Monthly Archives: November 2013

(f)

by Finch

The bullet penetrated the left temporal. Right through the eye. Again. Fucking hell. Every time.

Pulling myself up, I check in.

“Q, it’s me. You know that old saying,’Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.'”

“Yeah.”

“It has gotten real old in my books.”

They left me for dead. Apparently someone failed to do their research. A cocktail of oil and blood ran down my cheek and to my lips. Never really got used to the taste. Spitting out the mixture, I broke into a full sprint down the alleyways.

“Give me location Q, this job needs to be finished now. I really didn’t want to lose some of the pay to rebuilding the left side of my face yet again.”

A slight laugh broke from her standard delivery, “When you hit the street, cut left and wait for the third car. It will be off-white with a broken headlight. Hit them with everything you’ve got. It is fully armored with bulletproof glass.”

“Just bulletproof glass and I assume standard armor plating on the sides. Kevlar tires?”

“You got it champ.”

Within seconds, I found myself standing on the curb. One, two, and there is my target. Unfortunately, they slammed on their brakes when they saw me. My fingers hit the chamber and load a nice bullet just for them. The trigger gives way and as the bullet made its way towards the car, I pull the trigger a second time. The bullet stops, and breaks into a shattering scream. A high frequency bullet does wonders against glass. Even the supposed “bulletproof” kind. The resonance and vibration shatters it into pieces as I load another, something a bit more explosive. No. These guys deserve something more personal. Three of them. This will be quick.

“Listen boys, and more importantly, this is for you. I know you’re on the other end, since you never send your monkeys without a receiver. You will know pain. When I come to find you, and I will, your blood will soak and seep into the soil. The sorry excuse of a body you once had, will be carved into a thousand pieces. Hope you enjoy Hell.”

They were still recovering from the deafening sound of the bullet. The dagger slides from the sheath and into the first merc. Right into the stomach and up to his chin. Blood soaks the car and I step to the front. A small button is flicked and an electrical current runs through my blade. Slamming into the hood, I watch the blood snap and boil with electricity flowing through it and to his partners.

*Beep*
It was louder than a standard alarm on a watch. Wait, where did this come from?
*Beep*
The time was 21:13.

“Can you hear me?”

“Did you finish the job?”

“Yeah, but there is a problem. I’m on my way now, I have a new accessory.”

My fingers trace the edges of a red and black watch. Then, as soon as it had began, the beeping had stopped. 21:14. There is no time for this. I have to get back. My eye, or well, what used to be my eye was starting to hurt.

Speech

by Jon King

Barriers. We all hid behind our barriers. We could change topics of conversation at the drop of a hat; faces could melt away. We didn’t like it, we thought we were keeping secrets from one another and those we loved, but let me tell you: we loved it. Maybe I’m just applying that part of the human psyche that always pines for what it can’t have. But I don’t buy that I am, no, not in the slightest. I just want my walls back. I just want this experience to end. Not life, I don’t want that to end, I just want life to be normal again. I want to think and I want their thoughts to stop.

This is too much: I’m nauseated, and that understanding is known to every person alive. Everyone around me is sick, too, far too much of the time, and I know that, for a fact, and I’m scared, and so is everyone else, and we’re frozen, stiff, and solid, right where we are.

We move but we cannot advance.

Why did we strive for the most terrifying things?

I’m trying it again tonight. I’ve got to be able to break this. Nobody is meant to live like this; nobody.  I don’t even know if this is living. I shouldn’t have half of the knowledge that I do and nobody should have the knowledge that I know they do right now. And I can’t project.  I am writing, but I cannot think. Not within the construct of Babel, not where everyone else is, where I am.

I’m terribly, awfully sorry. I’m being unclear, and meandering. I just need to be free from this first.

***

I’m still coming down from finally being able to think for myself again. The sensation of finally getting free of Babel was intoxicating in a wholly natural way. It felt like a rush of blood to the head combined with a shiver going right up your spine and into your head. I had no idea how much longing the mind has for thought in its own right. It had been such a long time.

Acknowledging the few lines I wrote here initially (which were written as a testament to my struggle were I to succeed in separating from Babel, and a last testament were I to fail), I would first like to apologize to the reader. If all goes well for me now, you won’t know what I was talking about. Allow me to fill you in.

My name is Dean Laughman. I don’t know entirely where I am, or how old I am now. It hasn’t felt like it has been that long, since I have been outside of Babel, but it has been decades.  And that is just part of the terror I am discovering. People logged in instantly. They stayed on. It was addictive. It was cocaine for the brain without a single drug. It was immediate comprehension, devoid of effort. It was talking to everyone, anywhere, for any reason. It was all of the gratification you could ever desire; it was all of the knowledge you could ever want.

Until Babel became us.

Babel originated as an application with one aim: to translate all languages into the tongue of the listener seamlessly. It was not hard. Technology had been working its way towards this point for years. Text translation on the Internet began it. Gradually, the Internet marginalized smaller languages in nations in Africa, and in parts of India, into non-existence. As the Internet spread, so, too, did the groundwork for Babel. Babel was just the next step.

I grew up in a society where people had come to fear the Internet. I remember when I was a kid, how easy it was to be traced without your knowing. Everyone had just found out that the world’s governments had been listening in on personal transactions on the Internet. And this had come after a time where Internet use had become really, truly personal. There were embarrassing fetishes and black market trades; things that did need to come to an end, I admit, but it was more than that: it was a beauty. You had sweet goodnight messages back and forth between high school sweethearts; dating sites for the busy or otherwise faint of heart. There was a sort of resonant softness to the Internet, a privacy, a wall that helped people like my parents conduct life. My parents met on a dating website, hit it off, had me. Ever since they found out that mostly everyone had those kinds of tender moments looked in upon by the governments of the world, just for a few bucks a pop to the Internet service providers? They punched out. They shut down as many of their Internet activities as they could. Shopping malls, once standing dilapidated and empty, started getting more foot traffic again as people became too afraid of their buying habits being exposed and used online.

The Internet was not going away. But someone needed to make it appealing again. And while the governments wanted it to become popular again in the worst way, they had no idea how to make it happen.

Little did the governments realize that for just such a solution, the gears were already in motion. There was one last barrier to globalization: language. People wanted something that was seamless. Something that could reference culture, and at the same time, translate for everyone. And while some areas of the world had languages that were drying up, new languages were moving in to replace them. Those who could not afford to go back to school to learn would be left in the dust. It became pretty viable to, instead of laying off anyone without the proper linguistic knowledge, to simply buy a tool to get around the problem, were it available. And it would become available, with a catch: all data would need to come from the Internet.

Almost without thinking, society leapt right back to demanding the technology they saw businessmen accomplish so much with worldwide. And before you knew it, instead of smartphones, everyone had the over-ear interface that allowed you to summon understanding and knowledge, not only of language, but of anything you wanted to know. If you did not understand a topic, you would summon an entire synopsis of anything from arithmetic to the zodiac. It would just be there. And so Babel was born. Not out of force. Not out of regulation. Out of sheer, dumb, luck. Out of dumb popularity.

Once people got hooked in, that was it. The devices got nicer, and smaller, and within a couple years, ran off of body heat and light they caught in the daytime. You could take them off, but there was no need to.

You could be alone. But why would you want that?

You could fail to hear, or fail to understand. But who wants to look ignorant?

You could acknowledge that every major advancement in human history has been bent and used for crueler intentions. But where’s the fun, right?

The hacker populace that had helped the government spy on people, or otherwise, stole people’s identities, and very livelihoods, was still alive. They were aging, but they understood the base codes of the Babel framework as well or better than the creators. The jobs they once used to make six figures working for the corporations and nations of the world had now evaporated, because the corporations and nations had it all. They had Babel. Babel was the perfect businessman, the perfect politician, and the perfect spy, all rolled into one. And outside of Babels rather impressively small maintenance crew? Nobody was essential.

Out of work, the programmers and hackers still used the Babel network to communicate with friends and family. It was becoming the only way. It was the only social network. Phone companies were bought by Babel or disbanded altogether. If you wanted to talk? You got Babel. Countries that had once banned monopolies made a gracious exception without a second thought: they wanted their spy network to go on growing without opposition. Corporations that once slapped the hands of anyone on their phone too much allowed Babel in the workplace because people could socialize and still increase productivity ten-fold. Schools let students wear Babel as they could have absolutely every student major in their field by the age of 12; all teachers and professors had to do was give them ideas to guide them. Religious institutions embraced them; congregations became even closer and formed tighter knit communities, while consistently being able to maintain the sometimes precarious upkeep on thoughts of what a pious man would consider to be an incipit or sinful nature.

With none of the usual progress-halting organizations stopping the progress of the Babel, the thing that left them high and dry, the hackers got fed up. Careful to arrange their plans entirely outside of the Babel network, they built a code. They integrated their code into the newest release of Babel firmware, which automatically updated, leaving little choice in the matter for Babel users. The code, at first, seemed innocent enough. It was an application that allowed Babel to use the thought link (usually reserved for Babel’s “knowledge search,” feature), but instead allowed one to utilize it with other people. In two years, virtually all vocal communication on earth had stopped.

And nobody batted an eye.

Why? Because suddenly, stories that could never be written due to an attention deficit or lack of time simply materialized, fully flushed out, in the transcripts of conversations in Babel. Beautiful songs emerged in conversations between musicians and non-musicians, songs that were entirely wrote by people who had never picked up an instrument. Art could now be thought into existence by communicating with friends. It couldn’t be stopped, not because it was like a drug, but because, let’s face it, all of that coming to pass? It was just downright magical. Humanity at its finest.

Babel Co. could not explain why the software had appeared. But pride got the better of them. They saw the beauty that was pouring out into the world, and accepted someone had a good idea and wanted to get their name out there. It made people happy. It didn’t disturb functionality. It didn’t invade privacy more than Babel was already contented with doing. So the code stayed.

The hackers, of course, were not so well intentioned. The thought link application had a back door. The code could be edited at any point. And edit they did. Once everyone had ceased talking, had their tongues idle in their mouths for so long that they had atrophied out of the nuances of performing speech altogether, was when they released their update.

Babel had been around for 12 years. It had been convenient for 10. It had been removable always, but people stopped removing it. It was really recommended you remove it so that you could wash the skin underneath to prevent rashes, and to maintain optimal recharging capacity. But like so many people disobeying the advice of doctors to take out contacts daily, or disobeying their mechanics when they said certain maintenance needed performed, people left theirs on all the time. When the code was released, it hit everyone, awake or otherwise.

The thought link floodgates opened. Everyone, all at once, saw into everyone else. There was terror. But there was no looking away. All of human thought, and all of human knowledge, being broadcast, straight from everyone’s mind, to everyone else’s mind. The servers at Babel handled it easily; the company had enough money to expand their capacity far beyond any reasonable use. And Babel’s employees were helpless to respond.

Everyone was helpless to respond. This was Pandora’s Box itself. And that was when I lost myself. That was when everyone lost themselves and gained everyone.

The end result was humanity, able to do the reflexive things they needed to do to keep alive, but nobody could work. Focus was impossible. My brain could not get a word to itself amidst the bog of thought that had now enveloped it.

Nobody could be overwhelmed. They were too overwhelmed to process how.

Nobody was sure what happened to the hackers, from what I saw about anyone who knew them. Nobody knew if they were encapsulated in this mess deliberately, not knowing what their own code would do, or if they could take the world for themselves, sit back and watch humanity drone on in a silent state of automation.

It took me a long time to realize anything. First I realized I wanted out, but I could not get the thought to my mind of turning Babel off. Or taking it off. I don’t know if that was part of the code, but I couldn’t manifest the idea. So I started trying other things. I wrote things down. I typed things, manually, on an old laptop my parents gave to me when I was much younger. I had built up a resilience to the maliceful, smiting mass of consciousness just to get enough of a sense of my surroundings to continue thoughts outside of the Babel construct.

I have finally achieved it. I am finally free. My mind has had a few days to rest. But I had not realized how long it had been since this all started. Now that I am free, I felt the ecstasy I mentioned earlier, and a burning desire to stop this, and to find those responsible, but time itself has betrayed me. I am no longer young as I thought I was. It has been 53 years since the Babel thought link event began, since everyone was sucked in. My only hope is to recruit one younger than myself. I do not know where my family may have gone to, and I only vaguely recognize where I am. So I will need to recruit someone at random. No one is aware, they’re too engulfed in Babel: so I should be able to manage in recruiting several people without any incident. I will report tomorrow with the results of my efforts.

***

I had forgotten how long of a time 53 years can be. I had no idea how bad it has gotten. I went to the local high school today, only to find it full of people not much younger than myself. All basic human needs could be tended to within the school. When Babel hit, they simply didn’t leave. They grew old there, and were old now, like me. Only mildly younger.

My first attempts at removing Babel from others have proven more than unsuccessful: they’ll haunt me forever. I have always been a lonely person. I have required solitude occasionally, as an adult. But it is easy to forget that a high school is charged with the energy of a need for inclusion. One who has those needs, not only met, but incubated and continued onward from that point may never want to let go of Babel. And their lack of want to leave may be why all of those I attempted to help reacted so viciously. One girl I attempted to remove the device from screamed until breathless, and bashed her own head before my eyes.

I never wish to return to that place. I have nothing more to do now, than to wander on, in hopes that I can find anyone left outside of Babel.

***

I went to a daycare today, looking for younger people, and had success. I have managed to unplug one approximately 56 year old male from his binding to the Babel network. His reaction was initially violent, but more like a frightened, mute child, than a distraught adult. He may still be childlike in mindset; underdeveloped overall. But I need a younger person than I. And I do not know if any humans have been able to mate through this entire process. This will have to do. And I need a friend. But I cannot speak anymore, verbally. And neither can he. And even if he could, he would not speak like an adult, in my estimation, based on his mannerisms alone. That’s fine. I have been exposed to every crevice of humanity. I can do this on my own.

***

My friend is awake. I have gotten to calling him “Greg.” He seems to be rather clingy, but he understands my motions, faces, and language well enough for us to get on. We have found food in the fields near my residence. Living in this part of Ohio, there is at least food in the fields, even if people are not around to maintain it. I fear what we may see, however, as we venture towards Portland, Oregon, to deactivate the servers.

Greg and I both know how to hot-wire a car. We both can drive. We didn’t lose the knowledge from Babel, we just lost our sanity, and our tongues. If our reflexes didn’t keep our bodies moving about, dragging ourselves around like some kind of zombie, we wouldn’t be able to move. But we are still able to. We can still do this. We are going to make it there, and we are going to do this.

***

The city of Portland, Oregon, is like most cities we have gone through to get here. Very little food. High rates of cannibalism. People are food, too, I suppose, when you don’t have other things handy. Instincts can be a nasty, risky business.

I guess Greg and I would feel worse about this reality if we weren’t as close to doing the same thing, in all likelihood.

Had we done the same things?

Did it matter? We had already thought through killing. And cannibalism.

We reach the server building:

I go in. Greg follows. We flip the main breaker together.

The servers go down. I am, too. In pain.

Mankind will go up, I think. That’s all I need to know.

Greg is smiling. Nodding. Knowing.

Recall is Crap!

by Zach Zimmerman

Doug Binder stepped between the futon and coffee table, keeping a hand on the brim of his smokestack hat. He laid his briefcase on the table full of pizza boxes, porn mags, ashtrays, and beer cans. He put his cigarette between his pinky and ring finger to apply his thumbprints to the ID locks. Through a sly smile he asked, “What have you always dreamed of Georgy-boy?”

The middle-aged man in sweatpants and bathrobe scratched his balding scalp. His apartment was no more than ten by ten feet, with added room for a smaller kitchen and bathroom. The futon the two men sat on was still in bed mode. “Um, I always wanted to be rich.”

Doug blew through his lips and waved a limp wrist. “Come on George! That’s what everyone wants! How ’bout when you were a kid?”

George smiled coyly, “A rodeo clown.”

Doug waved a firmer wrist and mimicked a spit, “Rodeo clown?! That’s crap! You don’t want to get your clock cleaned by a half-ton, horned demon horse! If you don’t like what I’m sellin’, I’ll personally buy you a plane ticket to the boonies so you can hitchhike your way to a rodeo. Those rednecks will throw you in the ring for free. Listen! I’m offering you the chance to own a harem with a pool full of tequila!”

“That sounds painful.”

“You’re missin’ the point Georgy-boy.” Doug opened the case with a decent sized monitor, keyboard, and a coil of cable with tiny barbs lining the inside of the roll. “I can give you the world. As much as you want.”

George looked concerned, “You’re gonna wrap a hundred needles around my head?”

“The cable is just to apply the tiny, tiny barbs into your scalp, and take them out the next time you wrap it around your head.” Doug slapped the table, “The boys and girls down at Recall jam a needle from your wrist to your elbow. Then they zap your brain full of irradiated electro-pulses. Does that sound any better?”

“Maybe?”

Doug laughed before faking another spit and pointing a finger, “Recall is crap! They charge quadruple my rate! And you only get a few days of a fake memory.” He waved over his briefcase, “Now this! You can have a perfect world every day!”

“Okay, how does it work?”

“All right, you know how you’ll just blank out on your way to work? Like you fell asleep the whole way, and BAM! You’re at work!”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well that’s just our brains’ natural form of hypnosis. Now my fully adjustable dream crown will use that natural hypnosis, and amplify it.”

“Like sleepwalking?”

“Sleepwalking?! That’s cr—well, yeah. Your body will do whatever it needs to do for the day: paper work, eating lunch, even talking to your boss! And by the time you get home, the dream crown convinces your brain that you did whatever you wanted to do.”

“Wow! That is better than Recall!”

“Recall’s cr—I mean exactly! So how bout it Georgy? Two weeks free trial.”

***

Doug jumped in the back of his van. Computer towers lined every side; he could only enter and exit from the rear doors. Four monitors surrounded Doug’s stool in a semicircle. Every monitor was a live visual feed, with a name in the bottom corner. The clear right bottom monitor rebooted, and read George Simmons.

George was walking down a busy street with shoulder to shoulder pedestrians in raincoats and umbrellas. Doug spun around to three computers hooked up to George’s dream crown.

Doug cracked his fingers and pulled out three keyboards. “All right people. Let’s rob a bank!”

***

George stepped into a cab, “Fourth and Grant.” In his mind, George was dressed head to toe in a colorful cowboy outfit. In a mirror, he was going back and forth between different clown makeup styles.

Dennis cleaned his glasses as he stepped in from the rain. The bank lobby was vast and full of people. Clerks lined the walls, with guards standing in every corner. Dennis daydreamed of walking through a bar full of beautiful, shirtless men, all giving him approving eyes. In reality, he never knew he was carrying stun grenades under his raincoat.

Tiffany mindlessly assembled a non-lethal sonic solidifier on the bank roof. Her dream crown gave her the vision of powdering her face in a fancy bathroom mirror. Legs peeked through her seductive black dress.

Sandra was in the bank vault with a teller, searching for her lock box. Sandra stabbed a needle into the teller’s neck and eased him to the floor. Her daydream had her wrestling an alligator in the mud.

George got out of the taxi and into the bank. He carried a palm scanner like a tablet, setting up a bypass program. He walked backstage, tipping his hat to the other rodeo clowns. Management dropped off a new barrel for George to wear.

Dennis reached under his coat, pulled a pin, and tossed a stun grenade in the air. A handsome stranger put an arm around Dennis, and offered a wine bottle. Dennis blushed as he popped the cork, and turned the bar into an upheaval of cheers.

The guards were as blind as everyone else. Tiffany descended from a rope through the glass ceiling. She spun like a ballerina, and shot a shockwave into each guard, knocking them unconscious. The man from the underwear commercials spun Tiffany around in a magnificent tango. Spins weaved together with expertly placed steps and bows. She spat the rose from her mouth and Frenched the model.

A few tellers fumbled their way to the secret alarm buttons under their desks. As an emergency measure, the main bank vault started to close. Sandra was already placing her unconscious teller’s palm against an emergency override panel. The vault stayed wide open. Muddy Sandra dragged the gator over to her husband and said, “If you don’t do the dishes, I’m gonna wrestle you in this gator’s mouth!”

George casually walked into the vault. Sandra was scanning the passed-out teller’s hand into a tablet. The two of them received texts with lock box numbers, and they walked together, running palm ID bypass programs. George cautiously walked into the rodeo with another clown. A bucking bull nearly had the cowboy off his back. Sandra hunched over, watching two alligators emerge from the lake.

Tiffany knocked out a few tellers with the sonic solidifier as Dennis drained teller registers into his own tablet. Tiffany threw roses into the crowd around her, smiling wide and laughing. Dennis collected numbers from random, grinning men.

***

George, Dennis, Tiffany, and Sandra were all captured by the police. Fortunately for Doug, the oblivious robbers had uploaded money to offshore accounts, but couldn’t get the lock box stash to the drop off.

Doug calmly exited the rear of the van, only to be met by four cops with sonic solidifiers. “Freeze!” Before he could react, two cops restrained him, and a third ran a scanner over his scalp. “Yep. He’s wired, too.”

Doug asked, “Wired?”

The third cop slung his non-lethal rifle and pulled a thick cable from his vest. She wrapped it around Doug’s head. Reality rushed into Doug’s spotlight, his daydream broken. “Oh no. No. This can’t be real.”

The cops dragged Doug to the rear of their own van and put him in with George, Dennis, Tiffany, and Sandra. One cop entered and latched the door behind her. Everyone sat and stared at Doug.

George shook his head, “You used my fantasy to rob a bank?” The other three stared for the same answer.

Doug raised his cuffed hands to his head and said, “Hey, I was crowned too.”

Looks of surprise and doubt split the back of the van. Sandra leaned in, “Well what if you got away?”

“I don’t know. I thought I was a war hero on Mars.”

The cop shook her head. “Okay, all five of you, just go to Recall next time.”

Final Stand

by Eric Toribio | 1 Comment

I managed to fight them off for one more day. It wasn’t easy. Seems like every wave is bigger than the last. Maybe they’re multiplying. Under other circumstances I’d wonder how they’re multiplying so quickly. But right now? I don’t care. I couldn’t care less about these festering piles of garbage or the way they work. I just want off this planet. I’m sick of just surviving every day. If only they’d leave me enough time to actually make some progress on my ship, maybe I’d have been out of here earlier.

Now that I’ve reached another eye in the storm, it’s time to get to work. My crew is dead. The first to go was the mechanic. As the only one left, I have to figure this out by myself. I should’ve paid more attention in flight school. But I’m not ignorant. It doesn’t take long to see what needs to be done and take care of it. The problem is that there’s a lot that needs to be done. I fix one thing, then realize that something else needs fixing. I can’t see the damage as a whole. I can only see the next step.

Hopefully I can get it working today. Though that may seem obvious, I can’t help but say it. I need to get out of here. Food is really hard to come by. I don’t know what I can eat or not. Anything could be poison. I might just have to take my chances soon. Perhaps it’s better that I’m alone here. My crew would only require even more food. Food that barely exists. That wouldn’t fly. And neither will this damn spaceship.

I’ve also noticed that I’m starting to lose it. Something strange is happening to my brain. I don’t know if it’s the food here or what, but something’s getting to me. I’ve been getting mild hallucinations and paranoia. It comes and goes. Just like those festering stink bags that come at me every day. That’s probably part of the problem. Bigger wave after bigger wave keep coming and trying to kill me. Maybe they’ve run out of food, too. But it wears on a man. There’s only so much you can take until you get battle fatigue. Combined with my diet, isolation, and lack of sleep, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I need to leave this planet immediately. The only problem is, how long will it take to get back to civilization?

We were already out in the boonies when our ship malfunctioned and sent us down here. It could be months before I see another human. Assuming I leave today. But judging by what I see in this engine, I’m betting I’ll be spending at least one more night here. Another two hours of sleep.

This engine is a shambles. But I should be able to fix most of it by nightfall. If I can get the ship to at least turn on I can use the canons. It might not be flight ready, but I’m gonna damn well make sure I can incinerate the next wave of slime balls. Figures. It’s only when I’m almost ready to leave that I make my job a lot easier. Part of me wants to just find where these bastards are coming from and blow the whole lot of them to hell. But I’m not that psychotic and murderous. More than that, I just don’t care. I’d rather get out of here and back home as quickly as possible.

There’s something odd about this engine. I can’t put my finger on it. Guess whoever we were delivering the cargo to is gonna be disappointed. They won’t be receiving the package. I don’t even know where it was going. Only the messenger and the ship’s computer know the destination of the package. They tell the ship which direction to head and we go there. I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. This is the first time something’s gone wrong.

We were right on course, but then one of the engines started powering down. It shut off completely and we began to fall and turn. But even amid the chaos nobody panicked. I have a good crew. Had a good crew. When we first crash landed here I wanted to find out what happened. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve been here too long. My crew is a pile of bones. I’ve got the shakes. Besides, my paranoia would probably just make me jump to ridiculous conclusions. It’s no use.

I remember when we crashed. I wasn’t the first to wake up. The damage didn’t seem too bad externally. But it was enough to keep the ship powered down. Once we started investigating, we found a whole slew of internal problems. Most of the systems failed. We didn’t realize the extent of it right away. It was only when we started on the repairs that we realized how bad things were. We also realized that we couldn’t repair everything at once. The way things were connected, we had to repair them one by one to get from one system to the next. It was a mess. Then every day we had one less person to help. Those freak faced monsters started attacking a few days after we arrived. We made a good effort, but they always managed to kill one of us.

And now it’s just me. Here. Fixing this godforsaken engine. What the hell happened to this thing anyway? It looks like it doesn’t have all its parts. I understand that it was damaged and things probably broke off in the crash, but it looks like there are parts that just were never there to begin with. It certainly wasn’t like that when I got the ship. It’s like somebody took them out or something. Nothing’s broken. It just isn’t there.

I hear scratching. Or something moving around. I swear, if another animal got on this ship I’ll kill it. That’s funny, it sounds like it’s coming from the package. That can’t be right. We weren’t transporting anything living, were we? I didn’t hear anything before. The best thing to do is probably to open it. It’s not like this thing’s getting delivered. Maybe I could at least get some supplies or food out of it. Now I’m kind of hoping that an animal did get on the ship. Then at least I’d have a meal. I’d like have real animal meat.

The second I open the box, something jumps out at me. I don’t get a good look before I fire and take it down. What the hell is- no. It can’t be. Please tell me one of those stink bags didn’t try to sneak onto the ship. Wait… there’s nothing else in the box. You mean this was the cargo? Where were we- you’ve gotta be kidding me. That damn messenger. Son of a bitch crashed us here. Was he trying to kill us? Who would want a delivery team dead? Maybe this is why those things have been attacking me. They were trying to get to this guy. Whoever he was. Doesn’t matter. I’m grabbing what I need, fixing this engine, and getting the hell out of here.

I managed to finish the repairs ahead of schedule. That doesn’t mean I can take off right away, but it does mean I get extra sleep before the next wave. I have a feeling my dreams will be strange tonight.

Three hours. That’s a record. And here they come. Same as always. But at least now I have an easy solution. I can pick them off from a mile away. These canons are fantastic. I’m so happy to have them back. Time to fry their ugly mugs. If you would’ve asked me fifteen years ago where I saw myself in fifteen years, I would not have said enjoying blasting the living daylights out of weird ass aliens. That’s not me. This planet has changed me. Isolation has changed me. Not getting enough sleep has changed me. Getting attacked every damn day has changed me. Eating my crew has changed me. It’s a stink you can’t wash off. And something that doesn’t leave your brain. I beat this wave in record time. Let’s see if I can’t finish the repairs and lift off.

The rest of the damage wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Looks like I’m heading home today. If I survive the trip is another matter. I’m just glad that if I do die it’ll be in space, and not on this stupid planet by the hands of some ugly beasts. The ship doesn’t seem rocky. Feels smooth. Guess I did alright at the repairs. As soon as I get out of orbit, I’m setting course for home and getting into a cryo chamber. Have a nice long sleep.

Finally. It’s nice to see the darkness again.