Welcome to Anson Martin's writing portfolio!
Here is one of my first ideas, named after the Fermi Paradox.
In this excerpt, a group of salvagers discover a vessel of unknown make outside of the Solar System.
What they find shocks them and challenges their understanding of the universe...
--Excerpt Begins--
The twins had seen the odd machine first, though they didn’t say anything at the time. Both of them had been through far too much back on Earth to play their cards openly. However, that didn’t stop the captain from looking at the two of them with dismay as his heads-up display highlighted the object with flashing red exclamations.
“You two have any idea what this is?” asked the captain, his voice’s sternness betraying his fear to the twins.
“Boss, if I knew for sure, I would say for sure,” said the female twin. Her suit had the tag “Mbenga” on it, just like her brother’s did. “Best I can tell you, it looks like a recording device, though WAY more advanced than ours.”
The captain looked at the male Mbenga, who simply shrugged and gestured his helmeted head to his sister, as if to say, “she’s probably right.” The captain studied the object for a moment.
It could not have been larger than 15 centimeters in each dimension, shaped almost like an egg. Its surface was studded with odd bumps, and under the flashlights it appeared to have an iridescent coloring. Each additional moment that the captain examined it, a hair-raising anxiety pierced his mind.
The male Mbenga looked at the captain as his stoic facade faded, looking away from the small unnerving object. He seemed to hide a smirk from the captain, but then spoke in his soft tone, though it was somewhat hampered by the comm systems in his suit.
“Well, someone ought to bring it aboard the Polaris. Maybe the engineers can make more sense of it…”
As he touched it, a multicolored energy crackled up his arm in a nanosecond, ripping through parts of his suit. The egg-like object seemed to expand slightly, and the energy grew more intense.
Then he began to scream.