2030:
The signal celebrating her awakening: a single pulse of energy, a starburst erupting from its molten surface, took 6.66 hours to reach Astute, the world’s most advanced orbiting telescope. Entrusted by scientists with autonomous digital deciphering decision-making capabilities, Astute informed the joint US-Russo-Chinese-European Space Agency of its surprise eleven seconds later – a shock with the potential to change the course of history.
Humanity had received an invitation to visit a mysterious new-born, an inexplicable tenth planet, drifting in the darkest recesses of our Solar System beyond the dwarf planet Pluto.
News of the discovery was broadcast to a disinterested world. Fake radio signals from outer space had been generated, transmitted by communications terrorists as part of their global distraction fake news campaign, since the proliferation of social media during the first three waves of the pandemic. The decimated world population was now enduring its twelfth wave of the virus, a constantly mutating scourge that thrived on distrust, stirred by the anti-vax campaign, resistance to change, indiscipline, irresponsibility, and apathy.
The signal held no obvious benefit or solution to the spiralling death rates from the latest variants, endless floods and wildfires rampaging our once-green planet, or the perverse plasticated obliteration of life in the seas and oceans.
Doomsday approached.
Ad Astra:
At a maximum velocity of 590 miles per hour, Ad Astra could be predicted to reach its destination in 760 years. But the probe accelerated to a spatial speed of fifty thousand miles per hour once it had escaped the Earth’s gravitational pull. Ad Astra took sixteen years to reach the new-born, but the sensational fly-past took only days.
WHAT DID SHE FIND?
The new-born was rotating on its own axis at a frequency of once every thirty-six hours. The planet was two-thirds the size of Earth. The blue and green orb had a thin atmosphere. It was shrouded in shifting clouds, dense plumes of gaseous vapour, interspersed with clear patches through which the formation of the new-born was clearly visible. Astounded beyond their wildest dreams, the scientists pulled the proverbial trigger. Ad Astra fired her baby at the planet, controlling her release meticulously before she shot off into deep space.
The toughest baby in the Solar System, Electra, braced herself as she hurtled towards the alien planet. A sharp tug, her mother pulling at her bib, and she jerked violently, inhibited by a sudden paddy, a childish outburst of temper, as her retro-firing rockets forced her to calm down. She cooled. The fire in her heat-shield belly subsided. She felt a shady parasol bloom above her head. Withstanding all anticipated atmospheric pressure, Electra fell to the ground, the shock absorbers in her stumpy legs confused by soft, sandy, springy soil. Her momentous message would confound scientists, philosophers, dreamers, seers, and science fiction writers until their dying days.
WHAT DID SHE FIND?
MESSAGE: ELECTRA: 11:02: 23.08.2046: TERRAIN: FLAT WITH UNDULATING SLOPES AND LIQUID. SOIL COMPOSITION: SILICON, NITRATE, ORGANIC DETRITUS. ANALYSIS: LIQUID: H20. WATER PRESENT. ATMOSPHERE: PRIMORDIAL: NITROGEN 74.2%, OXYGEN 25.7%, ARGON 1.3%, CARBON DIOXIDE 0.06%, INERT TRACE GASES, WATER VAPOUR VARIABLE. BIOSPHERE: PRIMORDIAL. REPEAT. PRIMORDIAL. CONDITIONS SUPPORT LIFE.
They called the world Primordia.
