Fiction
Abeona: Part-3
Puzzling Curiosity Over a Line
Captain Tanaka and Engineer Adebayo began maneuvering Abeona-I towards Planet A-56, a deserted planet 1 year’s travel away from Mathrokorpa. Doctors Anand and Rousopoulos exchanged the genetic information they had gathered from Mathrokorpa with Research Scientist Doctor Jacobs and for the rest of the travel, the three went in and out of meetings with UPO’s human science division. The breakthrough discoveries opened new avenues for research and development in understanding mankind’s past in a better way.
Engineers de la Cruz and Müller, who monitored the craft and in their free time, began to work on various prototypes based on the knowledge they had gained from Mathrokorpa. Mankind’s future was already in the works.
A year went by in days spent in the lab, meetings, and maneuvering the craft through the obstacles space threw. After nearly circumnavigating the Sun of the new solar system, Planet A-56 began to grow out of the shadows. Gargantuan and cornflower blue with swirls of electric purple and white, Planet A-56 was a sight to behold.
Abeona-I landed steadily onto the sandy, smooth ground. The crew hopped out of the craft in their suits only to meet the scorching heat. The external temperature of their suits read 140-degree Fahrenheit, something that the human body has never experienced. Doctor Anand feared dehydration, while Engineer Müller worried about the suit’s durability in this heat. The crew trudged back to the craft and gulped down water. The short walk back to the craft left the crew clutching their heavy chests. It felt like they were hiking up across the Sahara Desert, but ten times worse.
Captain Tanaka then ordered the craft be flown to another location, away from the Sun. As they flew, there was a sudden change in the temperature at the mid-line splitting the light and dark side of the planet. The temperature dropped down to 30-degree Fahrenheit. Curious, the crew drove the craft back and forth over the imaginary mid-line and the temperature change was immediate. It rose to 140-degree F and dropped to 30-degree F instantaneously. The crew, baffled by this phenomenon turned to Doctor Jacobs, who shrugged his shoulders and stood open-mouthed at the bizarreness of the situation.
The crew ran tests to try and find some possible explanations for the oddity. The temperature change happened exactly at the mid-line throughout the planet. Every conclusion was met with a dead-end due to either disparity or the sheer imaginative nature. It almost seemed like the planet itself didn’t want the crew to solve its mystery. With every chance the crew got close to an answer, it provided an obstruction.
After a couple of weeks, Abeona-I disembarked off Planet A-56 back towards Earth carrying a dejected crew. However, having collected all the possible data, the crew was hopeful of being able to work out the problem with the scientists back on our Solar System. And the oddity provided Abeona and the UPO a compelling reason to continue space exploration. The mystery of Planet A-56 may not be solved by the crew of Abeona-I but the best minds humanity has to offer will surely not let the matter be put to rest and will push for further exploration and more breakthrough research to occur in the future.
Abeona-I sped through space heading towards an optimistic future, a future that opens new avenues for humanity to flourish.
Fin.
