Angelina looked at me soberly. “I need to enter the craft.”
“Are you crazy?” I practically shouted. “Don’t you think that’s rash?”
“How else am I going to examine it?”
“Why don’t we look at the video of what the robot explorer saw first,and then you’ll at least have some idea of what awaits you?”
“Sooner or later I’ll have to go in there, Zach.”
“You know what I’m saying is reasonable, Ange—curb your enthusiasm and let’s assess probable risk.”
She nodded, “Okay, let’s talk to the General.”
We found the General in his headquarters’ tent peering at laptop drone photos of the site and surrounding area.
He looked up when we entered and gestured us to take a seat.
He then sat down opposite us.
“It’s bizarre,” he sighed, “Why here and why then? There’s more questions than answers.”
“We’re feeling the same way,” I muttered. “We need to see the video of the interior of the craft.”
“No problem, I’ve got it right here.”
He swivelled the laptop so we could view it and pressed play.
It was deathly silent in the tent as we watched the camera pan the interior of the craft. I don’t know what I expected to see but it was eerily similar to videos I had seen of the interior of the space station.
I had read accounts of supposed UFO abductees recount their experiences of being aboard a very spartan and minimalist chamber made of moulded material, but what I saw didn’t resemble that.
There were what looked like consuls and various devices but although they appeared strange and unfamiliar, they didn’t strike me as being inhuman. Maybe it was the dimensions, but nothing seemed designed for little green men. It was beyond my ken, but to my senses, not alien.
The robot had been steadily moving forward all the time it was slow panning the interior and now focussed on the skeltal remains.
Angelina gasped, “The skull looks human—the proportions of the skeletal structure are similar to ours. I see bilateral symmetry and five fingers and five toes. This is not what I expected at all.”
The General spoke calmly. “Those were my imprssions as well. It’s a conundrum. It’s not like anything we conjectured based on the G-forces of UAP’s we’ve observed—the human body couldn’t withstand those kind of maneuvers.”
“Unless those craft were drones guided by some form of AI,” Angelina suggested.
“It’s a possibility we have to consider,” he concurred.
I held my head in my hands. “I just can’t wrap my mind around these concepts. I feel my brain is going to explode.”
“I’ve got to admit, I’m feeling the same way,” the General smiled sheepishly.
“It certainly rewrites the story of human origins,” Angelina mused. “Did the drone take air samples and do a surface analysis?”
“It did and everything seems normal and benign. I’ve been to many crash sites and there’s always something anomalous—high radiation levels, exotic alloys—but nothing of the sort here.”
I looked at Angelina for her reaction but there was none.
“Something’s been puzzling me,” the General said, turning toward her, “how did you manage to open the craft door?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know exactly—I simply reached out and touched the airship’s hull and the hatch automatically opened.”
“Do you have any idea at all of why that possibly happened?”
“I can explore possibilities but it would be pure conjecture.”
“Try me,” he chuckled, “Because I have no explanatiion at all.”
“Well,” she began, “the craft has no apparent controls in what appears to be the cockpit area which suggests to me that the craft isn’t maneuvered by some sort of manual control but is guided by AI and responds to sentient thought.”
When she spoke the words they struck me as being true. The craft was designed by humans for humans and responds to conscious thought.
There was now no doubt in my mind the occupants were human—just like us.
