The Big Bang - Short story

Come to think of it, all we knew a year ago was that they had existed. Based on the seemingly abandoned constructions erected on the eerie glow of the ground—it was hard to get used to a landscape without a horizon—it seemed safe to conclude that they no longer do, or, at least, not here. Personally, I’d like to think that they are just gone, but whether they had any means of interplanetary travel, and why their route across the crust of Europa hasn’t left any visible mark remains to be seen. Now I’m content with the task at hand—deciphering the marked ribbons we were so lucky to find in what appears to have been a kind of library. I could’ve said scrolls, but their writing is not broken up into lines; rather, it is set on long, continuous stripes of some fibre coiled up on hollow stone spindles. The library itself was unusual, a place enclosed by stone walls, probably to protect the coils from the sand carried by the tidal flows. Like all other constructions on Europa, the library seemed to have no orientation whatsoever. It was a simple box, hardly ornamented anywhere, made of the very same stone as all the other buildings, probably hoisted up by great effort from the bottom of the water. It had no windows or doors, just a large opening partly obstructed by an internal wall that Subexp had to sidle by when we entered. It was good that we’d brought the smaller submarine from Skybase, although it was hardly big enough for two.

The coils were stored on 10-metre-long spikes along all six walls. Apart from the entrance, a square-shaped spot on the opposite wall was also left empty, in the middle of which stood a simple stone machinery with two pike-like holders, an empty spindle, and a paddle wheel. The axle of the wheel was attached to the spikes with a belt made of the same material as the ribbons themselves.

It was when we selected five coils for analysis (totally at random, I have to admit) and started to lift them off the spikes that we had the greatest surprise. It turned out that the coils were illustrated. But if you think of little images interrupting the writing, you are wrong: Europans don’t appear to have been familiar with the idea of representing things in two dimensions. Instead, they created scaled-down statuettes of everything they wanted to depict, and attached them to the ribbons with short strings. Some coils had more than a hundred such pendants, which made them difficult to lift even for two people, and in water. Puzzlingly, we could find images of every tool, place, or more prominent building the explorer team has also discovered, but it seems that Europans never represented themselves. We can still only suspect that the sequence which resembles c-ui- in the writing refers to them.

It was thanks to these pendants that we’ve managed to reconstruct a great part of their language. Four out of the five coils we have taken back to the base were some kind of lists, so, thankfully, we didn’t have to reconstruct all the grammar at once, and the words were also written separately. (Prof. J Glaarry, PhD et cetera, thinks that they were compiled for some kind of taxing, but I believe that these coils were used to teach the young—but then, we still have no idea if they reproduced, and if yes, how. If only that was the only question we have about them.)

The fifth coil proved to be more interesting. While there still are some blank spots in our translation, it is safe to say that it relates an important event in Europan history. Europans had a kind of parliament which convened every Jovian month in the spherical construction in sector C6. It was in this parliament that they organized the efforts to extract building material from the Second Crust, bring the stone up where they probably lived, and distribute it among all Europans. But problems arose when they reached a harder deposit, mining became more cumbersome as well as more expensive, and Europans started to feel that they got too little stone for their efforts.

‘They don’t let us mine elsewhere on purpose,’ ran one of the arguments.

‘I’ve been working all my life, and I don’t get enough stone to build a proper dwelling,’ was another. Others simply claimed that the parliament embezzled the stone. Some tried to vindicate them by saying that the parliament couldn’t possibly give more stone away than what the Europans themselves had extracted, but to no avail. Unrest grew, and more and more Europans got convinced that they’d be better off without that parliament of theirs.

‘We want more stone!’ was the general sentiment, and ‘They’re robbing us!’ the general feeling. When the parliament convened the next time, it tried to do something, like raising the ratio to be handed out at the end of the Jovian year—but it was too late. For just after what we call Noon Darkness, when parliament was dissolved, Europans began to gather on the streets. By the time the Short Light passed, the first lump of sand had been thrown and the first chant had been shouted. Every c-ui- was there. Unsure what to do, they marched up and down for a while, and the more rebellious ones craved obscene words on the walls of the spherical building. They were particularly pleased with the fact that each and every Europan was on their side; no one appeared to dare defend that corrupt and outdated parliament of theirs, which was clearly responsible for their misery.

But the evening grew dark, and joc-oicc-, the self-proclaimed leader of the protest, suddenly stopped walking, turned around, and explained to them that with everyone already supporting the cause, there was little point in continuing to march up and down in the city. The Europans, most of whom had grown pretty tired, readily agreed, but there remained a few who felt there was more that could be done.

A bitter argument started. The Europans stood there in the darkness, with the last traces of light disappearing from below the buildings, and, like rippling shadows, floated here and there separating into innumerable factions.

It took a Jovian hour for the situation to boil down to one fundamental question: to blow up the parliament or not to blow up the parliament. l-oulcc-s emerged as the head of the extremist group, while joc-oicc- argued that they should try and settle the matter peacefully. Holding a piece of stone up in the water to become the living symbol of the people’s reclaiming control over their lives and building material, joc-oicc- delivered an eloquent speech arguing that there was no need for aggression. But when the priests–who had traditionally been against the parliament, and who enjoyed a particular popularity at the moment as they had just figured out the complex tidal pattern on Europa caused by Io and Ganymede—so, when the priests sided with l-oulcc-s, the debate was over. The sphere was to be destroyed, and l-oulcc-s volunteered for the highly risky and ennobling task of setting off the explosives.

It was a grandiose spectacle to watch pieces of stone starting off in every direction from the bright orange bubble the parliament turned into in under an instant. Fragments of the walls with elaborate carvings detailing long-forgotten events of Europan history floated past the frightened onlookers followed by trails of bubbles of some foul gas that they have only encountered in the mines down below.

There were some casualties—an old Europan was punched a hole into by a piece of a beam—but that seemed the necessary price that had to be paid for something this important. The symbol of mismanagement and bad times lay in ruins in front of them, and they thought of the justice that had been done and the vengeance that had been taken on the Europans who caused them so much pain. Some felt sorry for those creatures, but the whole thing was over now, and jc-oicc- urged that they hold a proper state funeral for all who had fallen victim to the Revolution. They all agreed, as Europans were not really violent by nature.

It was when they started searching for the bodies, but could find nothing except dust and stone, that somebody remembered. They all used to go to the parliament to decide how to distribute the stone. And after the parliament was dissolved that day, they all marched against it. There was nobody inside.

Since then, they have rebuilt the house of parliament. They must’ve needed a lot of stone for that.