My guess was this machine was being used to transport the satellites into space. I figured the road was used to give the object momentum prior to teleportation. This would help it start to maintain its orbit, otherwise it would just fall to earth as soon as it arrived in space.
I imagined there must be a lot of calculations involved in this. They would have had to keep track of the rotation of the earth, our orbit of the sun and various gravitational forces.
I started to wonder what would be involved in using a machine like this. Is the universe like a vast grid that you just punch in coordinates and send it on its way, or do you need send the objects based on the relative position to something with a strong gravitational force like a sun?
It's possible that this device may have had something to do with the disappearance of all the people. But what could possibly influence the people to do so? Even with such amazing technology it would take quite a few years to transport people off Terra Durom, and to where?
What a logistical nightmare. Unless there were a lot more machines elsewhere on Terra Durom, or some other means to access them besides being on the pad itself.
I decided to find out more information before jumping to anymore conclusions.
I headed to the tower on the outside of the sphere. There was various labs and offices. I ducked into one of them and found a newspaper. The date was 30 years ago. To have this technology 30 years ago was incredible, considering how hard we have worked to travel any distance from the earth. There must have been a significant difference in how their technology developed, either they stumbled on something we missed or there is something different about these "humans".
All of the news seemed to involve information about an evacuation. It had a basic outline of the plans to systematically get all the people off of Terra Durom. There were several ads in the margins explaining where you could pick up your evacuation manual. Supposedly this manual outlined what a person should take and what to leave.
It was amazing that all the governments 30 years ago could unite in such a way. What could possibly bring everyone together like this.
As if someone was listening for my question, the next page had an answer. An asteroid was heading for earth. They had managed to track its orbit the 2 previous times that it had entered the solar system. A computer simulation predicted that it would strike the earth in 31 years.
