Chapter 2

For the media it was the biggest day in…well, the history of media.

The police helicopter arrived over the field a few minutes later. It relayed its own findings.

Yes, a giant black circle had just appeared, about 60km west of Melbourne, Australia.

What was there already? A sheep paddock, naturally.

Was there anything in it? Why yes, the landscape of what appeared to be an entirely different world.

When had it appeared? Sometime last night.

What was it doing there? Who had made it? Or conjured it into being? Nobody knew.

Aliens? God? NASA? North Korea? The Church of Scientology?

The pilot asked for orders. Should he attempt to fly through the…um…portal?

No, the commander said. Just hover there until we can figure out our next move.

Other cars arrived, at first bringing police, but soon other onlookers – locals, the media, the government. Within an hour of the first police arrival one of the news networks had directed a traffic chopper to the area. Images were beamed live across the world. Within hours, a billion people knew.

Once he had accepted the situation as something other than a massive April fools joke, the Prime Minister had started issuing orders. ADF units were alerted. Mass text messages were sent out and phone calls made. Within hours men and women were arriving at depots, putting on uniforms and gathering weapons.

The police made the initial perimeter. With calm if bewildered professionalism more and more senior individuals arrived. Command of the scene changed half a dozen times that morning until the Chief Commissioner himself drove from Melbourne to look upon the scene personally. It was quickly agreed upon to set up a perimeter, with everyone within a 5km radius of the apparition to be evacuated. By noon some five hundred police had arrived and roadblocks had been set up to keep back the growing trickle of onlookers. Some local residents protested at the sudden eviction, but most were stunned into cooperation.

A large shed just behind the local farmer's homestead was quickly requisitioned as a command post. A flurry of calls were made. By the early afternoon three or four helicopters were now hovering overhead at any given moment, a mix of the emergency services and the media.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the 'portal' – for that was now quite obviously what it was, the sun had risen. The sky beyond was blue, with its own smattering of clouds. The wind gusting out of it had paused as the temperature and pressure on both sides seemed to stabilize. So far nobody had gone through it. Nobody had stepped over the line where yellow fields gave way to rocky green wilderness.

By the afternoon the military had started to arrive. A convoy of ASLAV armored fighting vehicles hastily gathered from their depot at Puckapunyal. No tanks were present – the ADF didn't have many to begin with and no plans to scramble them this quickly. A squadron of helicopters, Eurocopter Tigers and the older Black Hawks, arrived to patrol overhead. A quick arrangement was struck. Victoria Police would hold the outer perimeter, handling traffic and warding off curious onlookers.

The army had the portal itself.

'Whatever the hell that thing is – your job is to just stop anything nasty from coming through' as one local commander put it.

As the afternoon wore on the perimeter started to stiffen. It was a haphazard mobilization. Most of Australia's major military bases were in the north of the continent, the closer to potential threats in Asia. They were no more prepared for this then the Aztecs for the arrival of Cortez and his conquistadors. Nonetheless, units were hastily mobilized. Convoys of armored vehicles drove down highways in rarely seen numbers. Others went by train or air.

By dusk, close to a thousand armed men and women had arrived and begun to set up camp. The first helicopters had rotated out to be replaced by a fresh squadron. Police were relieved one roadblock at a time. Catering arrangements were made. Local officials up to and including the Premier of Victoria had dropped whatever they were doing and driven by to witness the apparition for themselves. Many offered encouraging words to the local troops. Behind closed doors important phone calls were made. The Prime Minister rang up the US President. The ANZUS Treaty was mentioned. US commanders began drawing up plans to reinforce their antipodal allies.

And through the portal, nothing moved.

Or not quite nothing – several times that day onlookers had spotted birds in the sky, but nothing flew through the portal itself. Trees and grass were tugged at by the wind. Clouds moved overhead, sunshine, from whatever star it was, glinted off rocks, but ultimately they were greeted by nothing other than a sunny afternoon.

As night fell in Australia, key decisions had yet to be made. Setting up a perimeter was the obvious first step, but what next? Should they send something (or someone) through this doorway to what was apparently another world? And where had it come from anyway? Aliens? An act of God? The talk show hosts had a field day. Social media was buzzing.

The sun set. Searchlights were hastily erected, pointing at the huge disk. On the other world dusk came too, about an hour after our own. The rotation periods seemed to be as similar as the temperature, climate and flora and fauna. Curious.

The first night was still tense. Hundreds of soldiers got little sleep. The barrels of several hundred weapons, up to and including the 25mm chain-driven autocannon of a Bushmaster, pointed up at the big black circle. They seemed rather inadequate. They hadn't had time to bring up any heavy artillery yet. A minimum of three choppers hovered overhead, rotating every couple of hours and adding their bright searchlights to those being erected on the ground. A few hundred miles away, a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornets sat on the runway. Their pilots nearby and ready to get in the air inside of five minutes.

Still, nobody panicked. No shots were accidently fired. Discipline held strong. Despite everything, the Brigadier in charge felt a twinge of satisfaction. Rushed together in a single day, faced with the totally unknown and inexplicable, his force was holding up well so far.

Sometime during the night a decision was made. They would have to investigate what was on the other side. But why bother sending people? It was 2019. Send a drone.

An RQ-7 Shadow was quickly located – at its base in Queensland. In the early hours of the morning it (along with its trailer and operating crew) was loaded on board a C-130J Super Hercules and flown to Avalon Airport. With impressive haste, it was driven to the portal and arrived there just after 8am – a little over 24hrs since the first phone call to the police. Two hours later, on the Prime Minister's word and with a global audience somewhere over a billion, the drone took off its 12 meter ramp and soared into the morning sky. Thirty seconds later it flew through the middle of the massive disk and over the wild landscape beyond.

The global audience would have to be a little patient. The images sent back by the drone could not be broadcast live. They went to a transmitter set up right in front of the portal. A single screen on the operator's desk showed the view beyond. At least fifty people crowded into the shearer's shed behind him, craning to get a look.

At first the view changed little. A rocky hillside, clusters of trees. The camera was angled down a way, with a broad field of view. A few minutes in, flying over smoother ground the operator gave a start.

"Uh…that's a road" he said calmly, as other strained to see.

He had kept the drone fairly low, no more than 2,000 feet up. Beneath them was a gently weaving brown line. It was quite obviously artificial, running almost perpendicular to their flightpath. The operator glanced at the Brigadier.

"North or South sir?" he asked.

"Lets try south."

The drone turned, following the road. Headed to alien Rome.

The view changed quite quickly after that. They left the hills behind. There were fewer trees, and those they saw were often found in anomalously straight lines. After that came fields of what were obviously crops.

"Is that wheat?" someone asked. It certainly looked like it.

They lost it a bit when they found the village.

It was slightly off the main road. The drone swerved to take a closer look. There were buildings, quite simple in construction. Little squarish wooden shacks. Surrounding fields were dotted with creatures, also quite recognizable. There were little white shapes that looked quite suspiciously like sheep, little pink pigs and a pen of what seemed to be chickens. Flying low, the drone soon saw the occupants. It was the last thing they had ever expected.

They were people.

"How?" was the first question on everyone's lips. If nothing else, the last 24hrs had built up quite a sense of anticipation. A portal to another world, one that might be full of little green men? That had been the obvious theory. Now the quandaries were coming quickly.

But where had these people come from? Were they truly humans? Had they evolved there, separately? Had their ancestors been taken from Earth and transported there at some point? Perhaps by another giant portal with its aloof controllers? What if the same thing was true here? What if our species hadn't evolved on Earth at all? But what about all the fossils?

Ignoring the broader existential crisis and leaving those questions to someone better qualified, the operator kept the drone circling the village in smooth circles. It was close to local noon. They counted maybe fifty people. Some were out in the fields, others clustered in around the buildings. It wasn't long before someone spotted them. A few of the 'people' below started to stare and point.

"Shall I move on sir?"

"What's your fuel?"

"We're good for another 3 hours sir, we've only moved 10 klicks from the…uh…start point."

"Keep following the road."

The operator did so. They resumed flying over the fields. The wheat continued, interrupted by pastureland dotted mainly with sheep. They flew over a few more villages, quite similar to the first. After more than an hour, the operator tilted the camera up a little and there were gasps behind him. On the horizon was a thick strip of blue – a vast expanse of water, what could easily have been an entire ocean. It seemed they were nearing the coast.

They flew into a bank of low clouds, one of many they had encountered on their flight. With fuel ticking closer to the 50% mark the operator was about to order the drone back when they broke through. The gasps were even more audible this time.

Ahead of them, near the entrance of a wide river, there was a city. It was hard to make out detail at this distance.

What stood out was a red castle on a hill.