Location: NIMH-One Crash Site, Thorn Valley.
Sol 10
Josh felt the contents of his stomach about to spill as he finally grasped the harsh reality of his situation. He had found his way back to his ship all right; only he had found it hundreds, maybe thousands of years after he had left! Everything finally made sense; this strange planet, its strange inhabitants, everything linked together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
This crazy world and its similarities to Earth was no coincidence. Although it would take some time to figure out all the details, Josh now realised that Nimh-Beta, originally a barren and lifeless planet, had been given life as a result of a major terraforming project carried out by his crew centuries ago. It had all started here, just as the Rats' biblical scriptures said, only from a different source: the ship's algae and bacteria payloads, unleashed into the environment after the crash, had initiated the basic nutrient cycles, which, over time, had turned the planet's atmosphere breathable and transforming Nimh-Beta into a habitable world. And he, catapulted forward in time by that electromagnetic storm, had the advantage – or rather the misfortune -, of seeing the outcome in the long run.
In this day and age, centuries after the planet had been discovered, an entire ecosystem, seeded by the hand of man, was thriving. The humanoid rodents of this world were no doubt also of terrestrial origin, part of Dr Valentine's genetically enhanced embryonics Josh's crew carried onboard ship. This ancient wreck they were standing on, whether seen as a holy temple or a spacecraft, was the cradle of their beginnings. But to Josh, it was nothing more than a long forgotten crash site – the place where his crew had reached the end of the road.
What could this have happened? Why had the ship crashed? What had become of his crew? Had they been rescued? It didn't seem likely, given that there was no sign of any other humans living on this planet, who were only remembered by his friends through ancient myth and folklore. And how could mere rodents have evolved like this, literally replacing humans as the dominant beings? The very thought made his head spin.
Meanwhile, his friends were all staring open-mouthed at OWL, scared stiff. Justin and Brutus stood with their hands on the hilts of their swords, while a nervous Mr Ages was slowly backing away against the wall, no doubt valuing his life more than his scientific curiosity. Elizabeth, however, in spite of her fear, seeing as the beast wasn't moving in to eat them yet, somehow managed to find her voice.
"P…please," she stammered, getting down on her knees, as if praying to the massive creature, "Forgive me for disturbing you, but I need help. My son is dying…"
"Unauthorised trespassing onboard a NIMH spacecraft is a federal offence," replied OWL in his cold, emotionless monologue, reciting the international space regulations in his electronic memory, "Unauthorized persons are subject to arrest…" Elizabeth was terrified; although not making much sense of OWL's strange caterwauling, it sounded as if he would not let them walk out of here alive for invading His realm. In an instant, she was flat on her face again, her hands clutching her head in terror, pleading for her life.
"No, please, I beg you…!"
"Stand down, OWL!" barked Josh, finally snapping out of his shock of realising what this place really was. He had enough troubles as it is, without having to deal with a panic over a perfectly harmless hologram, "On my authority as a NIMH-One officer, I confirm they all have full boarding clearance." They all stared in amazement as the Great Owl instantly obeyed their human friend without objection.
"Affirmative, Captain Anderson. Filing visitors' security clearance. Stand by." Data icons appeared beside the hologram, with snapshots of each person in the room, as OWL filed in the automatic visitors' forms, usually meant for NIMH executives visiting the ship on shuttle tours, "Clearance authorized and filed. Welcome aboard the NIMH-One. NIMH welcomes you onboard its first starship..."
"Yes, thank you, OWL," said Josh, cutting off the A.I. welcoming speech. Right now, he needed answers; and OWL had a virtually infinite photographic memory core, designed to remember everything picked up by his electronic stimuli for as long as he remained functioning. Alzheimer's disease and amnesia were not a handicap found in artificial intelligence. If anyone could tell him what had happened here, it was OWL, "I need a mission status report now! What happened here? How did the ship get like this? Where is everybody?"
Conjuring a number of different data icons displaying log files, video recordings, or just illegible binary code, pulling his memory core back thousands of years to retrieve the requested information, and crunching it down into a narrative, OWL launched into his story.
"Commander Fitzgibbons and the crew of the Nimh-One, excluding yourself, have all been declared end of mission circa 2094, and the mission lost. Following the disastrous crash-landing as a result of a faulty re-entry, rendering a return to Earth impossible, the survivors set out to terraform Nimh-Beta in a desperate attempt to build a new world before the ship's life support was depleted. In the years that followed, a new race of intelligent rodents was born out of the ship's tampered payload…" The Rats were stunned by what they were hearing.
"Are you saying that theNimh humans created us?" asked Justin, speaking for the first time, utterly dumbstruck by this new piece of information. Was their god and divine protector actually telling them that humans had in fact created their world? What was this madness? The others, finally realising the Great Owl, or whatever this thing was, meant them no harm, were curiously touching and prodding the hologram, fascinated by how solid the creature looked, yet their hands only seemed to pass through empty air at the touch. OWL patiently went on speaking.
"The birth of the new world was never witnessed by human eye as the last mission member passed away before the planet was fully terraformed. Instead, due to an unforeseen tampering with the bio-payload, a new species arose from within the derelict wreck of the Nimh-One, eventually evolving into a new intelligent being that inherited Nimh-Beta, picking up where humans left off…"
"No kidding," muttered Josh grimly, as the pieces of the puzzle slowly began to click into place. He, like the rest of his crew, knew the ship's bio payloads had been genetically enhanced, making them far more endurable and resilient than their natural counterparts, capable of surviving in the harshest of extraterrestrial environments. But this place… It seemed Dr Valentine had finally taken his appetite for playing God a little too far. Dr Shultz's words during that last meal with his crew resurfaced: "We did a too-good-a-job on them. They seem to have an intelligence of their own…" What the hell had Valentine done to those payloads? What kind of freak evolution was this? He turned back to OWL.
"What happened?"
"While the terraforming operations were in progress, Commander Fitzgibbons ordered a number of hybrid rats and mice to be cloned out of the ship's bio-payload, as part of a livestock breeding program. The hybrids soon began displaying inexplicable signs of human-level intelligence, which rapidly progressed as they matured. Years later, following the passing of Dr Boniface – the last surviving member of the NIMH-One's original crew -, the grounded vessel, still semi-operational, was taken over by a thriving population of intelligent rodents…"
Gordon was the last one left? thought Josh, remembering his now long-gone friend and colleague wishing him luck just before he had left the ship on that fateful escapade that had brought him here. Perhaps he had figured out the secret of the Rats' intelligence?
They watched as OWL conjured random video recordings, taken from the ship's onboard cameras, telling the story of the original Rats of NIMH. The old scraps of footage showed dozens of humanoid rodents, not unlike Josh's companions, only smaller and primitive-looking, living throughout the abandoned but still habitable ship. Some were wearing the old uniforms of the NIMH-One's original crew as evidence of their growing intelligence. Josh could see them tending to the onboard hydroponics garden for food, learning how to use tools and other gadgets, or having lessons in reading and writing with OWL in the Observation Room.
"Once the last of their human masters were dead, the mice and rats, now free of their cages, began exploring their new environment, learning and developing their newfound intelligence. Sustained by the onboard automated life support systems, they started off like mindless infants, surviving by following the normal counterparts' natural instincts of scavenging from the ship's stores. Then, as they matured, the miracle happened: with their intelligence now fully developed, they began to learn to talk, mostly mimicking at first. I took the initiative of teaching them full command of language, including reading and writing, as well as how to maintain the ship and keep the terraforming project going."
So this was how it all started, thought Josh. With their genetically enhanced brains, the result of that madman Dr Valentine tampering with their DNA, the Rats of Nimh-Beta had developed the intelligence of human beings! With the additional advantage of having the abandoned ship all to themselves, with its automated life support, capable of sustaining a sizable population onboard for years, like primitive human beings, they had began imprinting with their new environment. That, in turn, had led to the second step in the evolution: learning.
Aside from being the ship's A.I. navigator, OWL was programmed as an e-teacher, with links to the ship's vast e-library. Where genetics had supplied the intelligence, technology had supplied the knowledge to his friends' first ancestors, which went hand-in-hand in creating an intelligent species that would one day inherit this planet. They all settled down, to listen to the rest of OWL's story.
"For years, I taught and mentored them, as well as helping them maintain what was left of the ship. Soon, an entire colony was thriving within the ship's habitat. It was during that time that they learned of their origins, as well as mankind's cruelty towards their kind. This led to growing fear and unrest, namely the prospect of more humans coming along and discovering their planet someday…"
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. So this was how the legend of the Land of Nimh had been born: from the knowledge they had acquired from OWL and the wrecked ship itself, the Rats of Nimh had learned about the human race – and the grave threat it posed to their world if they were ever discovered. Fearing that humans might someday return to Nimh-Beta, perhaps to enslave them all, the danger of this faraway evil place called Nimh – otherwise known as Earth - had been passed down through countless generations as a taboo, forming the basis of their religion: OWL, the divine entity that had 'blessed' them with the gift of knowledge, had become their god, and Nimh, their mortal enemy.
"Years later, the atmosphere of Nimh-Beta was finally fit to breathe and with the NIMH-One having nearly exhausted the last of her resources and falling into disrepair, the time for the great exodus had finally arrived. The colony of rats and mice – now calling themselves the Rats of NIMH -, salvaged everything they could and abandoned ship, seeking to build a new civilisation far away, where humans would never find them. According to vague information I have been able to pick up over the centuries, the NIMH-One crash site was declared forbidden by the ancients because of its connection to humans, considered sacred."
"And all this time, the secrets to our true beginnings have been hidden right here," concluded Justin, as the Rats struggled to come to grips with the truth surrounding their ancestors' beginnings. So it had been nothing more than ancient fear and superstition that had kept this place and its secrets from being discovered and exploited for the greater good long ago. It was almost as if fate had sent Josh – the last of the humans who had breathed life into them - along, to help open their eyes to their long forgotten past.
"What about my husband Jonathan Brisby?" asked Elizabeth timidly. "What happened to him?" Sure enough, OWL had the answer to that too.
"Jonathan Brisby was my first visitor since the exodus," the hologram explained in his emotionless monologue, oblivious to the shock of everyone present. Not even the best of A.I. technology could reproduce human emotions or feelings, Josh remembered the NIMH scientists saying, "We spent months together, while he studied the ship and I told him of his ancestors' history, and of Earth's. He intended to pass all this information on to his friends and family when he returned home..."
"So what happened to him then?" demanded Mr Ages.
"Unknown," replied OWL, "All I know is that he was expected to deliver in secret a piece of the ship's Rosetta Disk he had discovered onboard the wreck to his superior, a certain individual by the name of Nicodemus – an artefact the Rats otherwise refer to as the Stone of All Knowledge…" At this, Ages was suddenly on his feet, giddy as a schoolboy.
"Great Jupiter, so he did find the Stone! Nicodemus and I have spent our whole lives looking for that thing…!" He suddenly fell silent, realising, in his excitement, he had unthinkingly let the cat out of the bag. Nobody seemed to have a clue as to what he was babbling about; then something clicked in Josh's mind.
"Is that what you were hiding in your lab?" he asked, remembering the drawing of that plate cut-out which he had seen the old inventor hastily stashing away that first day in his workshop. He had seen the Rosetta Disk when it was loaded aboard and could recognize it when he saw it, even as a drawing, "That was a fragment of the ship's Rosetta Disk, wasn't it?" After some hesitation, Ages explained.
"The only known surviving fragment of the Stone is in Nicodemus' possession, handed down to him through his family," he said, "For years we've been attempting to track down the missing pieces, in absolute secrecy, as there are many who'd want the Stone for their own dark ends – or otherwise destroy it. According to the legend, another piece was here at Thorn Valley, guarded by the Great Owl. That's what Jonathan really sought to find by coming here." Elizabeth clapped her hands over her mouth.
"But how did you chaps come to possess the Rosetta Disk in the first place?" asked Josh, feeling perplexed, "I mean, how did you even know what it was?" Ages shrugged his shoulders. OWL, however, did know. It just so happened, the Rosetta Disk was a gift from Dr Valentine for the future colony that was meant to be established on Nimh-Beta; and OWL, having been programmed to carry out the mission on his own should the crew be incapacitated or killed, had, as per his original orders, presented it to the first citizens of the new world. Funny how fate played out sometimes.
"I passed on the Rosetta Disk to the departing Rats of NIMH as a gift for their new civilisation, as per Dr Valentine's last wishes," said the hologram, conjuring another video recording, showing several Rats cutting up the nickel-and-gold disk they had just removed from its sealed compartment with a laser cutter, dividing the three pieces between them, but leaving one piece behind. "The leaders of the Rats divided it evenly between them, to use for the benefit of their people; one piece, it was decided, would be left here with me where it belonged."
"So Jonathan found it then?" asked Ages impatiently, "He found a missing piece of the Stone?" OWL nodded.
"Indeed he did, among other artefacts he discovered during his excavations on the wreck, all of which I helped him identify and catalogue properly. The only place I refused to allow him access to was the bridge…"
The bridge! thought Josh. That's where he should be looking; if the database still worked, he would have an even better source of information than OWL's history lectures. There was the ship's log, data banks, avionics, and a dozen other things that might help him determine exactly what had happened here and, most importantly, where did it leave him.
As they turned to leave the Observation Room, they heard OWL's voice again, "By the way, Captain Anderson, under the International Code of Command for Space Flight, as the last surviving member of the NIMH-One's crew you are hereby promoted to acting Mission Commander. I have already taken the liberty of updating your clearance…"
So much for sympathy, thought Josh grimly, still struggling to come to terms with his fate. Although he hadn't confirmed all the facts yet, he now realised his chances of ever getting home again were slim to none. The moment he'd realised what this place really was and after hearing OWL's story, the harsh truth of his situation was pretty clear. Still, he refused to give up hope until he'd seen all the facts for himself.
Bidding OWL farewell, they followed Josh out through an open gangway door and down a dark passage, which had once been the promenade deck, the former having little difficulty in finding his way around, despite the ship's transformation after centuries of corrosion and decay.
They made their way through ruinous, semi-collapsed compartments, which had long since lost the padding on their walls, exposing the ragged piping and wiring, and overrun by mounds of earth that had forced its way in through splits in the decaying hull, barely resembling the interior of a spacecraft anymore, save for a few details visible here and there. Finally, they came to the sealed bulkhead door that led to the bridge. Through the clouded, dirt-stained glass portals in the door, they could see the crew's g-chairs still facing their respective stations, all long vacant and dusty from age, but still recognisable.
Ignoring his friends' blank expressions as to how to open a door that had no visible lock or handle, Josh walked over to a lump of dried mud protruding from the wall beside the door. Chipping away the encrustations, he found the access touch-pad. Like every restricted area aboard ship, the bridge was protected by a fingerprint-identification lock, accessible only to the Nimh-One's crew. As a flight officer, Josh had access clearance to the bridge; but in order for the lock to work, he would need power.
The Nimh-One was powered by a long-term radioisotope generator, which run on unobtainium fuel rods – the same nuclear compound that powered the ship's ion rocket engines. The advantage of this technology was that, unlike standard nuclear reactors, which used coolant and moving parts to produce power, radioisotope generators converted radiation directly into electricity, for as long as the nuclear core remained radioactive. According to experts, unobtanium had an infinite shelf-life - OWL still functioning after all these centuries was good proof as any that a trickle charge was still coming from the generator. So why shouldn't the lock still have power too? It had better, thought Josh, otherwise it would take several pounds of C4 to penetrate the armoured, airtight door that led to the bridge.
Placing his thumb on the touch-pad, Josh waited for a response from the system. The first few tries yielded no results; but then he saw the dials on the panel slowly flicker back to life like cheap Christmas lights. A familiar inferred beam swept across the screen of the touch-pad, analysing his thumbprint, before giving him a green light. Somewhere inside the walls, ancient electric motors rose from the dead, powering up the door's long-idle hydraulic mechanism and breaking the airtight seal.
The Rats jumped at the ear-splitting noise, which sounded much like a pair of claws scraping along an old chalkboard, as the door slowly creaked open, sliding aside on its track, amidst an avalanche of dirt and dust that came dropping off in the disturbance. A gust of stale dank air, not breathed in years, came hissing out of the dark room beyond. Coughing and spluttering, the group gazed inside what was once the Nimh-One's heart and soul.
In contrast to the rest of the ship, which was barely recognisable anymore, the flight deck, which had been sealed tight, was almost as if frozen in time, all the dust-covered screens, controls and indicators on the panels still recognisable. The g-chairs had lost their leather padding over the years and the chrome lining of the control panels had yellowed and cracked from age, but otherwise everything appeared intact. The consoles were all dark and silent, starved for electrical power. Only a small red light still blinked dully on one panel, which was the ship's non-ceasing radio beacon which had led them here, still transmitting after all these centuries.
Finally finding himself back in familiar territory, Josh hurried over to the engineer's station. The ship may have aged hundreds of years in his absence, but the handling of the onboard systems was still second nature to him. Wiping away layers of dust off several panels, he initiated the primary power-up procedure. He would need to get the main power buses up and running to get the database back online – if it still worked.
"What are you doing?" asked Justin, watching Josh throwing switches, which began to glow red, as the ship's auxiliary power came back online. But nothing could prepare the Rats for the most fascinating phenomenon they had ever witnessed before suddenly materialise all around them.
"Great Jupiter…!"
The electrical buzzing and sparking of current flowing along ancient circuitry echoed throughout the ship, as electrical equipment rose from their long hibernation: computer monitors, instrument indicators and light fixtures returned from the dead one by one, flickering and dimming, bathing the bridge in artificial light. Josh couldn't suppress a smirk watching his friends' fascination at the sight of their first electric illumination, which far surpassed the candles or torches they were accustomed to.
After some experimenting and adjustments, he was finally drawing power from all major buses; the monitors around the flight deck lit up, displaying lines of naked binary code, all instrument readings erratic, because of the crashed computers. With a green board for the generator and most sub-systems, he set to work bringing the mainframe and avionics back online.
All right, so they had power and working controls. Let's see what else they had. Tapping a series of commands on the dusty keyboard, he brought up the system status menu, initiating the standard boot-up protocol. His friends, crowding all around him, were at a loss at the sight of all these beeping, illuminated displays, which they couldn't make heads or tails of. Ages was trying to read the text on the computer screens, but, alas, although he could understand the language, the terminology made no sense to him whatsoever. What were radioisotope generators? And power buses? And mainframe computers?
Leaving the system to run a full diagnostics check, Josh got to work dusting the rest of the control banks around the bridge clean, to get a better look at the readouts on the screens. Finally, the static of scrambled binary code on the monitors faded, as the ship's mainframe computer automatically corrected all the errors in the software and bypassed or discarded any fragments of damaged hardware, which couldn't be restored, performing a major reboot.
The first instrument to come back online was the ship's chronometer. Josh watched as the digital dials on the small screen finally synchronised on the date:
EARTH TIME: JUN 10th 4055
NIMH-BETA TIME: OCT 36th 1082
Two thousand years in the future, he thought grimly, his head spinning at the impossible thought that he'd in fact been thrown nearly two millennia into the future. He wondered what the Earth might look like in this future age. Did civilisation still exist? Or had they finished destroying the Earth and died out? Not that he'd ever find out... He turned back to his work.
On the big scope screen above Fitzgibbons' old station, they saw the ship's logo appear as a rotating 3-D model, the miniature OWL perched proudly atop the big gold letters N.I.M.H., the graphic looking slightly distorted from multiple damaged pixels. With the mainframe rebooted and more or less functioning, Josh turned his attention to the database. First and foremost, there was the ship's log.
Like every military-operated spacecraft, the contents of the log were, by rule, strictly classified, accessible only to Fitzgibbons and Lt Stacy; but, according to OWL, as the new acting Mission Commander, he now had clearance. After some frustrating trial-and-error by punching in different passwords, he was in. Pulling up the log entry list, he scrolled down to the 3rd May 2074 – the day he'd left the ship. Activating the video, he brought it up on the big screen for everyone to see. The recording was scrambled and corrupted from long-term disuse, as well as from the corroded hardware, so Josh had to run several error-correction programs for the computer to patch up the few intact fragments of the log.
Soon, Commander Fitzgibbons' stern face appeared on the snowy screen, his voice distorted by static caused by the console's worn-out speakers, yet still understandable. Judging from his gruff expression, Josh had a fairly good idea what he was about to record.
"…In an act of insubordination, or perhaps mental instability triggered by space fatigue, Captain Anderson launched in one of the manned pods against orders, in an attempt to penetrate the electromagnetic storm - an attempt which ended in disaster. We've been unable to re-establish contact with Alpha Scout, leading us to conclude the pod either disintegrated in the storm, or crashed on the surface of Nimh-Beta beyond. Any possibility for a search and rescue is out of the question. With no intention of jeopardizing the mission, I have ordered a trajectory adjustment, to safely slingshot us around the storm, for our upcoming landing on Nimh-Beta. I hereby declare Captain Anderson, a brave pilot, end of mission…"
Cold-hearted bastard, thought Josh with a frown, so you were never going to send a rescue for me anyway… They watched the video dissolve into static, as the computer automatically scanned for the next viewable fragment, finally striking gold on another entry made several days circa. They all gasped as Fitzgibbons reappeared; only this time he looked haggard and drawn, his face horribly deformed by several semi-healed wounds and a broken nose. Josh shuddered, realising they were seeing the aftermath of the crash.
"…Encountered a mysterious magnetic mountain range in our re-entry path, which misled our radio altimeters that trigger the descent-control rockets, resulting in a violent crash landing. Lt Stacy was killed on impact; flight navigator Wilson has suffered severe injuries, with little hope of recovery. The ship is trashed; and, according to mission protocol, we can expect a rescue in no less than ten years from now. I have henceforth declared an emergency survival situation, ordered all resources conserved, and every survival and escape scenario revised…"
The Dark Mountains, thought Josh with a frown. So that's what had caused the disaster. In spite of himself, he couldn't help suppress a smirk at the irony; because Fitzgibbons had refused to make a reconnaissance of the planet's surface before going in to land, like Josh had suggested, he had sent them flying straight into a blind alley of doom.
The problem with the NIMH-One was that nobody actually piloted her; only mankind's supercomputers had the brain power capable of commandeering a ship this size. But if someone or something caused them to malfunction, like, say, from simple magnetic interference, it meant a scenario for disaster. He wondered if Fitzgibbons had ever remembered his words, never to trust a machine to do a man's job… The log then jumped forward to another, longer entry made several weeks after the crash.
"…We have finally taken full inventory of all our resources and assessed our situation. We have no chance of lifting off again; and all our remaining Scouts were wrecked in the crash. In addition, the REMO sustained a guidance system malfunction, leaving it drifting dead in orbit, along with much of our equipment. As it is, we stand little chance of holding out until the estimated rescue mission arrival date. However, we have determined that the planet is indeed suitable for terraforming and most of the bio-payload survived the crash intact. After due consideration, I have decided to proceed with our original mission plan without delay, in the event that the rescue doesn't get here in time. The remaining TEMs launch today, to deliver the first algae and ammonia payloads for the off-site oxygen farms in favourable locations all around the planet…"
That was it then. The crew of the NIMH-One, finding themselves stranded and beyond help, in a last-ditch effort to stay alive had decided to try and fulfil Dr Valentine's ultimate dream: turn Nimh-Beta into a new, habitable Earth. If no rescue was coming for them, then their only hope would be to terraform the alien planet instead, so it could sustain life – sustain them. Josh activated the next recording, set during his crew's fifth anniversary on Nimh-Beta.
"…Oxygen levels continue to rise, slowly but steadily; temperature and humidity are rising too. Flight engineer Strauss has finally found a method to recycle the reserve fuel cells of our damaged engines to use in our generators, extending the life support systems, as well as providing us with enough power to continue carrying out our terraforming operations. Our greatest concern is water, which only seems to exist in frozen, dry-ice glaciers deep beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the cloning of animals, to use in our new ecosystem, continues. Strangely, the rats display some curious characteristics of advanced intelligence…"
Finally, the ultimate triumph in the history of science was almost at hand: the surviving crew of the Nimh-One were on the verge of creating a whole new planet to live on. But the price for tampering with Mother Nature was also starting to become obvious. The log fast-forwarded several more years, revealing an older, greying Fitzgibbons, sometime during their tenth year on the planet – the time the rescue was due to arrive.
"…We watched through our scopes as the rescue ship encountered the same electromagnetic storm that killed Captain Anderson in its trajectory and was vaporized. No survivors. Our last hope of ever returning to Earth has been lost. By now, only three of us are still alive: myself, flight surgeon Boniface and Dr Schultz, three lonely human beings stranded on the far corner of the universe forever…"
So, the long-awaited rescue had been for naught; his crew had never been found and the news of the discovery of Nimh-Beta had never been brought back to Earth. Fitzgibbons' face didn't reappear on the next recording. Josh felt his insides curl up as he recognised his old friend Gordon Boniface, his face looking horribly aged and fatigued, barely recognisable after years of suffering.
"…Finally, twenty years on, following the demise of Commander Fitzgibbons in a failed attempt to escape in the last of the pods, I'm now the last survivor of the NIMH-One, living in complete isolation from the rest of mankind. Our terraforming operations have failed; all of the algae farms are dying. Cause unknown. Meanwhile, I've finally cracked the mystery surrounding our mysterious hybrids…"
Josh was puzzled; according to this, the terraforming operations were failing and the planet would never flourish. So, how come there was air and life up here today? The group focused their attention to the last part of Dr Boniface's log entry, who was finally about to reveal the secret of the humanoid Rats of NIMH.
"Blood and tissue samples reveal that these embryos had been genetically enhanced as part of a top-secret military experiment performed by NIMH back on Earth, before the payload was loaded aboard. Classified documents seized from Commander Fitzgibbons' quarters after his death revealed the Captain had instructions to deliver the payload, using Nimh-Beta as a secret test site for the experiment. Now, we're paying the price: a new breed of super-rats and mice, with rapidly growing intelligence, soon to inherit this world we tried to claim for our own species. I hope humanity never learns of this horrible evolution and leaves this world, soon to be dominated by a species other than human, untouched forever. Either way, I will not be around to see any of it. The time has come for me to join the rest of my departed crewmates in hell, where we condemned ourselves with our foolishness. This is Dr Gordon Boniface, medical officer of the NIMH-One, signing off…"
And with that, the screen faded to static. Josh knew there wasn't another entry coming up. The expression of despair and anguish on his late friend's face as he'd uttered those last words had been clear: tired of this hollow life, of living in complete isolation, Gordon had finally decided to take his own life, leaving the ship in the hands of the rats still onboard, which would eventually rise to take control. He shuddered, remembering that skull he'd found in the hibernation bay, which, he now realised, had been his dear friend's remains. He briefly wondered how Boniface had done himself in; had he put a gun to his mouth, or helped himself to a lethal cocktail of narcotics from the medical bay? Such a pity he didn't have the luxury of taking the easy way out.
A sense of despair swept over Josh. There was no rescue coming for him; his would-be rescuers were all dead and dust for millennia, just like his crewmates. He was all alone, stranded on this mysterious planet and completely cut off from both the Earth and his own time forever. He would never see his home or his friends again, or even see another human being again. And he couldn't foresee much of a future for himself here, a strange creature from another world, trapped among talking rodents for the rest of his days.
Desperate for something to distract him from the misery building up inside him, he turned back to his checklist. At the communications station, he found a few interesting surprises.
"The REMO's still in orbit," he said, studying the graphic model of the ship's resupply module, still stuck in geostationary orbit, where it had been floating dead all these years. Its cargo of supplies and equipment, all floating up there in deep freeze, could have been of use to him now. But, without a working pod, it was all completely out of reach.
Tapping some more commands on the keyboard and flipping several switches, he brought up a satellite view of the planet's surface on the nav screen, with different coloured dots marking the locations of artificial objects scattered throughout the surface.
In the centre of the screen, close to the equator, was a blinking dot, marking the NIMH-One's landing site; a number of red dots marked with an X, scattered around the crash site, marked the locations where the ship's wrecked pods had come to rest. Just more junk there. Beyond Thorn Valley, in designated locations throughout the surface, hundreds of miles apart, were the TEMs; but, while they had served their purpose well long ago, now they were long dead, their husks buried beneath the desert floor. All except for one.
Looking carefully, Josh noticed one of the TEMs, situated some fifteen miles away from Thorn Valley, high up in the Dark Mountains, was still transmitting an active signal.
"By Jove, it's the TEM-1!" Sure enough, the transponder signature of the unmanned pod Fitzgibbons had sent through the storm – the one he'd gone chasing after, only to crash land on this planet in the far future on the other side - was unmistakable. It seemed the probe had made it through the storm intact and its automated guidance system had brought it down in a safe landing. With no one to recall it back to home base, it now sat somewhere up there idly, taking pointless readings or collecting worthless samples from the environment.
For an instant, Josh saw a tiny ray of hope; the TEMs, unlike the ship's manned pods, had a single-use light-speed ion booster, designed to automatically deliver a payload of rock samples back to Earth after the NIMH-One mission had departed. What if he could rig it to transport an astronaut in stasis instead? Could that remaining undamaged TEM perhaps be his ticket home? But then again, he remembered, he would need a hibernation tank and life-support system to make the return journey, which he didn't have. The ship's hibernation tanks couldn't possibly work after all these years, at least not without some serious restoration work. And the only place where he could find any of the tools or components he would need to ever try were onboard the REMO… In another words, it was hopeless.
Why the hell am I wasting my time? There is no escaping from this planet, any way I look at it…
Turning back to his checklist, he brought up the ship's schematic on screen, doing a diagnostics on the power and propulsion systems. The main generator, although on reserve, appeared fully operational, still producing within the safety line, and would continue to do so for several more centuries. The engines were of course dead, their fuel cells having been recycled by Strauss for the generators. Except for one.
"Booster #4 still has a working fuel cell," Josh said, studying the readouts on the nuclear fuel gauges. Sure enough, one of the ion boosters still had juice, enough for a single good burn. Yet, what use was it to him if the ship was now but a pile of corroded scrap metal? Nothing whatsoever.
"You're trying to find a way to leave us, are you?" asked Elizabeth sadly, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. Josh only pulled away, not in the mood for pointless sympathy.
"I've been away from home for thousands of years," he said grimly, finally switching off the screen, having covered everything, "I might as well be dead, like the rest of my crew." Nobody could find any words to comfort him, realising how hard it must be for him. It all seemed so bleak now.
Author's note: My sincere apologies for the delay, but I've been very busy lately. On a side note to all readers, I will no be going back to proof-read the story so far, particularly the opening chapters, so all further updates will continue to be delayed. ENJOY AND PLEASE REVIEW!