We were followed. I’m sure of that now. I won’t talk with Dr. Federman about it; putting it into words would make it too real, too present. From the look on his face when he shared his findings after combing the system logs, though, he knows as well.
I feel remarkably calm for the subject matter, for the situation as a whole. I expect this will wear off soon. The more work I can get done in this time, and the more I can record of what’s going on, the better.
I can only imagine these came from those microscopic creatures at the sea vents. They streamlined themselves after all. It’s unlikely for anything here to have human-like blood for that to be their food source. The heat of the bodies must have attracted them.
I’d hoped they may have some kind of poison in their fangs, or barbs, or whatever caused these puncture wounds. Poison that would quickly kill the victims.
They didn’t. Not that far along in the evolutionary process, or they’d just never needed it in the first place. These people died slow, agonizing deaths.
Something’s outside. I’ve been watching the external monitors for an hour now. Dr. Federman had this job, but he was a bit too focused on it, too tense. I didn’t want anything to be ignored because that focus wasn’t spread over all the monitors, so. My job now.
I’m a bit too focused, too tense. We can take turns being ill-adjusted. I haven’t yet decided if it’s better for one of us to be in their right mind and the other broken up completely, or if it’s better for us to both be halfway here and halfway off the edge of the cliff behind us.
Tension is bad here, but focus is good. Focus is a distraction. My voice is a distraction, and this diary is a distraction. Dr. Federman can be one when he actually talks to me, but he likes keeping his half of the conversation to himself most of the time, when he’s not giving me advice, when we’re not trying to comfort each other.
Something’s outside. The blip is only a half second long before it disappears beyond the edges of the borders once again, to return several minutes later in a different place. Much faster than any living being has any right to move, in my opinion. It’s stalking around us, stepping within the boundary for just a moment before fleeing again. It must be intentional. It must know where these monitors are, by scent or sight or some other sense we can’t understand that lets it know there are intruders in its home, aliens in its forests and cliffs and beaches.
How could it have stayed hidden for so many years? How could all of these creatures have stayed completely undetectable for so long, when people all over the planet have been searching for them? And only now they show up, come out of hiding. Come after the scientists. Come after us.
Soon, the communication channels will open again. Dr. Federman and I will be face-to-face with our bosses — or, I will. When I try to ask him what exactly we’ll be sharing, he shrinks away, changes the subject quickly. He seems to be against talking with them himself.
I don’t know how they’ll respond. Will they believe me? The data should all be there for them, but the likelihood is vastly small that any of this is actually happening. Maybe we’ve been seeing things. Maybe nothing is out there, nothing was in here, nothing but the most mundane deaths happened on this planet.
Will they take us home? Send a rocket down here, crush those cars in the garage, and let us go back to our jobs on Earth? Maybe I don’t have to underperform at all to be taken out.
…
No, they won’t. They knew what they were sending us into. They may not have known the specifics, but they knew how dangerous this mission would be.
If they do send a rocket to us, though… I don’t know if I’ll get on it. I don’t know if I want to.
No, that’s a lie. I want to. I want to get off of this planet so badly I want to cry. But I won’t. I’m already devoted, you know? This world is full of a mystery that Dr. Federman and I might — will — solve. It’s on me to bring answers and peace to the families of the deceased, and it’s on me to understand for myself, for my own sake. If I leave now, knowing there’s so much more out there than even these teams of top scientists had the slightest clue about, if I leave without learning all I can — I’ll never be able to let go of it.
And I’ll be cursed if I let this… thing keep following us. Here, on the wide land and roads of the southern continent, there is ample room to avoid it. Here, our cars are more than strong enough to deal with its attempts to get to us. The outside of the car we took to get here didn’t have a mark on it despite the beating it took. And here, the facilities are even stronger, strong enough to not have even been dented by that storm.
But soon, we’ll be getting on a boat. A small boat. And we’ll be going to islands with much less room to avoid creatures bent on disemboweling us.
I don’t… actually know if that’s its goal. [laugh] Maybe it wants to make friends.
It’s not coming with us, though.
There are weapons in here, yeah? [shuffling] Yeah, a few of them. After POGE had been deemed safe and free of surface life, there wasn’t a need for weaponry, but the facilities have all been stocked with a few rifles and pistols and batons, just in case. It’s strange for luck to start favoring me again.
Will Dr. Federman come with me if I ask him?
Probably not.
Be right back.
[coughing] What — [cough] what the fu-
[hoarse] Mom was always worried about me when I was a kid. One night, I’d be cowering under the covers, terrified of the monsters I believed were under my bed, or in my closet, or right outside my window, prowling the empty farmland and plains that surrounded our little house. And the very next night, I’d be outside with a flashlight and a kitchen knife, ready to fight off whatever it was. She called my mind a light switch, a quick flip between scared and furious at whatever I was scared about, between flight and fight, and when it switched to fight all thoughts of my safety would be gone in my need to remove whatever threat there appeared to be.
Hoo, boy.
I should think about what happened. I should talk about it. That’s what this diary is for, and the memory won’t be as fresh soon.
Dr. Federman actually almost yelled at me, can you believe it? I suppose leaving without notice and coming back with blood soaking my walking suit and my oxygen running out from the tear in it, blue in the face from holding my breath much longer than my lungs cared for, would make anyone angry.
…
Ah.
Ah… I-
I shouldn’t… leave him alone. He told me to think about what it would be like if he left one day and didn’t come back, leaving me all alone out here.
Uh.
Oh.
Don’t want to talk about. Don’t want to think about it. Maybe sometimes it’s better to wait a while before recording. I can’t quite latch onto the memory right now, even though I’m trying.
Sometimes it feels like I detach from this world. That’s what the light switch is, I think. One moment, I’m here, present and aware of all the dangers around me. The next, it’s as if I don’t understand danger, don’t understand the possibility that something could possibly hurt me.
Dr. Federman doesn’t forget that.
Shabbat shalom, diary. What a day of rest this has been.
Departure
Are we connected?
Yes, sir, I can hear you. Can you see me? Okay.
No, we haven’t found a way to keep this from happening. We planned to head immediately to the northern continent, where the first teams died, but there’s—