In Ascension

by Martin MacInnes

Three telescope-mounted probes had been sent to get better visuals on the object. Uria tapped her screen again, and the enhanced images came up. This was when I saw the carvings. It took a moment to fully appreciate what this meant. My body began to tense and I felt a surge of internal electricity. The lines were huge, monumental; massive parallel ridges cut across the face, the largest, according to the appended notes, more than a kilometre wide. Fainter vertical lines intersected, giving the appearance of a grid. Grids suggest order, intentionality – a schema, a message, a map. On one augmentation a set of ovals was etched onto the surface, sixteen of them, their diameter ranging from 30 metres to 200 metres. The ovals’ ratios were similar to the object itself, as if each sketch represented the whole picture, a self-referential writing system. A language. It seemed possible – the digital enhancements couldn’t go any further – that each oval contained further grids and ovals, that the process of regression continued almost infinitely.