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Translation efforts have recently led to an important discovery at the Lunar Device Research Facility, a trusted but confidential source revealed today. After years of work, the multi-governmental scientific team based on the Moon has now unlocked a new Gate destination key code – and with it, a name: The Gate-Builders referred to themselves as the Aexuron.
Speculation continues as to what exactly the Aexuron were, but many scientists agree that they constituted some kind of artificially-intelligent hive-mind – a race of sentient machines. Their technology was vastly more advanced than our own, but they seem to have mysteriously vanished after building the Wormhole Gate and placing the activation device beneath the lunar surface. What their biological ancestors may have looked like, their point of origin, and current whereabouts all still remain to be discovered.
After astronauts uncovered the activation device and its associated data cache on the Moon decades ago, it took several years for the assembled international scientific team to unlock the first destination by decrypting and translating the information stored in the cache. The task required the combined effort of several of the world’s most powerful supercomputers and hundreds of expert researchers, and it took years before the involved governments allowed the device to be used. After the device’s activation and the subsequent discovery of the powered-on Gate moving from its position in the Asteroid Belt to Earth’s orbit, several more years passed before an exploratory probe was launched through the Gate.
After a second destination was unlocked, corporate-sponsored expeditions established a human presence in both new star systems, setting up permanent habitation modules on the most Earth-like planets to facilitate ongoing scientific studies. Neither star system offers the possibility of easy settlement, however, as even their relatively Earth-like worlds do not hold breathable atmospheres. Environmental suits and pressurized vehicles are necessary to keep the explorers alive on the planetary surfaces. Research progress has accelerated since the first human footsteps on the far side of the Gate, but experts agree that it will likely be years before human explorers are sent to the newly-unlocked third destination, despite growing population and resource pressures on Earth and a public desire for exo-planetary colonization.
How the Gate is able to produce stable Wormholes is still unknown.
The source of the leaked information is a mid-level researcher working for the scientific team, who spoke to our reporter on condition of anonymity.
