Clavius Deep Universe

The crater, the machine and the thing beneath both

Jump into the fascinating universe created by Madeira Desouza for his Clavius Harvest Series of science fiction novels.

The crater

Crater Clavius is real — one of the largest and oldest craters on the Moon, roughly 225 kilometers across, visible in binoculars from Earth. In the novel, an international paramilitary organization builds a top-secret sublunar base there, descending many stories beneath the convex crater floor. The black site is named Clavius Base. From orbit, no structure is visible at all. Nothing on the surface calls attention to it.

Giant Blue Hockey Pucks

Agents travel in time inside enormous circular devices made of eerie blue glass — shaped like a giant hockey puck standing vertically on edge. Each chamber is pre-coated with a thick, pungent white propellant. An agent enters naked, the device seals, the white liquid swirls around the body, and the agent is displaced across centuries. Return is automatic. Twenty such devices fill an entire warehouse-sized hall deep within Clavius Base, connected to rows of high-tech racks by flexible pipes.

The Colossus

Beneath the crater floor, Chinese explorers discovered a partially buried structure of extraordinary scale. Only the top half is visible above the lunar rock — and that half alone suggests the full figure would stand over ten stories tall. The structure depicts a masculine humanoid: bald, bearded, with light-colored skin and piercing blue eyes. The official name is "the Colossus of Clavius." Its origins are not human. Those granted access to the observation level have never been the same.

Timeline

Benchmarks in spacetime

2192 CE
Chinese explorers discover the Colossus
While excavating to establish a habitat for a permanent human colony on the Moon, a Chinese expedition breaks through a wall and finds a vast cavern. Inside they find what they name the "Colossus of Clavius" partially buried in the crater floor — the greatest discovery in human history and the proof of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
2192 – 2250 CE
Clavius Base is built and MMDI is formed
China requests the creation of an international agency to operate from the newly constructed Clavius Base. The agency is named MMDI. Its true mandate — and the meaning of those four letters — remains a closely guarded secret. The base descends many sublevels beneath the crater floor, invisible from orbit.
2251 CE
The story begins
Year 2251 is when Clavius Deep opens. A routine day at Clavius Base spirals out of control. Time travel agents arrive and depart through the blue glass chambers. The General is watching. The Colossus is waiting.
1991 CE (mission target)
Arizona missions
Agents are dispatched to the American Southwest in 1991, repeating missions across different timelines. The desert, the Navajo Nation, Bullhead, Laughlin — each location matters to the agency's classified objectives.
2252 CE
The war
A human vs alien war spans centuries and involves religious violence as an existential confrontation with extraterrestrial life unfolds across the later chapters. Clavius Moonbase and the agents who called it home are all that prevent a full-scale alien takeover of the human species.

Underlying mythology

The Directorate called MMDI

MMDI The Clavius Harvest Series of novels starts with China sending explorers to scout a location for a sublunar human habitat. The Chinese find a colossus buried deep inside Crater Clavius which is authentic proof of extraterrestrial alien life in the universe. A paramilitary directorate is formed on Earth by various countries working together to build a top-secret time-travel base beneath the huge lunar crater while keeping secret the existence of extraterrestrial alien life. The human capability to travel in time is made possible by that extraterrestrial alien life, but nobody talks about that at all. Both the existence of human time travel and the lunar base itself are kept completely secret from the people of Earth.