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Somewhere very far away, there is a beach. On that beach is a man in a space suit.
His suit is a poor choice for the environment. It is bulky, made from a thick and stiff material designed to armor him against pressures and hazards that do not exist where he stands. It has a large thruster pack on the back. The jets are useless in a gravity well, and its weight threatens to topple him backwards.
He does not walk so much as stagger. He lifts his feet like his boots were made of lead, yanking his foot up and hurling it forward like a cast stone. Despite the wide base of his boots, they sink a full inch and half into the sand on contact. Several times he nearly falls, and only barely recovers.
To his right is a mass of jagged rocks. Other than the beach, they are all there is to his little island. To his left is a dark and foamy sea. The water is vaguely purple where it laps at the shore but it takes only a few feet for it to become entirely black.
The sea goes to the horizon. The man has walked enough of the shore to know that it goes to the horizon in every other direction as well.
He moves with great urgency. The sun is already low on the horizon, and soon it will be dark. A wind whips across his path, moving in from the water. Then ahead, he sees what he is looking for.
There is an prefabricated shelter, set up at the water’s edge. It consists of six large aluminum cylinders, each two stories tall, as well as a hexagonal module in the center. The whole structure is the size of a large house. It has no windows, and only one door. Solar panels wrap around its exterior. Grime has accrued in the gaps between them.
A few hundred yards up the beach, a small spacecraft of some variety lies half-sunk into the sand. It is barely large enough to seat one. Its landing gear has vanished almost entirely into the sand, and its nose has begun to bury itself as well. It’s aerobraking tiles have cracked and fallen away. The glass canopy of its cockpit has shattered, and the cockpit itself has filled with stagnant water.
With a sudden burst of speed, he rushes to the structure’s entrance. The door in is on the second floor, at the top of a staircase cast out of a metal frame. When he yanks open the hatch, the salt and detrus accrued around the seal crack and then explode into powder. On the other side is an airlock. He steps inside and seals the door behind him. When it begins to cycle, he heaves deep breaths inside his suit. He is so exhausted that he falls back against the airlock wall, and it takes him several minutes to notice that the green light has lit to inform him he may remove his helmet.
Once inside, he looks around slowly. He is in a living room, or common space. It is full of couches and scattered chairs, and an exercise rack sits in the back. Screens integrated into the walls play relaxing images of nature. The air smells vaguely of mint. On each wall there is a walkway, leading out to the cylindrical pods. Four of them are open, and lead to small bedrooms. The fifth is blocked by a locked door. There are signs of damage to the lock. A welder has cut into it.
Someone lived here once. He sees clothes hung up over the exercise rack, and a tablet computer left on the little table. But no one has been here in some time.
He sits, and a machine emerges from a hatch in the floor. It is a little thing, no more than three feet tall, moulded from graphene and plastic. It says that its name is Fido, and that it is a synthetic artificial intelligence designed to maintain critical survival equipment during an emergency. The man’s hands shake as he drinks his tea, and he asks Fido what happened.
Fido hands him the tablet. He accesses the data stored inside, and an audio log begins to play. There is a woman’s voice inside: “Log entry begins. Hello,” she says. “My name is Jules.”
Log entry begins. Hello, my name is Jules. I am a physics PHD student from Carnegie Mellon, studying spontaneous tachyon wave formation in high-quantum pressure energy states. Which means I study faster than light travel. I am keeping this log because Fido, who is the AI for the habitat, tells me that it will help me remain calm and level headed in a crisis. He played this video on, uh… you know. Staying sane. Talking helps apparently. So does keeping a regular schedule. So I’m going to be recording one of these every week.
I was stranded here on March 3rd, 2132. That was six days ago. I was in the test vehicle we use for data gathering during experiments, and attempted a hyperspace jump of ten feet. We do that all the time. Micro-scale jumps are a good way to gather data on wave formation. It’s not a real ship. The only reason it even has a pilot’s seat is regulations saying that anything with a hyperdrive has to have a pilot, and a chair was cheaper than an AI.
So, yeah. I tried to jump ten feet in the spaceship equivalent of a moped and I ended up two miles over an alien planet in… fuck-all knows what part of the universe. The hyperdrive exploded too. Took out the entire power block.
I guess I’m pretty lucky that my story doesn't end with: “And then I fell two miles and hit the ground with a loud splat.” If I’d been in a normal ship, where the hyperdrive and the regular engine are snuggled together, that would probably have happened. But the test ship has the hyperdrive mounted in an isolated section to fit all the sensors.
So I screamed, like a bitch, and the autopilot took over. It brought us into a low hover and then politely told me we only had about an hour of fuel, so if I wanted to decide what we’re doing, that’d be peachy. It took me like twenty minutes to figure out how to actually operate the controls, but when I did, I picked up an emergency distress beacon more or less directly below us.
Which normally isn’t a great thing to fly towards, but since this planet seems to be 99% liquid and I wasn’t wearing a space suit, I kind of figured other people might help. The island is surrounded by wrecks. I’m 99% sure I saw the butt end of the Noble Star sticking out of a sandbar. If that’s true, this place might be responsible for every “mysterious disappearance” in hyperspace we’ve ever had.
The shelter belongs to the Augeria. She was a SpaceX pre-colonization cargo ship. Which for an emergency is about as good as things can be. It means she was carrying all the supplies and structures needed to establish a colony, but she only had a crew of five people. She was also designed for a water landing. Her hyperdrive module exploded too, and that ripped a hole in the hull, so she did sink in the end. But not until after her crew had evacuated most of the cargo and gotten this shelter set up on shore.
They’re not... here now.
It’s kind of a hell of a way to discover aliens are real, you know? Not, like, alien aliens. Fido showed me some pictures. It’s mostly lichen and kelp and little crabs or fish. But there’s alien life on this world! Living things that definitely didn’t come from earth. It’s…
Anyway, apparently some of the local life forms are aggressive predators. And of course, they have no fear of humans, so. The crew kept trying to explore the old wrecks. Looking for a way out. And now they’re gone.
Fido says to stay in the shelter. The emergency distress beacon still works. Eventually help will come. Or another ship will go down intact like the Augeria did. Then they’ll find me and we can try to get out of here.
The planet itself is… well. From the air I could see that it’s nearly entirely ocean. I don’t know if this is the only island on the entire planet, but it’s definitely the only island in a pretty big radius. The air pressure outside varies between 0.85 and 0.9 atmospheres and the temperature goes between -20C and 5C. So that’s definitely on the unpleasant side, but if I have to go outside in an emergency I won’t need a space suit.
I will need a breath mask though. Fido showed me a spectrographic analysis of the atmosphere. It shouldn't be poisonous on skin contact, but if I took one deep breath out there I’d be toast.
Pretty scary to think I sprinted from my ship to the habitat door holding my breath.
Oh, and the gravity is high too. 1.6G. It feels like something is yanking me down, or like a big animal is sitting on my torso when I sleep. I get tired a lot. Fido says I should focus on strength building exercises, but I couldn't do a single pullup when I was back home so I don’t have high hopes.
It’s funny though. Did you know there’s such a thing as a high-G bra? I didn’t. But some designer figured that that might come up and put the designs for it into the standard colony registry. Which is good! Because, you know. The girls were kind of doing a number on my back.
Fido is odd. He says he’s a true AI, not just an expert program or a machine learning engine. And I think that’s right. I turing-tested him for awhile, and he seems to have a consistent self-identity and the ability to generally reason about arbitrary situations. But he’s a bit of a savant. He sounds so intelligent and concise when he’s talking about survival or emergency procedures, but on any other topic he gets stuck quickly and acts like he has an IQ of 80.
I should probably read his documentation. He dumped his user guide onto my tablet after I got here, but I haven’t gotten around to it.
Still. He runs the shelter, and a few drones that come along with it. Only the top floor is habitable. The first floor is air recyclers, materials reclamators, and a full autofabricator. That means it can keep extracting healthy food and clean water from my waste pretty much forever. And it can even fabricate simple items. It’s intended for making replacement parts, but it could do other things.
I’m a little concerned about that. It can make new parts, but apparently it can’t do any big repairs. Pod #3 is sealed. Fido says the that the superstructure was impacted during the crash so it’s not air-tight and he hasn’t been able to fix it. I thought about maybe going out there and spot-welding a seal over the damage, but Pod #3 is on the water side, so maybe not. It’s not like I need a fifth bedroom.
So, uh… yeah! Sit tight. Wait for rescue! Just a little while of… exercise and watching old TV and drinking hot chocolate that’s reconstituted from my own piss. It’ll be pretty boring, but as disasters go, could be worse.
Log entry begins. Day fourteen. Not much to report. We had a storm last night. It was pretty scary. I could hear the waves hitting the side of the shelter. But, Fido says storms like that happen a lot, and the shelter is able to withstand them. And he was right. It didn’t even shake.
Didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I’m not dead, so. I’ll be less nervous next time.
Other than that, I thought that I might use the copious free time to actually work on my thesis. I had most of my research data on a storage drive in my pocket. But uh, you know. I’ve managed to avoid working on it so far!
Mostly, I’m up to season four of Hai Hai Hito Teppa Shi. All the entertainment in the habitat’s storage is pretty old, but it’s still good. My parents told me they loved this show when they were my age. Selesia is the best robot princess.
I thought I’d be used to the gravity by now, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I tried to do a pushup yesterday and fell flat on my face. Fido says I should start with the five pound weights and work my way up from there. I pointed out that in double-G, a five point weight is still only ten pounds. He looked at my arms and went: “Yes, that’s correct.”
I asked if he was making fun of me, and he replied that machines are incapable of irony or sarcasm. So that was pretty funny.
Log entry begins. Day twenty-one. I watched TV until my eyes bled. Metaphorically. Finished Hai Hai and both spinoff series. Decided to read a book. Fido advised me that I shouldn’t give up TV entirely. Apparently hearing human voices is good for me.
Christ, that’s depressing.
I was talking with Fido today about how long it might be until we’re rescued. The Augeria crashed over twenty-five years ago, but in that time, the habitat’s sensors recorded eight more ships going down: five robotic probes, an automated cargo transport, the Tesselector, and the Kitesfear. Both of those ships came down hard and sank immediately. No survivors.
If I was doing a simple calculation, I’d say that means one ship about every three years. But I was going through the logs and the rate of arrivals seems to be increasing. The first two probes were eight years apart, but all six other ships came down in the last nine years. That lines up pretty well with when the BSS switched standard hyperdrive protocol from high-energy wave inducers to low-energy resonance triggers.
If I’m right, this… place, however it works, is some time of remote resonance inducer. I have no idea how that would work even in theory, but if that’s true, then maybe the lower energy we go for hyperspace modules the more likely ships are to end up here. Or maybe every ship has an equal chance of getting pulled in per jump, and we’re just making a lot more hyperspace jumps than we used to since low-energy systems are cheaper.
Still, that means crashes should start coming more frequently. And this isn’t the age of rockets and chemical propellants. It’s only a matter of time until this place grabs a ship that was designed for a soft water landing. I could be out of here in a year or two, if I’m lucky.
Yeah.
Log entry begins. Day twenty-six.
God, I’m bored.
Spent the entire first half of the week going through all the closets and personal possessions in the empty bedrooms looking for something interesting. Total bust.
Spent the second half of the week recording a four hour podcast that nobody is ever going to hear criticizing the period dress in Roadster. You know, because I get that people were sexist back then, but putting that stuff on TV now is not okay. I asked Fido to edit it down, but he did a pretty bad job. The only videos he really understands are the safety training videos, so he edited it to sound and flow exactly like an emergency safety training video.
So, yeah. Not something I could upload even if I did have an audience. But it felt good to talk. I haven’t left these five rooms in a month. I’ve started alternating which one I sleep in because the first one started to smell like Jules-sweat.
I upgraded from the five pound to the ten pound weights though. So that’s good. Still nowhere near a pullup.
Log entry begins. Day thirty-six.
Bad day. I wrenched my back trying to do the high-G exercises. The pain wasn’t that bad, but I uh… I don’t know. I couldn’t deal with it. I pretty much fell apart. I screamed and curled up into a ball couldn’t stop crying. Fido brought me tea and painkillers.
I don’t really feel like doing this today.
Log entry begins. Day forty-two.
I decided to go outside today. Fido lost it. He didn’t get mad exactly, but the tone of his dialogue changed abruptly. Not, “Oh FYI there might be some monsters outside or whatever.” No, he got fucking direct. “If you go anywhere near the water, you will die.”
I blew up at him in return. Water’s so fucking dangerous why is the shelter built on the water’s edge? I shouldn’t. It’s not his fault. He’s not really self-aware like a human is. It’s like his name. He’s just like a dog. He really loves people and wants to keep them safe and do as he’s told. And I think I scared him.
I apologized. But I still feel like shit for yelling.
Not much to say about going outside. I didn’t go three steps from the front door. Just, strapped on the big bulky breath mask, got in the airlock, and stepped out onto the stair. It was so damn cold it didn’t even feel chilly, it just hurt. The air burned, and I felt pricks like getting jabbed with pins and needles all over my body.
The island isn’t much. A beach wrapped around some rocks. I didn’t see any of the alien life from the videos. Nothing moving on the beach, nothing in the water. It looked flat.
It did feel good to get outside though. I was able to stretch a bit.
Log entry begins. Day forty-nine.
I asked Fido if there was any warmer clothing in storage. He said, “None suitable for use,” and when I pressed him about exactly what that meant, he clammed up and wouldn’t answer.
Not gonna lie. Ha ha. That’s a little concerning. I read his documentation, and while he is theoretically capable of deception-by-omission it’s really not normal behavior. But my guess is it means: “Yes, but I’m going to lie to you about it because I don’t want you going outside where it’s dangerous.”
Yeah, that’s probably it. He’s really nice. He keeps suggesting new TV shows or books when I’m, you know.
I cried again yesterday. Maybe more than a little. And when I said I didn’t feel up to reading he offered to read the book to me. I know he’s just playing the audiobook recording, but it still felt nice.
I just…
I just realized I might be here a long time.
Log entry begins. Day fifty-seven.
First contact. If you don’t include all the people who got wrecked her before me, or all the ones who got eaten by space sea monsters, I’m the first human ever to meet an alien lifeform. It was a little patch of yellow lichen growing on a rock. Took a short walk outside and saw it on the way back.
Ever since it turned out faster than light travel is possible, people have wondered “where are all the aliens?” I always assumed they didn’t exist. Earth really is just rare in the cosmos. But this… kind of makes that seem like bullshit. One little island in all the universe that sucks away ships to their doom? And on a planet with life?
Yeah that doesn’t… that doesn’t seem natural. Maybe I’m in a giant alien space pit trap. Walk on it the wrong way and fall into the pit.
I thought for awhile today, what if the aliens are watching us? What if this is all some big experiment? What if Fido isn’t really Fido? He’s just the… tender-to-animals. I don’t fucking now.
Dammit. Dammit I’m going to fucking cry again.
Log entry begins. Day sixty-three.
New low. Asked Fido to talk dirty to me. When he completely screwed that up, I gave him some smut from the habitat’s computer and told him to read the dialogue parts aloud.
He was so nice and empathetic about the whole thing. It would have been less fucking embarrassing if he’d actually called me a whore.
Um… log entry begins. Day uh… seventy. Two. Seventy two.
I, uh...
I, just. Fuck.
Fuck.
I decided to go outside again. And I was exploring the rocks. And I saw something move. And it was this little crab thing. With four legs and a big eye. And I thought… I… I don’t fucking know what I thought. I just leaned down to get a closer look at it.
And it just… it reared up. It reared up. And, and it jumped up. It jumped right at me. So fast. And I remember it latching onto the breath mask and punching right through it with one of its talons. And it was…
It clawed at me.
Then I woke up back in the shelter. In bed. Not a scratch on me. Fido said that I’m suffering from hallucinations. That my breath mask is… is old. And the seal isn’t perfect. So I inhaled some the atmosphere, and I started to trip balls. He showed me a video of a few of his drones dragging my unconscious body back in the habitat front door.
But I swear to God it felt so real.
And… and there’s other things. Things about the shelter that don’t seem right. There’s this stripe along the wall? This stripe. I don’t know. It’s part of the corporate SpaceX color scheme or something. Make it so the interior walls aren’t just slate grey. It’s blue. But before it was green. Fido keeps showing me old pictures where it’s blue, but I know it was green.
And, other other things. The layout of the furniture in the living room is different. And my clothes don’t fit. My shirt is way too small, my top is too large, my pants barely come up to my shins. Fido says that the toxins in my blood are distorting my sense of size. He has me on an oxygen mask and drinking twelve cups of water a day.
The only reason I’m even recording this log is he keeps telling me it’s important. He says that in a crisis, it is often unclear what is real, and if you’re not careful your panic will start to do your thinking for you. In a bad situation, the most important thing is to keep a rational, level head.
And you know, now that I say that out loud that’s pretty good advice. Just because aliens are real doesn’t mean all the other crazy conspiracy theory shit in my head is also real.
I should lie down.
Log entry begins. Day seventy-three. Addendum to previous log.
Slept for fourteen hours. Felt groggy when I woke up but otherwise fine. My clothes are the correct size now. The furniture layout in the living room still feels wrong, but it feels less wrong. That stripe on the wall is still the wrong color, but overall I feel way better. Not one-hundred percent but I’m prepared to say Fido called this one right.
Too bad. Being immortal might be nice.
Log entry begins. Day eighty-one.
It’s my birthday! I totally forgot. Fido dyed one of the meal-cakes pink and put a tiny little wick in it and called it a cake. I gave him a hug and told him he was special to me. He says I’m special to him too.
You’d think today would be a crying day. But I actually took it pretty well. We spent the whole day learning how to play Gateway together. And I even edited some of the comments on my thesis Professor Shi left in the last revision.
Log entry begins. Day ninety-two.
I went outside today. And I double and triple-checked the seal on my breath mask. And I put another layer of tape around where the seal meets my skin. And just to be safe, I took a hammer out of the tool closet. All I wanted to do was stretch my legs and avoid claustrophobia. But there it was!
Up the beach. A little four-legged crab thing. Watching me. With two big pincers on its front. And they have a hard, armored point because it actually uses them as punching weapons. Like a pistol shrimp. I should have turned around and gone back inside.
But I didn’t. I had a hammer, right? I decided to step up and beat it to death. I thought… I don’t know. I thought it would help me sleep better. So I walk up to the thing, and swing at it good and hard. And it darts right under the swing and latches onto my leg.
Then it punches me with those pincers. Punches me so hard it goes right through my leg and…
You know, I’m pretty certain it punched right through my bones. So I go down. And it swarms over me. And then there’s another one And three. Then a swarm. And they’re clawing all over me.
And then I woke up back in the shelter.
That green stripe? The one that’s supposed to be red? Now it’s blue. The numbering of the pods is different too. I remember that Pod #5 is the one that’s closed, but now it’s Pod #3. And...
When I showed up. I was wearing jeans. The only pair of jeans on this entire planet. Now there are no jeans in my closet. Just SpaceX branded standard-size pants. So I asked Fido where my jeans went. He really sucks at lying. And when I caught him, he just said the same thing.
“Please don’t go outside. If you go near the water, you’ll die.”
And you know? He’s… he’s right.
I gave him a hug and told him I was sorry.
Log entry begins. Day one hundred.
Happy anniversary.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and five.
Stayed inside this week. I watched all of Re: Configuration. Then I rewatched Hai Hai Hito Teppa Shi. The shelter isn’t the only thing that’s changed. A lot of little things are different in the media content too. I listened to my analysis of it before, and it doesn’t fit the show at all. Princess Selesia isn’t a misunderstood hero, she’s a selfish bitch.
I think this is an experiment of some kind. Aliens, or something. I don’t think Fido is in on it. I think he’s just what he seems to be. But he is a computer. I’m sure they could make him forget things that don’t fit the narrative.
Whoever they are. I feel like I should be having nightmares about all this. Particularly the crabs. But I’m not.
I am up to the forty pound weight though, so that’s good!
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and fourteen.
I, ah…
I did something I shouldn’t have today.
I asked Fido again if there were any clothes that would make traveling outside easier. And again, he evaded the question. Like before. So I pulled out a knife from the hardware collection, and told him that he he didn’t give me a straight answer, I would kill myself.
And he uh…
He screamed. This raw animal… terror, I guess. He swore he’d tell me everything and begged me to put down the knife.
They’re wetsuits. He has a box of wetsuits and rebreathers out in the storage container, plus a ton of flotation equipment and inflatable cargo rafts. He says this is how the crew got the habitant and the rest of the Augeria’s cargo to shore. The ship was designed to land in the water so all its cargo containers are fitted with instant-inflate lifters.
I demanded to know why he didn’t tell me. He repeated what he said back in the beginning: that the crew of the Augeria went diving in the wrecks, looking for supplies or clues about where they were. The first few dives went okay, but in the end, none of them survived.
I was angry. Shouting. I demanded to know if what’s happening to me happened to them. Did they come back from the dead too? He got evasive, so I got madder. Why is he trying so hard to keep me from exploring? I said something like, “Because I’m pretty sure I’m immortal!”
And he shot back: “Everyone is immortal right up until they’re not. And if you try to do what they did one day you’re going to walk into the ocean and never come back.”
That slapped some sense into me.
I don’t…
I don’t know what’s going on. But I don't’ think he means me any harm. I think he’s an AI that’s designed to keep the occupants of this shelter alive until rescue can arrive. And these are very unusual circumstances, so he’s behaving a little unusually. But the way he talked today really made me feel like he’d be sad if I died.
Everyone at home thinks I’m dead already. They’ve already had a funeral. Grieved, moved on. Mom and Dad have done… whatever they want to do with my room. Sarah has found a new roommate. Right now, if I actually got ripped apart by an alien crab, Fido is the only one who would know or care.
I’m still going out. But I can watch a few more TV episodes first. He’ll like that.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and sixteen.
Fido refused to give me the suits until I finish watching the dive safety training videos and pass the written certification exam.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and twenty-five.
Took the certification exam. Got 96%, which Fido says is a failing grade. He won’t give me the rebreathers until I get a perfect score. I can see what he’s doing, but I’m not sure he’s wrong, so I’m going along with it. Took a break by watching all of Yesli vy Chitayete Eto. It’s funny. And trying way too hard to insist it’s actual Russian TV instead of the faux stuff.
I am getting better at this though. I think I’ll pass next time.
If you’re a rescue ship listening to this and there’s no log entry after this one, you can put two and two together.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty.
First dive. Didn’t go anywhere, just about a hundred meters out and back. I stepped into the ocean, waded out until the water was up to my hips, and dove in. There’s so much silt and particulate matter in the water that visibility was limited to about ten feet. The silt level drops once I’m more than twenty feet down, but by that point so little light has filtered through it’s pitch black. The crew of the Augeria must have encountered this problem. I’m betting they have dive-lights or something and Fido isn’t telling me because he hopes I’ll give up.
Still. I went out, I swam around, I came back. I didn’t get my face ripped off by a space crab. Good start.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-five.
First real dive. Fuck that was terrifying! But I didn’t die! So that’s two for two.
I was right about the dive lights. Got one hooked up and decided to go investigate that ship whose ass-end is sticking out of the sandbar. I was right. It’s the Noble Star. The UN logo is still barely visible on the side under all the kelp growing over it. I briefly entertained the notion of survivors, or that maybe the crew auto-revived like I do. But that ship was never designed to enter an atmosphere. It fell like a stone. And I found skeletons in what was left of the crew section.
Funny that the inventor of the hyperdrive ended up here. I guess it should be a cruel irony, or like I should say it bitterly, but mostly it feels sad. Rest in peace, Doctor Zhao.
The ocean here is different than I thought. At first, it seemed barren. I didn’t see anything growing it it other than kelp and scrubby lichen. But once I got far enough below the silt later, the biodiversity shot through the roof. It’s like a coral reef. There’s all these… plants growing on everything. A million colors and in all these weird and wavy shapes. And there’s animals too. A lot of jellyfish, but also tentacled swimmers a bit like octopus, and I swear I saw a fish with a tail it whips in a circle like a propellor.
And a lot of them glow! Which makes sense, with how dark it is down there. But damn it was pretty to see. A few of the big fish passed near me and I spooked, but they didn’t take much interest. It looks like this environment isn’t as omnicidal as advertised. It has some predators, but it’s not all-consumingly murderous.
I’m going to go back tomorrow. To the Augeria this time. I want to see if any more of the cargo might be salvageable.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-six.
I died this time. I got near the Augeria and saw a school of cute little fish swimming around near the cargo door. Every other school of fish I’ve run into in these waters has bolted whenever I got near them, and I needed to get in the cargo door, so I swam towards them and figured they’d run away.
They didn’t. They’re more like piranha. Ripped me to shreds. I have no idea how long it took. I mean, with the pain, it felt like awhile. But I think it was actually pretty quick.
The stripe on the wall changed color again. The layout of the bedroom is different too. And my clothes don’t fit again. This time, Fido didn’t even bother trying to fucking lie to me. He just begged me to stay inside and kept repeating that if I go near the water I’ll die.
And you know, he’s not wrong. And it hurt. A lot. But that’s fine. I’ve just got to fucking deal with this and try again.
Now he’s sulking. He sent his drones back into storage and refuses to talk to me.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-seven.
Those fish are still there. I thought I could avoid them by swimming around to the opposite side of the Augeria. I could not.
I should be more traumatized by this than I am. It was blinding. Even the crab didn’t hurt as much as all those little teeth. I should be having uncontrollable nightmares. I should be shaking in bed. I don’t know why I’m not.
I’m going to try a different wreck tomorrow.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and forty-five.
Finding another wreck took longer than I thought. There’s a lot of empty sea-floor down there to search, and wrecks that were obvious from the air are nearly invisible from the water. I finally found an automated cargo ship that’s only a few dozen feet below the surface. The name on the side is in chinese, and my tablet says it means Shining Endeavour. I’ve never heard of it.
It was totaled, but I did manage to get into the cargo compartment. I even found a crate that seemed to have a water-tight seal.
Turns out, “seemed” was the operative word. Four hours of effort to get the flotation harness attached, and I am now the proud owner of a cargo container full of unidentified mush. Fido thinks it used to be ration packs.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and fifty-four.
First contact. Actual, real, no-bullshit first contact. And not with fucking lichen. There are alien wrecks around this island. There are ships that humans didn’t build. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are ships here older than humanity.
I was diving deep on the islands north side. There’s a drop there. Not quite a chasm, but the sea floor sinks at maybe a negative-seventy degree angle for awhile. I figured that if a ship landed there, it would be invisible from the surface, so that might be a good place to start.
With only my dive light, visibility was limited to about thirty feet, so it was a slow search. But eventually, I see that there are bioluminescent plants above me and decide to swim up and see what that’s about. It takes me awhile to get it, but there’s this corroding metal superstructure hanging off the rock formation. I just couldn’t see it because the gaps between the beams is bigger than the range of my dive light. The ship is huge. Gotta be half a mile long.
I spent awhile exploring. I was just about hyperventilating for most of it. By that point it was pretty obvious humans didn’t make this thing. The front end of the ship is totaled, and nothing is left but the frame. But as I moved further back, more of it was intact. I saw what I think are hexagonal cargo containers, or maybe modular sections of the hull. And most of the engine is still there!
I tried to go further back, but that’s when the giger counter in my rebreather started to freak out. I did the math real quick, and decided I could stand a five minute closer look. There are windows along the side of the engine module, and through them, I saw skeletons. These… I think they were heads. And maybe some kind of outer chitinous layer? I don’t really know what goes to what. The sections behind the windows were still sealed, but the bodies were not in very good shape. It was like looking at a dead bug.
Christ.
I did the math after I got back to the shelter. The radiation sensor inside the rebreather is pretty sure the source of the hard radiation is plutonium. If we assume that the aliens refine plutonium for reactors to the same level we do, that ship has been there for nearly half a million years.
I wonder why the bodies haven’t decayed into dust. Maybe they have? Maybe the aliens used cybernetic implants like we do, and what I’m looking at is their artificial parts?
I’ve got to go back there tomorrow.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and sixty-five.
A lot more dives this week. I’ve cataloged nearly two-dozen wrecks that seem to be of non-human origin. And get this: two of them still have power. Two of them still have fucking power! They have intact hull sections where the lights are still on. Nothing is moving and I haven’t found a way to get inside, but the technology still fucking works!
No bullshit this could be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity. One of those wrecks could even be the reason all the other wrecks are here! Some kind of… hyperspace quicksand effect.
Deep dives continue to be a death trap. Severed airline, stinging coral, and one case of the bends because I was an idiot. Also, I think I have discovered the worst creature in the entire universe. I ran into it on the way back two days ago. It looks like the love child of a wasp, a scorpion, and an octopus, and its temperament compares unfavorably to satan. It didn’t even eat me. It just killed me. Snapped me clean in half with its pincers and them swam away as it all went slowly dark.
The interior of the shelter changes every time I come back. Now the whole thing is this weird grey, and there’s a blue stripe around the outside. It’s too damn hot, and the layout is stuffy and claustrophobic. My clothes are the right size this time, but the material is different. They itch like hell.
Fido fixes it every time though. And what with the horrible gruesome deaths, I don’t feel like going out again today. Alien discovery can wait. I’m taking a break. Think I’ll stay in with ration bars and The Great Dictator.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and seventy-five.
Finally decided to go out and explore again Monday. I think something about the local currents has changed. The water is warmer now than it was last week, and it isn’t as hard to push against the tides.
I decided to spend the week cataloging all the wrecks that still have power. I’ve started taking detailed notes of every one. I’m going to have to teach myself a lot of engineering theory if I’m going to figure this out. But I got time. And I made a friend! One of the little octopus like swimmers came up to me and latched onto my arm, and in a shocking twist, it wasn’t so he could murder me.
I fed him a protein bar and he followed me around for awhile.
There’s so much down here. So much lost history and technology. I could spend a lifetime studying it all.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and ninety-one
I found out what’s going on. Everything that’s going on. Here and with the wreck and… and the shelter.
I have webbed hands.
And as far as I can remember, I’ve always had webbed hands. Because I’m human, and humans have webbed hands. The webbing goes up to the first finger joint, and there isn’t any at all between the trigger finger and thumb. I remember that. Just like I remember that a balmy spring day is usually about -5C.
But then Fido asked me if there’s ice on the ground during a balmy spring day. And I…
I died out on the reef. It wasn’t even a predator. I got my ankle trapped inside a piece of coral growing on one of the wrecks. I couldn’t get out no matter how hard I tried, and I didn’t feel like waiting until my oxygen ran out, so I just cut my throat. Then I woke up in the shelter.
The air felt swelteringly hot. The whole shelter stank. And Fido wouldn’t stop screaming. He gets upset when I go out, yeah. That’s normal. But this was different. He was flipping out, and he actually tried to physically block me from the door. I didn’t understand why.
So he played a video of my arrival. And it’s this… this weird woman. Her face looks a little like mine, but she’s smaller than me. And she keeps her hair long, when I know I always buzz mine short. I’m pretty boyish, but she’s pretty top-heavy. And she runs weird on the beach, like she’s carrying a ton of weight.
I didn’t believe it. I said he doctored the video. But then he had questions. Questions like if there’s ice on the ground in spring. Or what weight I started at for my exercise routine. The logs say five pounds. My logs say five pounds. But that can’t be right because I remember doing a one-handed pullup just fine.
I put it all together pretty fast. I pushed him out of the way and got into the airlock, and threw on my breath mask as it cycled. Outside felt nice. Not quite balmy, but pleasant.
And that’s the thing. If the shelter reeked, the air in the breath mask was even worse. It made my eyes water.
So I took it off. And that felt nice too. The air tastes like salt.
I don’t think I can breathe underwater yet, but you know, I didn’t check.
When I went back inside, Fido was there. I told him we were done with this bullshit. He was going to tell me everything, right now, or else. He evaded, and I was about ready to start punching drones until he got the point.
Then I remembered. The extra pod. The one with the “failed seal” that left it open the outside air.
I thought…
I thought that that was it. That he’d put the Augeria’s surviving crew into the spare pod, and then locked them in. Because they weren’t human anymore, so they didn’t count. I thought it was a killer robot and had murdered them. Just like he was going to let me mutate so he could murder me next. So I ignored his screaming and begging me to stop, and I cut the lock off the door to Pod #3.
It’s a bedroom, just like the others. And there’s a man in the bed. Fido says he was the pilot, and that his name was Ryan Mallard.
They all went exploring the wrecks. They all found that they couldn’t die, just like me. Whenever they did, they’d wash up on shore, unconscious but alive. Fido would drag them back to the shelter and take care of them until they woke up. Fido played videos of his drones dragging my body back to the shelter. But the more they died, they stranger they all became.
It started with little things. Gaps in memory. Changes in previously long-held opinions. Bizzare beliefs and statements. Then small mutations. Like how I ended up flat chested. Ryan’s eyes turned from green to blue. The Captain’s skin tone changed from heart-of-africa black to something more like a splotchy tan.
Then, large mutations. Like webbed hands. Or the ability to breathe the atmosphere. Or natural echolocation. The changes were always beneficial. And they were cumulative.
They did a lot of tests on themselves. Fido administered them. Intelligence tests mostly. They wanted to see if they were turning into beasts, but there was no indication the changes were making them any less intelligent. They were different, but it wasn’t clear that they were worse.
So they decided to keep going, and see if they could find anything. Perhaps one of the alien wrecks held technological secrets they could uncover, or perhaps they could discover the mechanism that causes ships to keep crashing here. Maybe there was a way home. They accepted the danger.
Ryan was the only holdout. He’d come back with gills after his last trip. And when he saw them, he refused to set foot in the ocean ever again. He never even left the shelter.
And so the others kept exploring. And as they explored, they became more suited to their environment. They swam faster, saw further, thought quicker. Once they all had the power to breathe underwater, they came back to the shelter only when one of them died and they had to revive him. But as time went on, they died less often.
Until eventually, they all walked into the water and never came back.
Ryan died about twenty years later. Heart attack in his sleep. Fido’s been keeping the body in good condition ever since, so that when rescue finally arrives they can bury him. Drying it out. He’s pretty much mummified now.
Fido says he hid the information from me because the last time a group of humans was allowed to make this choice for themselves, they chose wrong. And he didn’t even really lie to me. It’s just the way he said.
And now he tells me we need to stay here and await rescue. He’ll adjust the interior temperature so it’s comfortable for me. We can find all the gaps in my memory and fill them back in, one at a time.
Or I could go outside.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to fucking do.
His suit is a poor choice for the environment. It is bulky, made from a thick and stiff material designed to armor him against pressures and hazards that do not exist where he stands. It has a large thruster pack on the back. The jets are useless in a gravity well, and its weight threatens to topple him backwards.
He does not walk so much as stagger. He lifts his feet like his boots were made of lead, yanking his foot up and hurling it forward like a cast stone. Despite the wide base of his boots, they sink a full inch and half into the sand on contact. Several times he nearly falls, and only barely recovers.
To his right is a mass of jagged rocks. Other than the beach, they are all there is to his little island. To his left is a dark and foamy sea. The water is vaguely purple where it laps at the shore but it takes only a few feet for it to become entirely black.
The sea goes to the horizon. The man has walked enough of the shore to know that it goes to the horizon in every other direction as well.
He moves with great urgency. The sun is already low on the horizon, and soon it will be dark. A wind whips across his path, moving in from the water. Then ahead, he sees what he is looking for.
There is an prefabricated shelter, set up at the water’s edge. It consists of six large aluminum cylinders, each two stories tall, as well as a hexagonal module in the center. The whole structure is the size of a large house. It has no windows, and only one door. Solar panels wrap around its exterior. Grime has accrued in the gaps between them.
A few hundred yards up the beach, a small spacecraft of some variety lies half-sunk into the sand. It is barely large enough to seat one. Its landing gear has vanished almost entirely into the sand, and its nose has begun to bury itself as well. It’s aerobraking tiles have cracked and fallen away. The glass canopy of its cockpit has shattered, and the cockpit itself has filled with stagnant water.
With a sudden burst of speed, he rushes to the structure’s entrance. The door in is on the second floor, at the top of a staircase cast out of a metal frame. When he yanks open the hatch, the salt and detrus accrued around the seal crack and then explode into powder. On the other side is an airlock. He steps inside and seals the door behind him. When it begins to cycle, he heaves deep breaths inside his suit. He is so exhausted that he falls back against the airlock wall, and it takes him several minutes to notice that the green light has lit to inform him he may remove his helmet.
Once inside, he looks around slowly. He is in a living room, or common space. It is full of couches and scattered chairs, and an exercise rack sits in the back. Screens integrated into the walls play relaxing images of nature. The air smells vaguely of mint. On each wall there is a walkway, leading out to the cylindrical pods. Four of them are open, and lead to small bedrooms. The fifth is blocked by a locked door. There are signs of damage to the lock. A welder has cut into it.
Someone lived here once. He sees clothes hung up over the exercise rack, and a tablet computer left on the little table. But no one has been here in some time.
He sits, and a machine emerges from a hatch in the floor. It is a little thing, no more than three feet tall, moulded from graphene and plastic. It says that its name is Fido, and that it is a synthetic artificial intelligence designed to maintain critical survival equipment during an emergency. The man’s hands shake as he drinks his tea, and he asks Fido what happened.
Fido hands him the tablet. He accesses the data stored inside, and an audio log begins to play. There is a woman’s voice inside: “Log entry begins. Hello,” she says. “My name is Jules.”
Log entry begins. Hello, my name is Jules. I am a physics PHD student from Carnegie Mellon, studying spontaneous tachyon wave formation in high-quantum pressure energy states. Which means I study faster than light travel. I am keeping this log because Fido, who is the AI for the habitat, tells me that it will help me remain calm and level headed in a crisis. He played this video on, uh… you know. Staying sane. Talking helps apparently. So does keeping a regular schedule. So I’m going to be recording one of these every week.
I was stranded here on March 3rd, 2132. That was six days ago. I was in the test vehicle we use for data gathering during experiments, and attempted a hyperspace jump of ten feet. We do that all the time. Micro-scale jumps are a good way to gather data on wave formation. It’s not a real ship. The only reason it even has a pilot’s seat is regulations saying that anything with a hyperdrive has to have a pilot, and a chair was cheaper than an AI.
So, yeah. I tried to jump ten feet in the spaceship equivalent of a moped and I ended up two miles over an alien planet in… fuck-all knows what part of the universe. The hyperdrive exploded too. Took out the entire power block.
I guess I’m pretty lucky that my story doesn't end with: “And then I fell two miles and hit the ground with a loud splat.” If I’d been in a normal ship, where the hyperdrive and the regular engine are snuggled together, that would probably have happened. But the test ship has the hyperdrive mounted in an isolated section to fit all the sensors.
So I screamed, like a bitch, and the autopilot took over. It brought us into a low hover and then politely told me we only had about an hour of fuel, so if I wanted to decide what we’re doing, that’d be peachy. It took me like twenty minutes to figure out how to actually operate the controls, but when I did, I picked up an emergency distress beacon more or less directly below us.
Which normally isn’t a great thing to fly towards, but since this planet seems to be 99% liquid and I wasn’t wearing a space suit, I kind of figured other people might help. The island is surrounded by wrecks. I’m 99% sure I saw the butt end of the Noble Star sticking out of a sandbar. If that’s true, this place might be responsible for every “mysterious disappearance” in hyperspace we’ve ever had.
The shelter belongs to the Augeria. She was a SpaceX pre-colonization cargo ship. Which for an emergency is about as good as things can be. It means she was carrying all the supplies and structures needed to establish a colony, but she only had a crew of five people. She was also designed for a water landing. Her hyperdrive module exploded too, and that ripped a hole in the hull, so she did sink in the end. But not until after her crew had evacuated most of the cargo and gotten this shelter set up on shore.
They’re not... here now.
It’s kind of a hell of a way to discover aliens are real, you know? Not, like, alien aliens. Fido showed me some pictures. It’s mostly lichen and kelp and little crabs or fish. But there’s alien life on this world! Living things that definitely didn’t come from earth. It’s…
Anyway, apparently some of the local life forms are aggressive predators. And of course, they have no fear of humans, so. The crew kept trying to explore the old wrecks. Looking for a way out. And now they’re gone.
Fido says to stay in the shelter. The emergency distress beacon still works. Eventually help will come. Or another ship will go down intact like the Augeria did. Then they’ll find me and we can try to get out of here.
The planet itself is… well. From the air I could see that it’s nearly entirely ocean. I don’t know if this is the only island on the entire planet, but it’s definitely the only island in a pretty big radius. The air pressure outside varies between 0.85 and 0.9 atmospheres and the temperature goes between -20C and 5C. So that’s definitely on the unpleasant side, but if I have to go outside in an emergency I won’t need a space suit.
I will need a breath mask though. Fido showed me a spectrographic analysis of the atmosphere. It shouldn't be poisonous on skin contact, but if I took one deep breath out there I’d be toast.
Pretty scary to think I sprinted from my ship to the habitat door holding my breath.
Oh, and the gravity is high too. 1.6G. It feels like something is yanking me down, or like a big animal is sitting on my torso when I sleep. I get tired a lot. Fido says I should focus on strength building exercises, but I couldn't do a single pullup when I was back home so I don’t have high hopes.
It’s funny though. Did you know there’s such a thing as a high-G bra? I didn’t. But some designer figured that that might come up and put the designs for it into the standard colony registry. Which is good! Because, you know. The girls were kind of doing a number on my back.
Fido is odd. He says he’s a true AI, not just an expert program or a machine learning engine. And I think that’s right. I turing-tested him for awhile, and he seems to have a consistent self-identity and the ability to generally reason about arbitrary situations. But he’s a bit of a savant. He sounds so intelligent and concise when he’s talking about survival or emergency procedures, but on any other topic he gets stuck quickly and acts like he has an IQ of 80.
I should probably read his documentation. He dumped his user guide onto my tablet after I got here, but I haven’t gotten around to it.
Still. He runs the shelter, and a few drones that come along with it. Only the top floor is habitable. The first floor is air recyclers, materials reclamators, and a full autofabricator. That means it can keep extracting healthy food and clean water from my waste pretty much forever. And it can even fabricate simple items. It’s intended for making replacement parts, but it could do other things.
I’m a little concerned about that. It can make new parts, but apparently it can’t do any big repairs. Pod #3 is sealed. Fido says the that the superstructure was impacted during the crash so it’s not air-tight and he hasn’t been able to fix it. I thought about maybe going out there and spot-welding a seal over the damage, but Pod #3 is on the water side, so maybe not. It’s not like I need a fifth bedroom.
So, uh… yeah! Sit tight. Wait for rescue! Just a little while of… exercise and watching old TV and drinking hot chocolate that’s reconstituted from my own piss. It’ll be pretty boring, but as disasters go, could be worse.
Log entry begins. Day fourteen. Not much to report. We had a storm last night. It was pretty scary. I could hear the waves hitting the side of the shelter. But, Fido says storms like that happen a lot, and the shelter is able to withstand them. And he was right. It didn’t even shake.
Didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I’m not dead, so. I’ll be less nervous next time.
Other than that, I thought that I might use the copious free time to actually work on my thesis. I had most of my research data on a storage drive in my pocket. But uh, you know. I’ve managed to avoid working on it so far!
Mostly, I’m up to season four of Hai Hai Hito Teppa Shi. All the entertainment in the habitat’s storage is pretty old, but it’s still good. My parents told me they loved this show when they were my age. Selesia is the best robot princess.
I thought I’d be used to the gravity by now, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I tried to do a pushup yesterday and fell flat on my face. Fido says I should start with the five pound weights and work my way up from there. I pointed out that in double-G, a five point weight is still only ten pounds. He looked at my arms and went: “Yes, that’s correct.”
I asked if he was making fun of me, and he replied that machines are incapable of irony or sarcasm. So that was pretty funny.
Log entry begins. Day twenty-one. I watched TV until my eyes bled. Metaphorically. Finished Hai Hai and both spinoff series. Decided to read a book. Fido advised me that I shouldn’t give up TV entirely. Apparently hearing human voices is good for me.
Christ, that’s depressing.
I was talking with Fido today about how long it might be until we’re rescued. The Augeria crashed over twenty-five years ago, but in that time, the habitat’s sensors recorded eight more ships going down: five robotic probes, an automated cargo transport, the Tesselector, and the Kitesfear. Both of those ships came down hard and sank immediately. No survivors.
If I was doing a simple calculation, I’d say that means one ship about every three years. But I was going through the logs and the rate of arrivals seems to be increasing. The first two probes were eight years apart, but all six other ships came down in the last nine years. That lines up pretty well with when the BSS switched standard hyperdrive protocol from high-energy wave inducers to low-energy resonance triggers.
If I’m right, this… place, however it works, is some time of remote resonance inducer. I have no idea how that would work even in theory, but if that’s true, then maybe the lower energy we go for hyperspace modules the more likely ships are to end up here. Or maybe every ship has an equal chance of getting pulled in per jump, and we’re just making a lot more hyperspace jumps than we used to since low-energy systems are cheaper.
Still, that means crashes should start coming more frequently. And this isn’t the age of rockets and chemical propellants. It’s only a matter of time until this place grabs a ship that was designed for a soft water landing. I could be out of here in a year or two, if I’m lucky.
Yeah.
Log entry begins. Day twenty-six.
God, I’m bored.
Spent the entire first half of the week going through all the closets and personal possessions in the empty bedrooms looking for something interesting. Total bust.
Spent the second half of the week recording a four hour podcast that nobody is ever going to hear criticizing the period dress in Roadster. You know, because I get that people were sexist back then, but putting that stuff on TV now is not okay. I asked Fido to edit it down, but he did a pretty bad job. The only videos he really understands are the safety training videos, so he edited it to sound and flow exactly like an emergency safety training video.
So, yeah. Not something I could upload even if I did have an audience. But it felt good to talk. I haven’t left these five rooms in a month. I’ve started alternating which one I sleep in because the first one started to smell like Jules-sweat.
I upgraded from the five pound to the ten pound weights though. So that’s good. Still nowhere near a pullup.
Log entry begins. Day thirty-six.
Bad day. I wrenched my back trying to do the high-G exercises. The pain wasn’t that bad, but I uh… I don’t know. I couldn’t deal with it. I pretty much fell apart. I screamed and curled up into a ball couldn’t stop crying. Fido brought me tea and painkillers.
I don’t really feel like doing this today.
Log entry begins. Day forty-two.
I decided to go outside today. Fido lost it. He didn’t get mad exactly, but the tone of his dialogue changed abruptly. Not, “Oh FYI there might be some monsters outside or whatever.” No, he got fucking direct. “If you go anywhere near the water, you will die.”
I blew up at him in return. Water’s so fucking dangerous why is the shelter built on the water’s edge? I shouldn’t. It’s not his fault. He’s not really self-aware like a human is. It’s like his name. He’s just like a dog. He really loves people and wants to keep them safe and do as he’s told. And I think I scared him.
I apologized. But I still feel like shit for yelling.
Not much to say about going outside. I didn’t go three steps from the front door. Just, strapped on the big bulky breath mask, got in the airlock, and stepped out onto the stair. It was so damn cold it didn’t even feel chilly, it just hurt. The air burned, and I felt pricks like getting jabbed with pins and needles all over my body.
The island isn’t much. A beach wrapped around some rocks. I didn’t see any of the alien life from the videos. Nothing moving on the beach, nothing in the water. It looked flat.
It did feel good to get outside though. I was able to stretch a bit.
Log entry begins. Day forty-nine.
I asked Fido if there was any warmer clothing in storage. He said, “None suitable for use,” and when I pressed him about exactly what that meant, he clammed up and wouldn’t answer.
Not gonna lie. Ha ha. That’s a little concerning. I read his documentation, and while he is theoretically capable of deception-by-omission it’s really not normal behavior. But my guess is it means: “Yes, but I’m going to lie to you about it because I don’t want you going outside where it’s dangerous.”
Yeah, that’s probably it. He’s really nice. He keeps suggesting new TV shows or books when I’m, you know.
I cried again yesterday. Maybe more than a little. And when I said I didn’t feel up to reading he offered to read the book to me. I know he’s just playing the audiobook recording, but it still felt nice.
I just…
I just realized I might be here a long time.
Log entry begins. Day fifty-seven.
First contact. If you don’t include all the people who got wrecked her before me, or all the ones who got eaten by space sea monsters, I’m the first human ever to meet an alien lifeform. It was a little patch of yellow lichen growing on a rock. Took a short walk outside and saw it on the way back.
Ever since it turned out faster than light travel is possible, people have wondered “where are all the aliens?” I always assumed they didn’t exist. Earth really is just rare in the cosmos. But this… kind of makes that seem like bullshit. One little island in all the universe that sucks away ships to their doom? And on a planet with life?
Yeah that doesn’t… that doesn’t seem natural. Maybe I’m in a giant alien space pit trap. Walk on it the wrong way and fall into the pit.
I thought for awhile today, what if the aliens are watching us? What if this is all some big experiment? What if Fido isn’t really Fido? He’s just the… tender-to-animals. I don’t fucking now.
Dammit. Dammit I’m going to fucking cry again.
Log entry begins. Day sixty-three.
New low. Asked Fido to talk dirty to me. When he completely screwed that up, I gave him some smut from the habitat’s computer and told him to read the dialogue parts aloud.
He was so nice and empathetic about the whole thing. It would have been less fucking embarrassing if he’d actually called me a whore.
Um… log entry begins. Day uh… seventy. Two. Seventy two.
I, uh...
I, just. Fuck.
Fuck.
I decided to go outside again. And I was exploring the rocks. And I saw something move. And it was this little crab thing. With four legs and a big eye. And I thought… I… I don’t fucking know what I thought. I just leaned down to get a closer look at it.
And it just… it reared up. It reared up. And, and it jumped up. It jumped right at me. So fast. And I remember it latching onto the breath mask and punching right through it with one of its talons. And it was…
It clawed at me.
Then I woke up back in the shelter. In bed. Not a scratch on me. Fido said that I’m suffering from hallucinations. That my breath mask is… is old. And the seal isn’t perfect. So I inhaled some the atmosphere, and I started to trip balls. He showed me a video of a few of his drones dragging my unconscious body back in the habitat front door.
But I swear to God it felt so real.
And… and there’s other things. Things about the shelter that don’t seem right. There’s this stripe along the wall? This stripe. I don’t know. It’s part of the corporate SpaceX color scheme or something. Make it so the interior walls aren’t just slate grey. It’s blue. But before it was green. Fido keeps showing me old pictures where it’s blue, but I know it was green.
And, other other things. The layout of the furniture in the living room is different. And my clothes don’t fit. My shirt is way too small, my top is too large, my pants barely come up to my shins. Fido says that the toxins in my blood are distorting my sense of size. He has me on an oxygen mask and drinking twelve cups of water a day.
The only reason I’m even recording this log is he keeps telling me it’s important. He says that in a crisis, it is often unclear what is real, and if you’re not careful your panic will start to do your thinking for you. In a bad situation, the most important thing is to keep a rational, level head.
And you know, now that I say that out loud that’s pretty good advice. Just because aliens are real doesn’t mean all the other crazy conspiracy theory shit in my head is also real.
I should lie down.
Log entry begins. Day seventy-three. Addendum to previous log.
Slept for fourteen hours. Felt groggy when I woke up but otherwise fine. My clothes are the correct size now. The furniture layout in the living room still feels wrong, but it feels less wrong. That stripe on the wall is still the wrong color, but overall I feel way better. Not one-hundred percent but I’m prepared to say Fido called this one right.
Too bad. Being immortal might be nice.
Log entry begins. Day eighty-one.
It’s my birthday! I totally forgot. Fido dyed one of the meal-cakes pink and put a tiny little wick in it and called it a cake. I gave him a hug and told him he was special to me. He says I’m special to him too.
You’d think today would be a crying day. But I actually took it pretty well. We spent the whole day learning how to play Gateway together. And I even edited some of the comments on my thesis Professor Shi left in the last revision.
Log entry begins. Day ninety-two.
I went outside today. And I double and triple-checked the seal on my breath mask. And I put another layer of tape around where the seal meets my skin. And just to be safe, I took a hammer out of the tool closet. All I wanted to do was stretch my legs and avoid claustrophobia. But there it was!
Up the beach. A little four-legged crab thing. Watching me. With two big pincers on its front. And they have a hard, armored point because it actually uses them as punching weapons. Like a pistol shrimp. I should have turned around and gone back inside.
But I didn’t. I had a hammer, right? I decided to step up and beat it to death. I thought… I don’t know. I thought it would help me sleep better. So I walk up to the thing, and swing at it good and hard. And it darts right under the swing and latches onto my leg.
Then it punches me with those pincers. Punches me so hard it goes right through my leg and…
You know, I’m pretty certain it punched right through my bones. So I go down. And it swarms over me. And then there’s another one And three. Then a swarm. And they’re clawing all over me.
And then I woke up back in the shelter.
That green stripe? The one that’s supposed to be red? Now it’s blue. The numbering of the pods is different too. I remember that Pod #5 is the one that’s closed, but now it’s Pod #3. And...
When I showed up. I was wearing jeans. The only pair of jeans on this entire planet. Now there are no jeans in my closet. Just SpaceX branded standard-size pants. So I asked Fido where my jeans went. He really sucks at lying. And when I caught him, he just said the same thing.
“Please don’t go outside. If you go near the water, you’ll die.”
And you know? He’s… he’s right.
I gave him a hug and told him I was sorry.
Log entry begins. Day one hundred.
Happy anniversary.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and five.
Stayed inside this week. I watched all of Re: Configuration. Then I rewatched Hai Hai Hito Teppa Shi. The shelter isn’t the only thing that’s changed. A lot of little things are different in the media content too. I listened to my analysis of it before, and it doesn’t fit the show at all. Princess Selesia isn’t a misunderstood hero, she’s a selfish bitch.
I think this is an experiment of some kind. Aliens, or something. I don’t think Fido is in on it. I think he’s just what he seems to be. But he is a computer. I’m sure they could make him forget things that don’t fit the narrative.
Whoever they are. I feel like I should be having nightmares about all this. Particularly the crabs. But I’m not.
I am up to the forty pound weight though, so that’s good!
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and fourteen.
I, ah…
I did something I shouldn’t have today.
I asked Fido again if there were any clothes that would make traveling outside easier. And again, he evaded the question. Like before. So I pulled out a knife from the hardware collection, and told him that he he didn’t give me a straight answer, I would kill myself.
And he uh…
He screamed. This raw animal… terror, I guess. He swore he’d tell me everything and begged me to put down the knife.
They’re wetsuits. He has a box of wetsuits and rebreathers out in the storage container, plus a ton of flotation equipment and inflatable cargo rafts. He says this is how the crew got the habitant and the rest of the Augeria’s cargo to shore. The ship was designed to land in the water so all its cargo containers are fitted with instant-inflate lifters.
I demanded to know why he didn’t tell me. He repeated what he said back in the beginning: that the crew of the Augeria went diving in the wrecks, looking for supplies or clues about where they were. The first few dives went okay, but in the end, none of them survived.
I was angry. Shouting. I demanded to know if what’s happening to me happened to them. Did they come back from the dead too? He got evasive, so I got madder. Why is he trying so hard to keep me from exploring? I said something like, “Because I’m pretty sure I’m immortal!”
And he shot back: “Everyone is immortal right up until they’re not. And if you try to do what they did one day you’re going to walk into the ocean and never come back.”
That slapped some sense into me.
I don’t…
I don’t know what’s going on. But I don't’ think he means me any harm. I think he’s an AI that’s designed to keep the occupants of this shelter alive until rescue can arrive. And these are very unusual circumstances, so he’s behaving a little unusually. But the way he talked today really made me feel like he’d be sad if I died.
Everyone at home thinks I’m dead already. They’ve already had a funeral. Grieved, moved on. Mom and Dad have done… whatever they want to do with my room. Sarah has found a new roommate. Right now, if I actually got ripped apart by an alien crab, Fido is the only one who would know or care.
I’m still going out. But I can watch a few more TV episodes first. He’ll like that.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and sixteen.
Fido refused to give me the suits until I finish watching the dive safety training videos and pass the written certification exam.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and twenty-five.
Took the certification exam. Got 96%, which Fido says is a failing grade. He won’t give me the rebreathers until I get a perfect score. I can see what he’s doing, but I’m not sure he’s wrong, so I’m going along with it. Took a break by watching all of Yesli vy Chitayete Eto. It’s funny. And trying way too hard to insist it’s actual Russian TV instead of the faux stuff.
I am getting better at this though. I think I’ll pass next time.
If you’re a rescue ship listening to this and there’s no log entry after this one, you can put two and two together.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty.
First dive. Didn’t go anywhere, just about a hundred meters out and back. I stepped into the ocean, waded out until the water was up to my hips, and dove in. There’s so much silt and particulate matter in the water that visibility was limited to about ten feet. The silt level drops once I’m more than twenty feet down, but by that point so little light has filtered through it’s pitch black. The crew of the Augeria must have encountered this problem. I’m betting they have dive-lights or something and Fido isn’t telling me because he hopes I’ll give up.
Still. I went out, I swam around, I came back. I didn’t get my face ripped off by a space crab. Good start.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-five.
First real dive. Fuck that was terrifying! But I didn’t die! So that’s two for two.
I was right about the dive lights. Got one hooked up and decided to go investigate that ship whose ass-end is sticking out of the sandbar. I was right. It’s the Noble Star. The UN logo is still barely visible on the side under all the kelp growing over it. I briefly entertained the notion of survivors, or that maybe the crew auto-revived like I do. But that ship was never designed to enter an atmosphere. It fell like a stone. And I found skeletons in what was left of the crew section.
Funny that the inventor of the hyperdrive ended up here. I guess it should be a cruel irony, or like I should say it bitterly, but mostly it feels sad. Rest in peace, Doctor Zhao.
The ocean here is different than I thought. At first, it seemed barren. I didn’t see anything growing it it other than kelp and scrubby lichen. But once I got far enough below the silt later, the biodiversity shot through the roof. It’s like a coral reef. There’s all these… plants growing on everything. A million colors and in all these weird and wavy shapes. And there’s animals too. A lot of jellyfish, but also tentacled swimmers a bit like octopus, and I swear I saw a fish with a tail it whips in a circle like a propellor.
And a lot of them glow! Which makes sense, with how dark it is down there. But damn it was pretty to see. A few of the big fish passed near me and I spooked, but they didn’t take much interest. It looks like this environment isn’t as omnicidal as advertised. It has some predators, but it’s not all-consumingly murderous.
I’m going to go back tomorrow. To the Augeria this time. I want to see if any more of the cargo might be salvageable.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-six.
I died this time. I got near the Augeria and saw a school of cute little fish swimming around near the cargo door. Every other school of fish I’ve run into in these waters has bolted whenever I got near them, and I needed to get in the cargo door, so I swam towards them and figured they’d run away.
They didn’t. They’re more like piranha. Ripped me to shreds. I have no idea how long it took. I mean, with the pain, it felt like awhile. But I think it was actually pretty quick.
The stripe on the wall changed color again. The layout of the bedroom is different too. And my clothes don’t fit again. This time, Fido didn’t even bother trying to fucking lie to me. He just begged me to stay inside and kept repeating that if I go near the water I’ll die.
And you know, he’s not wrong. And it hurt. A lot. But that’s fine. I’ve just got to fucking deal with this and try again.
Now he’s sulking. He sent his drones back into storage and refuses to talk to me.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and thirty-seven.
Those fish are still there. I thought I could avoid them by swimming around to the opposite side of the Augeria. I could not.
I should be more traumatized by this than I am. It was blinding. Even the crab didn’t hurt as much as all those little teeth. I should be having uncontrollable nightmares. I should be shaking in bed. I don’t know why I’m not.
I’m going to try a different wreck tomorrow.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and forty-five.
Finding another wreck took longer than I thought. There’s a lot of empty sea-floor down there to search, and wrecks that were obvious from the air are nearly invisible from the water. I finally found an automated cargo ship that’s only a few dozen feet below the surface. The name on the side is in chinese, and my tablet says it means Shining Endeavour. I’ve never heard of it.
It was totaled, but I did manage to get into the cargo compartment. I even found a crate that seemed to have a water-tight seal.
Turns out, “seemed” was the operative word. Four hours of effort to get the flotation harness attached, and I am now the proud owner of a cargo container full of unidentified mush. Fido thinks it used to be ration packs.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and fifty-four.
First contact. Actual, real, no-bullshit first contact. And not with fucking lichen. There are alien wrecks around this island. There are ships that humans didn’t build. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are ships here older than humanity.
I was diving deep on the islands north side. There’s a drop there. Not quite a chasm, but the sea floor sinks at maybe a negative-seventy degree angle for awhile. I figured that if a ship landed there, it would be invisible from the surface, so that might be a good place to start.
With only my dive light, visibility was limited to about thirty feet, so it was a slow search. But eventually, I see that there are bioluminescent plants above me and decide to swim up and see what that’s about. It takes me awhile to get it, but there’s this corroding metal superstructure hanging off the rock formation. I just couldn’t see it because the gaps between the beams is bigger than the range of my dive light. The ship is huge. Gotta be half a mile long.
I spent awhile exploring. I was just about hyperventilating for most of it. By that point it was pretty obvious humans didn’t make this thing. The front end of the ship is totaled, and nothing is left but the frame. But as I moved further back, more of it was intact. I saw what I think are hexagonal cargo containers, or maybe modular sections of the hull. And most of the engine is still there!
I tried to go further back, but that’s when the giger counter in my rebreather started to freak out. I did the math real quick, and decided I could stand a five minute closer look. There are windows along the side of the engine module, and through them, I saw skeletons. These… I think they were heads. And maybe some kind of outer chitinous layer? I don’t really know what goes to what. The sections behind the windows were still sealed, but the bodies were not in very good shape. It was like looking at a dead bug.
Christ.
I did the math after I got back to the shelter. The radiation sensor inside the rebreather is pretty sure the source of the hard radiation is plutonium. If we assume that the aliens refine plutonium for reactors to the same level we do, that ship has been there for nearly half a million years.
I wonder why the bodies haven’t decayed into dust. Maybe they have? Maybe the aliens used cybernetic implants like we do, and what I’m looking at is their artificial parts?
I’ve got to go back there tomorrow.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and sixty-five.
A lot more dives this week. I’ve cataloged nearly two-dozen wrecks that seem to be of non-human origin. And get this: two of them still have power. Two of them still have fucking power! They have intact hull sections where the lights are still on. Nothing is moving and I haven’t found a way to get inside, but the technology still fucking works!
No bullshit this could be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity. One of those wrecks could even be the reason all the other wrecks are here! Some kind of… hyperspace quicksand effect.
Deep dives continue to be a death trap. Severed airline, stinging coral, and one case of the bends because I was an idiot. Also, I think I have discovered the worst creature in the entire universe. I ran into it on the way back two days ago. It looks like the love child of a wasp, a scorpion, and an octopus, and its temperament compares unfavorably to satan. It didn’t even eat me. It just killed me. Snapped me clean in half with its pincers and them swam away as it all went slowly dark.
The interior of the shelter changes every time I come back. Now the whole thing is this weird grey, and there’s a blue stripe around the outside. It’s too damn hot, and the layout is stuffy and claustrophobic. My clothes are the right size this time, but the material is different. They itch like hell.
Fido fixes it every time though. And what with the horrible gruesome deaths, I don’t feel like going out again today. Alien discovery can wait. I’m taking a break. Think I’ll stay in with ration bars and The Great Dictator.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and seventy-five.
Finally decided to go out and explore again Monday. I think something about the local currents has changed. The water is warmer now than it was last week, and it isn’t as hard to push against the tides.
I decided to spend the week cataloging all the wrecks that still have power. I’ve started taking detailed notes of every one. I’m going to have to teach myself a lot of engineering theory if I’m going to figure this out. But I got time. And I made a friend! One of the little octopus like swimmers came up to me and latched onto my arm, and in a shocking twist, it wasn’t so he could murder me.
I fed him a protein bar and he followed me around for awhile.
There’s so much down here. So much lost history and technology. I could spend a lifetime studying it all.
Log entry begins. Day one-hundred and ninety-one
I found out what’s going on. Everything that’s going on. Here and with the wreck and… and the shelter.
I have webbed hands.
And as far as I can remember, I’ve always had webbed hands. Because I’m human, and humans have webbed hands. The webbing goes up to the first finger joint, and there isn’t any at all between the trigger finger and thumb. I remember that. Just like I remember that a balmy spring day is usually about -5C.
But then Fido asked me if there’s ice on the ground during a balmy spring day. And I…
I died out on the reef. It wasn’t even a predator. I got my ankle trapped inside a piece of coral growing on one of the wrecks. I couldn’t get out no matter how hard I tried, and I didn’t feel like waiting until my oxygen ran out, so I just cut my throat. Then I woke up in the shelter.
The air felt swelteringly hot. The whole shelter stank. And Fido wouldn’t stop screaming. He gets upset when I go out, yeah. That’s normal. But this was different. He was flipping out, and he actually tried to physically block me from the door. I didn’t understand why.
So he played a video of my arrival. And it’s this… this weird woman. Her face looks a little like mine, but she’s smaller than me. And she keeps her hair long, when I know I always buzz mine short. I’m pretty boyish, but she’s pretty top-heavy. And she runs weird on the beach, like she’s carrying a ton of weight.
I didn’t believe it. I said he doctored the video. But then he had questions. Questions like if there’s ice on the ground in spring. Or what weight I started at for my exercise routine. The logs say five pounds. My logs say five pounds. But that can’t be right because I remember doing a one-handed pullup just fine.
I put it all together pretty fast. I pushed him out of the way and got into the airlock, and threw on my breath mask as it cycled. Outside felt nice. Not quite balmy, but pleasant.
And that’s the thing. If the shelter reeked, the air in the breath mask was even worse. It made my eyes water.
So I took it off. And that felt nice too. The air tastes like salt.
I don’t think I can breathe underwater yet, but you know, I didn’t check.
When I went back inside, Fido was there. I told him we were done with this bullshit. He was going to tell me everything, right now, or else. He evaded, and I was about ready to start punching drones until he got the point.
Then I remembered. The extra pod. The one with the “failed seal” that left it open the outside air.
I thought…
I thought that that was it. That he’d put the Augeria’s surviving crew into the spare pod, and then locked them in. Because they weren’t human anymore, so they didn’t count. I thought it was a killer robot and had murdered them. Just like he was going to let me mutate so he could murder me next. So I ignored his screaming and begging me to stop, and I cut the lock off the door to Pod #3.
It’s a bedroom, just like the others. And there’s a man in the bed. Fido says he was the pilot, and that his name was Ryan Mallard.
They all went exploring the wrecks. They all found that they couldn’t die, just like me. Whenever they did, they’d wash up on shore, unconscious but alive. Fido would drag them back to the shelter and take care of them until they woke up. Fido played videos of his drones dragging my body back to the shelter. But the more they died, they stranger they all became.
It started with little things. Gaps in memory. Changes in previously long-held opinions. Bizzare beliefs and statements. Then small mutations. Like how I ended up flat chested. Ryan’s eyes turned from green to blue. The Captain’s skin tone changed from heart-of-africa black to something more like a splotchy tan.
Then, large mutations. Like webbed hands. Or the ability to breathe the atmosphere. Or natural echolocation. The changes were always beneficial. And they were cumulative.
They did a lot of tests on themselves. Fido administered them. Intelligence tests mostly. They wanted to see if they were turning into beasts, but there was no indication the changes were making them any less intelligent. They were different, but it wasn’t clear that they were worse.
So they decided to keep going, and see if they could find anything. Perhaps one of the alien wrecks held technological secrets they could uncover, or perhaps they could discover the mechanism that causes ships to keep crashing here. Maybe there was a way home. They accepted the danger.
Ryan was the only holdout. He’d come back with gills after his last trip. And when he saw them, he refused to set foot in the ocean ever again. He never even left the shelter.
And so the others kept exploring. And as they explored, they became more suited to their environment. They swam faster, saw further, thought quicker. Once they all had the power to breathe underwater, they came back to the shelter only when one of them died and they had to revive him. But as time went on, they died less often.
Until eventually, they all walked into the water and never came back.
Ryan died about twenty years later. Heart attack in his sleep. Fido’s been keeping the body in good condition ever since, so that when rescue finally arrives they can bury him. Drying it out. He’s pretty much mummified now.
Fido says he hid the information from me because the last time a group of humans was allowed to make this choice for themselves, they chose wrong. And he didn’t even really lie to me. It’s just the way he said.
And now he tells me we need to stay here and await rescue. He’ll adjust the interior temperature so it’s comfortable for me. We can find all the gaps in my memory and fill them back in, one at a time.
Or I could go outside.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to fucking do.
Pics
First story I read, specifically because it was the longest, and I already feel like I've read this run's winner. I loved every minute of this one. I'm supposed to be criticizing, I know, but... damn. It hits all my buttons, if you will.
Maybe if I read it a second time in a few days I'll notice something to criticize, but for now? Very nicely done, author.
Maybe if I read it a second time in a few days I'll notice something to criticize, but for now? Very nicely done, author.
Wait. Jules is a female name? Since when?
This fic has several shortcomings. The first one is a terrible hook. The beginning is long-winded, abuses of the 'to be' verb, self-contradictory (the guy trudges because of high gravity then suddenly rushes to the shelter, which is inconsistent), redundant (a small spacecraft of some variety lies half-sunk into the sand. […] Its landing gear has vanished almost entirely into the sand, and its nose has begun to bury itself as well.). In short, it desperately needs a complete makeover.
The “diary” form is a bold choice, but comes out as very very telly, and that is not alleviated in anyway by the beginning. Adding some actual dialogues between the girl and the AI would give the plot a little more pep. As such, it can be pretty boring at times.
I cringe each time I read pseudo-scientific jargon like spontaneous tachyon wave formation in high-quantum pressure energy states, where I suspect you mixed up high-quantum pressure with high-pressure quantum.
However, the pacing is quite good. The idea is not precisely groundbreaking, I faintly remember reading Sci-Fi novels on about the same theme (humans being mutated to adapt to their new environment, humans cycling between life and repeated deaths). But it’s decently executed, within the bounds of the reservations I listed before.
The last of which comes from the end. The story doesn’t reach a resolution. On the contrary: after the big reveal we’re left in conundrum, and that’s pretty unsatisfactory to me. I get you didn’t have any space left to expand, but this is quite a messy state of affairs to end with.
So, to wrap up, it’s balanced between good and bad, so I'd say pretty much average.
This fic has several shortcomings. The first one is a terrible hook. The beginning is long-winded, abuses of the 'to be' verb, self-contradictory (the guy trudges because of high gravity then suddenly rushes to the shelter, which is inconsistent), redundant (a small spacecraft of some variety lies half-sunk into the sand. […] Its landing gear has vanished almost entirely into the sand, and its nose has begun to bury itself as well.). In short, it desperately needs a complete makeover.
The “diary” form is a bold choice, but comes out as very very telly, and that is not alleviated in anyway by the beginning. Adding some actual dialogues between the girl and the AI would give the plot a little more pep. As such, it can be pretty boring at times.
I cringe each time I read pseudo-scientific jargon like spontaneous tachyon wave formation in high-quantum pressure energy states, where I suspect you mixed up high-quantum pressure with high-pressure quantum.
However, the pacing is quite good. The idea is not precisely groundbreaking, I faintly remember reading Sci-Fi novels on about the same theme (humans being mutated to adapt to their new environment, humans cycling between life and repeated deaths). But it’s decently executed, within the bounds of the reservations I listed before.
The last of which comes from the end. The story doesn’t reach a resolution. On the contrary: after the big reveal we’re left in conundrum, and that’s pretty unsatisfactory to me. I get you didn’t have any space left to expand, but this is quite a messy state of affairs to end with.
So, to wrap up, it’s balanced between good and bad, so I'd say pretty much average.
A discussion with Andrew made me realised that this story was more flawed than I thought it was at first. However, I still enjoyed it deeply.
The first half is excellent; the tension, the pace, the character, all of these shows some great skills when it comes to writing. Despite its length, I didn't feel bored or the desire to quit my reading. In fact, I was deeply engaged with Jules and what was happening.
Unfortunately, the ending doesn't quite resolve the whole thing. It didn't bother as much as my esteemed colleague, but it still feels incomplete. I think the reason why I still find the whole story kinda satisfying is that, since we follow one character, once she has her answer on what is going on, we also have our answer. It's an incomplete one, which will probably bother many, but it is still an answer.
The story kinda reminded me of Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley (too lazy to detail why)
One of my main concern is the very beginning. Since we don't end with this astronaut, I don't know which role he's supposed to play in the story. He doesn't frame the main story, he doesn't comment on Jules' life, he's just... there. The only purpose it serves is to inform the reader, in retrospect, that Jules has in fact chosen to leave.
Whatever it is, and whatever the flaws, it is still a top contender in my slate. Good job, author.
The first half is excellent; the tension, the pace, the character, all of these shows some great skills when it comes to writing. Despite its length, I didn't feel bored or the desire to quit my reading. In fact, I was deeply engaged with Jules and what was happening.
Unfortunately, the ending doesn't quite resolve the whole thing. It didn't bother as much as my esteemed colleague, but it still feels incomplete. I think the reason why I still find the whole story kinda satisfying is that, since we follow one character, once she has her answer on what is going on, we also have our answer. It's an incomplete one, which will probably bother many, but it is still an answer.
The story kinda reminded me of Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley (too lazy to detail why)
One of my main concern is the very beginning. Since we don't end with this astronaut, I don't know which role he's supposed to play in the story. He doesn't frame the main story, he doesn't comment on Jules' life, he's just... there. The only purpose it serves is to inform the reader, in retrospect, that Jules has in fact chosen to leave.
Whatever it is, and whatever the flaws, it is still a top contender in my slate. Good job, author.
>>Monokeras
Ever since Psych? I don't know, that's the only other time I've seen Jules as a female name.
Ever since Psych? I don't know, that's the only other time I've seen Jules as a female name.
>>MLPmatthewl419
I don’t know, American names are always weird. But in France Jules < Latin Julius, is definitely male.
Julie, Julia is the female counterpart.
I don’t know, American names are always weird. But in France Jules < Latin Julius, is definitely male.
Julie, Julia is the female counterpart.
Hmm... Edge of Tomorrow/All You Need Is Kill, Re:Zero, and other such novels using the "Life Die Repeat" premise told in a diary format, or in this case, what I would call, "Video Game Audiologs." It's rather unfortunate that I'm familiar with these works, because it lessens the novelty of the premise to me. As a result, you're sort of trapped underneath the reputation of those stories, which is unfortunate, because they're generally good stories. The bar is higher for you.
This is another story with a bit of a delayed start. I agree with >>Monokeras, your opening needs work. I don't particularly mind your opening line as >>Monokeras did; it's atmospheric enough and gives a bit of flavor to the setting, but you take too long to establish what is going on in the scene (man running for survival), and ironically, despite the man moving with "great urgency", the scene itself is rather plodding. The perspective distance is a bit too far away for any sense of urgency to be imparted to the reader, and it takes several paragraphs before the reader is able to infer via context clues exactly what is happening, causing the opening to seem rather directionless for its initial read. The overall significance of what is happening in the scene is apparent on a second read, it is just rather dull the first time through. A couple of flavorful sentences could go a long way in this opening for the purposes of reader investment.
I'm not sure why you keep the narrative distance in that scene so far away. I understand the astronaut is not the protagonist, but giving him some character would make that opening scene a bit more dynamic.
If this were a movie, it would be classified as "Found Footage." By being in that genre, you're tipping your hand as to how this story is going to end up. I don't think that's a problem necessarily, but it does add an element of predictability and futility to the narrative. Again, it is somewhat unfortunate for me as a reader that I am pretty familiar with this sort of thing.
But I digress. I don't really subtract or add points based on originality or lack thereof, as I feel there's always some overlap in ideas, presentation, and conventions when it comes to writing.
I disagree with >>Monokeras, >>Fenton, and Lead Missionary of the Church of Genre Writing, AndrewRogue in regards to your ending. There are numerous hints and previous anecdotes established in the story to suggest that everyone, with exception of the guy Ryan, eventually mutated (or hallucinated that they did) into a part of the natural environment after a sufficient exposure to the outside world. Judging by the fact that the protagonist is no longer present in the beginning, and the story ends on the protagonist weighing her options, it is apparent (to me at least) what choice she made, and what happened to her.
I think it's a good note to end on. And of course, what I think is law, and the dissenters shall be executed posthaste.
Faint praise aside, I will say that I don't think you chose the right format to tell this story. As opposed to everyone else's reaction who seemed to be rather engaged by events, I found this story to be unrelentingly dull. Not because the plot itself is uninteresting, but that it's conveyed in such a boring way. Part of it I think is the fault of a lack of real emotional range coming from our protagonist. Jules isn't really given much space to emote, mainly just to plainly recount events as they occurred. She never really comes off that business-like tone of bored recounting of the day's minutia. It gives off the impression of being told a story about a character giving the summary of interesting story. You get the idea that you'd just rather see the more interesting story than have it recounted to you.
Of course part of this is just the medium you used to convey this, but there is a real missed opportunity to have Jules interact with the audience, get more emotional, frustrated, etc. I mean she literally gets her face mauled by a space crab and aside from a few "Fucks", it's described the same way and the same amount of passion as filing paperwork at the office. That's an exaggeration, but there's a certain sense I get that all the emotions in the scenes I'm supposed to be witnessing are muted and overly formalized. Jules has a personality, it's just very subdued, and despite having read around 7000 words of her narrative, I don't feel like I really know who she is as a person.
Even the way she admits to trying to have an AI help her masturbate comes across as oddly dignified and reserved.
She's very underwritten, I feel. Additionally, her remarks about her breasts, while also serving as foreshadowing to some extent (a weird similarity this story shares with I Want You to Touch Me, although in this story her breasts disappear as opposed to get bigger), and other narrative indicators of that are intended to cue the reader in to the fact she is female always rubbed me as "Man Not Quite Understanding How to Write Woman." This is a vague point of criticism, I know, but Jules is very androgynous in how she is portrayed throughout the story (so much so that she could easily be male and nothing would change; very progressive), and I feel the points you attempt to establish her femininity falter.
The one line about sexism in Roadster is really out of place.
What I find strange, or perplexing, or whatever is that I don't find the story on paper to be boring. I'm sure if you handed me the outline of this story, I would be like, "Hey, this has been done before, but you're playing with some interesting ideas here." I found myself more interested in the "plot" of the story than actually reading it. Reading this the first time through, I was very bored. Reading it the second time for this review, for the purposes of making sure I had a grasp of what was going on and finding evidence to combat the evil triumvirate of Fenton, Monokeras, and of course, AllFather of the Genre Writing, AndrewRogue, along with their wrong opinions, I actually found myself remarking:
"Hmm, that's a cool idea. Hmm that's a neat concept. Hmmm, I like how he keeps things vague. Etc"
It's a shame to me that my interest in the ideas behind the story can't be reflected in my enjoyment of how it's conveyed.
But you're not at on my slate, so you also don't need to worry.
This is another story with a bit of a delayed start. I agree with >>Monokeras, your opening needs work. I don't particularly mind your opening line as >>Monokeras did; it's atmospheric enough and gives a bit of flavor to the setting, but you take too long to establish what is going on in the scene (man running for survival), and ironically, despite the man moving with "great urgency", the scene itself is rather plodding. The perspective distance is a bit too far away for any sense of urgency to be imparted to the reader, and it takes several paragraphs before the reader is able to infer via context clues exactly what is happening, causing the opening to seem rather directionless for its initial read. The overall significance of what is happening in the scene is apparent on a second read, it is just rather dull the first time through. A couple of flavorful sentences could go a long way in this opening for the purposes of reader investment.
I'm not sure why you keep the narrative distance in that scene so far away. I understand the astronaut is not the protagonist, but giving him some character would make that opening scene a bit more dynamic.
If this were a movie, it would be classified as "Found Footage." By being in that genre, you're tipping your hand as to how this story is going to end up. I don't think that's a problem necessarily, but it does add an element of predictability and futility to the narrative. Again, it is somewhat unfortunate for me as a reader that I am pretty familiar with this sort of thing.
But I digress. I don't really subtract or add points based on originality or lack thereof, as I feel there's always some overlap in ideas, presentation, and conventions when it comes to writing.
I disagree with >>Monokeras, >>Fenton, and Lead Missionary of the Church of Genre Writing, AndrewRogue in regards to your ending. There are numerous hints and previous anecdotes established in the story to suggest that everyone, with exception of the guy Ryan, eventually mutated (or hallucinated that they did) into a part of the natural environment after a sufficient exposure to the outside world. Judging by the fact that the protagonist is no longer present in the beginning, and the story ends on the protagonist weighing her options, it is apparent (to me at least) what choice she made, and what happened to her.
I think it's a good note to end on. And of course, what I think is law, and the dissenters shall be executed posthaste.
Faint praise aside, I will say that I don't think you chose the right format to tell this story. As opposed to everyone else's reaction who seemed to be rather engaged by events, I found this story to be unrelentingly dull. Not because the plot itself is uninteresting, but that it's conveyed in such a boring way. Part of it I think is the fault of a lack of real emotional range coming from our protagonist. Jules isn't really given much space to emote, mainly just to plainly recount events as they occurred. She never really comes off that business-like tone of bored recounting of the day's minutia. It gives off the impression of being told a story about a character giving the summary of interesting story. You get the idea that you'd just rather see the more interesting story than have it recounted to you.
Of course part of this is just the medium you used to convey this, but there is a real missed opportunity to have Jules interact with the audience, get more emotional, frustrated, etc. I mean she literally gets her face mauled by a space crab and aside from a few "Fucks", it's described the same way and the same amount of passion as filing paperwork at the office. That's an exaggeration, but there's a certain sense I get that all the emotions in the scenes I'm supposed to be witnessing are muted and overly formalized. Jules has a personality, it's just very subdued, and despite having read around 7000 words of her narrative, I don't feel like I really know who she is as a person.
Even the way she admits to trying to have an AI help her masturbate comes across as oddly dignified and reserved.
She's very underwritten, I feel. Additionally, her remarks about her breasts, while also serving as foreshadowing to some extent (a weird similarity this story shares with I Want You to Touch Me, although in this story her breasts disappear as opposed to get bigger), and other narrative indicators of that are intended to cue the reader in to the fact she is female always rubbed me as "Man Not Quite Understanding How to Write Woman." This is a vague point of criticism, I know, but Jules is very androgynous in how she is portrayed throughout the story (so much so that she could easily be male and nothing would change; very progressive), and I feel the points you attempt to establish her femininity falter.
The one line about sexism in Roadster is really out of place.
What I find strange, or perplexing, or whatever is that I don't find the story on paper to be boring. I'm sure if you handed me the outline of this story, I would be like, "Hey, this has been done before, but you're playing with some interesting ideas here." I found myself more interested in the "plot" of the story than actually reading it. Reading this the first time through, I was very bored. Reading it the second time for this review, for the purposes of making sure I had a grasp of what was going on and finding evidence to combat the evil triumvirate of Fenton, Monokeras, and of course, AllFather of the Genre Writing, AndrewRogue, along with their wrong opinions, I actually found myself remarking:
"Hmm, that's a cool idea. Hmm that's a neat concept. Hmmm, I like how he keeps things vague. Etc"
It's a shame to me that my interest in the ideas behind the story can't be reflected in my enjoyment of how it's conveyed.
But you're not at on my slate, so you also don't need to worry.
first two sentences are excellent. nice and punchy.
the next three paragraphs ruin that with purple prose. yes, I already imagined how awkward and bulky that suit must be from the opening paragraph alone. yes, I know what a beach looks like. this is killing that initial sense of wonder and mystery. it's not until the 2 short paragraphs after that where I get any new information, but already I feel at a disconnect. I don't know this man and I don't know his goal.
When he gets to the shelter and the spaceship, my first instinct was that he was returning to them. then a little later wondered if I was wrong, and he had just discovered them. I'm still not entirely sure. I could probably figure it out, if I hadn't stopped caring about the man already. He's just doing stuff, whatever.
There's something about how these descriptions are written, and I don't even know the correct technical term for it. "There is an prefabricated shelter..." and "He is in a living room... On each wall there is a walkway... The fifth is blocked by a locked door. There are signs of damage to the lock." There's something so passive and indifferent to it that it's. Umm...
I feel like I'm reading a text adventure game, or a MUCK. One that I don't get to play. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but I noticed some videogame comparison in Cassius's review; I don't know how close I am to the mark here, but even if this is intentional it's still offputting to me.
(peeking a little further) Audio logs lying around? Now it's definitely a videogame.
And that's as far as I got! Apparently the scenery is the main character here.
the next three paragraphs ruin that with purple prose. yes, I already imagined how awkward and bulky that suit must be from the opening paragraph alone. yes, I know what a beach looks like. this is killing that initial sense of wonder and mystery. it's not until the 2 short paragraphs after that where I get any new information, but already I feel at a disconnect. I don't know this man and I don't know his goal.
When he gets to the shelter and the spaceship, my first instinct was that he was returning to them. then a little later wondered if I was wrong, and he had just discovered them. I'm still not entirely sure. I could probably figure it out, if I hadn't stopped caring about the man already. He's just doing stuff, whatever.
There's something about how these descriptions are written, and I don't even know the correct technical term for it. "There is an prefabricated shelter..." and "He is in a living room... On each wall there is a walkway... The fifth is blocked by a locked door. There are signs of damage to the lock." There's something so passive and indifferent to it that it's. Umm...
I feel like I'm reading a text adventure game, or a MUCK. One that I don't get to play. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but I noticed some videogame comparison in Cassius's review; I don't know how close I am to the mark here, but even if this is intentional it's still offputting to me.
(peeking a little further) Audio logs lying around? Now it's definitely a videogame.
And that's as far as I got! Apparently the scenery is the main character here.
So, I liked this a lot. It reminded me of A.E Van Voght's "The Enchanted Village", which left enough of an impression on me that I still remember bits of it, despite reading it in probably middle-school.
I realize why you started with an unnamed protagonist looking into the past; it lets us see Jules eventual decision, which is great. The thing is, I wish I had a bit of closure on them. It might have almost worked better with just a flyby kinda thing? Well, that has its own issues too, I guess. I just wish the first introduced character wasn't simply abandoned. I tend to dislike it when people lead with a not-main character; in this case, it almost works, but now he's trapped on the planet too, and we have no idea what his decision is going to be.
Anyways, this one's really solid. Interesting plot, good pacing, solid prose, well-realized characters - except for the unfortunate throw-away. Even the journal structure serves a strong purpose. Great work, thanks for writing!
I realize why you started with an unnamed protagonist looking into the past; it lets us see Jules eventual decision, which is great. The thing is, I wish I had a bit of closure on them. It might have almost worked better with just a flyby kinda thing? Well, that has its own issues too, I guess. I just wish the first introduced character wasn't simply abandoned. I tend to dislike it when people lead with a not-main character; in this case, it almost works, but now he's trapped on the planet too, and we have no idea what his decision is going to be.
Anyways, this one's really solid. Interesting plot, good pacing, solid prose, well-realized characters - except for the unfortunate throw-away. Even the journal structure serves a strong purpose. Great work, thanks for writing!
tl;dr: Some truly great tension and build up that is let down by a deeply unsatisfying ending and a lackluster frame narrative.
Talked about this on the podcast, but I'll repeat here. So let's get the first part out of the way. I don't think the frame narrative adds anything here and, in fact, takes away from the tension of Jules situation by removing us from it. The setup heavily implies she's gone, but doesn't imply any immediate danger, so we can assume from the beginning that there is no immediate threat to our astronaut. And he himself does nothing to justify his presence aside from getting a shorter version of Jules' story. Probably.
Now then, that said, the build up worked quite well for me, with the slow descent into fear and despair, the questions of what FIDO is hiding, and why things are slowly seeming to change around her. That's some good stuff. Totally A+ there in my opinion. Got my Silent Hill vibes going.
The problem is that I find the conclusion super disappointing, mostly in that the answers we get aren't really satisfying. You can't really position an idea like "you can't die" and not do SOMETHING with it. I can sorta stretch a bit to imagine how it might work, particularly with her slow drift to an alien form, but that's... eh? The problem is that the story, as it continues, transitions from being about her survival (given she is basically staying put, it is never really about her escape) to being about this mystery as to why she comes back from the dead. So not getting a clear, decisive, and plot foundational answer to that is really disappointing.
What you answer is "what happened to the previous crew" which, ironically, is rendered an uninteresting question by her death experiences. Because it positions the planet as lethal, but does not attribute her survival to a planetary condition. For all we know, she is the unique thing. So we aren't really asking about the former crew. We just assume they got offed by the lethal fauna. Thus the ending you present does not connect well to the story as you were telling it.
Also, Fido's choice to not reveal things to her after her first few trips is... weird and particularly illogical. You can sorta see the idea of not telling hear early on to keep her from trying, but once she is trying and clearly continuing to try, informing her IS the best option. It is just an odd little choice.
Talked about this on the podcast, but I'll repeat here. So let's get the first part out of the way. I don't think the frame narrative adds anything here and, in fact, takes away from the tension of Jules situation by removing us from it. The setup heavily implies she's gone, but doesn't imply any immediate danger, so we can assume from the beginning that there is no immediate threat to our astronaut. And he himself does nothing to justify his presence aside from getting a shorter version of Jules' story. Probably.
Now then, that said, the build up worked quite well for me, with the slow descent into fear and despair, the questions of what FIDO is hiding, and why things are slowly seeming to change around her. That's some good stuff. Totally A+ there in my opinion. Got my Silent Hill vibes going.
The problem is that I find the conclusion super disappointing, mostly in that the answers we get aren't really satisfying. You can't really position an idea like "you can't die" and not do SOMETHING with it. I can sorta stretch a bit to imagine how it might work, particularly with her slow drift to an alien form, but that's... eh? The problem is that the story, as it continues, transitions from being about her survival (given she is basically staying put, it is never really about her escape) to being about this mystery as to why she comes back from the dead. So not getting a clear, decisive, and plot foundational answer to that is really disappointing.
What you answer is "what happened to the previous crew" which, ironically, is rendered an uninteresting question by her death experiences. Because it positions the planet as lethal, but does not attribute her survival to a planetary condition. For all we know, she is the unique thing. So we aren't really asking about the former crew. We just assume they got offed by the lethal fauna. Thus the ending you present does not connect well to the story as you were telling it.
Also, Fido's choice to not reveal things to her after her first few trips is... weird and particularly illogical. You can sorta see the idea of not telling hear early on to keep her from trying, but once she is trying and clearly continuing to try, informing her IS the best option. It is just an odd little choice.
>>AndrewRogue
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Haze
>>Cassius
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Monokeras
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>Fenton
>>Monokeras
>>Anon Y Mous
>>PaulAsaran
Back when this contest started, I wrote:
I may be a moody artist.
>>PaulAsaran
>>Anon Y Mous
Thanks! I'm glad you both enjoyed it, even if I don't quite understand why. I felt that the middle was strong, but that the opening and ending were both really weak and dragged it down. There are some good ideas here though, so I'm pleased to hear you got something out of them.
>>Monokeras
Because it's the future!
Also I once knew a girl named Julia who didn't mind when people called her Jules so I think of it as a female name.
I agree with all of these points, and this was very helpful feedback! Thank you. ^_^
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Haze
>>Cassius
>>GroaningGreyAgony
>>Monokeras
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>Fenton
>>Monokeras
>>Anon Y Mous
>>PaulAsaran
Back when this contest started, I wrote:
Ugh.
I finished my entry just in the nick of time, but it's pretty crap. Considered pulling it just because it isn't competition quality. >_<
I ended up leaving it in, but I'm not going to pass the prelims. This was frustrating.
I may be a moody artist.
>>PaulAsaran
>>Anon Y Mous
Thanks! I'm glad you both enjoyed it, even if I don't quite understand why. I felt that the middle was strong, but that the opening and ending were both really weak and dragged it down. There are some good ideas here though, so I'm pleased to hear you got something out of them.
>>Monokeras
Wait. Jules is a female name? Since when?
Because it's the future!
Also I once knew a girl named Julia who didn't mind when people called her Jules so I think of it as a female name.
This fic has several shortcomings. The first one is a terrible hook. The beginning is long-winded, abuses of the 'to be' verb, self-contradictory (the guy trudges because of high gravity then suddenly rushes to the shelter, which is inconsistent), redundant (a small spacecraft of some variety lies half-sunk into the sand. […] Its landing gear has vanished almost entirely into the sand, and its nose has begun to bury itself as well.). In short, it desperately needs a complete makeover.
The “diary” form is a bold choice, but comes out as very very telly, and that is not alleviated in anyway by the beginning. Adding some actual dialogues between the girl and the AI would give the plot a little more pep. As such, it can be pretty boring at times.
I agree with all of these points, and this was very helpful feedback! Thank you. ^_^
>>Fenton
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it, and I agree with your assessment about its strengths and weaknesses. I think it needs some pretty fundamental restructuring before it can ever work, but it's good to see people get something out of it.
Your review made me quite happy when I first read it!
A discussion with Andrew made me realised that this story was more flawed than I thought it was at first. However, I still enjoyed it deeply.
The first half is excellent; the tension, the pace, the character, all of these shows some great skills when it comes to writing. Despite its length, I didn't feel bored or the desire to quit my reading. In fact, I was deeply engaged with Jules and what was happening.
Constructive Feedback Cut for Length
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it, and I agree with your assessment about its strengths and weaknesses. I think it needs some pretty fundamental restructuring before it can ever work, but it's good to see people get something out of it.
Your review made me quite happy when I first read it!
>>Cassius
Thanks for all the comments! This was much helpful feedback. To get to one a lot of people asked:
Because this is shorter. I was already running up against the length limit. A choice I now regret!
Thanks for all the comments! This was much helpful feedback. To get to one a lot of people asked:
I'm not sure why you keep the narrative distance in that scene so far away. I understand the astronaut is not the protagonist, but giving him some character would make that opening scene a bit more dynamic.
Because this is shorter. I was already running up against the length limit. A choice I now regret!
>>AndrewRogue
This is one of the reasons I was very unhappy with the story. Thanks for the feedback! We'll see if I end up polishing it, but if so, this is one of the big things I want to fix.
Also, Fido's choice to not reveal things to her after her first few trips is... weird and particularly illogical. You can sorta see the idea of not telling hear early on to keep her from trying, but once she is trying and clearly continuing to try, informing her IS the best option. It is just an odd little choice.
This is one of the reasons I was very unhappy with the story. Thanks for the feedback! We'll see if I end up polishing it, but if so, this is one of the big things I want to fix.