Some Came Searching

SOME CAME SEARCHING

By Dan Sullivan

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Dan Sullivan on Smashwords.Com

SOME CAME SEARCHING

Copyright © 2012 by Dan Sullivan

Thank you for downloading this eBook. Printed versions are also available at online bookstores. Your support and respect for the property of all authors is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously. Check sources at the end of the book. They are real.

Whenever I have studied human affairs, I have carefully labored not to mock, lament, nor condemn, but only to understand. 1676 Baruch Spinoza

If nobody knows, your guess is as good as mine, and vice versa. George Brennan 2012

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Engineer

Chapter 2 The Lieutenant

Chapter 3 Sometimes I Wonder

Chapter 4 Another Planet, Another Drill Hole

Chapter 5 The Gods Are Discovered

Chapter 6 You Must Ask Questions

Chapter 7 The Captain

Chapter 8 Those Big Stones Again

Chapter 9 Hello, Dave

Chapter 10 The GRS Nomalar

Chapter 11 Taking Notes

Chapter 12 The Work Of The Gods

Chapter 13 Boys Will Be Boys

Chapter 14 So Now I Know

Chapter 15 At The Higher Level

Chapter 16 Your President Is Calling

Chapter 17 The Bomb Is Dropped

Chapter 18 The Alien Takeover Resistance

Chapter 19 Serious Negotiation

Epilogue

Sources

Acknowledgements

Other

Introduction

There is one avenue of approach to ancient mysteries which requires no magic, no gods nor giants, only advanced technology. But one question always remains: Whose technology? Somehow, someone produced the ancient technology required to shape and transport single stones that weigh eight hundred tons, feats which we can't reproduce with ropes and manpower. Someone in ancient times produced megaton granite sculptures which have perfect left/right symmetry and bear the surface marks of precision machine tools. All of this occurred during a period of time when the hardest metals in cutting tools were bronze or copper.

Some learned theoreticians say the ancients sculptured granite by pounding granite with diorite balls, but they just never seem to demonstrate the capability. Bashing out perfect lips and eyelids on a granite face with a stone baseball is quite a trick. Try it sometime.

Who could have done it? Were they humans, angels, demons, extraterrestrials or gods? This story proceeds on a simple premise: The only requirement is technology. According to Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. If not, it is a good place to start, adding complexity only as necessary to reach the solution. Who, in ancient times, could have possessed technology which in some instances exceeds our own?

This story is fiction, but it presents some of the possibilities of the how and why of ancient megaliths. We are now examining our planet from the core to the stratosphere, and other planets orbiting other stars. No magic is involved, only advanced technology.

This is the story of an engineer who is a typical product of the accumulation and compounding of knowledge since the beginning of human history. He has been chosen, for a long list of reasons, to help fellow humans prepare for a new era in which we will refine and expand the science and technology required for interstellar travel.

Chapter 1

The Engineer

Time: 2235 AD

The old man sat by the fountain in the park, talking to a friend from the Space Museum Supporters Society. You mean you never heard the story about Dave Warner? There are several book and documentaries, and at least one motion picture production about him. I got my hands on the whole lot of them and put this piece together. Once you hear the story, you'll know why he is one of my heroes.

He pulled a wallet from his vest pocket, fished out a coin-sized object from his collection, and handed it to his friend. Slip this into the old ARP (artificial reality projector) this evening. But, I want it back, it's my only copy.

Later that day, the friend settled down in his study, placed the electrode clip on his head, and inserted the disc. The first scene showed the old man, sitting in the corner of an office full of desks, work stations, and busy people, ready to narrate his tale. Thus, the saga of the old man's hero, Dave Warner begins------

Time: 2013 AD

Dave, get your feet off that desk and design a robot.

The vice president grinned as he walked past. Dave had his stamp on more robot probes operating throughout the solar system than any other engineer in the business. The truth was that he made more money for the corporation when he had his feet on his desk and his hands pressing his temples, and George Brennan, vice president of engineering for TechFrontier Aerospace Corporation, knew it very well. Dave had the gift of coming up with ideas that made everyone slap their foreheads because they hadn't thought of it first. Doing the math and drawing the plans were just the skilled labor part of the job.

Dave Warner was an aerospace engineer. He worked for TechFrontier Aerospace in Houston, Texas. At age forty-two, he still had his athletic build and dark wavy hair, and he made the girls look twice. He had spent his professional career in whatever cutting edge project he was needed most.

His specialty was in helping to build exploratory probes that would gain the greatest amount of the most-needed information in the most likely and reachable locations.

Dave's probes had probed in moon dirt, Mars dirt, Venus dirt, Mercury dirt, asteroid dirt, and drilled in a few places that didn't even have dirt. George knew that Dave's heart, mind, and curiosity were much farther out there.

How far out do you go? George had once asked.

Oh, not very far, replied Dave. "Only as far as you can see through the eyes of the orbiting telescopes.

They hit the wall right out there at the edge of the universe. Beyond that point it is somebody else's problem, just like before the Big Bang. My probes can't get into those places yet."

Dave had wanted to be an astronomer or cosmologist, but he had decided his chances of employment were much better as an engineer. He was the kind of a person who never stops until he finds the answer. He was the type required to break into new areas of scientific exploration that up to the present have had everyone stumped. Things like the source of gravity or conditions prior to the Big Bang.

It takes a stubborn, determined person who sorts present knowledge into batches and then looks for connections between the batches, which can sometimes lead to the missing bit that makes a whole new batch. Some people just seem to have a gift from somewhere. They can follow the threads through the existing mathematics and physics until they eventually find the bundle of loose ends that opens up a new realm of knowledge.

Dave Warner was like that. His mind had a habit of rapidly progressing through a series of questions whose answers took him to a place where he could pick up those threads. For example, he could start out by asking himself a simple question like how far it was to the nearest star. Then the gears would start turning in his head:

4.3 light years.

How can we get there?

In a very fast spaceship.

How long will it take?

That depends. How fast can we go?

How much acceleration can we generate?

How much acceleration can we tolerate and still survive?

If we build it, can we sell it?

Ok, backup one line, make it a robot. Five G acceleration to the halfway point. Find a buyer, we will find a way to build it. Or he may start with,

Where did the universe come from?

It expanded from the Big Bang.

How do we know that?

We can observe and measure the expansion and play it backward to a single point.

Where did the point come from?

No one knows. Some say that it was created.

Where did the creator come from?

No one knows.

Can we find out?

Maybe. Once we discover how to explore the inside of a black hole and return.

Could the universe just pop into existence from nowhere?

No one knows.

Could the creator just pop into existence?

No one knows. Some people won't question such things.

At that point Dave would say, Now we're getting into philosophy and religion. Let's explore the galaxy first, then the universe, before we accept belief and give up on knowledge. Belief will always remain in the hypothesis stage. The answers are out there somewhere. They may be right here in the computer, if we ask the right questions.

Dave questioned such things. He initially questioned everything. He honestly accepted things that could be proven. When you compress a gas to half the volume, do you double the pressure?

Yes. Here's the cylinder and the pressure gauge. Try it.

Does gravity bend light? Yes. Here are the telescope and the camera. If you stand here long enough, there will be another solar eclipse. Then you can try it. For most other things, Dave's answer would be, Maybe, let's look at it.

He was also captivated by the study of ancient writings-The Theogony, Torah, Homer, Mahabharata, and Gilgamesh, for example. Those ancient works gave a glimpse of how people applied logic to mysterious things in ancient times. Humans had advanced intellectually to the point that they sought answers to mysteries, but they had not advanced technologically to the point they could begin to find the answers. Their dedication to the pursuit of knowledge had led to the development of science.

The way Dave figured it, those men of old occasionally witnessed natural occurrences, the causes of which were a complete mystery, such as storms, volcanoes, and flaming meteorites. Then, they could not explain a comet pulling or pushing its tail through space or a meteor blazing through the atmosphere. They were all spiritualists, of necessity. Today both spiritualists and technologists work to explain the mysteries, but they work with different sets of tools.

In Dave's view, the two methodologies diverged like this: Unknown leads to Imagination, but then diverging thought processes occur: assumption vs examination / fabrication vs experimentation / gullibility vs skepticism / superstition vs reason / emotion vs logic/ persuasion vs demonstration / opinion vs fact / mythology vs history / potions vs medicine / astrology vs astronomy / magic vs.physics.

The unknown is always present, and imagination is necessary to begin the search for answers, but from there the methods rapidly diverge. That is when human nature kicks in, which says that one must come up with an explanation, or else one has to admit that it is beyond one's scope.

A surprisingly large number of people have always been unwilling to admit that. So, in that case, one offers the best guess at an explanation, and if others believe it, then one must have been right. It worked in ancient times, but it is more difficult now.

The discipline of the scientific method has filled in many of the blanks. Even so, scientists readily admit we have more questions than answers. The good news is: now there is a system and a growing knowledge base that helps us to find and test the answers.

Discipline is the only way to overcome human nature. Dave didn't think he was right on any particular issue because other people believed it-he knew he was right because it was tested, proven, and repeatable. Otherwise his stock answer would apply: Maybe, let's look at it.

He also wondered why humans were motivated to use such different methods to answer questions about the unknown. Why do the two groups in modern times still split so readily into either spiritualism or technology?

Things are different now. We are still driven by the same curiosity to explain mysteries, but the methods available have improved. With orbiting telescopes, we can detect galaxies at the edge of the universe. With microscopes, we can see the micro-organisms that make us sick. We can synthesize diamonds and examine a baby before it is born.

There's no longer any need to infer magic just because we are observing something that we don't yet understand. We simply admit that we don't know and keep working toward the answer.

Why are we driven to explore and map the universe? At least three good reasons: first, we want to know if there is anyone else out there. Second, prospecting; there are valuable things out there that we can put to good use: metals, fuel, and knowledge, among other things. And third, we need a second home. Eventually, our sun will become a red giant, and it will absorb the inner planets, including Earth. The sun is not our most immediate problem, because we have five billion years, plus or minus, remaining before we have to emigrate away from the red giant sun. However, in the shorter term, we will eventually spot an inbound asteroid.The survival of Earth's species may very well depend on the species we have sent to the second home.

We need to get that second home established and growing as soon as we can. The bigger the better. The sooner the better. The more vacant space the better.

Suppose we find a suitable second home on some planet that is occupied. Would we ask them if we could move in on the back lot, with a promise not to inconvenience them?

Would we determine if we could exterminate them, and if we could, would we? If we can answer those questions, thought Dave, maybe we can begin to answer why visitors from another world would want to come here. There may be intelligent beings out there whose star has run its course and will soon self-destruct. How long have they been on the interstellar road? How desperate would they be? Would they exterminate us like we exterminate rats? What kind of a planet will they need? How much of the planet will they need? Perhaps they will simply be looking for something specific, like water or methane or uranium or who knows-it could be gold.

Maybe they will just be exploring, looking for other life forms, mapping the galaxy, or they may be police forces chasing bad guys. Dave figured that if it was the latter, hopefully they wouldn't look too closely at humanity. We may be in trouble.

Dave's profession was designing machines to explore the universe. All of his friends at work did the same thing, but only Dave wondered about those rock blocks. The two greatest lifelong mysteries in Dave's life were extraterrestrial life and those big stone slabs, because each had several equally maddening secrets hiding under their