Captivated

From afar, The monolith looked just as majestic as the footage. But it had a different kind of charm to it. The kind Helen didn't expect it to. To her, it was..

"Beautiful"

That was the word she used to describe it. It had completely captivated her. It's sole presence was just that grand. No one could explain why. But this monolith currently had the complete attention of everyone in the vicinity.

As the vehicles started moving again. They approached the monolith. They stopped quite far away from it. As the interference in the are was really great. Even the scanners that were built to withstand such high interference levels weren't working and glitching out.

So they had to stay far away enough so that it wouldn't affect the vehicles. The Mechs also stayed outside the parameter. Inside this parameter anything electronic would malfunction.

The researchers got out of the vehicles one by one and started taking out their equipment. Although chances were great that they would probably malfunction. But they had prepared for that. All the equipment were highly protected against any forms of radiation. Although this impacted the performance of some of the equipment. But that was manageable. It was more important to get them working. Even at a lower performance level.

Dr. Helen and her assistant got out of the vehicle and started walking towards it. As they walked towards it, They could feel the insane amount of energy running beneath their feet. The Lines here were some of the thickest and most dense they had ever seen. The amount of energy they transported even caused the surrounding air to get charged to some degree.

From the vac-suit readings, the radiation levels around them were almost the same as open space. Which was quite high. But it wasn't a problem for them.

As Both of them began to get closer to the monolith. They could sense it. There was more to it that what may be apparent. While it didn't feel like it was an organism of some kind. But it was definitely intelligent.

AI was nothing new for humanity. They had long developed AI that could do many complex tasks faster than Humans. Humans put these AI to good use to do the repetitive tasks.

But the intelligence in the Monolith didn't feel like it was like typical AIs that humans built.

"It knows that we're here.", Dr. Helen said after she looked at the behavior of the monolith. As soon as they came closer it changed it's morphing pattern. It was quite distinct in it's own way. It made it clear that it sensed them.

"Can we communicate with it?", Her assistant asked her from behind her.

"I doubt it. We don't know if it's even able to communicate it the normal sense. It's not a give that communication is a part of it." Dr. Helen said after thinking for a bit.

For the longest time, humans believed that communication was the key for an intelligent species to become a civilization.

But throughout the age of stars, It became apparent that it wasn't the case for everyone. Humans had came across a few civilization that didn't utilize Communication. In fact, it wasn't even a concept to them. They were fully autonomous, and knew what they needed to do. It was quite baffling to imagine something like that.

But it showed that a powerful civilization could grow without communicating without it's own members. So when it came to the cube. Dr. Helen didn't assume it was trying to communicate with them In some form or the other.

"What's our next step? Should we try to perform some scans?"

"I doubt it'd work. The interference level is really high. Normal scanners won't work. Try to setup the JSIT, see if it produces any results.", Dr. Helen said.

The Assistant looked her with widened eyes. This was extremely reckless. The JSIT was a really big piece of equipment. And to set it up, one needed to use the bots. But bots probably wouldn't work here. So it was impossible to set it up. Also, they didn't know how the monolith would react to the scanner. As it was clearly intelligent enough to recognize their presence.

"Are you sure? I don't think it'd like having the JSIT around it. And with the amount of interference, It doubt it'd even work correctly." Her assistant asked her to be sure.

"On second thought. You're right. It probably won't work.", She shook her head. For some reason, She wasn't thinking right. This was weird.

As the leader of this mission, she needed to be on alert all the time. And the monolith before her was exactly what got her so excited. This was the conclusion of the mission to B1. What happened? Why did her thoughts start to drift off.

She fell into a thought. But couldn't really come up with anything.

'It must be the lack of sleep getting to me.', She didn't think about it any further and pushed it to the back of her mind. She wanted to focus on the Monolith.

"What shall we do then? Should we try the long range scanners that we've bought. It should have enough range to work for afar.", her assistant suggest.

"Good, try that." She nodded.

The Long range scanners were brought out. And setup around the parameter. There were quite a few of them as 1 wouldn't be good enough to work through all this interference, So they had to use multiple of them. As they couldn't get close enough to use the better scanners, these were their best bet.

Dr. Helen got a little back. She watched as the scanners were being set up. Soon they started working and were gather some data.

She went back to one of the vehicle. The data collected by the scanners were being sent back here.

"It's as we thought. The interference is too great for the scanners. Their data is almost useless."

Dr. Helen looked at the projection.. After thinking for a while. She said.

"Not quite" She knew just how to fix the data clarity.