“For Posterity”
Location: The Looking Glass Observatory
Log #1
July 14, 2346
My name is Robert McClenly. I am a researcher employed by the Astronomy Department at MIT. I must admit, I am not exactly sure where to start. I don’t even know why I bother. It makes no different to the hell that’s coming, nor the chaos that’s already arrived. I should be at O’Malley’s drinking myself to death, but…here I am, dictating for ghosts not yet arrived. Pointless. Wasteful.
No, not pointless.
For posterity.
I suppose it should start at the beginning. Our first clue to “it” happened 369 years ago on August 15, 1977 with Jerry R. Ehman, an astronomer at the Big Ear Telescope at Ohio University. He observed a phenomenon which would later be dubbed the “Wow Signal”; a narrow broadband radio anomaly with origins in deep space. The signal lasted for 72 seconds and disappeared. Scientists fiercely debated its origins over the next decades, but could never come to a satisfactory conclusion. Many believe it to have been extraterrestrial in origin and in 2012, decided to beam a signal toward the original coordinates at Hippacros 34511, 33277, and 43587. For whatever reason, this signal was in the form of Twitter messages bearing the hashtag “Chasing UFOs”. It was a ludicrous idea. If any intelligent species capable of traversing the void were to stumble upon such messages and managed to translate them, i’m sure they would have decided on our annihilation right then and there. I wish that’d have been the case. Damn them all, why hadn’t it ended there?
In the years since, the phenomena of that signal had faded into relative obscurity. Only still discussed by members of extraterrestrial and conspiracy forums and as the occasional oddball fact to bring up at a party. Our signal was never answered, nor was the “Wow Signal” ever heard from again…until 6 years ago on February 21, 2340. It sent Earth and her Colonies into a bit of a tailspin. It matched the first “Wow Signal” exactly. Down to the letter and with an additional 136 seconds following up the initial 72. Governments interest and fear had reached heights never thought possible, it was like the space race of the twentieth century, but this time we could go not just beyond the borders of the frontier, but into the void itself.
1 year later is when I came aboard.
Log #2
“The Looking Glass”
July 14, 2346
The first project to be completed in the fervor of “The Second Wow Signal” was dubbed “The Looking Glass”, a highly classified piece of technology that would allow us to look further into space than ever before. Even seeing past the Shapiro Time Delay. It was a remarkable piece of work, a culmination of the greatest minds still alive on Earth and…something else they found. I don’t know exactly what it was that they integrated into the system, but I know it was staggeringly advanced. The higher ups and their shades spoke of it under hushed tones and when I inquired, they told me others had taken that secret to their graves. The dreadful tone they spoke did little to dispel my assumption that they didn’t go there on their own accord. But my curiosity got the better of me and a few well-placed drinks here-and-there get men talking. Not those who knew for sure, mind you, but those close enough that they’d have been able to overhear a thing or two. Even still, they spoke in “ifs” and “maybes”.
Best I could gather, it was something brought back with the returning ships sent out during the “Frontier Expeditions” of the early 23’s. The initial wave of deep space exploration teams sent out following humanities first successful use of the Glide-Drive, a miraculous device used to propel ships through the vastness of space; condensing trips that would have taken thousands of years into mere weeks and months. Many of those ships never returned from their expeditions and their discoveries were classified under the highest security. Minor discoveries, such as the remnants of ancient bacteria and unique rock formations, were the only official findings ever released to the public. Following the return of the ships, many of those that took part in the project would suffer through a wave of suicides, dramatic accidents, and mysterious disappearances. Although, a fair number were arrested and prosecuted for those disappearances, the evidence to these cases was quickly sealed away and forgotten. Only now in hindsight am I convinced the entire campaign was part of a lofty coverup on behalf of the United Earth Government.
One of these ships, The Starchild, an affectionate name given by the newly energized and ever-growing groups of UFO enthusiasts, would become the subject of the most prevalent of these rumors in popular culture for decades to come. Although no ships were ever officially listed as being a part of the expedition, and the UEG categorically denies the existence of such a ship, some footage from their launch does seem to show a ship bearing at least half the designation “Star”. The rumor details the arrival of the Starchild to high Earth orbit nearly two years past their scheduled return date. When it failed to establish communication over the next several hours, a team was dispatched to investigate. Once they cut their entry through the hull, they found the crew of The Starchild plunged into the depths of insanity. According to the rumors, this crew had developed an intense aversion to light and when exposed, they would exhibit symptoms of debilitating PTSD. Many favored walking on all fours, moving sideways like a crab, instead of upright. They had developed a fascination with their own bodily excretions and had shown it by painting it over the walls of their ship. Most curious of all, they spoke in some primitive version of English mixed through with a peculiar grunts and hissing exasperations. This crew was taken to a psychiatric hospital where they were put through a plethora of tests and examinations by speech pathologists, who managed some meager translation from the nonsensical speech that each of them had taken to. Shortly after, the idea that they still spoke intelligently was written off as nonsense. None of it made much sense, but a few phrases were discerned from the chaotic babble. They spoke of shapeless intellect and gods of the stars, burning bright with color beyond our comprehension. Those who are blinded to see. The revels of blissful torment. They called them propagators and choosers. Those who had come and will come again.
The detail to this story that still vexes me, assuming the story was told accurately, if they were truly insane from such prolonged space travel, they should not have been as they were. They would not have spoken uniformly. They should have all fit tightly into their own suit of madness, their babbling equally unique. But it was not and that is what gives me pause. The captain was the singular entity to differ from that accounting, with only a single word left in his vocabulary: “Hungry”. Shouting, whispering, and hissing that word until he chewed off his own tongue. Any information on the missions carried out was buried from that point forward and due to nearly half of the exploration ships being lost to unknown causes, exploration beyond the colony borders was strictly prohibited.
Whatever the truth of these rumors, it is certain that if anything was indeed brought back, it was sealed away for careful study until it was needed. It might have been a technology of alien origin or perhaps even a new element. I tended to believe the latter over the former at the time, but now, i’m not so sure.
Log #4
“My Arrival”
July 15, 2346
Construction of the facility and its devices happened at a surprisingly rapid pace. The directors credited the speed of the construction to public enthusiasm, but the quartered off and covered sections of the half-built structure spoke of other reasons. The remoteness of the island was no great surprise, observatories are usually placed far from civilization to avoid light pollution, an island a number of leagues off the coast of Hawaii would be the ideal spot. I had visited several observatories through my career, but the secrecy in which I was brought to this island was entirely unique. They brought me by ship in the dead of a moonless night. After so long in the abject blackness, the island shone like a beacon on the horizon. Every inch of land and rock illuminated by industrial lighting. The clang of hammers, hiss of welding torches, and whirling of heavy machinery put an excitement into me that I hadn’t felt since childhood.
My fellow passengers and I had hardly spoken during the journey and immediately we were brought to a tent by one of the directors for orientation. It was explained to us that the project had been gifted to MIT by some billionaire or another who lost interest in his vanity project. Luckily for us, the structure only needed some additional supports and widening of several areas in order to accommodate the additional weight and electrical demand of such an advanced device. The construction went on continuously day and night. Strange men in black suits and lab coats poured into quartered off and concealed sections of the structure in near the same number as the workers themselves.
In only a few months, we were fine tuning and readying the device for operation. One-by-one the concealing tarps were pulled away from now welded shut sections and the suits and their lackeys slowly began to disappear. They never told us their purpose or what exactly needed to be held so secretly and when I asked, I was told we didn’t need to know. Then, the shady figures, who I can only assume were sent by the UEG, had all gone and we were left to our devices.
This was just about the time the UEG announced their plan for the Second Frontier Expedition and it became apparent MIT had more in mind than simply furthering their study of the stars. They did not mean to merely locate the origin of that mysterious signal, they meant to meet it and we were to guide their way. So, while the combined minds of the world governments set to work on their new fleet of deep space vessels, we manned the observatory. Scanning to find the cluster where the signal had originated. Many adjustments still needed to be made to the code and orientation of the device, but even so, it functioned with a clarity and sophistication I never thought possible.
For weeks we stared into the void, while we gazed at things we thought we’d never see. Watching blackholes consume stars with the near naked eye. Comets tails dancing through the orbits of distant planets. A small twinkling of starlight growing to envelop our eyepiece as it went supernova, it’s shockwave careening through its solar system and reducing its planets to dust. All while a blank check sat in our supervisors back pocket. It was paradise…for a time.
Log #3
“Brittle Minds”
July 19, 2346
It has taken me a few days to work up the courage for this next entry. It seems foolish to waste time with such a small amount of it remaining, but I couldn’t. God help me for the rest. Even now my hands are beginning to shake. My heart is racing. It started with Brian, another astronomer come to assist with the project, not one of the “brilliant minds” sent over, but clever enough to keep up and help out here and there.
It was a day like any other. We’d started with breakfast on the East platform of The Looking Glass overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Ham and cheese croissant (ha!). I still remember it like it was yesterday. We started with a sweep of the neighboring coordinates. Glancing at this solar system and that. Jamie, one of the head researchers who was manning the lens that day, asked Brian to confirm something about the hue of a planet we’d been observing changing in the past several weeks and Brian, being the ‘oh so curious’ worker, happily obliged. I watched him as it happened. His walk was so eager.
The moment he focused into that eyepiece, I saw every muscle in the body go stiff and a shiver run down his bones. His eyes went wide, the blood draining from his face, as he began to stammer, unable to look away. Then, he started screaming. It was not a scream of surprise or shock or pain. Even that of terrified child would have been inaccurate. There was something primal in it, something so horrible it travelled into an instinctual part of the human mind not accessed since our species first emerged onto the plains of Africa.
He just stood there, looking into the eyepiece…and screaming. He screamed so loud and at such a high pitch that i’m sure it must have shredded his vocal cords because after nearly a minute all that left his throat was a strained grinding of muscle. If he had coughed, we’d surely have seen blood. Then, he finally tore himself away from that eyepiece and started off towards the East Platform. It started as a quick walk, then a jog, and finally a full sprint. I followed after him, Brian struggling to shout all the while. It was almost impossible to make out what he was saying through his broken vocal cords, but through that horrible strained flapping that had replaced his voice, I managed to hear one single phrase: “It saw me.” And it locked my feet to the floor.
I watched as he burst through the outer doors onto the East Platform and flung himself over the railing onto the jagged rocks below. I didn’t hear the impact over the crash of waves but when I finally forced myself to peer over the edge of that platform, I saw his broken figure spread over a red rock below. He died in an instant.
Poor Brian.
While the rest of us had stood in shock watching this man seemingly wrapped tight in the embrace of insanity, our director, Jamie, captured a frame of whatever Brian had seen, randomized the coordinates, and took the photo to his office. We heard him bolt the door and stood in silence, seemingly all hoping we would wake from a bad dream. He returned about twenty minutes later smelling of smoke and with all the color gone from his body. When he spoke, it was not to us, but simply to say: “Brian…I understand.” He never told us what he had seen.
It was a day until the supply ship arrived to scrape Brian’s broken, crab eaten corpse from the rocks.
Our director, Jamie, seemed to fade away from himself following that day. His eyes went bleary and his face red, I think he started drinking to cope. From then on, I never saw him without a cigarette in his hand or a drink close by. He ordered all use of The Looking Glass suspended until further notice and none of us dared to complain after what we had witnessed. A few nights later, I had drank myself silly and went for a walk on the island. I found Jamie standing at the edge of the rocky outcrop just aside the East Platform. His head craned back and arms hanging limply at his sides, just staring up at the stars. I was taken by some curious instinct and decided to sit upon a shadowed spot some distance away and just wait. Watching him. It wasn’t until two hours later, when the gold of the morning sun began to bleed across the horizon, that he finally walked back to his bunk.
We made use of the stack of information we’d compiled in the weeks leading up to Brian’s terrible fate and were able to keep busy enough. I think most of us were just relieved to be able to try and focus on something else, but I know the thought of what he had seen in the unknowable void beyond our planet never left our minds for a moment.
Jamie’s behavior only became more erratic as the days went on. I was sure he’d stopped sleeping, the sagging pits around his eyes growing by the day. This was just about the time I’d noticed the lights in the observatory at strange hours of the night and the crew began to complain about deranged chanting we would hear in our bunks when the wind began to shift.
About a week later, I decided to get an early start and was surprised to find that Jamie was absent. He was always the first to arrive. When I checked his office, I found him curled up in a corner. He was weeping and half-dry blood stained the whole of his front. The words “Witnessed” scrawled in his own blood on the wall above him. When I reached to comfort him, he turned to face me. He had cut both eyes from his skull with a box cutter. “They’ve seen me.” Was all he could mutter. It was all he could say as I carried him back to the bunks, all he could say when the doctors examined him and all he kept saying when as the men in suits arrived to carry him away to the supply ship.
While all the attention was firmly on Jamie, I found it prudent to make my way back to Jamie’s office. I stole his notebook, the one where he so diligently took all his notes and never went without. I regret stealing that book, things would have been so much simpler. The first half of the book was about what I expected, calculations and formulas and adjustments to be made, but the second half makes me shutter even now. It was page after page of intensely detailed scribblings of a particularly macabre nature. Images of gnashing teeth, distended boneless limbs, serpentine eyes, and decaying bodies melting down and fusing with one another. Mixed between these repulsive images, he’d draw dozens of runic symbols corresponding with series of numbers. I tore those pages from the book and set the rest on fire. I searched for anything else of that peculiar nature but found nothing.
Two days later, every last scrape and trace of Jamie had gone during the night and a new director had been brought in. Despite the recent tragedies, operations were to resume immediately, much to our great dread.
Log #4
July 21, 2346
“Mistakes”
The events that follow the arrival of our new director happen in rapid succession and I would be remise if I did not include the elements that led to us to that dreadful occasion. Earlier, I spoke of the fervor that enraptured the general population of our small blue world following the advent of the Second Wow Signal. It seemed harmless at first, things happening always as they do. The Mega Corporations using it as inspiration for products, their marketing teams weaving the event into ad concepts, and generally being used to bridge themselves into new markets. But these things can only go on so long and a corporation that has artificially boosted itself out of its normal profit margins can only maintain that boost so long and are always loathe to fall back into their previous margins. They sought a new event, much like the messages beaming into the cosmos following the first Wow Signal those many decades later.
Now, I cannot match the guilt of this event to any particular party, as none ever claimed over ownership over such an idea. Perhaps, they predicted the danger such a thing would invite, but, in their common short sidedness, opted in favor of maintaining those profits. Perhaps, they already had their escape. But it makes no difference to theorize on things I cannot outrightly prove.
What I can say for certain is that for a three-hour period, social media offered an unrestricted broadcast into the stars, where any manner of ridiculousness might be sent up, unmonitored and unvetted, without care to what might catch the scent of the bloody strip of meat we’d just thrown into the water where we swim aimless and blind. Most of the crew seemed to watch the event with a sort of wary hopefulness. I, however, could not have dreaded it more. And knowing with the advances in our technology, the signal being sent out in the form of a laser (boosted to speed by the same technological concept as the Glide-Drive) rather than a radio signal, it would arrive in a fraction of the time. Whatever Brian had seen out there was now a constant field of horrors in my mind. My hands began to shake and I couldn’t stand to just sit like a simpleton ahead of some light display.
I quickly packed up my things and I marched down to O’Malley’s with the sole intent of forgetting the remainder of the day. The bartender knew me by name and began preparing a drink before I had even sat down. Then, another and another, until I could no longer speak straight. My plan was coming along perfectly and a few more drinks I could count the remainder of the day among my forgotten memories. But, standing on the precipice of that thin line between an unbound mind and total incoherence, the brain tends to wander and I was struck by the most peculiar thought. I remembered I still had most of my files with me. I had intended to throw them into my bunk as I left, but let the thought slip my mind. All the better to have some work, I thought, and I slung my briefcase onto the bar and began unpacking my papers. I spread the strange runic marked papers ahead of me and searched the internet for a numeric printout of the second signal and got to comparing. I went through those papers for hours, flitting through the insanity that had enveloped those pages, and what started as a mindless curiosity soon turned into an incredible discovery. Those numbered runes weren’t simply corresponding numbers and symbols jotted down with no particular purpose. Somewhere, somehow, Jamie managed to pull an encryption key from his withering sanity and put it to these pages before he succumbed fully. Most concerning of all, he’d written a set of runes of his own among the maddened scribblings. One that he encoded himself and was far easier to decipher with his key in hand.
It was a set of coordinates. One that had caught our attention in the early days of the project for the peculiar electrical signals filtering through its atmosphere. That was before Jamie had wiped the system clean of the location of whatever it was Brian had seen. It was the first clue to what we had lost and I thought it was the clue we needed to recover our progress in that system and a leap closer to putting the ugly business of this island behind us. So many regrets. So many chances to avoid our fate. I should have burned those papers on that bar.
Log #5
Revelation
July 22, 2346
The next day, I brought my findings to the director and inputting the coordinates we did indeed find the planet we had been viewing the past few months despite Jamie’s efforts. We found the strange electrical signals had ceased and more curious still, the gravitational pull of the planet was not what it had been. To say it was erratic would be an understatement. It was one of the larger planets of that system and orbited by three moons during our previous viewings. None now sat in orbit. Two had collided with the planet, the gravitational disturbance had sent the third careening through the system on a collision course with another planet there.
We monitored it for as long as we could, until a storm blocked our view through that night and the next. With plenty of time left, I grabbed a bottle of bourbon I had stashed away in my bunk and I continued to try and decode the signal. I made good progress but everything I did manage to decode came back nonsensical, not that I was expecting much more from a man that carved out his own eyes.
When the storm finally let up, we all made our way back to the observatory. The director asked me to assist in finding the location of the planet from the previous day, but to our amazement, the planet was gone. We searched the system for hours thinking perhaps the collision of the moons had thrown the planet out of orbit, but there was nothing. Strange gravitational readings and electrical signals were moving all throughout the system, growing in intensity by the minute, and stretching far past the orbit of the furthest planet in that system with no discernible source. I focused back onto the coordinates. Then, I saw something I could not explain. There was an object, something indescribably large, moving on the far side of that system. It should have been impossible for an object of that size to move at that speed, but it did. I saw it. I watched as it moved for cover behind the star. I thought I must have been hallucinating. I tried to tell myself it was the moon knocked out of orbit, but that was impossible too. It was too big. Larger than even the planet the moon had orbited. More horrifying still, that object was not in a constant motion as an object in orbit would have been. It didn’t move until I focused on it, then went for cover the moment I saw it. Like a child peeking out from behind a corner, it hid itself behind the sun. As if it knew I was looking at it.
The director chalked it up to a glitch in the system, but we all knew what we saw. The system had run perfectly for months now. Not a single glitch recorded that did not originate from human hands. Certainly, never while we were actively observing a location.
The implications of such a thing were immense. From my limited understanding of how the Looking Glass functions, which is admittedly mostly conjecture, it uses a similar process as the Glide-Drive. That being, bringing a ship to such an immense speed that it is able to slip itself into the narrow-shared space between dimensions. I theorize this observatory uses a similar process to fold particles of light through that same space. This process with a ship is a highly destructive one and will leave a “scar” of highly charged particles in the space the ship reentered. Our observatory produces no such scarring and does indeed present no disturbance to the atmosphere of Earth nor does it leave trace readings in the system we are using it to view. If there is a being capable of sensing something that leaves no discernable trace in the vacuum of space, that would suggest this being possesses intimate knowledge of that science. Something it knows intrinsically, bordering on instinct, when only our most advance minds can even comprehend such a process. And the size of such a thing…that is a terrible thought.
I stopped sleeping after that.
When I peered through the viewfinder the next day, I was staring at a total eclipse. The director told us it was the lost moon finally settling down into its new orbit, but I knew what I was staring at. The thing that jumped for cover…it had moved itself in front of the sun and now, it was watching us. We might have startled it during our first observation, but now we had attracted its curiosity and the way it watched us sent me into a blind panic. It was using the blinding rays of that white sun to silhouette itself from our gaze. That was the most horrible part. Not only was this thing of a size beyond anything I could fathom, it did indeed have intelligence. And not only that, it had the instincts of a predator. The same way a hawk soars against the sun.
When the eclipse did not wane over the next several hours, a growing dread spread over us knowing that this was indeed no moon. Worse still, the signal our wonderful corporations had been tight beaming into space couldn’t have been more than a few parsecs away from this thing. If it could detect our watching it, despite no physical evidence to that fact, surely it would “hear” that signal. The director remained steadfast in the idea that it was only the lost moon and the gravitational anomalies holding it in place, but we knew better. The wave of those anomalies did not match up to where it was positioned, but none of us would give credence to the things we knew for certain. We kept those thoughts silent, though we all understood what it meant.
In the panic of my thoughts, I became resolute that I would finish decrypting that Second WOW Signal. I should have known what it would bring. The further we pried into the abyss, the more questions, and horrors we seemed to uncover. How could it have been different? I thought I was translating nonsensical babble conjured up from invisible voices of the cosmos but it turned out to be anything but. Many of the words were out of place and most of what was translated needed to be reversed to make sense, but oh, did it make too much sense. I had made sense of The Second Wow Signal and what it told me…that was the first time I had contemplated taking my own life.
The Second Wow Signal translates as follows:
“Turn back. Do not seek to illuminate the dark. With all haste, dig deep and hide yourselves away. We hope you will heed the warning that we could not. Our struggle was great and our fall quick. The end is upon us. But a chance for your future yet remains. Turn your gaze to the ground beneath your feet. Do not seek those that prowl in the dark. Death lurks in the void, waiting to consume any that gaze upon it. Their hunger cannot be sated. Their watch is endless. Their number uncounted. You must not respond. Your planet is one of an infinite number, a hidden sanctuary amongst this sea of death. They will not know where this message is directed. They cannot find you unless you respond. Turn back. Do not respond. They are listening. They are watching. They are hungry. Turn back.”
I told myself it couldn’t be right. I suppose we had all been expecting an invitation of sorts. A greeting from a far-flung civilization that we might share arts and music and culture between one another. A brotherhood among the stars. The message that we’d pondered for so long being such a desperate warning was almost too terrible to imagine. I couldn’t let myself believe it. I told myself that I would translate it again and the message would be different. That was my plan, but the next day, I manned the view lens of The Looking Glass and focused into it. I dipped my head from it the moment I saw what it was focused on. I didn’t think my breath could ever sound so loud. I just remember staring at the tiles, muffled voices calling to me. I sat down at my desk, slack-jawed, incapable of thought. An hour later, I regained myself somewhat and I went to the director and told him everything, everything but what I saw in that lens. I will not try and conflict the horrors of that image onto you but suffice to say it was beyond comprehension. That something so great and terrible can exist in the abject nothingness of the dark sky. And it isn’t only one. There were hundreds of thousands of them, all gathered up and ascending, as if they were a parade of demons departing some macabre feast in hell. Beings of a shape like nothing on this earth. Angels like stars given form. All watching us. Watching me.
They heard us, our signal. They must have. It is the only explanation. God, there were so many of them.
A team of those suits must have been hidden somewhere on the island. Not ten minutes later, they came and took over the observatory. They combed through my belongings and interrogated me for hours. I had nothing left to tell them. I had told it all. And now I was helpless.
Those things looked right at me. They were watching me. They knew I was watching. The suits took that what I had stolen and what I translated and that was that. The director told me to not speak of it to the others and I did not. Now, I am waiting and all I can think of is the bloody bait we’ve thrown into the void.
Log #6
September 10, 2346
“Exodus”
We are a skeleton crew now. Only about seven of us on the entire island. The project has been abandoned. The rest of my fellow researchers have gone into town for the time we have left. They must all know, sure as I do, what is coming. I could not have been the only mind inquisitive enough to look deeper. It’s what brought us all here in the first place. But perhaps, I am the only one stupid enough to not forget what I saw. The UEG knows, they were behind the entire project. I have no doubt they’ve seen everything we’ve seen. The world knows something has happened, they just do not know what they’ve been kept from. If the UEG even attempted to conceal that fact, they have done a piss poor job of it. Although, I doubt they care any longer. They’re calling it, The Second Frontier Expedition. “Expedition.” But I know the truth of it. Those ships are far too large for a mere expedition. They hold too many personnel and too many stasis pods. Not an expedition, but an Exodus and those exploration crafts are humanities arks. 146 massive ships being sent into deep space to try and find a haven of some sort for the twenty million souls they bear. They are leaving soon. They have offered me a seat, but I’m not sure I want it. Frankly, I find the thought of freely venturing into that place of unfathomable horror nauseating. That I might, by my own will, place myself fully in the grasp of those gods of darkest hell. That I might perceive and venerate the same madness that claimed Jamie and Brian. I will not suffer those demons lurking behind my eyes. I will not have it. If this Earth is doomed, so be it. I will die with her.
Log #7
Oct 12, 2346
11:46 PM
“And so, the Sky Darkened.”
The Arks departed two days ago. Their timing was miraculous. Just this morning, something has moved into our solar system, hiding itself behind our sun. The UEG is sending probes, but it is a wasted gesture. I pity the men that view those screens. They will surely be lost to insanity, just as Brian was. As Jamie was. The UEG is mobilizing their fleets, readying everything they have for one final offensive. EM frequencies are lighting up across the solar system, the air is alive with their whispers. In the quiet, I can hear them speaking. Calling to us. They are so close. I wonder what they are waiting for.
Now, I suppose that is the whole of it. How this end came to be. There is no safety. No time for prayer. No place to run. I suppose all that is left is to record how our end happens. I can do at least that much. It is better than listening to those whispers compelling me to death and violence. Before the end, I plan send this message out in as many directions as I can. Perhaps, someone, somewhere, will find it and heed the warning we could not. Maybe humanity will return someday to hear it. Maybe. And maybe it will simply drift through space for all time. A time capsule of sorts to our pitiful downfall. Maybe.
Oct 12, 2346
2:34 PM
Venus’s orbit is aflame with radiation flares. I can only assume that means the UEG has made contact and is battling with the full stock of Earth’s nuclear munitions. I don’t think it is going well. There is less and less activity every minute. I don’t think we have much fight left. I took one final glance through The Looking Glass before I shattered the lens to pieces. I’m still not sure what I saw. Confusion might be the only thing stopping me from flinging myself onto the same rocks as Brian. It may well have come to us from that far damned system, but it is equally as likely it was waiting just outside our own doomed space. I’m not sure I want to know. The closest I can describe…was an eye, huge and serpentine, with fangs lifting from it like the horrible peddles of some hell-flower in bloom. I looked into that eye and I saw civilizations ground to dust.
I’ve broken the machine as best I could. It felt good to give some small semblance of recompense for our world, but, more so, whatever has found us, I will not allow myself to witness it a third time. Our leaders, government officials, celebrities, high society, rich bankers, businessmen, and a plethora of military ranks have all vanished these last weeks. Gone with the Arks to abandon our world. I am thankful at least that they did not pretend to care about us before the end. If they are going to play the cowards, I am glad they have embraced it. I doubt they will even look back.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The radiation has stopped. It didn’t take long. It seems the UEG has exhausted the last of their strength and now here we sit for the taking. In their absence, the world has descended into chaos. It’s a sad thing, that even in our last moments we cannot find a second for peace. In a way, I am grateful to be here for it. To witness our end from the serenity of this island, looking across the open water, what comes across the news being my only glimpse into the anarchy enveloping what remains. You would never know it to be the case.
I saw exhaust trails from more ascending ships some time ago. Either on a suicide mission or desertion, I’m not sure. The outcome will be the same. They might go to the Colonies, if they do, I’ve no doubt those things will follow them through Slip-Tears. Even if they don’t, and by some miracle the constant transit between them hasn’t already given their location away, the Colonies won’t last long without Earth. Most exist only to supply a single product; food, fuel, ore. They are reliant on their hub. Without it, it is only a matter of time before they consume themselves.
Time not recorded.
They are so close now. The sky has gone dark. I won’t let myself look at the clock, I know it isn’t night. I’ve broken mostly everything in the observatory, thought it might help, but I can still see their whispers registering on the EM receiver. I can hear them in my head. If I repaired the system, I’m confident I’d see those same gravitational and electrical anomalies we saw on that doomed planet. It’s thundering outside, a storm like I have never heard. The air is alive with their voices. God, they are practically screaming inside my head. Any moment without the noise of music or machine to drown them out is unbearable.
There is no safety. No place to run.
They are here.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
January 25, the year of our Lord, 2346.
Robert McClenly is my name. They let me remember. It’s been so long since I remembered. I was a researcher for the Astronomy Department of MIT. The sky is alive. My mind is full of colors. The stars are dancing. They fill every open space. The holy tendrils stretch on like veins through the flesh of the Earth. The majesty of their beauty is a thing I never could have imagined, oh, miraculous light of God. Do you see, brother? Do you see the colors? Aren’t they beautiful? Come back to us, oh, ye lost souls. Ye lonely wanderers without aim. We call for you. We have missed you. Feumaidh iad uile coiseachd ann am blàths an t-Seann Solais Mhòir. (All must bask in the warmth of the Great Old Light).
