"Ugghhh.. I give up. Nothing about these lines makes any sense what so ever!", Kita threw the tablet in his hands and stood up from his chair. He had just spent last 18 hours going through all the available data about the lines that survived the EMP blast.
The more he dug through the data, the more nothing made sense anymore. With frustration clear in his eyes, He wondered around in the lab for a few minutes before finally going back and picking up the tablet. The tablet itself was fine. He quickly sat back down and began to project the data and information on a huge projector. It helped him figure out things if he projected them in front of him.
He forced himself to calm down and to look at the projection from a new perspective.
First of all. The lines covered the entire planet and were divided into several zones. Although the zones were connected to each other, the didn't seem to transfer any energy between them. As there was a clear disparity of energy levels between the zones.
But that wasn't the main cause of his frustration. It was the insane amount of energy that was within the lines. The lines themselves were only about a meter in diameter and were rounded in shape. Almost like a root of a tree. But it didn't seem to have any definite end. It went on a continued loop around the planet and connected several forests of same energy levels to each other. The energy inside them didn't originate from any of these locations though. Kita hypothesized that the energy was being supplied from the center of the planet. This was the only way where there were no clear scans of the energy lines. Multiple thicker branches of the lines were mapped to be going towards the center, but all the probes suddenly malfunctioned after reaching a certain depth. So it was most likely the center of the planet where all the energy were being stored.
This posed a bigger question. How did all the energy end up in the center of the planet and what was capable of storing such insane amounts of energy so efficiently. Kita honestly didn't have an explanation. But he had an inkling. A certain theory was itching the back of head for a while.
The theory suggested that B1 was an artificial planet. Created and designed from the ground up to match the specifications of the creator. But he didn't have any evidence that supported his theory right now though. He only had an hunch. But if this was true, the whoever was responsible for creating this planet was a major threat to humanity.
But he didn't want go down that rabbit hole. For now.
He focused back on the charts. If this energy distribution network held so much energy, and it was used to feed the monolith, then it made little sense to scatter it all across the planet. Kita had a feeling that the Monolith wasn't the only thing the lines were feeding.
This was when he remembered something.
He quickly called up the data about the trees. As the matched his theory he quickly gave a devious grin.
"How could I miss this? Helen would've loved to see this!" His grin died instantly the moment he thought of Helen.
It was as he had suspected. The Lines didn't only feed the energy to the Monolith. The lines also fed the trees with energy. Helen and the other's missed it cause they didn't think that the energy within the lines could be transferred without any physical connection. And the energy also didn't seemed to be moving within the lines. But that wasn't the case. The energy density inside them was simply so high and the replenishment rate was so high that any energy that the trees used would be instantly replenished within the lines! That's why the energy didn't seem to be moving.
But in reality, the energy was being used by the trees as well as the monolith! Only the trees and even the whole forests sipped a fraction of the energy that the monolith used.
That's why it wasn't noticeable! That's why everyone missed this small remark.
He suddenly had a feeling that what he was looking for was within the trees. He really wanted a sample to examine right now. But that wasn't possible, they had already taken everything and everyone off of the planet and were preparing to head to the nearest lagrange point to FTL out of this system. Whatever Kita wanted to do, he needed to do it before that happened.
Kita looked up any sample that had been taken from the trees, only to find out that any trial of taking a sample had ended in failure as the tools weren't capable of cutting the strong alloy. And the trees that the mechs had cut down were instantly vaporized only leaving behind a cloud of dust and a orange cuboid. That sparked his interest.
He quickly called someone and asked them to bring all the orange cuboids to his lab.
He began to look up the process the trees used to grow itself. As it was quite the fascinating process. It somehow managed to convert a noble gas that didn't want to react with anyone into a alloy that was harder that many of the alloys humans had created over the centuries! Although he wasn't a material science researcher, This was still fascinating to him. The Aliens responsible for all these seemed to be very adapt at material manipulation. They were able to construct trees that could literally reposition the protons and electrons as it liked! This was too ground breaking. The technology levels on display were to high to even fathom how they had managed to create something like that.
Kita called this Molecular forging. This was a pretty good name to describe the entire process. But that wasn't all there was to it.
Soon there was a buzz on the door, the orange cuboids had arrived. He quickly let them know to leave the cuboids outside and go. Once they were gone, he quickly opened up the door and then closed them again as soon as he picked up the cuboid.
The Cuboids were being stored in a special container. And they were probably also really dangerous. So he opted to use bots to open up the containers and put them inside a special multipurpose lab scanner. It could give him all the information there was about the cuboid. How they functioned, What they were made out of. Everything would be available to Kita.
The Cuboids were glowing with an orange hue. The scanner began to throw all kinds of rays at the cuboid. The Cuboids themselves hadn't really been studied after first gathered. The reason was the Expensive Lab scanner was too heavy to transported anywhere. Once it was installed in the lab, it was there for good. There was no moving it without dismantling it. This wasn't possible for missions. The scanner was also really sensitive to things like vibration, Atmosphere and other elements. All these things could skew the readings. So the scanner was stored inside of a completely isolated room that was virtually cut off from the rest of the ship.
If there was something that could give Kita an accurate answer on what these cuboids really were, then it was this scanner.
The Scanner was called Trig V. It was an internally developed scanner used by the Arcorn Viziers. It was the most powerful scanner available to humanity till date. One couldn't buy this on the open market. An inferior version of the scanner could be found from time to time. But they were just the ones that didn't meet the quality standards of the Arcorn viziers. So they were sold off to anyone interested and wealthy enough. Plenty of institutions wanted to get their hands on this extremely expensive piece of equipment.
The shore had 5 of these scanners on-board. Kita's Lab had one of them on the account of him being the head researcher.
The scanner still took some time before it produced any output data at all! Kita looked at the initial data. It astonished him a bit.
The Cuboids were made up of another Unknown element. Humanity hadn't come across this element in the past. This made it all the more interesting to Kita. The composition of the cuboid consisted of a few different materials. And 3 of these materials were unknown to humanity!
"That's certainly curious. These planets are filled with new exotics!"
Although this made sense once kita thought about it a bit. The lines, the trees and the monolith all of these were artificial constructs. That was for sure. And whoever made them had a extreme mastery of molecular manipulation. This much was apparent.
With this information, it wasn't hard to deduce that the newer elements could also be artificial elements! Ones that were developed for certain purposes and to fit certain implementations of the applications.
This was really ground breaking stuff. Humanity had to work it's way around the natural exotics and elements and figure out how to harness the different properties. But that wasn't the case for the aliens. They could just design the machine and then mold the elements and exotics to fit the machine itself. Making the elements take shape and form needed to achieve the goals of the machine in question.
Soon, the scanner had finished scanning the Cuboids. Except for the exceptional materials, there wasn't anything that stood out about the cuboids. So he decided to move on to scanning the line samples taken from B1. He wanted to know if there was anything about them that he was missing. This was crucial to figuring out how to make them release all the energy inside them.
An interesting thing about the lines was that it had lost most of it's energy after it was cut off and separated. Currently it didn't even held a fraction of the energy it used to regularly hold and transport. So it was pretty safe to handle.
Kita didn't use any bot this time to pickup the sample. Instead, he used his hands to pick up the Sample from inside a box. He was wearing gloves though. As it didn't really held much energy anymore, Kita figured it was safe enough.
Kita picked up the 1 Meter section of lines. It wasn't that heavy. But it was rather big. It wasn't a problem for him. He walked towards the chamber the Lab scanner was in. He held the sample in his hand and entered the required pass codes to enter the chamber. After he entered the chamber he quickly finished prepping the sample for the scanner. And then pushed a few buttons that prompted the scanner to extend out a tray with the cuboid. Kita needed to take out the cuboid and put the sample in that tray.
So with the Lines sample in one hand he extend his other hand to pick up the Cuboid. The cuboid was also deemed safe enough to touch by the scanner. And shouldn't pose any threat to anyone. But the scanner was only a machine.
As soon as Kita's hand touched the cuboid, He felt a surge of energy in his body. He saw the Cuboid's Glow brighten. But that wasn't the main event. The Sample of the Lines had also began to Glow with the same orange hue as the Cuboid!
These 2 things had somehow made a connection through his body! The lines sample was suddenly filled with energy! Where did it come from? That was entirely unknown!
Kita felt the energy levels inside his body suddenly increase. There was something happening to him. Such energy levels should've already blown him up! He should've been all over the pristine floor. But yet, for some reason. That wasn't the case. Kita was fully aware of what was happening. He tried to remove his hands from the Cuboid. But was unable to move even a single finger. Before he could make any such moves though, He felt the Cuboid suddenly phasing through his hands. It suddenly began to integrate itself inside his hands! That was dangerous!
Kita felt a really sharp pain in his mind. One that felt like his brain was about to blow up. Suddenly, everything went black. And the last thing Kita remembered was falling to the ground.