Astraea: Exodus from Earth

15th May 2086, Hawaii It was like any other dark, moonless night at 4,200 metres above sea level. An explosion of stars filled the sky overhead, but the two astronomers on duty that night were much more interested in passing the time with video games. After all, they had spent many nights looking at the same part of the sky. Sometimes, even unlocking the secrets of the universe gets boring.

One of the largest telescopes on Earth had been tasked with studying distant, icy bodies much farther away from the sun than any of the planets. Even Pluto, which was once thought to be the end of the solar system, was practically on our doorstep compared to some of the worlds that had been found hiding out there in the darkness.

It was fair to say that after a few thousand announcements, the excitement had begun to wear off. But on this night, the astronomers would make an accidental discovery that was more than just exciting. It was going to change the course of humanity’s future.

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Impetus fulgurum!

Where did you learn that!? eep.

Beep-B Beep.

Beep.

Years of practice, my friend.

Some of us worked on our pronunciation!

Huh? Did you hear that?

Wait … what is that?

Is that a … detection?

It can’t possibly -

I win! Take that Fluffyfoot.

Nobody beats house Dragonfang!

Professor Mason - sorry to wake you. We need you in the control room as soon as possible. We think we’ve found … Well, you should just see for yourself.

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Later that night …

Well, well. It looks like you’re both going to have something named after you.

It’s so very faint. This might be a distance record for the discovery of a new comet.

Professor, look at this. There’s no sign of nitrenium or water. Is this really a comet? I’ve never seen anything like it.

If it’s an asteroid, we would know about it. This must be arriving from the outer solar system. If it were close to us, it would be unnaturally dark. Unless Professor! I need to double-check this, but I looked for possible missed detections over the past five nights. Look, when I boost the image there is a faint signal among all the noise that makes it hard to see. It was hiding in there for days. The orbit … it’s … it’s close and … well, if this calculation is correct, it’s … it’s slowing down!

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19th May 2086, Washington D.C.

What you see next to me is the clearest image we have of the object, which we are naming 2086/Jennings-Pérez after its discoverers. Observations reveal that 2086/J-P arrived unnoticed from beyond Neptune and is now in a stable orbit between Jupiter and Saturn. We believe this is a new kind of celestial object, and we are calling for an urgent exploration mission to understand its nature. It could prove to be the greatest scientific discovery of this century.

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Parthenos is away. Max thrust.

All systems reporting good status.

Copy that Parthenos. Everyone on Earth is behind you. Good flying!

20th March 2089, Launch Site 4, The Moon Less than three years later, a group of ten space agencies made up of 64 countries launched a joint mission to 2086/J-P. A team of astronauts and scientists departed from the moon on board the Parthenos spacecraft for a five-year journey.

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12th July 2091 The first robots had revealed 2086/J-P to be a dark cube, over two kilometres wide, and with a strangely patterned surface.

But nothing could prepare the crew of the Parthenos, or the rest of humanity, for the first detailed look.

The world watched in awe as its explorers entered the cube …

It’s a perfect circle.

I mean really perfect.

Control. We’re passing through the opening now. Expect loss of signal. Over.

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The cavernous cube shone with the light of billions of shards of colourful, glowing crystal. The shards contained patterns like the outer wall of the cube, unlike anything humans had seen before. They came in a variety of colours: red, blue, green, yellow, amber, violet and pink.

The cube was obviously made and sent to the solar system by some sort of alien.

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Who created these? And why?

The scan shows that they should be safe to handle.

So where do we start?

The scientists aboard the Parthenos, fascinated by the beautiful glowing shards, discovered that the circuits in each crystal seemed to supply unlimited energy. It was as though they were drawing power from the universe itself. The cube contained more than enough resources for every nation on Earth to have free, clean energy.

But that was only the beginning …

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5th September 2094 Years later, the Parthenos finally returned to Earth with many tons of crystals, which the crew had nicknamed “lumins”.

2086/Jennings-Pérez also received a name: The Gift.

The world’s governments agreed that it should be mined, and an ever-growing number of mining ships departed Earth every day to gather and return the valuable lumins.

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Something unexpected happened to the crew of the Parthenos.

Their years of exposure to the lumins on board their spacecraft granted them extraordinary new abilities.

A - L - T - A - I - R. Incredible!

Scientists discovered that every human’s brain matched with just one colour of lumin, and that anyone exposed to their colour of lumin from birth could develop powerful talents later in life.

All over the world, parents chose to raise their newborns as gifted children.

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Red (Reflex): Their ultra-fast responses make them perfect pilots.

Green (Foresight): Talented strategists who think like supercomputers, making accurate predictions.

Yellow (Sight): With hawk-like vision, they see tiny details far away.

Blue (Strength): Their muscles grow super dense, giving them almost supernatural strength.

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