Audio Clip #4:
“Well I have not made one of these in awhile. Just over 2
months since my last audio message home… making it nearly 3 months since our
journey. It feels like a lifetime ago, a different Ariana Sheffield grew up in
Bristol, a different Ariana Sheffield studied aerospace engineering at
University College London and met …”
*audio is a confused muttering, Captain Sheffield sounding
confused and trying with difficulty to remember something.
“… right. Dave. At the pub. How could I have forgotten that?
He will be long dead when this message reaches Earth, so at least he
will never know his wife almost forgot him.”
*audible chuckling.
“A different Ariana Sheffield...”
Audio Clip #5:
“We are much closer to Gamma Draconis now, and our
guardian angels have been with us the whole way. More of them joining every
day! Our new home is looking more and more beautiful. New scope and sensor data
support our initial claim that it would be life-supporting. Maybe by the time
humanity receives these messages they will have the technology to visit our new
colony. There is not a lot of genetic variability between just the 6 of us, but
Lin thinks if we can designate partners just right then we may have a chance at
populating this new world. Could you imagine it? Children of Earth
united hundreds or even thousands of years later. It would be magical.
“Crew morale has never been better. Spirits are higher than
when we were approaching the sun originally. The feeling of a new found hope is
ecstatic and addictive. Even Liz, who would not even speak in the early days of
our exodus, never fails to have a smile now. She spends hours on end in the
observatory deck watching our angels weave and dance and shimmer. They even began fluorescing in different wavelengths, a mosaic of colour. Our golden
gods carrying us, protecting us, delivering us to our promised land. Liz says
if you graph the frequency of their movement and play it back it creates a rhythm
and melody, differing and variable, an interwoven message…”
*no audio for 24 seconds, followed by a loud crash as if
something knocked into a bulkhead and Captain Sheffield softly chuckling
in the background.
“I have to go see Liz.”
Audio Clip #6
*audio clip begins with soft, yet rhythmic sounds.
Potentially a tapping on a desk or bulkhead. A melodic chanting of 5 distinct
voices builds up, wavering and sometimes guttural tones shifting from quiet to
loud, in time with the tapping. Choral voices are presumably Jorge Reynolds,
Elizabeth Stone, Mike Drmic, Lin Zheng and Olivia Rayfield, who
continue to chant throughout the audio clip in the background to Captain
Sheffield’s message.
“Four months now we have been in the Draconis system.
Food is running pretty thin, and we have all lost at least 10% of our body
weight. No one seems to mind. We found our distraction, to push away those
impure thoughts of Earth and our previous lives, of sadness and hunger.
When Liz started worshipping our fluorescent friends no one questioned it. We
all knew it was the right thing to do… hear how the golden gods sing to us from
the void.”
*Captain Sheffield begins to hum and chant along
with the crew and rhythm. A shouting rises between the crew.
“I am going to let them in.” presumably said by Elizabeth
Stone, followed by muffled shouts and a building argument between the
crewmembers. Audio is incoherent for 11 minutes and 37 seconds until Captain
Sheffield returns to her terminal.
“Liz and Lin opened the airlock. It cycled open to the void
for nearly 2 minutes before we managed to close it. Jorge rushed back to the
observatory, and now we see nothing around the ship. All of our fluorescent
golden gods are gone. They are no longer guiding us and singing along our
hulls. Where did they go? Jorge rigged up the comm lasers to look for them
within the airlock… which we have not opened to the rest of the ship… and they
are not there. Could our gods have abandoned us so easily?”
Image from: https://images.nasa.gov/details-0004368
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