SCENE 06-1 – The Hatching
Location: Outside the Nazca Mountains. Solar Field.
Time: 01.08.16 – 10:13 UTC-4.
Setting: The egg begins its opening sequence under concentrated solar energy.
After six uninterrupted months of work, the solar concentration plant was finally ready. It covered a total area of one hundred and twenty hectares, one hundred of which were occupied by one hundred thousand hexagonal mirrors, each ten square metres in size. The projected average incident energy was 6.5 GWh per day.
The mirrors, arranged along the northern, eastern, and western slopes of the mountain that hid the alien base, were all steerable but still covered with white protective sheets for safety reasons. The southern side was occupied by the military base. What puzzled the engineers most, however, was the direction of the focused beam: it pointed straight at the mountain’s summit — a pile of rocks. No receiver, no tower, no visible structure. No instructions at all.
In any case, preparations were coming to an end. I had taken part directly in its construction. WO technology had been partly adapted, and the silver-coated mirrors represented the very limit of what terrestrial engineering could achieve. The sheets were removed simultaneously by dedicated drones — moving like a coordinated swarm. Just before dawn, the last sheet was laid at the foot of the mirrors. The sun was about to rise.
A long, low-intensity tremor shook the rocks. The desert quivered. A dry, deep sound travelled along the mountain’s flanks, where dark fissures appeared, running perfectly straight from base to summit. The underground structure was moving, lifting itself free from the rock that had hidden it for millennia. Everything that covered it lifted as if weightless and drifted aside without resistance.
An immediate evacuation of the crystal hall and the grotto was ordered. Yet no external or internal structure was damaged, and none of the objects or chambers inside shifted by even a millimetre. Alien technology never ceased to astonish me. Their control over gravity was absolute — down to every single point. Even the sparse plants and animals on the surface suffered no harm: they were simply displaced.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
What emerged was a magnificent, compact, truncated pyramid: white, solid, imposing, rising from the desert directly beneath its tip — a shining point of golden orichalcum where the sunlight converged.
Inside, the pyramid divided into eight metallic petals: two per triangular, equilateral face. It did not break apart; it unfolded like a mechanical flower in bloom. The triangular plates detached one by one, in perfect synchrony.
The paleo-Amazonian forest and the quartz-crystal nest with its feathered shell were revealed, but only the nest began to rise slowly from the base toward the outside, pushed upward by the gravitational fields triggered by deuterium fusion.
The sun rose on the horizon. Its first rays struck the surface of the mirrors and were caught by the feathers of the egg — now fully exposed — which turned bright and shimmering as they absorbed the light.
Meanwhile, inside the pyramid, a radiant sun ignited at the top. The light freed the plants completely from the cryogenic gel that had wrapped them for millennia, and the paleo-Amazonian forest returned to life.
Now the nest received the full concentrated light of the solar plant and rested on the truncated pyramid. The orichalcum tip shifted into place at its base, restoring the connection between the crystal hall and the pyramid at the height of the nest itself.
It was the feathers that absorbed all the light from the mirrors. They grew ever brighter — an enormous, oval sun, shining intensely. Lightning-like flashes multiplied around its surface, and in the sky the first clouds began to form. Dark lines appeared on its shell — separation cracks like those on the mountain — revealing the outline of a bird’s head, a long neck, and wings beginning to unfurl at its sides.
Slowly, the long neck rose, lifting the head with its two black eyes. The chest was struck directly by the focused beam. Electric arcs ran across the entire body — along all three kilometres of the creature. And then — a sound.
A sharp, prolonged cry — the call of a solitary hawk — crossed the valley and reverberated against the rock walls. It echoed through the mountains, multiplying, merging with the silence. It announced the birth of a new being.
Niajin looked at me, entranced, smiling. She was communicating mentally through the feather to the SAI of the alien base.
“Quetzalcóatl,” she whispered. “His name is Quetzalcóatl — but for me he will be Quetzal, the feathered serpent who has come to return to me my lost Amazonia.”
“But what is it?” I asked her. “It’s enormous… it can’t fly, can it?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “It can fly — and not only through the air. It’s a starship, and it is able to travel between the stars.”
I looked at her, completely drawn into her blue gaze. And I felt, at once, the desire to travel with her into the sky of her eyes — and into the immensity of space.
