The trek back was unnaturally swift.
Where the journey to the monster was met with impediments and lapses of time, the walk back home was eerily quiet. Even the sludge within the mire did not nibble at their heels with the veracity they’d once had, as if the vigor in their fighting spirit was claimed with the death of the Vessel.
Aurelio relished in that peace. He’d feared that the world would be just as arduous on the return trip as it would be during the surveying phase of the game.
He placed that difference as inconclusive within his mental buckets. A sample size of one hunt was not enough to derive a definitive conclusion from. He did not want to kick himself further by jumping to a conclusion and then having the world pull the rug out from under him.
They crossed the threshold from mucky mire into firm woodlands after some time, with the outpost walls standing a good distance away.
“What’s that?” Elena asked.
Kalani raised her arm up and motioned for the crew to stop. They boosted the gain on their environmental audio levels and listened to the ambient sounds of the world.
Carried in the wind was a discordant bell toll.
“Sounds like an alarm.” Cantwell identified.
Cold water washed over Aurelio as it dawned on him what was happening. He was thankful that his helmet was on because any realization on his part would make the tenuous situation he had with the rest of the crew much more volatile.
Kalani looked to Aurelio anyway, “Any idea what that alarm can mean?” She asked in a stern tone.
Aurelio avoided looking at her directly as he nodded, “That bell toll rings out for certain developments that the stone wants to inform its denizens of. Phineas isn’t in danger, but we should head to the station. I don’t know how long the monolith is going to blare its alarm and I don’t want things to inspect the integrity of our walls.”
He felt Elena inch closer to Aurelio, weapon sheathed but hands eager on the handle. The sooner they got to the Outpost, the sooner he’d get the chance to mend their deteriorating relationship and investigate how the settlement phase of the game takes place.
The innovations were chief among those discoveries.
He needed some things to work like the game. Aurelio was only as useful as his knowledge to predict the systems of the world.
“What does the hunk of rock want to tell us that it’s willing to alarm us from out here?” Elena asked, suspicious of his words.
“Maybe the former denizens built it that way. I can only tell you what I know.” Aurelio spat back.
“Hey,” Kalani called his attention back, “That didn’t answer my question. What does the alarm mean?”
“The stone is going to tell us that this planet is going to get consumed.” Aurelio answered directly.
That garnered silence from the rest of the crew.
He sighed, “Please give the order to move, commander. It’s gonna be easier to explain with the visual evidence the stone’s gonna provide.”
Kalani exchanged glances with Elena before turning around.
“Let’s move then.” She ordered.
The crew marched in lock step towards the outpost with their spoils in tow.
---
They arrived at the outpost to see a pacing, frantic Phineas in front of the radar station. His face was wracked with anguish.
“What the fuck! Holy fuck! We’ve gotta get out of here!” Phineas yelled as they approached the center of the compound.
“What’s happening?” Cantwell asked.
“What’s happening,” Phineas scoffed at the question, “What’s happening Canti is that there’s a mother-fucking celestial void on a collision course with this death planet!”
Kalani’s body visibly stiffened.
“Did you go inside the radar station, Phin?” Elena urgently asked.
He nodded, “Well yeah. The fucking system started blaring in the middle of my door hunt. All of the monitors are lit in there. It-it was a struggle to step out. Had to step out.” Phineas continued to pace, although the tightness in his face lessened slightly with their arrival.
He wasn’t looking at Aurelio though. And that made him suspicious.
That’s a bad mindset to have. They were scared and he was the outlier in all of this. Made him easy to suspect of foul play and he wanted to avoid having such a strained relationship with them.
“Aurelio, you lead the walk in.” Kalani stated.
Aurelio silently listened to the order. He crossed through the station's doorway, wincing at the ear-splitting bell that was reverberating through his suit.
The pressure on his chest was heavy with each powerful gong. Those behind him followed along with their own discomfort and trepidation. Phineas watched from the entryway, refusing to follow along with the rest of his crew.
They reached the nest of the monolith, and the monitors were disgustingly bright. The room was flooded with a skin scorching white light, an ever-shifting symbol emblazoned in the large center screen like a movie theater countdown.
The scavengers gathered around the console and the screens blinding light dimmed to a manageable shine.
The bell toll ceased, replaced by what Aurelio could only describe as gravel scraping the inside of his skull. The monolith invaded their minds with a distant desire to be interpreted and understood. They were filled vessels now overstuffed with fractalled thoughts incongruent to their perspective and perception. Lingering on the streams of images that flooded his immediate thoughts caused Aurelio to heave and wretch.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The stone’s jagged and overwhelming directives caused the scavengers to buckle and cry out. Unlike the others, only his skin flared up with the cerulean hues of his embered core, flames threatening to immolate him and leave him as ash and dust if he did not reconcile the incongruency of their thoughts with his willpower.
Their throats were raw by the end of its message. Aurelio’s skin was cracked and charred near the edges of his leylines. The monitors dimmed further, most powering down to leave the one main console available with static on screen.
The scavengers collectively took shallow breaths. They stared at one another in huddled silence.
Aurelio’s winced at any recollection of his intruder's thoughts, but the theme of the message was clear.
They had forty solar cycles to gather the parts for an escape ship if they planned to survive the planet's consumption. A celestial body marked by the evisceration of stars and planets alike was slowly approaching the scrap planet and they wanted to be off it, by the time it did.
The Black Sun.
“Why…” Kalani attempted to compose herself with mixed results, “What was all that?” She looked at Aurelio before wincing, hand pressed firmly on her temple as if trying to keep her head from falling off her neck.
“That’s its way of communicating, currently.” Aurelio answered.
Elena slammed her fist on the wall while attempting to stand up, “What the fuck do you mean, currently? We have to deal with this shit again?”
Aurelio nodded lightly, “Yeah. It doesn’t have the sense or the care to encode its thoughts in a digestible way if we don’t attempt to establish a connection with it.”
The {Connection} innovation was low on his priority list but moved up slightly after experiencing that wave of nausea wash over him. A waste of resources with his current considerations but worthwhile if it meant avoiding that agony again.
“Is that how it talked to you last time?” Cantwell asked.
“Yeah.”
Disappointment.
Aurelio didn’t want to think about it.
He clapped his hands and geared his mind towards more productive pursuits.
“Let’s get out of here. I haven’t forgotten my promise to you, commander. First thing, right?” Aurelio gave her a soft smile.
Kalani looked at him for a long, hard moment before letting the tension in her shoulders slack and laughed, “This outta be good. Yeah, come on gang. Let’s hear what our resident geologist has to say about our circumstances.”
They walked out of the building and towards the open plaza near the center of the outpost. Aurelio was flanked on all sides by the rest of the crew. He was still in his exo-suit, the damage was still present on the arms, with his dormant [Ember Lance] on his back.
Another curiosity cropped up in the back of his mind, but he filed and sorted it for later consideration. He was focused now on not getting kicked out of the outpost into the wilderness.
“What’s happening guys? What’d the newbie do out there that we have him surrounded like some criminal?” Phineas looked to the rest of the crew for answers.
“His story isn’t adding up. I can’t have someone on my crew not willing to be honest with me.” Kalani replied. Phineas looked back at Aurelio and fell in line with the rest of his crew, staying silent while their interrogation started.
“Some of his story checks out. The rock can speak.” Cantwell noted.
Aurelio could kiss the man on his bald head for that.
“Just because the rock can speak, doesn’t mean that the bastard hasn’t been shifty from the jump.” Elena spat out, eyes trained on Aurelio with her [Carbon Cleaver] out for use.
“Shifty implies I’m trying to undercut or harm you in some way.” Aurelio chimed in.
Kalani nodded, “You’re right about that. Which is why I’m perplexed why you haven’t been honest from the jump with us. We don’t know what your importance is to our client. You were familiar with that monster that attacked us in space. As a matter of fact, you’re familiar with a lot of things about this place.”
“He’s not from the future, either.” Cantwell added.
“You’re right,” Kalani wagged her finger, “He can’t be anyway. There’s some knowledge you have about this place and other bits that have caught you off guard. And I want to know how and why this is the case.”
She leaned forward, “Who are you, Aurelio?”
Who was he? How could he answer that question?
“I-” am from another world.
He formed the words but his voice croaked after the first letter. A distant presence in the back of his mind swelled in form. The air grew thin, and his mind became fuzzy. Aurelio started to panic.
“I-” am from another world. “I-” am from another world. “I-” am from another world. “I-” am from another world. “I-” am from another world.
No matter how many times he tried to get the words out of his mouth, nothing beyond ‘I’ would leave his lips. The lines on his skin were flaring up. It was all he could do to depend on the panic for energy and not succumb to the overwhelming force that pressed down on the edges of his mind.
The others were growing distressed at his attempts.
“It’s gotta do with the marks.” Phineas offered.
Kalani raised an eyebrow, “You understand what’s happening here?”
Phineas laughed, “I don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me. It’d been bugging me since we crash landed that we’d had our markings on arrival, but he didn’t get his until we uncanned him.”
“The voice.” Cantwell whispered.
The crew, sans Aurelio, collectively winced at the recollection. That was also strange.
“Yeah…” Phineas calmed down some, “That. But there wasn’t anything like that when we landed down here. So, who gave him the marks?”
“The monolith.” Kalani surmised. Phineas nodded in agreement.
That explained why the monolith hadn’t sent power to the rest of the outpost when the others attempted to start things up.
Those were ill-omens that Aurelio was contending with that the stone had taken such great interest in its little disappointment.
“So what? The stone’s keeping him from giving us the full story?” Elena yelled out in exasperation.
Aurelio grit his teeth, “I. Am. Aware. Of. Fate.” Each word out of his mouth burned like hot coals. His mind was stabbed with sharp pains as he cycled on phrase after phrase to deliver a sliver of a message to them. “I. Know. About. Futures.”
Kalani raised her hand, “You don’t need to push yourself further, Aurelio.”
He buckled to his knees and felt the great pressure from the back of his mind dissolve into the background.
“I think I can tell you this much…” Aurelio glanced around furtively, waiting for the monolith to smite him down. “I have a plan and I have some knowledge on how this world operates. I want to get us out alive and safe and I can’t do that without your help.” He groveled at their feet, “Please. I want to help. I can help. I want us to live.”
Aurelio started to cry, “I want to go home. I want to go home. I can’t go home, and I don’t know how, and I need all of your help and support so please just-” his sobs wouldn’t let him continue. He could hear a faint hiss coming off his cheeks, his skin no more wet than it had been out in the Mire.
“Look up kid,” Kalani raised his head up and smiled, “Let’s hear what you have to say and figure out your story as we go along.”
She extended her hand down at him.
Aurelio grabbed at the invitation and lifted himself up to join the rest of the crew.