Europan artefacts

I have argued long and hard with myself about whether I should mention this, as I am technically not allowed to talk about it. But I am close to croaking anyway, so what is the worst they can do? Kill me twice? No, they will just claim this is a hoax I made up, the sceptics will continue to label it as such and only the crazies will believe me. That is how they have always handled these things, ever since the Majestic 12 documents under Truman. Due to my work on Mars, I was originally planned to go to Europa for Minos-3, before that mission was cancelled due to M-2’s failure. We were shown highly classified information during the briefings. I already talked about the satellite images, but we were also able to read reports in which the astronauts of M-2 reported finding strange objects frozen in the ice or ejected from geysers. They did not look biological, but neither did they look like they could have come from us or the Soviets. I was unable to take a photograph, but I was able to sketch the most distinctive object they directly showed us from memory:

Sketch of putative Europan artefact inscribed with unknown writing.

Our superiors were themselves unsure about the authenticity of the object. It was allegedly recovered by one of the surviving M-2 astronauts and brought to Earth, but he himself kept it secret at the time. After returning to Earth, he became a member of the Church of Synthology and paraded the piece around in private congregations as an affirmation of the cult’s beliefs. It only came under government possession after his house was raided, following the aftermath of what happened on the International Lunar Station. It therefore seems highly likely that the piece could have just been a forgery, which the person used to further his position in the church while leveraging his reputation as a former astronaut.

The Last Writings of the Dawn-Thinker

A huge Moon loomed above the sky as a faint, young Sun touched the horizon. Waves crashed against the beach, strange, gelatinous trees were gently rocking in the wind. High up in the sky floated triradial polyp-like creatures, preyed on by flying disks. Their wings were made of feather-like growths that were actually fleshy in nature. “Fleathers” if you will. The ground was covered in a dense mesh of purple rhizomes, forming an everchanging, evershifting “spongeland” instead of grassland. Embedded in the spongeland was even stranger vegetation, cones connected by strings like pearl-necklaces, spirally algae, long stalks that ended in egg-like “flowers” and large transparent orbs that were suckled on by asymmetrical worms. Only here and there was the spongeland broken up by gigantic, three-sided pyramids and extravagant houses built out of bricks and large stone blocks. Their ornamentation was exquisitely extravagant, quite byzantine one might say, with gilded arches and little frescos depicting history and mythology at every corner. On one of the roofs sat a slug-like creature, its belly armed with hundreds of tiny stubby legs. Its head was an elongated tube, adorned by one huge eye made of a silicate disk. With its tendrils and tentacles it played a baroque tune on a concertina-like instrument, singing to the people below the roofs like a muezzin, telling them to pray to their gods.

This was not an alien planet, but Earth itself, approximately 1.7 billion years before the modern day, deep in the Proterozoic. Except for the algae, none of the creatures here were of the multicellular life we are familiar with. The polyps, worms and the musician were not animals, the trees and cones were not plants, the rhizomes were not fungi. They were all stem-eukaryotes or even multicellular bacteria, descending from experiments in multicellularity that long predate the fauna and flora that would arise in the Cambrian. 400 million years earlier, their evolution was boosted during a quick oxygenation event, leading to a first fauna of macroscopic slime-mold-like flowers and polyps, which greatly diversified in the course of evolution into the wide biodiversity seen here on display. But today only that very first primitive generation, known as the Franceville biota of Gabon, would be preserved as enigmatic fossils, continuing to puzzle humans but ultimately being overlooked in the grand history of life as little more than curiosities.

Out of his window, Ptahhatp watched the serene scene. But whereas it used to fill his being with calm, he now watched the horizon with melancholy in his hearts. Ptahhatp spent a lot of time thinking about the world, about philosophy. He was a scribe of the Society of Sohon, one of many intellectual gentlemen’s clubs. Ptahhatp’s civilization had many ups and downs, a history even longer than humanity’s. But it had already hit a ceiling millennia ago. The long line of gelatinous trees, with their leathery skin instead of solid bark, did not turn into coal upon fossilization. Algae had simply not existed for long enough or in great numbers yet for their remains to turn into sizeable deposits of petroleum. Living trees were sacred to the dawn-creatures, one needed to make a prayer each time one wanted to fell one. So, all in all, there simply was not enough with which to fuel an industrial revolution. For the better part of a millennium now, Ptahhatp’s society was stuck in an elongated equivalent of the early 18^th century. The height of technology were pocket-watches and elaborate crank-operated automata, imitating people and the fleathery flying disks. They served as little more than entertainment and luxury for the high society.

With no real vision towards the future, Ptahhatp’s society became expert antiquarians, obsessed with the past, “new” movements, be it in art, philosophy, politics or religion, simply being cyclical renaissances of old ideas being brought back in new ways. His Society of Sohon, named in honour of a famous archaeologist, was one of many orders of antiquarians, which met each month to discuss their findings and share and reproduce their texts, much like the royal societies of Enlightenment Scotland. It was one of his favourite hobbies during retirement, now that he no longer had the capacity to go on his adventures. Ptahhatp used to be a polymath, like some sort of Precambrian Shen Kuo, having experienced many different things during his political career under the Emperor. He built canals, oversaw trade and taxes, worked as a royal astrologer and mathematician, drew maps of the realm, led armies into war… it would be easier to list the things he did not do. But now he was living a calm life in his big, old mansion, writing poetry. Until now.

The previous night, he was plagued by a strange dream, a nightmare even. Everything he knew, all the world, was encroached by a veil, not of darkness but of blinding white. Huge walls of ice, thrice as tall as the tallest pyramids, relentlessly marched towards the equator, burying all beneath them until the whole globe appeared like a ball of snow. Drifting solemnly through the emptiness of space. Ptahhatp’s disembodied mind floated atop the ice-sheets, seeing all of history beneath him. Eventually the ice melted and returned to the poles, but when it did, nothing beneath remained. The mighty glaciers carved away the entire world, not just the surface, but also all the rock formations holding eons of life’s history inside them. All the buildings were gone. All the flora and fauna were gone. All the mighty monuments and ruins were gone. All the fossils were gone. It was as if his entire world had never existed. Eroded away by the abyss of time.

Dreams held great meaning to Ptahhatp. Ironically for a person obsessed with the past, he felt as if he had been cursed with visions of the future. But he had never dreamt this far in time before. What was he to make of it? He looked around his chamber, onto the shelf with all the little antiquities, reliquaries and fossils and contemplated the likelihood of them having been preserved, found and brought here. Each one, even the most mundane piece of fossil plankton, is nothing short of a small miracle. The odds of them surviving into the modern day against all the destructive forces of time were astronomically low and now they are just sitting there on his shelf. But they will not survive forever. No matter how good he and his descendants take care of them, they will be destroyed one day. Everything will be destroyed one day, fading into oblivion. Even Earth will one day be gone, with perhaps nobody else in the universe ever knowing that it existed. All the life, all the cultures, all the works of this little pale blue dot… gone forever.

As he looked at his collection, Ptahhatp slowly went through a crisis of faith. What is the point of him preserving history if none of it can be preserved forever? For whom is he doing all of this? Just for himself? He, who cannot take any of this with him into oblivion? Not far from where he lived there was a crimson pyramid, so old that no carving on or in it survived into his time. Nobody knew who built it anymore, what ancient king may have been buried inside. Only the red sandstone blocks remained and in a few thousand years they would be gone too. If even the mighty works of god-kings will fade, what chance does he as a mere historian have that any of his works will be preserved across time?

And he looks out the window again. Into the Sun on the horizon, the lush spongeland, the undulating gelatine trees, the merry musicians on the house roofs. The joy and laughter of the people. This is the present. This is what he actually lives in. There is no past and there is no future for him to experience, only the now. In a flurry of inspiration, his tendrils pick up an ink-tipped fleather and he writes down a poem, unusually for him written in prosaic rhyme:

“What is better?

To have lived and left no letter?

To have legend and no life?

Living but an endless strife?

To become a memory,

Known but for mortality?

Burn my works, smash my bones!

What worth they are once I am gone?

All these things are but loans.

Death is all I own. 

 

I am but sole witness

Of my life in stress.

There is no reason and no rhyme,

Everything just flows with time.

 

If a Beyond there is,

With my goods I cannot depart.

And so these I should not miss,

But one thought I will impart:

 

Mourn me, do not.

Cry for me, do not.

Search for me, do not.

 

Beyond death, you need not plan.

To be happy is all you can.”

 

He goes out to play with the musicians in the street. He does not make history today, but he does make his day.

Shipwrecks on Vulkanus

Vulkanus has always been a mysterious place. Not of this world, literally, as it is thought to have been a former rogue planet captured by the Sun. The atmosphere is veiled in opaque clouds of black dust and some regions are covered in dense, impenetrable jungles. One of its most mysterious aspects are however of Terran origin. Encountered during geological surveys made by private companies are from time to time the radar- and lidar-images of spaceships crashed amidst the forests or desert dunes. Some of these can be accounted for by known accidents from previous expeditions or ships that were intentionally discarded on the planet instead of being expensively retrieved back to Earth. The identity and story of some wrecks remains unresolved, however, and suggests that maybe some rogue private entities or maybe even governments have had access to the planet without the rest of the world knowing. 

A prevailing idea among conspiracy theorists that unfortunately dominates the discussion is that at least some of these wrecks are not even of human origin, with Vulkanus being something like a Bermuda Triangle of the universe on which various alien species have crashed. There is no evidence for any such claims, or interstellar visitations of our solar system in general, but they make for good spooky stories to tell in the dark. The most famous one is of course the so-called Parker Report, an allegedly true account written down by a man named Jonathan Parker that was mailed to a journalist. In the account, Parker claims to have worked as a surveyor for the Azuma Corporation when he was tasked with investigating such a shipwreck. There is no evidence of said wreck or Jonathan Parker having ever existed or a man by that name ever having worked for Azuma (the author tries to account for this by preposterously claiming that the corporation assassinates and erases whistleblowers). Together with other irregularities, the Parker Report can be safely dismissed as a hoax. But it is an amusing hoax and so, for the sake of entertainment, shall be recounted here. 

According to Parker, the gigantic ship was shaped like 2/3s of a torus, with an architecture, both in- and outside that can be described as looking as if it were made of black, fused rock, clearly inhuman in design. The inside of the ship consisted of large hollow hallways with ribcage-like walls. The interior atmosphere of the ship was surprisingly Earth-like and maintained at an ambient temperature (this is another hint at the story being a hoax, as oxygenated air would most likely explode if it came into contact with the atmosphere of Vulkanus). Deep inside the ship, Parker then allegedly found some sort of “trophy room”, in which were stored various biological relics from the solar system: A diamond-axe of a harphead sealed inside a container, the jaws and tooth-plates of an irsu from Mars, the head of an air-shark from Venus, the stinger of a Jovian Titan-Jelly, mandibles from an Europan IRO, a pyrite-tooth from a lava-worm of Io, what appeared to be a dinosaur-skull and even a few human crania, some with markedly enlarged brow-ridges. There were a few other artefacts, also mostly skulls or mummified heads, but seemingly from alien species still unknown to science.

No complete corpses of the pilots were ever found according to Parker, only a few isolated bones here and there, seemingly fossilized. Throughout the ship were various carvings, which showed noseless but vaguely humanoid, screaming faces, as well as bipedal creatures with skeletal heads, seemingly walking on their hands and holding scifi weaponry with their tentacles/tails(?).

The Parker Report further alleges that the shipwreck was covered-up and salvaged by the Azuma Corporation, for implied nefarious purposes. It furthermore warns that the existence of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences, especially ones that seems to enjoy hunting safaris on different planets, cannot be allowed to be held secret from the rest of mankind.

Perhaps rather tongue-in-cheek, the report ends with the words: “This is dread, man. Truly dread.”

Pseudocosmonaut

The most terrifying thing about space is not that it is vast and empty. It is the fact that it is only mostly empty.

A few decades ago, a tale emerged from the otherwise mundane routine that maintained the Second International Space Station, shortened to just ISS2, which has now been decommissioned. It began when German astronaut Ingo Mess was alone on a spacewalk out on the station’s hull in order to fix a little damage that had been done to one of the solar panels by microscopic space debris. As he was about to enter the airlock again, to his shock, he spotted something out in the distance. It looked like a human in a spacesuit, floating alone in the void. And it was moving. Mess claimed that the figure was fidgeting frantically and waving, obviously in distress. Mess entered the airlock, reported to his crew what he had just witnessed, and got out a manned maneuvering unit (MMU), a form of space-jetpack. With that he went out to retrieve the floating spacefarer. Mess claims again that the figure was waving and beckoning to him as he approached, but then suddenly stopped moving as he got closer. Mess feared that it was already too late and the person fainted or even died from the long isolation in space. He grabbed the body and retrieved it.

Once past the airlock, it became apparent that the body was clad in a Soviet spacesuit, of the Orlan-D-type typically worn by cosmonauts during the 1970s and 80s. At the time, the orbit of the ISS2 was close to that of the Plutonia, a smaller Soviet space station, so, even if the chances of such a thing happening are astronomically low, the astronauts speculated that maybe an accident had dislodged one of the cosmonauts from his station and by pure luck he had drifted to theirs. But to everyone’s shock, once the visor was lifted and the helmet removed, they saw that there was no person inside. It was just an empty spacesuit. 

Perhaps the movement that Mess reported was an optical illusion or even caused by gas escaping from the suit or air tank. When contacted, the crew of the Plutonia reported that there had been no incidents and that none of their cosmonauts had gone missing. But this opened up more questions, mainly why there was an empty spacesuit just floating around in Earth orbit, let alone a historic relic from the 70s? The suit was eventually chalked up to a mishap or perhaps even durability test during the early days of spaceflight that had gone unreported or forgotten.

However, the incident seems to have had a negative impact on Mess, whose crewmembers described him afterwards as increasingly erratic and “suspicious” of the suit. Days after retrieval, he still claimed to have seen it move when he looked at it through the security camera of the station’s storage room. The other astronauts chalked this up to swaying caused by microgravity.

Nonetheless, things really did start to become strange on the space station after the suit’s retrieval. The number of minor system errors did demonstrably increase, while many crewmembers started reporting health problems. The suit itself was frequently found outside its storage area after the astronauts woke up from sleep, one time even with its glove gripping the lever of the airlock. These incidents were most likely pranks on Mess by another crewmember.

When things truly got concerning was during the spacewalk of another astronaut, when she noticed there was a small hole in her suit and it was losing air rapidly. She thankfully noticed quickly and was able to re-enter the airlock before asphyxiating. The following days, Mess tried to do her job but before leaving the airlock he noticed that his suit was also perforated at the sleeves. The other suits on the station were soon after also found to have little holes poked into them. Someone was seemingly sabotaging the crew.

The cosmonaut suit itself ended up being the only one left intact and useable, in part because it was also in a surprisingly good condition despite its age and having been out in space for so long. Eventually, it was decided to bite the bullet and have one of the astronauts don the suit in order to get the necessary repairs on the station’s hull done. However, this was prevented by Ingo Mess, who barred anyone from even approaching the suit, because he feared something bad was emanating from it. Before anyone could wear it, Mess secretly ejected the suit back out of the airlock while the rest of the crew were sleeping. After he did, he reported that the suit began flailing again in panic, briefly holding onto one of the solar panels before losing grip and silently drifting back forever into deep space.

After the incident, the astronauts were able to repair one of their own suits again into a workable condition and fix the hull and panels. Technical and health problems also decreased and all crewmembers were able to safely return to Earth after the end of their mission. Mess, however, was largely shunned by his colleagues and reprimanded for his actions by the command centre. He had to go through another psychological evaluation, under fear that the isolation in space and his long separation from his wife and child had taken a mental toll on him. But the evaluation found him to be perfectly lucid and mentally competent, if a little traumatized from the experience.

Nevertheless, the following years largely saw the incident, including even the sabotage of the other spacesuits, being blamed on Mess’ mental health and his previously respected reputation sank quite a bit, at least outside of the circles of conspiracy theorists. Mess himself claims that his actions saved the lives of the entire crew. He has come up with his own explanations for what was up with the suit and the weird string of coincidences that befell the astronauts, but said theories have not exactly helped him beat the insanity accusations.

Early on Mess seriously claimed that the spacesuit was possessed by the ghost of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who was the first human being to die in a spaceflight (in order to save Yuri Gagarin from said fate). This can of course be rejected outright, not just because ghosts obviously do not exist, but also because Komarov died in 1967 and he burned with his spacesuit into a carbonic crisp during atmospheric re-entry.

Next, Mess claimed that the suit was some sort of secret failed experiment by the Soviets, perhaps actually being mechanical with an AI built into it. While this explanation at least does not invoke supernatural entities, it still has no evidence speaking for it, especially given the fact that such technology would not have been possible to achieve in the late twentieth century. This is nevertheless the favoured theory by the majority of conspiracy theorists.

In the last years of his life, Mess speculated that what his crew picked up may have actually been an alien lifeform, which, for whatever nefarious purposes, imitated the appearance of a cosmonaut, perhaps without knowing what the inside should look like.

The spacesuit has never been encountered again.

Image source:

• Wikimedia

The Great Orm of Mars

Fig. 1: An alleged photo of a sandworm briefly surfacing, captured by the Curiosity rover. In reality it is a rock formation of crystals whose surrounding matrix has eroded away.

 

The majority of life on Mars is tiny to microscopic in size. The number of lifeforms than can grow taller than a human can be counted on one hand. Any megafauna has been extinct for millennia, if not for millions or even billions of years. Or has it?

Rumours abound of the great dustbowl desert of the northern hemisphere being home to a gigantic creature that swims through the sands like a whale through water. These rumours of “sandworms” are largely based on grainy satellite imagery, geological structures claimed to be “worm-signs”, including the infamous canals, and some eyewitness-reports made by space tourists. At least one Mongolian cosmonaut claims to have seen one as well, likening it to the “olgoi-khorkoi” of his homeland. Professional spacefarers of western countries have meanwhile never made such claims (though even if they did see one, they might not report it out of fear of being seen as unprofessional, as often happens with UFOs). Nobody has ever been able to produce any physical evidence or even clear photographs of the creature.

There are various reasons that speak against the creature’s biological reality. For one, it seems physically impossible for an organism to move through sand as if it were water, especially at the claimed great speeds. Sand simply does not work that way and even if it did, the friction would create an unimaginable amount of abrasion and heat that would likely damage most organisms. At least one cryptoxenologist, Roy Sanderson, has countered this by claiming that the worm might be able to create vibrations in the ground that turn sand into a non-newtonian fluid that makes it easier to swim through. If this really were the case though, seismometers at various Martian research stations would have surely picked up evidence of such vibrations.

Even ignoring that, there is the question of how an organism this big would even be able to subsist in a biome with so little plant and animal life. Some cryptoxenologists have argued that in the deep underground of Mars there might be hidden lush ecosystems that the worms might be feeding on, like sperm-whales diving into the abyss to catch squids before surfacing. There is no evidence for these hidden ecosystems, so this is just special pleading. A more sensible suggestion that has been made is that the sandworms might be lithotrophs, literally feeding on the iron dust they plough through, because we actually know these types of organisms exist on Mars. This has led to some fanciful speculations that the worms might be giant offshoots of the otherwise small dust slugs. The problem is that the iron-reducing lithotrophy of the dust slugs is an inefficient energy-source that seems very unlikely to be capable of supporting any larger animal. Though we do not know how this system changes if an organism with a larger gut is able to ingest far greater amounts at a faster rate. Similarly to hindgut-fermentation in sauropod dinosaurs, larger body sizes might actually make digestion far more efficient than in smaller animals. But this is just speculation with no direct evidence.

Lastly, even if it is on another planet, it seems highly unlikely that an organism this large would go undetected for so long. Even if they lived 99% of their lives underground, the movements these creatures would create would, as mentioned, surely be detectable by seismometers.

Fig. 2: Satellite imagery claimed by Holland to show a giant worm or wormsign.

But if these sandworms are mere myths, then why do people keep claiming to have seen them? Perhaps the very first claims of giant sandworms on Mars, certainly the first ones to be widely published, were made by one William T. Holland in December 1978, based on grainy satellite imagery he claimed to show the worms and traces left behind by them. The images in reality just showed dune-filled canyons, which appeared convex instead of concave due to lighting. However, the date of Holland’s claims is highly intriguing, as they were made just a few months after the release of part 1 of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune quadrilogy. Just like the novel they were based on, the movies prominently displayed the fictional giant sandworms of Arrakis, brought to life thanks to H.R. Giger’s amazing designs and Phil Tippet’s ground-breaking go-motion technology. It seems very likely that Holland’s interpretation of the images were coloured by the movies and their popularity among general audiences further boosted the perceived plausibility of the cryptid. Many of the space-tourists who claimed that the unusual sand dunes they saw crawl across the desert were the legendary worms admitted to having read Holland’s books on the matter, so their interpretation was thus indirectly also coloured by Jodorowsky’s Dune. Therefore, they all saw giant sandworms on Mars because they wanted to see them.

The Canals of Mars

One of the greater mysteries of Mars is that Lowell and Flammarion were apparently correct in their observation that large and seemingly straight linneae are present on Mars, though only very few of the ones we discovered match the maps drawn by them. These features are so far mostly concentrated in the shrubland regions, most beginning in the slope-regions of the southern highland and radiating out into the lowland deserts, sometimes joining with ancient craters. Sometimes these lines will join each other or at the same crater, with new lines also seemingly flowing out of the craters. While often only ten-or-so metres wide, some of these features have impressive lengths, the longest one so far discovered reaching from the slopes of Alba Mons all the way to the Milankovič Crater.

My own sketches overlain with those of Lowell. Though in my case, all the canals were actually buried underground beneath the sands.

What is weirder is that almost none of them were actually visible on the surface when we arrived, instead the “canals” were discovered by accident during seismic measurements, as they lie many tens of meters under dust and sediment. This further makes it doubtful that these are the same as Lowell’s canals. Though the excavation of one “canal” concluded that it was only buried a few centuries ago by a series of large global dust storms. Possibly then, Lowell and Flammarion had the luck of seeing these when they were still uncovered. It is also possible that far more such features exist across the Martian globe, though they lie now deep underneath dust and permafrost.

Now of course, it is very attractive to think that these may have been created by intelligent life, possibly as a form of irrigation system. Apart from their remarkable straightness, there is however nothing else that might corroborate artificiality. At least in the ones we excavated, natural geologic flowing features are observed and at the meeting points of the “canals”, where one might expect settlements, nothing has been found that would raise an archaeologist’s eyebrow. It should be noted, however, that we do not yet know how old these features are. Who is to say that after millions or billions of years, features like the Panama- or the Suez-Canal might still be recognisable as man-made?

Seeing no direct evidence to the contrary, it is nonetheless still preferable to interpret these features as being of natural origin. A common geologic feature observed inside their bedform are so-called antidunes, a form of ripple that forms in supercritically flowing water, which due to the lower gravity is expectedly more common on Mars than on Earth. The “canals” might therefore be the remains of highly unusual, massively sized flooding events. During times of intense melting, either through supervolcanic eruptions or freak heatwaves in the South, enormous amounts of meltwater may have flowed down the highlands into the deserts. The waters may have eaten their way through miles of previously super-dry and uncompacted sand and dust, which, once wetted, may have solidified into walls. On repeat-floods, these may have controlled the flow of water into straighter directions, eventually forming long, canal-like forms. This is more of an attempt at an explanation than an actual explanation and it is entirely predicated on the possibility that the low gravity of the Red Planet makes water behave differently than on Earth, because there is no Terran structure comparable to these flow-features.

Europa rejects contact - Attempt no landing!

Europa was always an obvious candidate for finding life in the outer solar system. Close in size to our Moon, this Jovian satellite is a rocky body made of silicate rock that is covered in a thick shell of ice. Thanks to the extreme tidal forces put on it by circling Jupiter, it is constantly stretched and compressed. This friction does not only regularly create planetwide cracks in the ice, but, together with the decay of radioactive material from the core, produces enough heat to melt the lower layers of the ice into a vast, globe-spanning underground ocean, possibly with even more liquid water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. This ocean interacts with its overlying ice shell much like the Earth’s mantle does with the tectonic plates, lifting, shifting and subducting the ice layers, which have the consistency and behaviour of hard rocks due to the surface temperatures. Sometimes even cryovolcanoes and geysers are formed this way, their plumes being our first hints towards the existence of this ocean. It was not difficult to imagine the vast possibilities of alien ecosystems in this unique environment, from algal life clinging to the thinner sections of the ice roof to cameronesque vistas of bioluminescent deep sea life clustered around hydrothermal vents. Maybe there were even space whales.

After Mars and Venus, Europa was naturally the next target for large-scale exploration and research. After the success of the Horus Missions, the Minos-1 and 2 operations were designed and sent to the Jupiter system by NASA in largely the same style. While M-1 only consisted of robotic probes, M-2 already brought human explorers to the ice moon. I have nothing but respect for those pioneers who went on M-2, for even back then it was realized that the challenges on Europa and on the way there are much greater than any of my missions to Mars. The journey to Jupiter alone took over six years, which even with stops at the ILS, Mars and the Ceres Waypoint will take an enormous toll on the human psyche due to the isolation. Europa’s surface has no tangible atmosphere and is constantly bombarded by radiation, which would cause severe illness in any unprotected human in just one day. Add to that the fact that the tidal forces cause the very ground to constantly contort and crack, sometimes causing mountain-sized spikes and plates to jut out in the span of a few weeks, putting any permanent surface station at high risk. I really think it was a mistake to send humans to Europa this early, but of course our government felt the need to do it because the Soviets were already doing it.

What no astronaut or cosmonaut at the time could have been prepared for was what really lurked beneath the ice. The early robotic probes had already sent back perplexing data. The first hydrobots to enter did not encounter a saltwater ocean like expected, but instead a fluid that was chemically reminiscent of cytosol. While mostly very watery, some probes encountered bizarre zones of high viscosity which impeded their movement, as if they got stuck in masses of jelly. Biologically, the ocean seemed both alive and desolate. There were no space fish, krill or whales, no corals, seaweed or bioluminescent deep sea creatures. The first lifeforms encountered were instead strange and nonsensical. There were large swarms of unicells that were highly metabolically active but were extremely reduced in morphology, almost like free-swimming mitochondria or chloroplasts. From the thinner sections of the ice roofs hung algae-like multicellular forms, who were solely composed of photosynthetic organs with some structural support, with no obvious organs for reproduction or energy-storage. In fact, they seemed to simply eject the sugar they produced into the ocean water! Through these clouds then swam small, bristleworm-like forms, who seemed to absorb the sugar before darting away. At no point during any observation of the two Minos missions was there ever any recorded interaction between organisms which resembled classic behaviours of herbivory or carnivory. Nothing made sense.

Also encountered were large, gelatinous balls floating in the water, sometimes three metres in diameter. They had large orifices, originally interpreted to be mouths, out of which swam worm-like forms similar to the ones mentioned before. These moved restlessly and frantically between the mouths of the gelatinous spheres. What was truly fascinating was that when the hydrobots approached the sphere clusters for further investigation, they were almost always attacked by some type of predatory creature which resembled a mix between a polychaete and a moray eel. Dissections done by the Soviets and later the M-2 teams revealed that the large mandibles of these creatures did not connect to a mouth – in fact they entirely lacked anything resembling a digestive or even reproductive system, instead largely consisting of muscles, nerves, circulation and some fat storage – meaning that organ existed solely to attack. The same was true of any of the worm-like forms swimming between the gelatinous spheres and around the algae-like forms.

IRO-1

Once the Minos-2 mission arrived, labs and stations were able to be set up at the surface, where the biological samples collected by the surviving probes could be further analysed. State-of-the-art sequencers were able to decode the genome of the Europan organisms, and the results were both astounding and disturbing. Least surprising was that the organism’s chromosomes consisted of a form of nucleic acid, just like on most of the other life-bearing planets, but of a different composition than those on Earth, Venus or Mars, which again indicates a separate case of abiogenesis. This xenonucleic acid (XNA) consisted of an unprecedented number of nine nucleotide bases, which meant these organisms worked off a genomic code much more complex than any lifeform we knew before. And the chromosomes and their XNA-strings were huge, though largely consisting of seemingly useless sections, which on Earth we would usually call junk-DNA. But something truly remarkable was observed with unicellular Europan cells that were experimented on in a controlled setting: When exposed to external stimuli, the cells could rewrite the “junk” sections of their XNA almost on a whim. When exposed to these stimuli on a regular basis, the cells eventually reacted to them with perfect timing and anticipation. They had some form of memory and, it seems, they used their XNA as a medium for data-storage. In addition to this, they engaged frequently in horizontal gene transfer with other cells, including ones that were seemingly unrelated, at much higher rates than any bacterium or areont from the inner solar system.

But the true shock came when the genome of all the Europan samples were compared with each other, revealing that there was no difference! Every single-celled organism, every plant-like form, every worm and every gelatinous sphere had the exact same number of chromosomes containing the exact same genome! They function like the cells in your brain and the ones in your toes, containing the same biological programming but just using differenct sections of it. All of the Minos teams found the exact same conditions across the whole moon and the same was corroborated by released data from the Soviets. This, combined with all the other observed oddities, led the researchers to only one uncomfortable conclusion, one which strains human understanding:

The ocean of Europa is a single superorganism and all the smaller lifeforms encountered within it are simply its organs.

And we pissed it off.

Shortly after the Minos-24 team landed and did their invasive probing into Europa, cracks started to emerge in the ice close to the surface base and out of the cracks crawled strange entities nicknamed “ice crabs”. Resembling human-sized bacteriophages with almost comical jaws and scythe-arms, these were terrifying creatures encased in exoskeletons of pure ice which immediately began overrunning the base and attacking it. Obviously unprepared and unarmed, the astronauts suffered casualties and had to abandon the base. A Soviet research station suffered the same type of attack around the same time after doing an experiment where they exposed parts of the ocean to X-rays. Strange behaviour was observed at the attack sites from orbit. After eliminating the threat, some of the ice crabs crawled back beneath the crust but most wandered around aimlessly until freezing in place, presumably succumbing to the radiation. Samples taken from the fragment of a dead ice crab show that underneath its icy shell it was made of the same biological matrix as the other organomorphs. 

 IRO-2

After the remaining Minos teams re-established their bases with precautions against further attacks, a rudimentary working theory on Europa’s nature could be worked out. Organomorphs such as the ice crabs or the worm-eel have been designated as some form of immune reaction against outside threats. The fact that the latter seems to be protecting the gelatinous spheres indicates that those organomorphs are of greater importance. Maybe they are some form of energy-storage or possibly even coordination-centres, with the smaller bristleworms acting as units of communication and transportation between them and the other organs. Another special type of worm-like organomorph with a syringe-like proboscis was observed swimming between the other organomorphs and injecting them with fluid, which is presumably how all the components are fed. The planktonic swarms and algae-like organomorphs seem to simply provide the system with nutrients, but they cannot possibly be the only method of energy-production supporting this moon-sized organism. Surely there must be more organomorphs feeding off the chemicals of hydrothermal vents, but none of the hydrobots have survived long enough to explore Europa’s ocean bottom. Possibly the superorganism also feeds off the tidal energy and some magnetic anomalies on Europa have been used as evidence that it may even be tapping into the energy of Jupiter’s magnetosphere. All bets are off with an entity that is this foreign. How the known individual organomorphs are even formed is also a mystery, as they cannot reproduce by themselves. Possibly the hollow spheroids also act as a form of womb in which the individual organomorphs gestate. Things like the ice crabs might start out as gelatinous matter that swims close to the crust, where the water becomes a sort of ice slush, and crystalize an exoskeleton around themselves before going to the surface.

The existence of the immune-response-organomorphs (IROs) bears two possible and rather disturbing implications. Why would a gigantic organism that is this isolated have evolved an immune system? Have other… entities… landed here before that caused Europa to evolve this adaptation? Or is this simply a remnant from an earlier time when the ocean was not yet a unified organism but competing with other lifeforms? Perhaps more plausible is that the IROs were generated only recently in response to human activity. It is notable that the first manned and unmanned Soviet missions did not encounter the aquatic IRO-1 and were able to inspect the spheroids up close for a time. Only after they captured one of the spheroids in a net and dredged it to the surface did attacks on the hydrobots by IRO-1s begin. It is possible then that Europa, rather quickly, generated this new organomorph as a response to a perceived threat. The implication that then follows is that the organism is capable of perceiving damage to its system and reacting to it. This is further supported by the existence of the ice crabs, IRO-2s, who seem to have no other function other than to eliminate the source of the threat. Shortly before the attacks, the victims at both sites even reported seeing tiny, cricket-like ice creatures hopping across the surface, whose faces were just one large circular eye. If correctly interpreted, these could have been “scouts”, little biological cameras meant to localize the source of the threat. By most definitions it would mean Europa is sentient. But is it sentient in the same way that a bacterium or a jellyfish can mechanically react to outside stimuli, or can it actually think on some level? Bearing in mind the experiments done on the memory-cells and the implication that their abilities apply to all the other organomorphs as well, it would indeed mean that Europa has a way of creating, storing, copying and sharing data between all of its components. So yes, it maybe can think. Is it intelligent? Nobody knows and I wonder if we even want to know. If Europa can dynamically “design” the IROs depending on its needs, it could indeed mean that it is at the very least capable of creative thinking and planning. If these are instead instinctually generated from older genetic memory, it would mean that Europa had to use them previously, before ever interacting with humans, which bears a whole lot of other unsettling implications.

Further research all proved futile. One of our scientists, convinced of Europa’s intelligence, tried to make “contact” by sending down a hydrobot to the spheroids which emitted a simple message through sonar waves and light. The bot was immediately attacked and destroyed. The cosmonauts tried something similar but instead, rather cleverly, by encoding a simple binary message into strings of XNA and releasing them into the water. There was no observable response to this, at least as far as they were willing to tell us.

While these and more experiments were being carried out, the attacks from the IROs grew bolder. Perimeter fences around the surface bases at first proved effective, while the astronauts were able to defend themselves by repurposing thrusters from drones into heat rays that could melt the carapace of the IROs. With time, however, the IROs began systematically testing the fences for weak spots until they found ways to break in. And with each new attack, the appearance of the IROs slightly changed. Their carapaces grew thicker, their arms and legs longer and stronger and more and more icicle-like teeth appeared in their maws. They were adapting. Eventually all the bases were unable to conduct research and came under threat of becoming overrun. After one of the captains, suffering from immense psychological damage due to the isolation and grief, crashed one of the spaceships into the surface, Minos-2 was immediately terminated and deemed a failure, ordering all the remaining astronauts to evacuate and return to Earth.

The Soviets held out a little longer, but at a high cost. Towards the very end they reported being attacked by a new type of IRO which they called the “pavuk”. It was a sort of ice spider about twice the size of an elephant. From its four spindly legs hung a huge polyhedron, which the IRO used like a wrecking ball to demolish any of the remaining surface habitats. The smaller IRO-2s reportedly swarmed around the pavuks, as if they were some form of leadership. Only very few cosmonauts made it back from Europa.

 IRO-3

No further missions have been sent to Europa by anyone ever since. All we are left with are questions upon questions. What is the true extent of the superorganism? The fact that they have only been able to explore the upper water layers means that there might be many more organomorphs and maybe even more complex systems lurking in the depths. Some sonar images imply whale-sized entities swimming somewhere down there. Classified orbital images I was able to see showed strange formations in the ice, which some have interpreted as larger versions of the ice-IROs that have died and frozen in place. Much, much larger. If I remember the scalebar correctly, one of these alleged exoskeletons must have been as long as a giant redwood is tall.

Then comes the question of Europa’s intelligence. I believe a true case can be made that Europa can think and come up with new concepts, seeing as how it seems capable of altering its organomorphs in response to human defences. Is it intelligent in any way comprehensible to humans? I do not know. If the whole ocean is filled with thinking and communicating cells like this, it could potentially have a computing power stronger than any human brain or supercomputer. The fact it uses its own genome as a form of data storage could mean it has a memory that could span millions of years into the past. This could be a god-like entity beyond our understanding. And it does not like us. At no point was Europa willing to make contact. Its only responses to human activity were either apathy or active hostility. Maybe relations could have been more friendly if the cosmonauts did not accidentally damage the organism before realizing what they were doing, but it seems that ship has now sailed. Europa does not want to be contacted.

Lastly, there is of course the question of how a superorganism like this can even come into existence in the first place. As soon as life emerges, natural selection would dictate for it to become selfish and split up the biosphere into multiple separate entities competing with each other. Either Europa went a separate path from the very moment of abiogenesis or something truly unusual must have happened later on. What if this is the result of some sort of biological equivalent to the Grey Goo scenario? One organism became so successful that, almost like a cancer, it began spreading out and absorbing everything else, until filling out the whole biosphere and stabilizing into its current form. Perhaps all the different organomorphs we see are the genetic ghosts of once free-living species whose anatomy was assimilated and co-opted by the organism.

Assuming that, even if highly unlikely, the putative artefacts that were claimed to have been found in the ice genuinely came from Europa, the implications would be stark, as it would be the first definitive xenoarchaeological proof of an alien civilization. We would then have to ask if such artefacts are simply from other visitors to Europa, who were similarly chewed up and spit out by the superorganism, or if this is the remnant of a civilization that was native to the moon. If it is the latter, what happened to them? Do they still exist deep inside the moon and the superorganism is just their guard dog? Or were they consumed by it? Maybe it was an experiment that had gone horrifically wrong. Or maybe they did this willingly. What if this is the end point of any biosphere which develops intelligent beings? Look at what we are doing to Earth, replacing all of its biomass with humans and domesticated organisms that serve humans. Maybe in a few million years, Earth’s biosphere will only be a writhing mass of post-human swarms controlled by computerized overminds, while the descendants of cows, corn and chicken will be genetically altered to such a degree that they are stripped off all individuality and will simply be another component of the human hive system.

We will never get any answer to these questions in our lifetimes. No further missions to Europa are planned by any space agency or government on the globe, at least none aimed at probing the ocean. All further ambitions, such as establishing aquatic colonies under the ice or even using Europa’s water reserves to terraform the inner planets, have consequently been thwarted by the moon as well. Europa is deemed so off-limits, so cursed, that there are now talks about an international treaty like the one in Antarctica. Even if we were to go there again, Europa will probably not let us explore further.

There is a moon-sized superorganism living in our solar system. It is potentially of immense intellect but has no interest in establishing contact with us. We will never understand its true nature and we may have made it angry. And there is nothing we can do about all of this. We simply have to live with this reality.

Europa is best left alone. It does not want us there. Attempt no landing.

Perhaps Enceladus will be a better prospect.