She was in a poorly lit room. The water level was quickly falling down. Soon the water ran off, exposing a wet floor. Then the other part of the rock in front of her moved forward and aside. Julia came into an opening, leading to a big hall. The rock behind her was quietly closed.
The big hall was empty. It was a hemisphere with walls and floor looking as if made of stainless steel, polished to a high finish. On a metal cube in the center there was something like a biker’s helmet. Julia stopped and touched the wall – it was smooth and felt warm.
She heard the same voice:
«Take a seat and put the helmet on!»
Julia sat down on the cube and put on the helmet. The metallic pedestal was slowly caving in under the weight of her body, and soon took the shape of a convenient armchair, flowing around all her body. She felt warm and comfortable. With a light click, the helmet was switched on, and the surrounding scene shifted.
It was the Earth. The sun was hanging in the sky on its trajectory. The alternation of day and night was as usual but there was no moon and the constellations were located in different places.
The earth and the sea were the same, only their colors had changed, while plants and animals were quite different. There were lots of them, and they all were larger and more colorful than those growing on the Earth now.
Real giants with huge wings and oblong heads were flying in the sky.
The sun lighted up the surroundings evenly and not very brightly.
Everything was gigantic – the forest was huge, various large flowers were growing in glades. Flowers of similar sizes were trailing from some trees.
Giant insects of a human being’s height were flying among the trees.
Tremendous lizards and snakes were climbing in bright green grass several meters high.
Here and there some traces of the struggle for surviving were seen – broken bones, skulls, and trees, pulled out of the earth with roots.
The voice said:
«We are the Earth Keepers.
Your civilization is the sixth on this planet. The previous ones were wiped out by the United Civilization of the Galaxy «Milky Way», which includes the Earth planet.
At a certain stage of the mankind’s development, we put forward a fighter for a single combat with the Galaxy Civilization. The fortunes of the Earth’s population – whether they will live on or not – depend on the result of this combat.
It’s a standard procedure of admission to the community of civilizations of our Galaxy for any civilization. They want to know – to what extent we have developed and have established ourselves as a civilization.
Combats are carried out on the planet chosen by the Supreme Council of the Galaxy.
The place where they are carried out is always the same; so, we reproduced its exact copy. It is our training facility now. All scenes of battles we had have lost were built into the program. Besides, we added our own episodes. Now it’s the place where one can learn a lot.
If we win, the Sixth Civilization of the Earth will get a powerful impulse for further development, and, in several thousand years, it will become equal to other civilizations of the Galaxy. Not everything is so simple, though. There exists one more danger.
When all civilizations of the Galaxy join the United Civilization of the Galaxy «Milky Way», the next stage will be admission of our United Galaxy Civilization to the General Cosmic Civilization.
