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Alien fingers gently sweep away the dust on the concrete slab using a fine-haired brush not unlike what we used to have. Its eyes rolled in wild amazement as it uncovered more of this strange hieroglyphical language which wove an even stranger tale :
…You, who are reading this now, must obviously be of a race who has progressed enough - technologically speaking – to be able to explore the vast heavens. It may be a long time yet before you fully understand what you are reading now, but be rest assured, there will come a time when you will accept what has to be done. Don't forget, we have been expecting you. Undoubtedly, you are pondering, and quite ponderously too, about this strange language you are reading, and why you seem to have little trouble understanding it. Let's just say that we've 'stumbled' upon the basic building block of language itself and leave it at that – for now. The year is now 3030 and it has taken us 10 years. 10 long years it has been since the Committee found the abandoned starbase in Sector G of Alpha Centauri. Many pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place since that discovery, just as many pieces of your puzzle will fall into place now that you've found us. Look up now, what do you see…? Alien eyes turned upwards and found instantly what it was supposed to see. The numbers 5908 hovered within a greenish glow above its head. It saw, but it didn't understand. With its eyes back on the hieroglyphs, it read on… The numbers depict our year. We are sure you have something similar to keep track of the dimension which we call time. We can't tell you how long its been since we've moved on – to borrow a term - since our number system would, in all probability, be of a different scale to yours. In the last millennium, we've seen much progress – technologically speaking, again – and we've had just as many perplexing problems thrown back at us. We have, for example, proven that the Universe is finite. That prove is given further below and it should be of great interest to your physicists, be forewarned though, it is a little indigestible. However, for all our technology, we haven't been able to catch up with the very edge of the expanding Universe simply because it is expanding, theoretically, at the speed of light. What lies beyond that, we can only wonder… Many theories have come up about our very existence since then. The most favoured, and logical, of which is the simple number line theory. Imagine a number line: it has zero as the central value and stretches on forever to both sides; infinitely so. For every number that you can think of, there is one that is bigger, and quite obviously, one that is smaller. Which is the way it is with our Universe. We've discovered molecules. Not much later we've discovered atoms and we've found electrons, protons, neutrons in them and so on and so forth. We have yet to come across a particle which we cannot break up, if we had, it may then be another Universe. According to the number line theory, the converse would also then hold true, and that is a scary thought. What we mean to say is that, if we ever do catch up with edge of the Universe, and we do break through it, we should come up in an Alternate Universe. Simply put, we are but part of a larger Universe which, in turn, is part of a still larger Universe and it goes on forever. Now, back to the starbase that we stumbled upon in Alpha Centauri. Just as we have moved on ahead of you, we found that they had moved on ahead of us. They left us details of the procedures and it is reproduced verbatim further below. To summarise, it appears that there is a higher power governing the Universe (or would that be Universes, we do not know). Anyway, it appears that Judgement awaits us and so we must prepare. The keyword here is it awaits us. When all along, we have been waiting, and fearing for the day to come - for the fires to sweep across our lands, for famine to strike us and for the floods to kill us off – it appears that it is has been waiting for us. And so we must go. The plans for the nuclear device is, as again, attached below. There is one last thing. Three millennia ago, we have legends which stated that a star shone brightly in the night sky as a child, a very special child, was born. We have since calculated that the bright star originated from the Alpha Centauri, G sector. It appears that the shining star was the light produced by the self-annihilation of the people who have moved on before us. I believe your people have, in turn, seen a shining star the night a special child of yours was born. That, I believe, would be us…
Alien fingers dropped the fine-haired brush as it touched the concrete wall. It fingered the inscriptions as if it were sacred…its eyes believing…
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