The Nightbird
Elite
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2006
- Posts
- 3,841
- Location
- Chicago, USA
- Society
- Project-Asylum Corp.
- Avatar Name
- Revan The Nightbird Evenstar
Journal of Revan Evenstar,
Entry 1
I have never written a journal entry before, but I must start now. I must record everything that has happened yesterday, as clearly as I can remember it, because it is the day when the world I knew was torn asunder. My mind is bursting with questions, and there is an unknown blaze, raging in my soul, driving me to search for answers, to find some way of forestalling the impending calamity. There are many things I don’t understand in all that was told to me, but I am certain there are clues that will prove vital. I must not miss anything. Now, how did it all start? Ah yes...
It was near high noon, I was prospecting in my favorite forest. Grand, majestic mountains can be seen on one side, and a deep, gently flowing river heard on the other. A light fog still hung beneath the canopy, and some dew left on the foliage got through my armor. It was peaceful and invigorating, that is, until the inexplicable happened. Lightning flickered over my prospecting display; it sizzled and popped as I let it fall to the ground. It was dead. As I looked up, thick fog was rolling in all around me and in a moment, I was swallowed. My radar, locator, and even helmet display, one by one their lights faded. My visor fogged up when the ventilator shut down, so I removed my helmet. The fog smelled of ozone, and was charged with electricity; all the hair on my face tingled. I wasn’t so much feeling scared as inconvenienced. After all, Calypso’s weather had only just begun to stabilize after Typhoon’s impact, and electromagnetic storms are far from rare. Still, I’d never heard of one strong enough to shut down heavily insulated armor electronics, nor one in the form of a fog.
With mindforce still mysteriously forceless, I resolved to just walk out of the fog. The source of moisture was likely the river, so confident in my sense of direction, I marched towards the mountains. Four hours by my reckoning later, I no longer recognized the trees I passed, I was lost; I blamed this on an audible buzzing in my head, it was as if I was intoxicated. Just as I was feeling the need to rest, I came upon an odd sight: A log cabin, sturdy but archaic, stood in front of me. The lights were on, and a moving shadow can be seen through the opaque window. From the flickering of the light, I could tell a very old oil lamp was being used. I knocked, and the door quickly swung open.
“A visitor!” An old man with young eyes beamed, and ushered me inside. After taking one look at my gear, he exclaimed “I guess you weren’t prepared for the EM fog either, ruined almost everything I had, even crashed my ship”. The interior of the cabin was sparsely furnished. The furniture consisted just of a table, stool, and bed, all crudely fashioned from wood. There was however paper posted everywhere: charts, maps, graphs, diagrams, and formulas, mostly handwritten, covering every available space on the walls. “I guess you’re wondering who I am and what I’m doing here.” He started without my prompting. “My name is Mile Thales, I’m a senior researcher commissioned by the government to discover where mindforce comes from. I left with everyone back when Typhoon hit, but there’s not much research that can be done on a crowded space station so I muscled myself a shuttle and some supplies, and came back down early. I guess I’ve been here almost a year now.”
He poured out two cups of water and passed one to me. I told him I was curious about why mindforce was disrupted and asked him what he knew. He beamed even wider than before, “well, it’s a long story, and I haven’t had company for a long time so I hope you’ll forgive me for being long winded. As you know, the fuel for most mindforce powers is mind essence. However, even without it or any power boosting implant, the earliest colonist discovered they could gather vibrant sweat from native creatures with just their mind. This vibrant sweat became the foundation of all future mindforce developments. However no one really knew the source of this newly found power, so people like me were hired to investigate. I started by looking at how the native creatures came into possession of the sweat we gather from them. I analyzed their diets and found nothing resembling sweat. I resorted to dissecting the animals, but none had any strange organ whose purpose is unknown, or could be attributed to producing sweat. Human biopsies also indicated nothing about human physiology has changed since our arrival from Earth. The research quickly hit a dead end, funding was cut, and I turned to mining for my livelihood.”
“This was when something amazing happened. As a prospector like you, I wanted to find as much as possible, so I kept detailed records on all of my finds. Over time, something entirely unexpected emerged. Oh, I'm not talking about which places had the most valuable ores, but rather something that became apparent from the time stamps on my claim records. What was amazing was not when I found deposits, but when I couldn’t. The time stamps indicated periodic, rhythmic, time gaps during which it was very difficult to find anything. I customized a radar sensor to detect whether something in Calypso was interfering with my ore sensor and then I found it. Calypso had a pulse! Steadily, EM waves burst out from Calypso’s inner core, and these waves disrupted sensitive mining sensors. That was how I first came to believe there was more to Calypso than just a rare, life supporting planet.”
He paused for a moment for a drink and to study my expression, then remarked “Most people I’ve told this to have a look of disbelief. It even took quite a lot of persuasion for me to convince the government to reinstate my funding. You, you’re different, you’re curious aren’t you? Well, if nothing else, if you apply what I’ve told you in mining, you’ll become a very successful prospector, but there is more to it. With renewed funding, I obtained better equipment and set up sensors all around Calypso. I was looking for the source of the EM waves, and with the help of some federal engineers, produced a computer projection of their origins.” He pointed to a map of Calypso with bold lines running through it. “What resulted was an amazing, gigantic, crisscrossing, vein-like system running deep beneath the surface. Even now, we don’t know what flows through it, but we do know it flows in bursts like blood being pumped by a heart, and those bursts are what generate the EM waves.”
He paused again, then sighed and continued. “At least, this was the case before Typhoon fell. The sensor grid I’d set up has been destroyed, so my information is sparse, but at least some changes have occurred. First, as I'm sure you noticed when you returned to Calypso, is that we can no longer control mindforce powers even with mind essence. Second, almost invisibly unless you knew how to look, is that the ‘pulse’ of Calypso has sped up. From an ecological point of view, Typhoon was devastating, but from a geological point of view, it was just a superficial wound to the upper crust of Calypso. Isn't it strange that humans lost the ability to manipulate mindforce, yet indigenous creatures have not? Animals and mutants that use mindforce to manipulate electricity or frost continue to do so unhindered. It could be nothing of course, but in the worst case scenario, what if the planet itself is the source of mindforce and is sentient? What if when we first arrived, it welcomed us and granted us new powers to strive in its harsh environment, but now it has decided that humanity is too destructive, and decided to revoke its gifts? We can survive without mindforce, but I fear what could happen if this planet ever saw us as enemies. I know it sounds far-stretched and speculative, but hey, I’m a scientist. I’m allowed to have wild ideas, so long as I manage to prove them. Also... it’s just that ever since I arrived, I’ve been having strange dreams... no, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
He started packing some supplies and weapons into a backpack, along with some notes off his wall. “I’m glad you came today, had you come tomorrow, you would have found just an empty cabin. There is a place I want to visit. It is on top of what appears to be a major nexus of those subterranean veins, I want to do some research there, and so I’ll be building a new cabin there and abandoning this one.” He stopped, holding an old MD class orefinder in his hands. “Here, take this. It is junk compared to the new finders out there today, but it’s one of the few electronics I have that didn’t fry from the EM fog. I’ll just requisition a new one with my next batch of supplies, one of the perks of working for the government” he grinned.
By this point, the buzzing in my head had grown more intense. I was fascinated with Thales’ research, and I had questions, but I couldn’t seem to focus enough to condense them into words. My vision was burring and I felt confused, though I did not know why. Thales just smiled and ushered me out, saying “you’re tired, the fog affected me like this too when I first encountered it. Get a good night’s sleep, and you’ll feel fine in the morning.” I noticed that the fog was receding, and the sun almost gone. He tapped my emergency transport and as he slowly faded from my view, said "I've still got work to do; it's been nice meeting you. When next we meet, I'll be sure to share my latest discoveries with you."
I barely managed to stagger back to my apartment. I was dizzy with exhaustion, and wanted nothing more than to collapse onto my bed. Soon, I slipped off into a deep sleep. Sometime during the night however, my slumber was interrupted by a chilling breeze. When I opened my eyes, I found myself resting on hard soil. It was dark, leaves rustled all around me. I was inside an unfriendly forest. I could feel hidden eyes fixated upon me, malevolent eyes. Slowly, quietly, I could feel the suffocating darkness, full of hatred and malice, advance closer and closer. Terror gripped my heart, I bolted up and ran. I ignored the burning in my legs and the heaving of my lungs, fear fueled my desperation. The eyes drew close; I could smell blood and putrid breath right behind me, when the pursuit suddenly ended. I saw light in front of me, the edge of the forest, a bright light. I was filled with joy, but as I broke through the foliage, it was replaced by awe and terror.
Instead of the sun, I was greeted by the flash of laser and flare of rockets. The vista lain out before me was not that of a battle, it was a bloodbath. At the edge of an unfamiliar city, colonists, beasts, and robots butchered each other with reckless abandon. There was no order to the slaughter, colonists huddled in small packs for protection, trying to blast everything coming close, but every once in a while a robot beam would find a mark and a body falls limp, or a blood-frenzied beast would get close enough to rend flesh. The robots were scattered but fearless, systematically firing away at anything alive. The beasts ferociously mauled whatever was closest, be it man or machine, for neither could withstand their razor-sharp claws and crushing jaws.
Out of the sky, I saw a glint off polished metal. That was my only warning before a gigantic pod impacted the battlefield. The concussion spread out like a shockwave, blasting all off their feet. For a brief moment, night returned and silence reined. Then the pod unfurled, eight thin legs extended, puncturing the ground. In the ensuing laser fire, the monstrosity was revealed. It was the child of death and steel; shaped like a spider, adorned in armor, and bristling with weapons, it was a dreadful sight to behold. Immediately, the large cannon on its back emitted a pitched whine, the agent of death braced and aimed. A beam of devastating power cut across the plains, the flash blinding and roar deafening. As the smoke cleared, I saw a barren ravine where its targets had been. It then began a slow march across the battlefield; any resistance was annihilated with overwhelming force.
The conclusion of the fight seemed decided, but the goddess of victory was not to smile this night. The ground beneath the spider split open and spilled upwards, and another giant emerged. As the dirt and dust settled, its form became distinct. It resembled an eomon, but its color was gray and thick, bony plates covered it like armor. Horns protruded from its head, large claws covered the front paws, and spikes decorated its back and tail. It was a creature not bred for the hunt, but for battle. It tackled the spider's legs; they looked thin in comparison and with the wail of sagging girders they crumpled beneath the weight. The eomon then proceed to claw and tear the thorax of the spider open, the screech of tearing metal and great thuds of falling pieces echoed across the battlefield.
Then, I heard the roar of engines and looked up. Five assault shuttles flew over me in wedge formation, and streaked towards the two behemoths, plasma cannons blazing. A great inferno rose up around the giants until both forms were lost beneath the flames. As the shuttles flew past and circled around for another run, the scene turned surreal. A booming explosion inside the inferno blew the fire apart and sent another shockwave across the battlefield. The spider, stripped of dorsal armor, had blown to pieces. The eomon however, was still alive. The intensive flames had charred it black, and it bore large, bloody holes in its plate armor. Around it, even the rocks were still burning, ignited by the plasma fire. It groaned with great agony, but still painstakingly turned to face the shuttles' next pass. With a great inhalation I could hear, it let loose a long screech that stopped my heart and froze the blood in my veins. It felt as if I was encased in ice. The fires around the eomon had all gone out, there was no more fighting, yet I could still see. Light danced in the sky where the cry of the eomon reached, and I understood. A terrible amount of mindforce was being used; a cold snap engulfed all that I could see. Machines, humans, and beasts were all frozen solid. With a great crackling, the shuttles, now little more than blocks of ice, crashed and broke apart.
As the screech ended, the light dimmed and started to fade, and then a dozen suns flared into being in front of me. It was bright, painfully, excruciatingly bright. I closed my eyes, yet I could still see. I covered them with my hands but still, in front of me, I saw the river turn to steam, the forest leveled like grass, and the city turn into a black silhouette. Then I saw only white.
My heart raced, cold sweat ran in drove down my face and neck; it was still dark outside. Was it a nightmare? It was so vivid and I could remember every detail. I began to reflect on everything Thales told me, and finally, I was able to put words to the confusion I felt then. There were many inconsistencies to that meeting. Why would a researcher live in a log cabin with no technology? Maybe it was necessary when he first crash-landed, but redevelopment has proceeded quickly over the past half year. He could have easily been granted a laboratory to work in, and he definitely wasn’t the type to hold back in asking for funding. It was as if he didn’t know reconstruction had taken place. It’s possible he lost all of his communication gear, and was completely out of touch for a year. But even if that was the case, why did he not ask for news from me? How could anyone be alone for a year, and yet have no interest in current events? In the end, all he did was share his theories with me.
I wanted answers, and I needed to rush to catch Thales before he left; I'd neglected to ask him where he was heading. It was early morning by the time I reached where the fog had overtaken me. Armored boot tracks are easy to follow, and I proceeded at a full run deeper into the forest. Half an hour later, I found myself at the cabin once again. Something wasn’t right. The cabin had noticeably decayed since yesterday, and there was a smell of mildew. The door was unlocked, so I entered. The stench of decay was much greater inside. The roof leaked, the papers left on the walls were mostly gone, and bugs have made a home of the wood; there was nothing that looked legible or usable. It was as if the cabin had been abandoned for years. I was amazed and terrified.
As I write this, I have to my right the official Imperial record on Mile Thales. Everything he told me has checked out. In the last entry, it says that he took a shuttle out from Exodus station, destination: Calypso. Contact with the shuttle was lost during landing, a rescue mission was launched but contact with that shuttle was also lost. No further attempts were made. His current Status: Missing, presumed dead. The date for this entry: three years ago. To my left, I have on my table, the old MD-40 finder given to me.
.
Entry 1
I have never written a journal entry before, but I must start now. I must record everything that has happened yesterday, as clearly as I can remember it, because it is the day when the world I knew was torn asunder. My mind is bursting with questions, and there is an unknown blaze, raging in my soul, driving me to search for answers, to find some way of forestalling the impending calamity. There are many things I don’t understand in all that was told to me, but I am certain there are clues that will prove vital. I must not miss anything. Now, how did it all start? Ah yes...
It was near high noon, I was prospecting in my favorite forest. Grand, majestic mountains can be seen on one side, and a deep, gently flowing river heard on the other. A light fog still hung beneath the canopy, and some dew left on the foliage got through my armor. It was peaceful and invigorating, that is, until the inexplicable happened. Lightning flickered over my prospecting display; it sizzled and popped as I let it fall to the ground. It was dead. As I looked up, thick fog was rolling in all around me and in a moment, I was swallowed. My radar, locator, and even helmet display, one by one their lights faded. My visor fogged up when the ventilator shut down, so I removed my helmet. The fog smelled of ozone, and was charged with electricity; all the hair on my face tingled. I wasn’t so much feeling scared as inconvenienced. After all, Calypso’s weather had only just begun to stabilize after Typhoon’s impact, and electromagnetic storms are far from rare. Still, I’d never heard of one strong enough to shut down heavily insulated armor electronics, nor one in the form of a fog.
With mindforce still mysteriously forceless, I resolved to just walk out of the fog. The source of moisture was likely the river, so confident in my sense of direction, I marched towards the mountains. Four hours by my reckoning later, I no longer recognized the trees I passed, I was lost; I blamed this on an audible buzzing in my head, it was as if I was intoxicated. Just as I was feeling the need to rest, I came upon an odd sight: A log cabin, sturdy but archaic, stood in front of me. The lights were on, and a moving shadow can be seen through the opaque window. From the flickering of the light, I could tell a very old oil lamp was being used. I knocked, and the door quickly swung open.
“A visitor!” An old man with young eyes beamed, and ushered me inside. After taking one look at my gear, he exclaimed “I guess you weren’t prepared for the EM fog either, ruined almost everything I had, even crashed my ship”. The interior of the cabin was sparsely furnished. The furniture consisted just of a table, stool, and bed, all crudely fashioned from wood. There was however paper posted everywhere: charts, maps, graphs, diagrams, and formulas, mostly handwritten, covering every available space on the walls. “I guess you’re wondering who I am and what I’m doing here.” He started without my prompting. “My name is Mile Thales, I’m a senior researcher commissioned by the government to discover where mindforce comes from. I left with everyone back when Typhoon hit, but there’s not much research that can be done on a crowded space station so I muscled myself a shuttle and some supplies, and came back down early. I guess I’ve been here almost a year now.”
He poured out two cups of water and passed one to me. I told him I was curious about why mindforce was disrupted and asked him what he knew. He beamed even wider than before, “well, it’s a long story, and I haven’t had company for a long time so I hope you’ll forgive me for being long winded. As you know, the fuel for most mindforce powers is mind essence. However, even without it or any power boosting implant, the earliest colonist discovered they could gather vibrant sweat from native creatures with just their mind. This vibrant sweat became the foundation of all future mindforce developments. However no one really knew the source of this newly found power, so people like me were hired to investigate. I started by looking at how the native creatures came into possession of the sweat we gather from them. I analyzed their diets and found nothing resembling sweat. I resorted to dissecting the animals, but none had any strange organ whose purpose is unknown, or could be attributed to producing sweat. Human biopsies also indicated nothing about human physiology has changed since our arrival from Earth. The research quickly hit a dead end, funding was cut, and I turned to mining for my livelihood.”
“This was when something amazing happened. As a prospector like you, I wanted to find as much as possible, so I kept detailed records on all of my finds. Over time, something entirely unexpected emerged. Oh, I'm not talking about which places had the most valuable ores, but rather something that became apparent from the time stamps on my claim records. What was amazing was not when I found deposits, but when I couldn’t. The time stamps indicated periodic, rhythmic, time gaps during which it was very difficult to find anything. I customized a radar sensor to detect whether something in Calypso was interfering with my ore sensor and then I found it. Calypso had a pulse! Steadily, EM waves burst out from Calypso’s inner core, and these waves disrupted sensitive mining sensors. That was how I first came to believe there was more to Calypso than just a rare, life supporting planet.”
He paused for a moment for a drink and to study my expression, then remarked “Most people I’ve told this to have a look of disbelief. It even took quite a lot of persuasion for me to convince the government to reinstate my funding. You, you’re different, you’re curious aren’t you? Well, if nothing else, if you apply what I’ve told you in mining, you’ll become a very successful prospector, but there is more to it. With renewed funding, I obtained better equipment and set up sensors all around Calypso. I was looking for the source of the EM waves, and with the help of some federal engineers, produced a computer projection of their origins.” He pointed to a map of Calypso with bold lines running through it. “What resulted was an amazing, gigantic, crisscrossing, vein-like system running deep beneath the surface. Even now, we don’t know what flows through it, but we do know it flows in bursts like blood being pumped by a heart, and those bursts are what generate the EM waves.”
He paused again, then sighed and continued. “At least, this was the case before Typhoon fell. The sensor grid I’d set up has been destroyed, so my information is sparse, but at least some changes have occurred. First, as I'm sure you noticed when you returned to Calypso, is that we can no longer control mindforce powers even with mind essence. Second, almost invisibly unless you knew how to look, is that the ‘pulse’ of Calypso has sped up. From an ecological point of view, Typhoon was devastating, but from a geological point of view, it was just a superficial wound to the upper crust of Calypso. Isn't it strange that humans lost the ability to manipulate mindforce, yet indigenous creatures have not? Animals and mutants that use mindforce to manipulate electricity or frost continue to do so unhindered. It could be nothing of course, but in the worst case scenario, what if the planet itself is the source of mindforce and is sentient? What if when we first arrived, it welcomed us and granted us new powers to strive in its harsh environment, but now it has decided that humanity is too destructive, and decided to revoke its gifts? We can survive without mindforce, but I fear what could happen if this planet ever saw us as enemies. I know it sounds far-stretched and speculative, but hey, I’m a scientist. I’m allowed to have wild ideas, so long as I manage to prove them. Also... it’s just that ever since I arrived, I’ve been having strange dreams... no, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
He started packing some supplies and weapons into a backpack, along with some notes off his wall. “I’m glad you came today, had you come tomorrow, you would have found just an empty cabin. There is a place I want to visit. It is on top of what appears to be a major nexus of those subterranean veins, I want to do some research there, and so I’ll be building a new cabin there and abandoning this one.” He stopped, holding an old MD class orefinder in his hands. “Here, take this. It is junk compared to the new finders out there today, but it’s one of the few electronics I have that didn’t fry from the EM fog. I’ll just requisition a new one with my next batch of supplies, one of the perks of working for the government” he grinned.
By this point, the buzzing in my head had grown more intense. I was fascinated with Thales’ research, and I had questions, but I couldn’t seem to focus enough to condense them into words. My vision was burring and I felt confused, though I did not know why. Thales just smiled and ushered me out, saying “you’re tired, the fog affected me like this too when I first encountered it. Get a good night’s sleep, and you’ll feel fine in the morning.” I noticed that the fog was receding, and the sun almost gone. He tapped my emergency transport and as he slowly faded from my view, said "I've still got work to do; it's been nice meeting you. When next we meet, I'll be sure to share my latest discoveries with you."
I barely managed to stagger back to my apartment. I was dizzy with exhaustion, and wanted nothing more than to collapse onto my bed. Soon, I slipped off into a deep sleep. Sometime during the night however, my slumber was interrupted by a chilling breeze. When I opened my eyes, I found myself resting on hard soil. It was dark, leaves rustled all around me. I was inside an unfriendly forest. I could feel hidden eyes fixated upon me, malevolent eyes. Slowly, quietly, I could feel the suffocating darkness, full of hatred and malice, advance closer and closer. Terror gripped my heart, I bolted up and ran. I ignored the burning in my legs and the heaving of my lungs, fear fueled my desperation. The eyes drew close; I could smell blood and putrid breath right behind me, when the pursuit suddenly ended. I saw light in front of me, the edge of the forest, a bright light. I was filled with joy, but as I broke through the foliage, it was replaced by awe and terror.
Instead of the sun, I was greeted by the flash of laser and flare of rockets. The vista lain out before me was not that of a battle, it was a bloodbath. At the edge of an unfamiliar city, colonists, beasts, and robots butchered each other with reckless abandon. There was no order to the slaughter, colonists huddled in small packs for protection, trying to blast everything coming close, but every once in a while a robot beam would find a mark and a body falls limp, or a blood-frenzied beast would get close enough to rend flesh. The robots were scattered but fearless, systematically firing away at anything alive. The beasts ferociously mauled whatever was closest, be it man or machine, for neither could withstand their razor-sharp claws and crushing jaws.
Out of the sky, I saw a glint off polished metal. That was my only warning before a gigantic pod impacted the battlefield. The concussion spread out like a shockwave, blasting all off their feet. For a brief moment, night returned and silence reined. Then the pod unfurled, eight thin legs extended, puncturing the ground. In the ensuing laser fire, the monstrosity was revealed. It was the child of death and steel; shaped like a spider, adorned in armor, and bristling with weapons, it was a dreadful sight to behold. Immediately, the large cannon on its back emitted a pitched whine, the agent of death braced and aimed. A beam of devastating power cut across the plains, the flash blinding and roar deafening. As the smoke cleared, I saw a barren ravine where its targets had been. It then began a slow march across the battlefield; any resistance was annihilated with overwhelming force.
The conclusion of the fight seemed decided, but the goddess of victory was not to smile this night. The ground beneath the spider split open and spilled upwards, and another giant emerged. As the dirt and dust settled, its form became distinct. It resembled an eomon, but its color was gray and thick, bony plates covered it like armor. Horns protruded from its head, large claws covered the front paws, and spikes decorated its back and tail. It was a creature not bred for the hunt, but for battle. It tackled the spider's legs; they looked thin in comparison and with the wail of sagging girders they crumpled beneath the weight. The eomon then proceed to claw and tear the thorax of the spider open, the screech of tearing metal and great thuds of falling pieces echoed across the battlefield.
Then, I heard the roar of engines and looked up. Five assault shuttles flew over me in wedge formation, and streaked towards the two behemoths, plasma cannons blazing. A great inferno rose up around the giants until both forms were lost beneath the flames. As the shuttles flew past and circled around for another run, the scene turned surreal. A booming explosion inside the inferno blew the fire apart and sent another shockwave across the battlefield. The spider, stripped of dorsal armor, had blown to pieces. The eomon however, was still alive. The intensive flames had charred it black, and it bore large, bloody holes in its plate armor. Around it, even the rocks were still burning, ignited by the plasma fire. It groaned with great agony, but still painstakingly turned to face the shuttles' next pass. With a great inhalation I could hear, it let loose a long screech that stopped my heart and froze the blood in my veins. It felt as if I was encased in ice. The fires around the eomon had all gone out, there was no more fighting, yet I could still see. Light danced in the sky where the cry of the eomon reached, and I understood. A terrible amount of mindforce was being used; a cold snap engulfed all that I could see. Machines, humans, and beasts were all frozen solid. With a great crackling, the shuttles, now little more than blocks of ice, crashed and broke apart.
As the screech ended, the light dimmed and started to fade, and then a dozen suns flared into being in front of me. It was bright, painfully, excruciatingly bright. I closed my eyes, yet I could still see. I covered them with my hands but still, in front of me, I saw the river turn to steam, the forest leveled like grass, and the city turn into a black silhouette. Then I saw only white.
My heart raced, cold sweat ran in drove down my face and neck; it was still dark outside. Was it a nightmare? It was so vivid and I could remember every detail. I began to reflect on everything Thales told me, and finally, I was able to put words to the confusion I felt then. There were many inconsistencies to that meeting. Why would a researcher live in a log cabin with no technology? Maybe it was necessary when he first crash-landed, but redevelopment has proceeded quickly over the past half year. He could have easily been granted a laboratory to work in, and he definitely wasn’t the type to hold back in asking for funding. It was as if he didn’t know reconstruction had taken place. It’s possible he lost all of his communication gear, and was completely out of touch for a year. But even if that was the case, why did he not ask for news from me? How could anyone be alone for a year, and yet have no interest in current events? In the end, all he did was share his theories with me.
I wanted answers, and I needed to rush to catch Thales before he left; I'd neglected to ask him where he was heading. It was early morning by the time I reached where the fog had overtaken me. Armored boot tracks are easy to follow, and I proceeded at a full run deeper into the forest. Half an hour later, I found myself at the cabin once again. Something wasn’t right. The cabin had noticeably decayed since yesterday, and there was a smell of mildew. The door was unlocked, so I entered. The stench of decay was much greater inside. The roof leaked, the papers left on the walls were mostly gone, and bugs have made a home of the wood; there was nothing that looked legible or usable. It was as if the cabin had been abandoned for years. I was amazed and terrified.
As I write this, I have to my right the official Imperial record on Mile Thales. Everything he told me has checked out. In the last entry, it says that he took a shuttle out from Exodus station, destination: Calypso. Contact with the shuttle was lost during landing, a rescue mission was launched but contact with that shuttle was also lost. No further attempts were made. His current Status: Missing, presumed dead. The date for this entry: three years ago. To my left, I have on my table, the old MD-40 finder given to me.
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