Object of Unknown Provenance

More about Object of Unknown Provenance

We were not unprepared men.

Our instruments were sound, our provisions adequate, our charts the best available
to modern science. We had come to the interior with a specific aim, and until that
moment had encountered nothing that lay outside the known excesses of an
unmapped wilderness.

It was therefore with some surprise—and, I confess, a sudden and unaccountable
hesitation—that we found our progress halted by a clearing which should not have
been there.

The jungle parted as if by long habit, revealing a circular space of deliberate
proportion. At its center stood the object.

It was neither ruin nor growth, neither tool nor monument, yet possessed qualities of
all four. A perfectly smooth enclosure of transparent material contained within it a
complex mechanical assembly, faintly luminous, rotating with a precision that
suggested neither decay nor haste. No sound issued from it save a low, steady
vibration, perceptible more in the chest than in the ear. The surrounding vegetation
showed no sign of distress. Moss grew close to its base. Vines respected its
boundary.

No marks of excavation were visible. No path led to it. No trace of habitation could
be found, recent or ancient.

Our instruments recorded nothing immediately hazardous. Our compasses
disagreed. Timepieces remained functional, though several members of the party
later remarked—independently—that the interval spent in the clearing felt longer
than our notes would suggest.

We did not activate the device.

Nor did it, to our knowledge, acknowledge us.

After the necessary measurements were taken and sketches made, we withdrew,
marking the location as accurately as conditions allowed. The jungle closed behind
us without ceremony, and within a quarter hour there remained no sign we had ever
stopped.

Of the object’s origin, purpose, or makers, we can offer no conclusions—only this
observation: whatever intelligence placed it there did not do so in haste, secrecy, or
fear of discovery. It had waited long enough to be found when the finding was
possible.

That we were the ones to encounter it may be coincidence.

That it was encountered at all does not feel like one.