"Final Portal" [?] by Forrest Cameranesi NOTICE: THIS IS A VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY PRE-PRE-PRE-ALPHA VERSION OF MY STORYLINE. MANY PARTS WILL BE CHANGED AND/OR DO NOT EXIST YET. I APPOLIGISE FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO WORD THINGS VERY WELL --- THAT'S CHRIS' JOB. ============================================================================== Background: It is approximately 2073, mankind is in the early stages of terraforming Mars, and most of the outer planets have been throuroghly probed. Microbes had been discovered in the warm waters buried deep under ice on one of Jupiter's moons. Perhaps more important, on the dark side of our own moon was discovered an ancient, battered crash site in what is called the Tycho crater. The origins of this wreckage are largely unknown, but it contained salvagable machinery which we have studied and rebuilt. One of these machines contained a form of exotic matter, which apparently reproduced itself when changed eith electricity. The most bizaar property of this matter was it's incredible resistance against gravitational forces, and it could therefore be used to build a dense, circular singularity which could warp space-time itself, pulling two part of the universe together in one point. Normally such a device would collapse upon itself and form a black hole, but the aforementioned lack of gravitational forces cause this machine to be fairly stable. A wormhole large enough to fly a spaceship through was built in Earth orbit (by attaching it to our moon, neccesay because of the lack of gravity) and another near Jupiter, and Pluto. These succesive wormholes gradually extended farther and farther until they crossed the Oort cloud, where we were surprised to find a radio signal coming from apparently nothing, just a point in space radiating static. It was then discovered, upon observation, that a tiny wormhole existed at that point, and that the radio waves were coming through it. It was then expanded, and a ship sent through. Immediately afterwards, the entire series of wormholes began to disintegrate and the particles fell through eachother and dissapeared, without a trace. The endpoint of the Final Portal, as it was called, is unknown. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |*| Warning: Dangerous levels of radiation detected. All crew report to containment chamber 42-FC-237 until further notice. |*| The small shuttlecraft had been slowly narrowing in on a planet roughly twice the size of Earth for seven days, three hours and two minutes before the alarm went off. Apparently this system's intense blue star was radiating some subatomic particles which penetrated the ship's hull, and the crew had to retreat into a small, sheilded chamber and await the ship's automated splash-down to the lush, blue-green planet below. Their decent began according to standard procedure: communications with their mother ship, a ship known as the "Interspace Explorer", had kept stellar placement coordinates in sync, and the ship's computer was guiding the shuttle in towards the planet. Specifically, to the source of what had earlier appeared to be radio static, but as they neared the source it had become apparent that it was incredibly short bursts of perfect sine waves, indicating a possible source of intelligent life. About halfway through their descent, approximately 52,000 miles above this planet's sea level, a large airborne object collided with the ship, knocking out it's communications array and sending it on a downward spiral towards the coastline below. The crew, noticing this sudden jolt, ignored the radiation warnings (which had since been lowered from Level 5 to Level 1, about equivilent to the radiation put off by large power lines) and returned to the flight deck. Switching on manual atmospheric control, the capitan began to maneuver the ship to a steady landing on the beach. They took air readings: 76% nitrogen,19% oxygen, 5% carbon, and a few benign trace elements. Upon stepping out, they found a very different world. The crew of the small shuttlecraft had landed themselves on an alien planet, more abundant with surface life than even earth itself. From space, they could see large, light blue patches - apparently shallow oceans - covering about a fourth of this alien world. The rest of it was thick, dark green, with an occasional baren, snow-ringed volcano, spewing thick black soot into the air. ...................................................................................................................................................................................... ok, I'm not gonna bother writing everything out cinematic style. Pretty much, they go into the jungle, find these "bugs"... ok, I'll explain the bugs in detail. The basic body plan is both endo and exo skeletons, so they have a lot of strength. They've got three legs, most commonly having the two "arms" in front, and swinging the "tail" leg from behind them to the front, and then roll over the tail leg back to the front. Repeat. That's their locomotive system. Then for their attacks they raise up on the hind leg and use their forearms like "claws". Their head is a skull with a brain in it (about that of a dog), three eyes (two "slit" eyes and one isocolese-triangular shaped eye on the forehead with the point facing down between the two slit eyes). They have a "nose" (air intake) which is just a blow-hole type thing (usually open, but can be closed). Then there's two sensory organs between the nose and where the ears would be, on the "cheekbone" (if there was one). Then there's a spider-like mandible-clad mouth (material intake/output). All of that is covered with "skin-tight" armor, which is actually a form of skin that fits to the head perfectly and then hardens into a shell and thickens, creating a protective helmet. At the top-read is one exposed spot with an odd glandular organ protruding. From the back of the head comes a spine, but rounder and more flexible than a terran spine. Around that is one big lung, a stomach, and a few other unknown organs. There is no heart, the entire innards are simply bathed in bodily fluids. Outside that is a multi-plate shell (it varies between species). The spine grows much larger toward the rear of the shell and has muscles attached all over, and is then covered by rings of shell which overlap and create a virtually impenatrable hull to the tail. The team splits up after exiting the shuttlecraft, but they keep videolink with eachother (you can pull up the videolink at any time and it'll show a real-time-rendered scene, or a QT movie. Usually a QT movie.) Throughout the game, we find alien machinery, long abandoned, but still functioning. Some of it is computers, diagrams, and other information. We also get info from our colleagues via the vidlink. Basically, this is what we find out: An ancient alien species, so old they don't know which planet is their own homeworld anymore, once inhabited this place. They constantly retreated from another, seemingly omnipotent alien race who's sole intent was to wreak havoc on anything and everything, even eachother, although they would never quite die. The inhabitants of this planet had detected us in our early development, and sent three probes, only one of which succeeded in making contact with Earth. One crashed on an outer planet, and another on the dark side of our moon. They then sent out another probe to intentionally collide with a comet in the Oort cloud, which then created a microscopic (by our standards) wormhole through which they could send a radio beacon. They hoped that someday their collective conciousness, merged into an AI, would be able to contact us through the wormhole and the reminants of the probes. Their physical selves were destroyed when their enemies attacked them unexpectedly. The AI remembers that long afterwards another race came and captured the beasts which now roamed this planet. They stole parts of the machinery and studied them, and didn't even notice the AI. After centuries of non-contact, the AI simply set a repeat radio message at extremely high (again, only by our standards) speeds (frequency?), and shut itself off. Somewhere in the game we finally decode this message which gives instructions on how to turn the AI back on. Once we do, it tells us all of the above. It then gives us a small computer with loads of information on cybernetics, artificial intelligence, space travel, etc etc etc. Then it helps us set up the wormhole network, re-launch out shuttle, and then we return home to Earth. As we near the exit wormhole, the planet below begins to emit large amounts of energy, the space around it seems to warp as light in bent, and it then folds in upon itself. As we pass through successive wormholes they do the same, and by the time we reach Earth no evidence but the computer which the AI gave them remains that the planet ever existed. The end? Or just the beginning? [NOTE: THE ABOVE DESCRIBED EVENTS AND CHARACTERS ARE PURELY SCIENCE-FICTIONAL. ANY SIMILAITIES BETWEEN THIS AND VAUGLY IMPLIED EVENTS IN THE MARATHON SERIES AND "FOREVER MORE" ARE PURELY INTENTIONAL]