The Weapon

Author : Stefan Aeschbacher

The ancient city had been buried for over five thousand years. The digbots were digging at this spot for two hours, fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. They were making good progress. So far they had found three plates and a container of unknown purpose. Due to the ideal conditions at this location, most of the artefacts were exceptionally well preserved.

Suddenly the alarm sounded. Digbot #953 had found something unexpected. They had been cataloguing this era for quite some time; something new only popped up once every few months. The eagerness to see the new object was correspondingly high.

The probability of the new object being a weapon was estimated at 87%. It was therefore immediately put into an armoured storage container. Even though the bestial concept of warfare was something only known from history, they were well equipped to handle such dangerous goods.

The object shown on the holo-screen was cylindrical with a diameter of 6.7cm and a length of 11.5cm. It had been clearly marked as dangerous with red colour. One of the more experienced historians came to the conclusion that the object at hand was an item called “grenade”.

Immediately after securing the object, the historians started the in-depth analysis. Apparently the grenade was filled with a liquid. Not much was known about the race that had lived on earth in this epoch. They called themselves “humans”. It was not known how a “human” would react to the liquid in the grenade. Probably it was some kind of contact poison. Analysis showed it to be extremely sticky. A small lever on the top probably served as the trigger mechanism.

A so far unknown font had been used to mark the weapon. Probably to inform the reader of the extreme danger of the object. The historians were quite good at deciphering human scripture, but this one posed a riddle to them.

Due to the extremely dangerous nature of the object, they decided to store it away. It was put in a high security bunker on an uninhabited moon in the system. It had long ago been ruled, that the mere idea of a weapon had to be hidden from the general public.

Some years later a research team applied a new radiological technique which revealed two more text fragments on the grenade. They suggested that the object was really very dangerous and poisonous. They read: “Do not shake” and “contains caffeine”.