TheDarkestDark

By the end of 23rd century, Earth civilization reached high technological level, while facing serious social problems. Resources became scarce following humanity growing in number five times in comparison to early 21st century. Despite scientists coming with various ways to save the world, including colonization efforts, degradation continued. Number one candidate for colonizing - Mars - required 300 years to be fully terraformed and only selected people could live under domes. Humanity needed a more solid plan - one that would bring results and bring them sooner. Following continuous surveys of space systems, a planet similar to Earth has been found - two times bigger than humanity's home, this new discovery was a true breakthrough. However, more detailed researched showed that about 20% of the planet is taken by an alien megacity surrounded by a powerful force field. New information caused a huge uproar among scientists involved, especially after no signs of life encountered and no response to various means of communication. After several years of observation, the city was considered abandoned. Having analyzed the data, numerous governments agreed on a joint effort to send and expedition to reveal the turth about the city and establish the very first colony on that planet. With the biggest ship made of five modules, over 5,000 strong crew set off on most important mission in humanity's history. John Marlow, a scientific officer and one of many deployed for the expedition, sets on a journey which will challenge his knowledge about the Universe and humankind's origin.

The New Gaia

Our crew remains concentrated on the underground facility we have encountered during on our way for planning the route to original rally point, having majority of the group camping around the premises and selected people working on proper investigation of the facility where one of our crewmates died recently, and some of us barely managed to escape alive.

I know what most of people would have said if told to get into the place that nearly caused their death yet again, and - to anyone who is going to read this in the future - I totally agree the idea is unwise, or - to put it more bluntly - completely crazy.

However, it is something to be considered that way based on individual experiences, and given the circumstances we are in, I must admit that leaving this alien facility as it is, without attempting to get to the root of its functions may potentially put our further expedition at risk - after all, we are going to ultimately move most of the science resources closer to the megacity and that means many would need to travel there using this very camp as a stop on the way. Risking possibility of losing someone because of leaving alien installation be is a big no go.

Now, agreeing to the plan for proper investigation we are proceeding with doesn't mean we are going to succeed easily, and - honestly speaking - what I'm seeing right now shows that this whole task is not going to be easy.

Crazy as it sounds, we already encountered the first problem before even going inside the facility yet again. While previously we just had people going in there head-on, not knowing anything about this place and only following the route in hope of finding our lost crewmate, we cannot repeat the same thing, putting more people at risk, and - even if we tried - the way entrance works somehow changed from the previous time.

Originally, our PECs registered the route we took, and we carefully looked through the footage, but the very moment we re-opened the path, it turned out it is different from the earliest stage. And, what is even weirder here is the fact we confirmed the setup of the entrance's layout changes every now and then.

Initially, we had no idea how this works, and only by pure coincidence we found out a connection between these changes to another building within the same city-like complex - it looks like advanced interface built in one of the walls is actually affecting the layout of the entry point of the underground facility.

For now, we can only be sure about the initial point of the route, but given our observations so far, it may be affecting other areas of the facility as well, therefore it is really important for us to understand how this system operates.

The problem is, this advanced alien interface uses a language we still cannot understand. Our best specialist in this field managed to decipher a portion of the symbols already, and has a basic frame of the theory about the principles behind the construction of the language, but it is still ways from being solid enough to be interpreted in a similar way to how we approach ancient human languages like Greek or Latin.

We are now close to the final deadline agreed on with McRae after reviewing the recent findings. Honestly, I don't feel comfortable with going there before properly understanding how the interface functions, but the longer we stay in one place, the bigger is the chance some people who need our help are not getting it.

6th February 2297