A while back, I got to know a friend called Nick. We both live on a planet called Zenst. Zenst spins at a much faster pace than Earth. Thanks to this, we have storms that spin around more often than on Earth. Our sun, unlike Earth's, has a noticeably variable brightness. This makes it seem as though it's pulsating sometimes, even under a blue sky.
Zenst is a world full of self automated robots that help others do work for them. We also have automated cars, & the more wealthy people own hovercraft, hoverboards, & other such vehicles. In fact, we even have aircraft that change color according to how fast they travel. Computers have advanced as well. Some are even powered by the physics of water droplets, which I don't know that much about.
We have an extremely spread out population that's rather small. Thanks to this, Nick has an enormous property that encompasses many thousands of acres. He makes a living by harvesting crops on his land. Much of his property, however, he's left alone. This allows a vast forest to grow naturally for as long as one can remember. Over seventy five percent of this forest has gone unexplored by us, & perhaps anyone else neither. One day I decided to take a stroll by myself through these woods. Nick calls the forest after his friend, Mik. Mik once disappeared out into the world, never to be seen again. This has caused Nick & I to theorize that Mik literally vanished into thin air, as in, teleported. Another idea of ours is that Nick decided to make us think that he moved somewhere far, far away, & that he actually settled into the woods. This would be a radical change, as Mik may have serious difficulties living in the wild, as opposed to us, who need to use high end tech almost constantly to stay ahead of our game. In other words, we need to keep on track of everyone else, while Mike needs to stay on track with mother nature.
I myself am an outdoors kind of person. One day I decided to explore part of Nick's woods. The area I went to explore was a patch of woods which Nick has essentially made into a park. This included hiking trails. One of the trails leads toward a river, which I decided I would follow for as far as I could. I was at least four miles into my trek. Perhaps it was much further. I noticed something peculiar near the river. They were ruins. I was hesitant about telling any one. I still told Nick later that day. That's when Nick decided to tell me more about it. He told me what he knew from his grandfather, Gary.
Gary had always had a desire to be a park ranger. I asked Nick why Gary hadn't realized this career. He said he's talked with Gary quite a lot, but Gary would always avoid the subject. Anyway, Nick told me a story that Gary passed on to him. The story takes place about twenty years ago. That day would turn out to be quite peculiar for Gary. Gary had walked into a bar one evening, after having a long day. He was quite bummed out because, as it turns out, the way his day was going, it was quite boring. Yet, soon enough, his boredom would hit a roadblock. He overheard some young guys talking. He called them "crazy" guys, because they seemed to talk so loudly, just short of shouting. He couldn't tell if they were sober. "We were out in them woods, one night with a flashlight. After wakin' all night, we reached this spot where we witnessed some strange entities" one of them said. "We took some sticks to make a couple of torches, & charged the entities" he said again. Then the other said, "They were running away like a group of mountain monsters, if you know what I mean. When one of them ran into another, they'd give out a growl. All of a sudden they seemed to teleport right into the darkness, like they were traveling through a wormhole or somethin' ". A friend of the two asked, "Anything you wanna add?" One of them said, "Right before they vanished, they seemed to leave behind some stuff, like photos or somethin'. We charted our location on a map. My friend Gildan took it. After it was said and done, Gildan told me he lost the map somewhere as we were tryin' to get out. If he wants it back, he better go in there and find it. Cuz I ain't going back twenty something miles for a dumb map." After this, Gary thought they may have been scouting Nick's woods. Gary decided to see for himself whether the map could be hidden in Nick's woods somewhere. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. However, by this time, the map was not resting on the forest floor anymore. Instead, it was in the hands of a naturalist named Jerry. Jerry claimed to have found it while searching for truffles. Unsure about whether this was the real deal, Gary decided to try his luck and see if he could obtain the map. Jerry told him, "Sir, I've been trying to read this map for quite a while, much to my dismay. If someone else finds it useful, then be it." From then on, Garry embarked on a trek in order to reach the location that was supposedly somewhere on the map. Garry would venture out in Nick's woods, sketching along the way. This way he can, in a way, create a map of where he wanders.
Garry's quest has led him to find what was marked on the map. It was a set of images, describing plans on how to build a mechanism- one that Garry suspects no human has any idea of how to manufacture. So it begins...
Two months later
For quite some time, the space agency has been trying to reach a planet called "Fez". However, to enable space travel by fusion power, engineers still need to figure out the last step in order to realize this. Otherwise they'd risk a journey that would likely take well over 10 years. Well, engineers have received the images Garry discovered. It turns out, Garry discovered the next step the space agency needs to enable fusion fueled spacecraft- plans for a fusion powered spaceship. Now, this will allow astronauts to land on Fez possibly within a year. Based on obervations, Fez is green, & contains gasses such as Carbon & Oxygen, in abundant quantities!
1 year, 6 months later
On a world orbiting a tiny, yet exceptionally intense star, resides a society that hasn't even discovered electricity yet. Residents call this world Glikom. Rumors have spread at an exceptionally fast pace throughout neighborhoods. There have been sightings of "star people". The star people have reportedly arrived in a levitating object of some sort, one which not even the wisest of residents can describe, despite their best efforts. The residents of this planet, however, soon dismiss these sightings. They believe that star people, or aliens, as they're sometimes thought of, are terrestrial beings. In other words, they think that these beings are spirits. These spirits have manifested, and can only be visible to certain people. In order to be a witness to such phenomena, it is important that you are ready. Being ready consists of at least two things, or "states of mind" as one might think of them. 1) you need to believe that they exist (be open minded) & 2) You must be able to sense when they're trying to communicate by telepathy. If you cannot interpret mindfully that they're trying to make an appearance, or what they're trying to communicate, then this lowers your chance of being a witness. Glikom is a giant world, roughly twice Earth's size. It also has a much slower spin as Earth. Unlike Earth, which spins ever slower, Glikom is further into the slowing process.
2 years later
I'm in Nick's house. We've got a TV running, when all of sudden, we hear breaking news. Then we're reminded: we had astronauts travel to Fez! sure enough, that's what the breaking news is about- "astronauts arriving from their long journey from Fez". Later the announcement is made that the astronauts will be talking about their discoveries a week from now,
I made sure to mark my calendar to hear about what it was like for the astronauts roaming around Fez.
1 week later
I call Nick. He decides to meet me at my house to watch the astronauts on TV. This is the first time astronauts have gone to a habitable planet! As we're watching, the first astronaut sits at a table, with cameras flashing everywhere. "Fez was an astonishing place to explore, to say the least. It seemed quite surreal and something that one may think of if they really stretch the imagination. I don't think, I know, that all of us astronauts now have memories of a lifetime... on a world that's a lot like ours, lush, green, coffee-colored skies, & as vibrant as one can imagine." The astronaut goes on for thirty more minutes. Then it's the next person's turn. He goes. Right as he's going to talk, we hear my front door open. I rush out to see who it is. Then Nick rushes after me. As we look towards the door, I'm shocked for some reason. I truly can't explain why, it's like something tells me that this is unusual. What's more dramatic is the look on Nick's face as he's left utterly speechless. Garry has arrived. In the heat of the moment, however, the emotions quickly shift, and excitement overtakes us. We all rush to the TV. Yet, our emotions just now pale in comparison to what will soon be announced by an astronaut on TV. First though, we listen to some interesting discoveries regarding the weather on Fez; "We've noticed the days on Fez to be quite long, at least a few times longer than here on Zenst. The sun near Fez is astonishingly bright, and the clouds amazingly thick and dark. In fact, once the sun shows through the clouds, the temperature can jump by at least five degrees in five seconds. As a result, the planet may experience unusually strong wind gusts. In one instance, I was talking with some other astronauts who were about twenty five miles away from my location. My thermometer read 45 degrees, yet they radioed back to me saying that it was 80 degrees. This is local climate on a whole new level. We've noticed how the slow spin has enabled more heat buildup than one might see on Zenst. We've also confirmed Miller's predictions that the slow spin would allow for stronger, more long lived storms, with higher rainfall rates. One of the things that Miller (Miller was a scientist studying what climate may be like on other planets) didn't mention, yet we observed, were that plants died off at night. What takes about three months or so on Zinst, happens in a matter of four days on Fez. So, it was kind of, should I say, a time warp. Our perception of time was transformed. When we arrived, the leaves were green. On the fourth day, however, come late afternoon and they would already start changing color. On that day, the night was fairly cold and long. On the fifth day, it was even colder. That evening the leaves fell. Before morning came, it was a full blown winter. Then about six days later, the leaves started growing again, and morning literally brought new life to the land. At times the clouds resembled neatly shaped jagged hills." Another astronaut speaks. "Storms tried to form funnels. Ironically, the straight line winds often tore up the funnels. We had to seek shelter immediately." Next, the astronaut talks about some other intriguing things he noticed on Fez. "I sat up one night. I noticed what seemed like glowing orbs floating in mid air. They didn't seem to move. However, after several minutes I noticed they were not in the same location. I took a nap for an hour. I then got back to observing the orbs. I noticed them forming a dense clump, or cluster. They seemed to then literally vanish into thin air. I talked with some of my fellow astronauts about it the next day. We had discussed what was really happening. We came to the conclusion that instead of vanishing, the orbs were likely making their way to an underground cavern. One day, something truly amazing happened. A scientist who was part of our mission gathered one of these orbs and studied it inside a lab in our spaceship. This life form was made up of an extremely thin membrane, as well as extremely thin, delicate, organs. It's shape was kind of like a fish. We called it a Zonzi. It turns out that the air on Fez is incredibly thick. Zonzi's lungs can hold incredibly large quantities of air. They inhale a large volume of hot air while they're underground, near thermal activity. Then at nighttime, they float out of the cave, and float freely through the cold air, settling down generally in random places. Once they settle down somewhere, the wind might push them. If they don't find food, they die. It turns out that the ones I noticed were quite large- likely over 10 feet in diameter. I'd say they were approximately two miles away. Yet, when one was found by our scientist, it deflated. All that was left was what would be left of a balloon. Yet, the same night this happened, I had woken in the early morning and looked out my window to see tiny Zonzis coming towards the window. I had to close the window. After all, they could be poisonous, or be like box jellyfish. Perhaps even worse would be if they carried an unknown disease to which there was no antidote or cure for."
Right after this, a chief or someone of that nature takes place of the astronaut and starts speaking. His facial expression suggests he's about to declare something unthinkable. "I am here now, to make a special announcement. We have saved the best discovery for last. Ladies and gentleman, I announce to you, that while we were wandering about on this unknown planet, the most amazing discovery... (pause)...was not something of that world, but something of our world. That discovery has a name. It's name is... Mik. At that moment, we all felt like this was the end of a new chapter in our lives. And for the first time ever, we felt as if our life was a book. Then, I heard my door open again. We all looked at each other. We knew who it was. And this would, perhaps, be the end of the story. Yet, at the end, Garry made it all better. Because Garry, like the man we just heard from on the TV, had an announcement of his own- one that can be considered to be equally as important. We knew it had true meaning behind it, and for that, we remembered it for a lifetime. If this is to be a secret, we will hold on to it for dear life:
"Boys, if there's anything to remember from life, it's this. You can be a witness if you meet at least one requirement. You need to believe that they exist. Be open minded. There are legends of ghosts or aliens out there, and if you do not believe in these things, they will appear to you."
-----Thanks for reading. Stay open minded. I hope you've learned from this. If you think it exists, don't give up, and don't be swayed by other's beliefs. You're imagination, is NOT lying. If you seek explanations that aren't rational, don't abandon such explanations. Others will try to keep you permanently attached to rational thought, & disconnect you from the other world, a world that in part belongs to the imagination; your imagination is telling you something; LISTEN to it---------------------
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