems dusty, but it's smooth and convex, so it's not an antenna, but it could have an antenna inside it..."

"Are you suggesting that there may be an underground installation there? The ellipsoid is a kind of facade?" João asked. Laura nodded, but she also shrugged, indicating that it was just speculation.

"A secret project," said Marco. "Probably American. Before they settled in the north, they considered the south as well. The Shackleton was a candidate."

João was thinking about how he would approach the matter with his friend An Lin, the director of Tsien. Then one of the girls working in that room came to him and asked for his attention.

"Bad news from Earth, sir. There is an insurrection in Tibet. The Chinese government is accusing the European Union of providing weapons and training to the rebels." João thanked the information, bewildered. Maybe it was not a good time for a call to An Lin...

"Let's take a closer look! Laura, I want you to run the mission! Get a vehicle, choose a team and let me know as soon as you are ready to leave. Find out what that thing is and who put it there!"

"I'd like to take part!" Marco stepped forward. João thought for a moment why would he send a geologist to the Shackleton, but he agreed. In less than an hour, the flying vehicle left.