The Mandala

[rosetto 0]

Sal looked on the inner walls and soon found another symbol cluster. Assumption, the fuel on which he was running told him that these clusters were merely room names of a sort. There had to be more chambers than this. Pressing lightly with his hand, an opening appeared. He saw the light was different in the next room. It was darker and the walls were not the antiseptic eggshell of this room. They were a soft green.

 

 

He looked at Chris and said, "I'm going to check this out. You could flag the others to come in out of the rain. I don't think our friends come in here. I actually think that that is why the doors are hidden as such. They seem to require a warm touch to operate."

 

 

He was just thinking aloud again. He really had no idea how the doors worked. He had been thinking 'open' both times. Perhaps it was a combination of his thoughts and tactile interface with the symbols. This cluster was nothing like the one on the outer doorway or its counterpart inside. Chris didn't respond right away. Sal wasn't looking for approval either and he turned back and walked through the passage which led into the next room.

 

 

The room contained tables and other wire-framed furniture. Apparently they had once been covered with an organic material which had long disintegrated. It was strange but it was not in disarray. These people, whoever they were, had just walked away from all of this, 600 hundred years before Sal was born.

 

 

Being the curious type, Sal tried everything; pushed down on the bare springs that once supported a fabric pillow; rapped on the table to determine its solidity. He was finished sneaking around and trying to hide from everything that moved. The last time he checked he was a member of the top of the food chain. Of all of the species of animated lifeforms, they had not found any more complex and more organized than the humanoid. The opposing thumb had been the key to the success of many races. Those without them never developed beyond their immediate environments to venture out into space. There were the few, the elders; that had grown beyond their physical existence, but most of these had also developed intellectually and wisely chose to not interfere with the curious humanoids and their quests.

 

 

Sal thought about the metaphysics of their current dilemma and wondered if the Zoalus had also risen beyond their physical captivity. It was highly unlikely because there was lack of evidence. Elders seldom left traces of their previous life. It was probably purposeful; the way it had been done since time had begun. Intellectual maturity was beyond the comprehension of humanoid societies because there was no frame of reference. Sure, they could speculate as many, of the fourth dimension, but it could not get past the practical science. For the layman, the whole concept of Warp Technology was other-worldly. There were three physical dimensions in which we live and breathe. Nothing unreal exists. That was simply how we experienced the universe, riding the endless wave-crest of Time into the future.

 

 

Warp drives were common knowledge to Sal as he grew up. And therefore, the fourth dimension existed even though it wasn't something that one experienced. It was how humanoids had traveled beyond their lonely stellar systems within their own lifetimes. Without such technology, visitation of any race to another cradle of life was impractical.

 

 

Sure. There were records of successful generation-ships, ship than traveled at speed less than light for hundreds of years. But the passengers who arrived at their destination had little in common with those who set out on the journey. Sometimes the arriving people like the ancient Vulcans who became the first Romulan people, had no idea why their ancestors even left. Society changes with time.

 

 

Even primordial bacteria mutates as it seeds life on new abodes. The DNA strands are bombarded with random chemical compounds as the solid body that houses the suspended life passes through gaseous anomalies in the vast emptiness of space between the stars.

 

The Zoalus, like all races fit into one of these two categories but without further data Sal had no idea which one. There were no visual images of these people but from the architecture one could determine that they were humanoid and approximately 2 meters in height. They also apparently breathed oxygen as this planet was most definitely a class M and about 5 billion years old. Their written language was highly structured which meant that they possessed advanced intelligence. Still, no other race known had ever met them. There were no other records of this society other than what was left behind on this lonely orb.

 

 

The program that Sal had written based on Dr. Weston's research made many assumptions. It had been thought for many centuries that all spoken languages were based on the same 40 odd sounds that all known languages used. There were many methods used to represent these sounds symbolically but detailed analysis usually resulted in isolating these basic building blocks into vocally uttered syllables. This method had been used successfully by the Federation for over two hundred years as the members encountered new races and peoples. Dr. Weston and now Sal had no reason to assume that the Zoalus were any different. And so the program had isolated the 20 simple symbols as being assigned to and associated with the audible structure of the spoken Zoalus languages. The sequences contained syllabic structures which could be formed.

 

 

The other assumption that this software had made was also based on the generalized concepts that all spoken languages seemed to contain. Words were a combination of syllables and used to form sentences of thought. Some of these words were used to identify objects were as others were used to describe action or change. Two mysteries remained, however. The first was the actual assignment of these sounds to their symbols. Until this was determined, speaking this ancient tongue was impossible. The second was even more obscure than the first. It was the purpose and meaning of the other twenty complex symbols, the symbols that were represented on the faces of the object they had found. They had special meaning and Sal needed to find some kind of frame of reference here to determine this.

 

 

Most cultures had used some kind of pictorial art form to bridge this gap. Languages were based on objects that existed within the environment of the species. The Zoalus seemed to have excluded imagery of their species in their art which was very unusual for advanced cultures. This was one of the primary reasons why archaeologists had been baffled by what they had found here. Not only were there no photographic portraits there has never been even so much as a stick figure found to describe the Zoalus physique. It is only assumed that they were bipedal and walked upright as most humanoid species. Another assumption was the opposing thumb appendage which had been found to be important in cultural development.

 

 

 

One science would clearly have to resort to using pictorial representation and that was medicine. Sal needed to find a hospital or life science college. Their text books he reasoned would have examples of bone structures and anatomies of their genus. The document that had described the gardeners, the original purpose of the drones, contained pictorial representations of thousands of plant and animal life forms that flourished on the planet. But nowhere, and Sal thought it to be purposeful, were there depictions of the Zoalus people; not even for the purpose of scale. This was found to be a very common use for self-image. It was almost fanatical, he thought.

 

 

Then he found the mandala. It was embossed into the ceiling of the next room that he found. The room was most definitely an interior and contained no windows and yet it seemed brighter than the rest. The walls were pearly white and the ceiling almost translucent. The primary focus of the mandala seemed to be eight bipedal figures that stood upon eight distinct 'high order' symbols. Sal pulled out the dodecahedron and found the same symbols upon it. They were equally spaced upon its surface as were they represented here in the mandala. Each figure had its own unique features but all were bipedal and humanoid in appearance. One figure held a pointed shaft and another cupped a small flame. There was one who seemed to be cradling an offspring and one reaching for the heavens with a light in its eyes. They were the archetypal characters to which Dr. Weston had referenced in her dissertation.

 

 

Each figure stood upon a high order symbol which was in-turn supported by three other high ordered symbols. Although the subordinate symbols were duplicated, each group formed a unique pairing. Sal squinted to see even more detail in the mandala. There were a third and fourth layer to this design. These layers contained pairings of these high ordered symbols and all were uniquely paired. No two were alike. This mandala was the key to the Zoalus high order language.

 

 

Sal knew that each archetypal character was unique in its own right having their own sense of value to themselves and the world around them. They were representative of mental personalities. All cultures had these symbols and it was thought that it was the understanding of the 'human condition' that set apart these intelligent species from other life forms.

 

 

He did not know what kind of room that he was in but it seemed to have a religious overtone to it. There were concentric circles of stone benches directly below the mandala and the room measured in his opinion some 20 or 35 meters across. Hundreds of people could occupy this chamber on the benches provided. In the center was a raised platform; an altar of sorts which had a smooth flat surface. Sal moved toward the center and noticed that each pillar that supported the central altar was translucent. Within each were sculpted statuettes of the figures in the mandala. There were eight supporting pillars. This was indeed an important find and he needed to show the others.