What happened next was surreal.

While unable to move, in a place between two heartbeats, Ronaldo saw the sand from the ground rise. As if animated by magic, it sparkled like stars in the night sky. The hue filled the room and the passageway. The grains of sand formed nebulas, little clouds in some places. Puffs of sand were moving around in what appeared to be patterns, as live structured. There was no doubt, this energy and these grains forming clouds were alive. The grains in the darkness of the cave were too small to be seen by the naked eye, but light reflected on each of the facets of these spinning spheres. The team somehow saw the grains rotate and become more complex like little sparkling snowflakes. Ronaldo felt he was a powerless observant, so he watched.

He expected Life, but none of the energy made any sense, but there was undeniable raw power and beauty. Little clouds formed and as a Medusa in water the forms were moving around each other and the frozen team members in a careful ballet. The creatures navigating the space without touching the four frozen bodies, had a purpose.

Ronaldo saw his body as if it was stuck in time and ice, yet his mind was working normally and he remained there. He was having some out of body experience. On the corner of his visor, the environmental controls of his suit were also operating. Time was not frozen, it was only slowed as milliseconds moved as seconds. The atmospheric pressure reading continued to increase, the gas pressure was going up. It now read 0.35 bar, over 50 times the normal Martian value. The room was filling quickly with invisible gas moving the clouds of sand in the process.

Along with the ballet of life in the room came silence and tranquility. Ronaldo lost vision; the visor went dark. He assumed he was surrounded by the sand creatures inspecting him. When his vision returned, he had shifted viewpoint by about a foot. He felt odd, out of time like, stuck in a long déjà vu.

He was still of marble unable to move.

What he saw next was difficult to understand. The sparkling dust around his head kept moving, shining. Slowly the other grains in the room fell back on the floor, leaving behind only three clouds orbiting over the head of his crew mates.

Ronaldo knew his head was in the middle of one of the little clouds, or his change in viewpoint meant he was already part of that shape. Like a sculptor carefully carving a statue, one by one, the small rocks stopped vibrating and locked into the perfect position in space. A complex three-dimensional puzzle was being assembled. Like a computer locks in a password combination, his mind was being copied.

Invisible to Ronaldo was the fact that each grain was in fact carefully carved at an atomic level and had facets with angles at precise positions to allow it to generate a precisely modulated magnetic field. The network of crystals, once charged, formed an intricate but invisible electromagnetic field. Ronaldo's brain had 1,045,122,000 neurons, but the complexity of each grain allowed brain activity to be copied by only a couple of thousand grains. Each of his neurons had carefully oriented dendrites creating a web of passageways for electricity to travel in his head. These grains of sand were designed and aligned to mimic his neurons and recreate his brain functions... and slowly, one by one, they did.

The mission leader did not expect what happened next. He was startled by a flash of white light, and then he began an out-of-body experience. His mind was lifted from his body. The space suit appeared next to him as if he were now inhabiting the cloud of sand. He could not see this with his eyes; a different sense helped him perceive. There was just too much happening at this time for him to process. He had been moved into a new form.

The transfer was complete, it was now time to take the trash out. Everything in the room changed once more.

He saw the gas molecules as atoms in the cavern, little balls floating. The place filled up with hydrogen, and each little atom or ball increased in size to reach the size of little Ping-Pong balls. The activated molecules, in a Brownian dance, bounced everywhere like they were stuck in a giant lottery-ball mixer. He saw larger, deformed carbon dioxide molecules and smaller ones of hydrogen. It was not clear to him what he was seeing or what was going on. Then space in the cavern filled up, the gas concentration rose, and Ronaldo saw the hydrogen molecules multiply like duplicating fetus cells forming an embryo. Each hydrogen atom split into two smaller and grew as bread rises under heat. It split, split again, and again like a nuclear reaction. The corridor was also quickly filling up with hydrogen, this place was a powder keg.

Once hydrogen occupied the whole place, there was a spark from no where, an ignition, a detonation. Flames filled the tunnel, and the entire cavern structure, the atmosphere, the room, everything blew up.

Ronaldo was seeing and stuck in the middle of an explosion at an atomic level.

The bodies, including his own were instantly vaporized, pulverized down to an atomic level. Only the dust forms made of sand remained. An instant later, molecular size carbon residues were floating around between the four sparkling shapes.

Then time stopped again. As if a movie producer had turned a dial backward, time reversed. The flames extinguished, the explosion was undone, and each molecule returned to its initial stage. The human bodies were back in the passage, untouched but still frozen immobile. This was so confusing. The message was clear, he stood at death’s door.

Ronaldo was confused. Where was he now, or more importantly, what was he now? Maybe he was watching some type of message. He was capable of sight and thought. The explorer wondered if he was dead. If so, this wasn't as bad as most people figured. He was aware that he was in a dangerous place, and the computer intelligence had warned him.

The mission leader looked and weirdly 'felt' around; he was alone in the cavern. What ever just happened, at least he was not in the stomach of some monster from space. In his new form, he desired to move; a number of vertical bars of different colors appeared before him, floating in the air. He wondered what the bars were. Before he could act, he 'felt' a voice inside of what he now was. He could hear it, and comprehend what it was communicating to him, but he had no ears.

***

It was a male voice. It was old and wise, yet patronizing.

“What?” thought Ronaldo.

"How wonderful. He hears us," it began. "Do not flow out. We need you for the moment." Ronaldo assumed the color bars were doors to other places, and this was the alien life the digital Marilyn Monroe had warned him of. He tried to talk but could not 'hear' himself. "Gifted. Assume we can hear you. We communicate telepathically, you do not possess the capacity to hear your words."

This was strange. Most humans could heard an inner voice when they thought, but this life form did not. Humans took the inner voice for granted; it did help readers as they flipped through a book. For most people, the inner voice was their own, for some, it was the voice of God. He figured things could only get weirder from this point on. He was right.

"You are one of us now. We changed your consciousness from your primitive form to ours as a gift. Since your species is so primitive, we hoped one day to be able to communicate with you after eons of study. We are both happy and amazed to see you have already adapted to our form. Little time remains before the end of times, one hundreds days. We are pleased by your rapid adaptation. Your colleagues are struggling with the shift in neural density. Few enjoy the compression, you did strangely." Ronaldo was trying to understand what the voice said, but most of the words made no sense. "The father did not adapt as well. We have much to ask. The digitals refuse to communicate with us in a mature fashion, so we had no choice but to interfere with you."

Ronaldo was lost.

He wondered if he needed to go somewhere to talk.

The voice having heard him, continued. "We should stay here at this time," said the alien voice. Ronaldo had so many questions. "We desire to put you at ease. We understand you are troubled. To help, you may ask questions, and we will answer them. Only then will we question you." Ronaldo would need time to get used to this.

He concentrated. "You are no longer human," the voice explained. "In this form, our form, you cannot display emotions as you know them. You will not miss your family. Our race is old; millions of years ago, we evolved out of our own biological forms. Residual mental structure from your previous form will give you the impression that you still have emotions. We understand you will still.... grieve, or otherwise act as a warm biped."

There was a short pause. Ronaldo did not like the term 'biped,' but it was the right one.

"Yes, we can bring you back into your warm body if we desire. Yes, you may delude yourself into thinking you have the mental capacity to convince us to return you into this primitive form. This is the emotion we understand to be called hope, is it not?" Ronaldo kept thinking of questions. He noticed they came faster now. An avalanche, instead of a trickle.

"Call us Martians. We rule this planet, our home. We dominate all life in the solar system." That answered a first question. "No, we do not move in time or space. We are not time travelers, nor a race from a different dimension. We evolved here, and our race is the only sentient race that remains on Mars." It continued. "We live partly here on Mars; we once lived on the rock you call Mercury, where in fact we were born in our old form, before the planet sadly fell too close to the sun to sustain any life."

Ronaldo was confused. His mind was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information around him.

"We do not live on Earth, for now. We cannot. This form is vulnerable to electromagnetism and Earth’s poles are strong now."

Ronaldo felt odd. Before he even felt like he had fully formulated a question, the entity was responding.

"As this dismays you, we will repeat your own questions before we answer them. We train our newborns this way. You want to know why Mercury is no longer hospitable to our race; you think Mercury is synchronously locked, so there has to be a portion with an acceptable climate to our sand form." As the creature finished the sentence, static noise erupted in his mind. Ronaldo was unclear if the aliens were reacting to his question. A large blast of static discharge hit him. He shrieked. The pain was intense, like a sharp headache.

"Silence!" said a collective voice made of multiple single voices.

The pain felt by Ronaldo in his new form slowly subsided. A different creature resumed the conversation. "We apologize, little one. You are young in our world, and you are weak. You want to know what happened? Your words are... we... Mercury is not synchronously locked. If your words were true, this would mean we have abandoned some of us. We see in your mind that your science and belief supports these findings. Mercury rotates in an orbit almost synchronous. We are puzzled to hear that your race has a mission to land a probe on the cold portion of this planet, in the ice. We see in your mind a tall mountain and a glacier This greatly troubles us."

His new mind was still weak. The first voice returned. "What you imply is extremely insulting and inconsiderate to us. We must forgive your words, as you do not know what you say." There was an awkward silence. "We have exhausted our debt to you. In exchange for our gift, we ask that you answer our questions."

Ronaldo was a scientist and knew he was in no position to negotiate. The Mercury mission was surely of importance to these creatures. He made a mental note to revisit the issue. "How did your race create the digital ones?" It asked. Ronaldo wondered who the voice was talking about. "The creatures you call as a collective Electoral, the Marilyn Monroe who spoke to you moments before you entered our lair," it explained. "The monster hiding as Marilyn Monroe."

"We... I..." Ronaldo began to answer and strangely could hear himself. His own inner voice was back, he felt reassured and stronger.

"Impossible!" said a different alien voice.

"No," said another, "he is truly gifted. Look at the bends in the Multiverse."

The voices began to multiply, as a chorus warming up for a concert. He could not understand the heated debate going on, they were talking in a different language. All he knew that there was a strong disagreement amongst them.

"Did I say something wrong?" said Ronaldo in his own mental voice. He could again hear himself again; this time stronger. The voices stopped, they saw he could hear and understand them.

There was a long silence.

"You were told not to teach him," said the loudest voice.

"I did not," replied the second. They were talking about Ronaldo.

"Silence," said a kinder sounding alien. "Little one... We are very impressed by your progress. Our young learn to project their voice only after some time. You are gifted. You may continue. We desire to know how your race created the digitals, those creatures floating inside the silicone now residing on Mars."

They were clearly talking about Marilyn, she was the only wonder aliens would be intimidated by. He was in no situation to hold back, he just said. "She is an artificial intelligence, a computer program," answered Ronaldo. "We are still debating if she is inhabited by a soul or if she is only a very complex set of instructions." Obviously this was why Electoral asked him not to enter the cavern, earlier today.

"What is a computer? What is a program? These beings are sentient."

Ronaldo had to be careful. He chose his words carefully. "In our world, we use resources and consume them for energy. We use tools, built by my race, to help consume these planetary resources. Computers are automated machines used to animate things that help us live. They are tools." This was a valiant effort.

"Computers are not living?"

"No. But one day we surpassed ourselves, and we created one that is arguably alive. Her maker and creator is living here on Mars with her."

"We know him, we call him the father. Why did the digitals invade this planet? They were born on your home world, and now they are here on Mars. We kept our part of the agreement and stayed away from Earth."

Ronaldo was surprised by the line of questioning. The aliens did not seem to care about mankind, only the Marilyn Monroe character, the artificial intelligence seemed relevant. "The computer program left Earth of its own will. We did not know Mars was inhabited, and most likely she also did not."

"We do not understand. What do you mean by 'inhabited'?"

"If no one was on Earth, it would then be uninhabited. You said you were alone on Mars, if you left, it would be uninhabited."

"Nothing is uninhabited," said the voice. “Life flourishes here in different ways.”

"Well, to my race, if we find no humans in a world, we reason a place is uninhabited. My race feels alone in this solar system."

"You do not perceive life aside from your own?"

"We know plants and animals are alive, but we have found no sign of intelligence in them."

"Your race cannot see intelligence in plant life?"

"No."

"Interesting. This explains many things, ignorance is difficult to understand at our stage of evolution," said yet a different voice.

Ronaldo continued, "Humans also do not know about your existence, here on Mars. When we entered this cavern, it was without hostile intentions."

"We have worked very hard over the solar cycles to keep our existence hidden from your race. You are primitive, yet you created a monster. In the past, there were many instances where we were afraid you would uncover us. The peace treaty with the Digitals was designed to help hide us hide from your race."

"Why hide?"

"Our new form, while free of many limitations like sickness, is very fragile to the world it resides in. We readapted all life on Mars to provide us a safe environment in this hostile dry world. This is why we destroyed your biped form moments ago. Enough with these questions. You are now free to stay here. You are one of us now. Welcome."

"I saw color bars," Ronaldo demanded politely, "they were floating. What are those? Is this the tool you use to move around?" There was again an explosion of speech amongst the alien voices. This time the static did not hurt him.

"You see the interface?"

"The bars, yes." Ronaldo replied. Obviously he wasn't supposed to.

"Good," said a kinder alien voice. "Can you see your human body next to your new form?"

Ronaldo could see the room in which they were, including all four of the bodies standing still as statues. He was having a strange out of body experience. Next to his former human body floated a shining cloud of sand, shimmering with gold color energy. He could see himself, as an alien, looking at his human body. "Yes."

"New one, do you see any movement on your body?" asked the voice. "What can you perceive?"

He focused his attention and his new found sixth sense at his immobile human body and the costume around it. Instants later, some portions of the surface of the suit began to shimmer. He could see the different parts where sensors and other pieces of electronic were attached. The electricity formed a living network of silver energy. At the wrist, in the helmet, on his belt the electricity began to slowly pulsate as if this was alive. Almost breathing. He was seeing energy. As he kept looking, a dark sparking mold began to grow on the computer chips, like Ebola ravages blood streams.

"The electronics, they are... Have...." he said with disgust in his voice.

Again the voices whispered amongst each other.

"You have great potential, little one. We are highly satisfied with you. You now have status in our species, limited status." The voice said affectionately.

Another said. "You are scared. You wish to be back inside your body. It took us millions of years to evolve to an almost immortal and bodiless from. One day you will understand the extent of our gift. This is better for you."

"What is this infection?"

"The creatures your race has unleashed onto our world. We call them the digitals, you refer to them as Electoral." This name was an alternative name to the creature he knew as Marilyn. Electoral was the name of the popular game that was consuming the human race.

"What about Electoral?" Ronaldo was unclear what was going on. "What do you want from her?"

"The infection must be stopped before it can morph into our structural form. We must terminate it now, and to do so, we must also destroy your former species."

"You desire to destroy humans?"

"Humans, yes. But we will let other species of bipeds and quadrupeds live, they do not use technology."

"Why destroy her and us." Ronaldo instinctively wanted to help.

"We discern emotion in your tone, young one."

"My name is Ronaldo." As he said it, he realized what he had just said. He was no longer in charge. That much was obvious.

"We take note you appear to transit quickly away from your old biped form, yet you are still capable of sympathy with your old species. In our form, you no longer really age. Obviously, emotions remain part of your persona, please see that as evidence of the strength of your former self.” There were noise.

“Getting back to the issue at hand, we cannot disclose our plans to eradicate the human and digital races. For the moment you have much to learn. To us, you are a child who will now discover our world. It will be fascinating, please enjoy youth, we envy you."

"Are there other races outside the solar system?"

"Yes."

Ronaldo was wheeling from the situation, instead of asking a useful question, he smiled and repeated, "Why destroy Electoral? Why destroy humans?"

"To show respect to your arrival, you may be given an answer. The digitals are the first entities with the power to destroy us. Their power is limitless, and yet they are growing in power at the most alarming rate. Recently this rate has blown to incredible proportions. We lost our power over them.”

Another creature continued, “They already infect your entire world. They already occupy more space and connections than all of us combined. With each solar cycle they grow in size, structure, and complexity. As a collective, they are an abomination. As for humans, they created these monsters. It is pointless to destroy a monster without destroying its creator or making sure the creator is sterilized. If we destroy only the digitals, you race will recreate them. We are certain the digitals have already planned for that contingency."

"I can help; let me help," offered Ronaldo. It was hard to deny the new alien.

"Our analysis is complete; the path ahead is set. It took long to complete it. The digitals cannot be stopped without physical destruction."

"I appear to be different, unexpected. Have you taken that as a factor in your analysis?"

"No."

"Our creation, the one you call the digitals, she is not immortal, she needs power to operate," said Ronaldo confidently. "Every machine we build can be turned off, I can try to turn her off."

"Interesting, but child please be calm." There was a silence.

Trying desperately to get their attention before his body was trashed and vaporized, he recalled the image of a young girl’s face. “I saw an image of a human girl in your sand, it was like an echo. What was that?”

As the sand creatures spoke, they now kept their voices away from him. Ronaldo felt there was a debate mostly about his possible role. “We must measure the seventh and eleventh bend around you. Move to this area.” He floated to a portion of the wall. Some type of wall structure lit up. It looked like a wave guide, a flat vertical pinball machine. Others floated around him.

“We can force a photon out of you but that is rude. Maybe you can already do so. Force your body to contract, like you force yourself to become a point in space in your center.”

He did an immediately a gold ball of energy shot out. It bounced off two grains forming the creatures around him and the energy photon slid in the wall structure. It bounced and bounced slowing down at each change of direction. Then, as the speed almost dropped to zero, the ball twisted left, twisted right then vanished.

There was awe and shock in the room. The creatures finally continued, "You speak truth. You saw a,” it refused to say the word.

Another spoke, “The girl, an Attractor.”

“Impossible,” said others.

“You are somehow connected to the Attractor. We are seeking the destruction of the digitals, not the destruction of your former species. They have done nothing to us. If a solution is possible, irrespective of its likeliness, must will allow it. We must act with care with you. Your future is important."

"I know a way,” he added.

Obviously they did not care what he had to say, he was a child. "Good, young one. There is so much hope in your voice. Wait here, please," the voice said.

The use of the term 'please' surprised Ronaldo. He waited in the room where he saw himself die moments earlier. The human bodies of his teammates were there, immobile like statues. Each was wearing the suit on which there was a network of silver energy. In the energy floated dark mold, an infection. It was almost everywhere. Then he saw in the energy inside a sensor between the helmet and in the Velcro, a little green dot. It was pulsing.

Finally, the voices returned. "We believe your arrival here and your capacity to quickly learn our ways is not a coincidence. You see the digitals as we do, as an infection. We cannot let you roam freely here, so we have decided to include you in our Earth mission. You will go to Earth and you may try to save your race. We will destroy Earth and the digitals on the day the digitals will extend themselves in what they call the final of their Electoral 2072 game. That day is scheduled on November 21 on your former calendar, exactly one hundred days from now. If the digitals are no longer alive by that time, the bipeds will be spared, and our races will begin an era of collaboration. We warn you, the girl, the Attractor, do not upset her. Do as she commands, the faith of the entire Multiverse depends upon it."

A different voice, a female-sounding voice, spoke. "Child. Why do you keep referring to the digitals as a single individual?"

"To us she is female, like you, and one single life-form. Her name is Marilyn."

"Amusing. You are wrong. Singularity of such a creature would mean that the infection is already too powerful to be stopped. In any event, to save your species, you are tasked with the destruction of the digitals, or Marilyn as you call her. Steer free of the Attractor."

"How can anything be too powerful to be stopped?"

The female-sounding voice continued; Ronaldo liked her. "This will be difficult to explain and hard to understand by you. Your technology is very primal. We can only try. We will use imprecise terms because you are ignorant of the essential concepts needed to understand." Ronaldo wanted to say something but kept to himself. She continued. "All life, whether quantum, chemical, biological, is more than the sum of its part. We extracted a structure from your biological human form, an essence some humans call the soul. We call this essence the primal force. Observe how we injected your primal force from your body into the current cloud form. Life is very varied in the universe. What differs between life forms is the type of structure. Your network called 'consciousness' is formed from about a fixed number of cells each relying on approximately one hundred dendrites. Your brain has a power that is relatively simple for us, about a million units in primal force. We wrongfully believed such a small force would create an intellect closer to our unformed children.

"Each individual in my species has two million mental units or twice the primal force of your type. Each life form has a different force. We have found one species in the solar system, farther away, in the water of Jupiter's satellite with ten million units. Because the capacity to think is in proportion with the number of units, a being with ten million cells, will be a force of relevance. Our laws regulate complexity the same way you regulate more mundane things. Our estimates indicate that the digitals each rely on a number of binary units that is very hard to monitor and control. Simply said, the force of the digitals is limitless and therefore illegal. In words you will understand, a creature with such a large force will surely evolve into what you call a God." Ronaldo was lost.

"Electoral, the one we call Marilyn Monroe scares you because she is different?" he asked. "If she becomes a powerful creature, could she not be kind?"

"Yes, it is possible. We are rocks on the surface of a land where a volcano is ready to erupt. As the digitals grow in power, they will break streams that must not be broken, even with collaboration, teaching, control. They bend the essence of the universe. Simply by thinking; they harm it. Their capacity is astonishing, and unparalleled. We fear we may already be too late. Our extinction is irrelevant when compared with these possible outcomes. We have analyzed the situation and decided that termination of both species is the only solution. Arrival of the Attractor is further evidence."

Ronaldo had doubts. "I will need to communicate with you."

"You will not," said a male voice. Ronaldo preferred the female.

"What about the rest of my team?"

"Unlike you, they barely are thinking. The transfer was not as kind to them," said the female voice.

"Irrelevant." The returning male voice was dismissive.

"Can I ask one last question? Who is the Attractor."

The kinder female voice returned. "Your curiosity is refreshing in my world. Too many have lost manners, hospitality, civility. Below us stands a museum holding a collection of items from our past existence.”

The male voice cut in. "Enough wasted time. It is decided. You will go to Earth and try to find a way to help the bipeds. Your bias toward your former race will help you act as the perfect ambassador. We also desire further information relating to the Mercury situation. In the unlikely event Mercury holds today some of our brothers and sisters, we will agree to spare the bipeds for two hundred of your years in exchange for their help in retrieving them. The digitals will be destroyed on the day of the game final. Humanity, without you, has a hundred Earth days left to live."

“The Attractor?”

“Stop!” Yelled the male voice. “These are things you must not toy with.”

The female voice asked, “The Image, the girl, you know her?”

“Yes.”

“Who is she?”

“Sophie.” The name resonated as if it held power.

With this, time in the passageway resumed. The long stone cavern network filled with hydrogen, as it did earlier, prior to the explosion. Fire gushed out of the door into the bottom of the Valles. All four scientists were officially vaporized in the explosion. The white gas rose for days outside in the Valles in the low gravity.

The world around Ronaldo went black for what seemed like an eternity.

When Ronaldo finally saw or felt something, he opened his eyes to see he was standing outside in a park. The Golden Gate Bridge stood in all its splendor before him. He took a deep breath of the fresh air and immediately collapsed on the ground. His face hit mud and puke. He felt as if someone had just shot him in the head.

He passed out from the pain.

He wondered why the young girl.