The Silence of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (book recommendations website txt) 📕

The old veterans of the City of Light are slowly beginning to die. Nature takes its toll naturally and this is the situation! We pretend not to notice, but with each death we lose a patron and the situation becomes more and more stressful as many of us miss their experience and routine.

Many are those who don't understand what it really means to lose a dear friend. It is more than a catastrophe. It is a nightmare.

Semrik Sin was one of the last of the Mohicans[1], but his time was running out too and he knew it inwardly very well. He had problems with some of his internal organs. There was no organ replacement in the City of Light, just a quick repair of some open wounds. Soldiers were supposed to achieve mental enlightenment, not so much dealing with side things.

Each and every warrior of light had to pass a morale test in order to be fit to handle their primary task and protect others. Not all were capable of that. That's why some of the veterans died and weren't accepted into the City of Light. In other words, it wasn't nearly enough to fight on the battlefield, as too many things would become much more important later on.

When Semrik Sin died, there were too many people present at his funeral. Each and every one wanted to say goodbye to our great friend and show their respect for him. Under ordinary circumstances, this event would not have been something extraordinary, but under the present circumstances it certainly was.

All in all, the funeral ceremony left us with the impression that our destiny was preordained and a brand new life awaited us.

Many would never forget the words of Semrik Sin "Life is an emanation of where you want to go!" - they sounded quite incomprehensible to me at the time, but with time I became convinced that this was not exactly the case. Semrik Sin had lived to the age of eighty-five - and he did so in his desire to help us all build our lives.

When we closed his eyes, there were many wistful ones. Here was Von Blask himself, who was about a year younger than himself and had always looked upon him as an older brother.

[1] Mohicans - a famous North American tribe.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE COSMIC PLAGUE

It came from who knows where - to some as a blessing, to others as a curse. But for most of us, used to dealing with Charon's super-extreme weather conditions, it was just like a sad addition to the landscape. Some may well remember the so-called meteorite hunts. Charon had a frozen inland ocean about which relatively little was known. But we were certainly convinced that it lay beneath the lithosphere, and near-volcanic channels connected it to the surface. We had launched probes to reach it many times before, but without result. Time passed, and the colony's need for water grew exponentially. The answer to this question is not straightforward. There were too many variables to consider. According to research from very far back, an amount on the order of three gallons, or that makes toward eleven liters, is considered sufficient, which may not seem like too much, but in practice is too much of a load for us. Water cannot be stored in liquid form at these temperatures, which is more than obvious, but there is another serious problem. In fact, special georane transducers were used to store water extracted from the planet's underground in the form of tiny nanogranules, each of which could store up to about 3 millilitres of water.

As I have said, the advanced knowledge we had left behind on our previous planet was not much, and we could not now take full advantage of it. We still had to cope even with our meagre available resources, and that was a real challenge. Somewhere in there we began to feel the effects of the space plague. We called it "the uninvited guest" and I was aware that it had taken victims on other planets in the distant past. Strange were the symptoms of this cosmic plague. Man first degraded morally, and very soon began to behave like an animal and drool like some kind of monster. As for its vector, it was the cosmic Anzaranium buffoon, which was something like the fleas of the past. Several terrible waves passed - each successive one stronger than the last, and everything lined up in a rather strange way. According to some, the plague came from beyond the confines of the solar system, but even now there is no certain confirmation of this fact. The more I think about it, the more I find that there is great simplicity in the way we perceive the disease in question. The most incredible precautions are put in place - many of which don't even work like humans do. But we are forced to cope by manual means. You might ask, what exactly are the handy tools needed to combat such an insidious disease? Well, frankly, a variety of them. Only the very rich could afford so-called plague doctors for the simple reason that it was too expensive to avail oneself of the services of such a specialist.

Perhaps I have not mentioned in sufficient detail the symptoms of the so-called space plague, and, believe me, there are many to be mentioned. As a matter of fact, the first symptoms were quite difficult to spot. The skin was fading slightly and there were barely noticeable scabs on the face. Then the surface of the skin shrunk and little by little her scary face began to show. The Anzarani buffoon was a rather brutal predator. Yes, some would say, a great wonder, but it wasn't exactly. I don't want to describe the torment of the unfortunates either - it was indescribable. Just a few rough strokes would give you the crudest idea as to the gravity of their situation. This disgusting parasite eating away at skin and tissue, and turning them into a walking corpse, was, to say the least, rather unpleasant. Controlling its population was also a real challenge. But here was where the following contradiction arose - wasn't it impossible for the Anzarani buffoon to thrive in such conditions, and here I do mean the harsh and even murderous climate of Charon. Well, not exactly!

The buffoon seemed to show remarkable signs of intelligence and handled even the most treacherous conditions like a true ghost warrior. It was obvious that it couldn't get under the suits and deal with all these problems.

This little animal is very cunning and brazen, but more on that later. One thing we can say right now - there is probably not another case like this in the entire solar system.

Our spacesuits had nothing in common with the old advanced models made of quisson and kevlarite. The current ones were only a pathetic imitation, but they were still good for something. For example, the electronic valves had been replaced with fully mechanical equivalents, which was primitive. On the other hand, our visors couldn't pick off the Sun's fierce glare well either. There were also blinded, which reduced our resistance. Yes, the Sun's rays were reaching Charon after all. A pitiful semblance of light - a memory of another life. And of another world! A world that, at least in my opinion, will never return!

But here I digress a little - what is true in this case is our desire to continue the human race as our sole and unflinching mission. That alone could really insert some meaning into our otherwise meaningless existence. Each of the other races inhabiting Zegandaria had taken their own independent path of development - and we had coexisted for so long. It's unbelievable how quickly life changes!

On one of our many meteorite hunts, we came across something very strange - parts of a communications satellite had fallen onto the wreckage of one of them from some unknown place. We had never seen anything like it before. Communication on Zegandaria was through other channels, and by no means in so primitive a manner. I could only interject the modest fact that deep down I was aware that we could not use Riandan teraflyters here to eavesdrop as had once been done in the polis. The signals we did pick up were in the form of radio waves though, which to me is laughable. Yes, some will say, so these electromagnetic waves propagate through space at the speed of light. But the Riandan teraflyter used a completely different principle to accomplish communication. Let me clarify for those who were not into physics - there was not a single child or adult on the planet Zegandaria who did not understand mechanics and quantum physics. It was like the A-B-C of our education. As we came across various nuggets of information from Earth that we planned to later make contact with, I became familiar with some of the advances in the past and discovered enough interesting things about what Earthlings understood about physics, including quantum physics. According to general relativity, we all knew very well that the speed of light was the limit of possibility, and radio waves travelled at exactly the same speed. One of the scientists in the past - one John Singleton[1] - had discovered an interesting gadget known as a polarization synchrotron, which, broadly speaking, increased their speed as it drove them through a magnetic field. But to return to our own technology - while Singleton's discovery impressed me greatly, the Riandan teraflyters used tachyon nanotechnology that could overcome much higher speeds. The problem was that it was inapplicable here on Charon, and the reason was obvious - too few of us had the knowledge to assemble it, and no one had taken the blueprints when we left, since we were traveling incognito - such was the order of the Zegandarian Confederation.

The size of this meteorite was something like 5 cubic meters, so I would describe it as medium - and in this case I am not being guided by any science, but expressing my opinion from the point of view of the colony. From the point of view of our survival, they were vital because on their surface we sometimes found interesting things, and on the other hand we mined various metals such as nickel, magnesium, iron, silicon, aluminium and so on. There were other useful elements such as sulphur which also came into our use. This was the cheapest way in our opinion.

Maybe that was when we were attacked by those disgusting buggers!

[1] John Singleton - a scientist with major contributions to the field of electromagnetism.