Alien Remains

The cockpit was where the spacecraft's precision instruments were concentrated, as well as the core hub for all its piping and circuitry. Nearly every action the spacecraft performed was carried out through the cockpit.

At last, the cleanup of such an important area had been completed.

Yet the results of that cleanup were far from satisfactory.

When Yue Yuan entered the cockpit, what he saw was neither precision equipment brimming with technological sophistication nor a cabin gleaming with metallic luster, but a rust-covered heap of junk.

Rust. Dilapidation. Fragments. Deformation. One word after another sprang into his mind.

The cockpit was very spacious, but almost nothing intact remained. Yue Yuan looked around and saw scattered workers still feeling over various broken fragments. Several others crouched beside things resembling control consoles, brushing away dust like archaeologists.

Yue Yuan asked about the alien remains and was told that they had already been transported to the research institute next door.

Passing through corridors and compartments, Yue Yuan soon arrived at the research institute the workers had indicated.

Though it was called a research institute, it looked more like an exhibition room. All sorts of objects were on display inside, all of them components from various types of alien spacecraft.

Yue Yuan passed the various exhibits and reached the middle of the institute. There, he saw a familiar face—Yi Kai—along with several unfamiliar workers who were presumably members of Yi Kai's research team.

"Doctor Yi, where are the alien remains?" Yue Yuan shouted to Yi Kai from a distance.

Perhaps hoping to extract some useful information from the alien remains, Yi Kai, a biology PhD with relatively little on his plate, had voluntarily taken on the research project and brought along his team.

Alien organisms were still organisms, after all. Yi Kai was at least professionally suited to handle the work.

"The Commander-in-Chief is here. Just call me Old Yi," Yi Kai said with a smile as he glanced back at Yue Yuan approaching.

Only after Yue Yuan came closer did he lift his chin and gesture ahead. "That lump is it."

Following his gaze, Yue Yuan discovered a square wooden frame on the floor two steps away. A sheet of plastic film had been spread across the middle of the frame, and a dark, blackish mass lay on top of it.

Yue Yuan stepped forward and squatted down for a closer look.

The wooden frame had been temporarily assembled by the staff to display objects. It was only about the size of a table, and the black mass inside filled it almost perfectly.

"This lump is an alien? Why does it just look like a blackened chunk of dirt?" After looking at it twice, Yue Yuan voiced his first impression.

"It doesn't look like dirt. It is dirt," Yi Kai's voice came from beside him.

The alien was dirt? Yue Yuan was a little dumbfounded. He turned to look at Yi Kai, who was stepping closer, confusion written all over his face as if to say, Are you messing with me? Yi Kai seemed to understand his expression and explained, "I said this lump is dirt. I never said the alien is dirt. Though, that's not quite right either. The alien really has become dirt by now."

As he spoke, Yi Kai came to Yue Yuan's side, squatted down as well, and pointed at the blackened clump. "Commander-in-Chief, look. This is the alien. See these lines here and here? The stuff around it is the soil layer."

Yue Yuan followed Yi Kai's finger and examined it carefully for a long while. At last, he spotted faint lines scattered across the dark soil layer, along with several areas whose color differed slightly from the surrounding dirt.

As Yi Kai's finger traced the shape, the alien's outline gradually formed in Yue Yuan's mind.

"A many-legged creature?" Yue Yuan asked uncertainly.

To be honest, without a rich imagination, it was impossible to picture what something embedded in a layer of soil had originally looked like, especially at first glance.

Yue Yuan had thought the entire lump was the alien. He had not expected the actual alien remains to be merely the lines within it. The shape formed by those lines looked to be only about as large as a sheep.

"Could be an arm." Yi Kai spread his hands and explained, "This piece of shit—cough, this broken thing is the alien. Based on observation and compositional analysis, we initially suspect that this alien belonged to some kind of soft-bodied animal. Those lines were probably its tentacles, antennae, or something similar. Our conclusion that it was a multi-tentacled species matches the structure and layout of the cockpit's operating equipment, so that part should be correct."

As a bona fide member of the Zero Zero Generation, even though he was already in his seventies, Yi Kai occasionally let slang from the previous century slip out when he spoke.

Yue Yuan had long grown used to it. Sometimes, he even copied a few ancient expressions himself, like "holy shit" or "fuck me sideways."

Yi Kai slowly stood up and continued explaining, "Based on the analysis of the remains, this alien organism was carbon-based life, which fits our traditional understanding. But biological information such as its genetic material can no longer be read. So all we know is its general shape and biological classification—well, according to the boundaries of Earth's biological taxonomy. We know nothing else in greater detail."

"That's it?" Yue Yuan stood up as well. Honestly, he was a little disappointed.

He had come eagerly to see an alien organism, only for it to be even less interesting than a fossil.

Had he known it would be like this, he might as well have gone to look at the strange symbols occasionally found among the spacecraft wreckage, though humanity still had no idea what those symbols actually meant.

"The information is limited, but at least we know this was a spacecraft belonging to some kind of soft-bodied sentient life civilization, don't we?"

Yi Kai shrugged and continued, "Aliens exist, and Alien Civilization exists too. They're carbon-based life, which all fits our previous speculation about life in the universe. In other words, perhaps carbon-based life is the common form of life in the universe. That has some reference value for our understanding of the universe and other aliens, so we can't say these alien remains are completely useless."

All right.

Yue Yuan, whose curiosity had turned into disappointment, sighed inwardly and shifted his gaze away from the alien remains. "By the way, Old Yi, is there only this one set of remains?"

"Just one."

Yi Kai nodded, a nostalgic expression appearing on his face. "Relevant personnel speculate that this spacecraft may have suffered an accident due to some malfunction, then been captured by the Solar System's Gravity over the long passage of time. Eventually, for some unknown reason, it crashed onto Callisto."

"Although that theory contains quite a lot of speculation, our dating of the alien remains found that their age differs greatly from that of the soil layer. That does support the idea that it fell onto Callisto and was buried by the soil long after the alien had died."

It had to be said that these scientists really had some skill. With only a tiny amount of information, they could infer a great many things.

Yi Kai looked at the thoughtful Yue Yuan and continued, "We have reason to believe that the civilization this alien belonged to may still exist, even if this specimen is an ancient relic from tens of thousands of years ago to us."

That was indeed true. A mere tens of thousands of years was truly insignificant to the advanced cosmic civilizations humanity imagined.