Zhu woke up to cold rain beating against his face. He shivered as his breath made clouds. He raised an arm to shield himself while he got up, surprised at being covered in mud. Then he looked around in confusion. He was not on the Nineveh. He was somehow in a strange field under stormy skies, and he was alone. He looked all around in confusion as thunder roared overhead. Rows and rows of markers of chiseled stone stretched out on every side towards a distant wall.

He recognized the markers. They were tombstones. He saw Christian crosses, Muslim crescents, Jewish Stars of David, pyramidal obelisks, and plain old rectangular slabs. He was in a cemetery but it wasn’t correct. None of the tombstones were marked. He studied them for a moment wondering how they could appear so unfinished. Even the graves of the unknown dead were marked with what little facts were available.

He shouted as he began walking down in between two of the rows in the direction of a distant open gate, his feet splashing in puddles as he went. The cold water passed right through the fabric of his shoes. “Hello! Is there anyone who can hear me? Hello!”

No answer.

“Hello!” he cried as he sped up to a brisk pace. “Hello! Is anyone there?”

I must be dreaming. He recollected his recent memories. He had travelled with his ship and crew to Delta Hydri. He was on the Nineveh. No, he was on another ship! He remembered; they had boarded an alien derelict with the intention of prepping it for tow.

Doctor Chandna, Patterson, and Samoylova had all warned him of the dangers. But he needed to see everything. He wanted to be known for something. And then there was the accident, and the pain, Soliman’s broken panic, and Patterson’s voice telling him that it was going to be okay. And that was code for it wasn’t.

He could now see past the gate through the pouring rain. It did not appear to be a means of escape. There were more rows of graves extending past it. He slowed to a stop as fear began to fully replace the confusion. His brain replaced some of the previous uncertainty with the irrational reality that appeared before him. There was another cemetery beyond this one.

His heart furiously drummed within his chest, and his blood pressure soared with tension. If this was the afterlife then he had deceived himself about his faith. This certainly wasn’t heaven. This was either a horrible dream or something much, much worse. “Hello!” he screamed. “Is there anyone out there?”

A voice came from behind him. It was calm and masculine. “I am here, and this is not a dream. This is the truth of what is.”

Zhu turned and looked at the man, who hadn’t been anywhere around only moments ago. He didn’t know what exactly he expected to see when things were already this strange, but it certainly wasn’t what stood before him. Whomever it was, he was a man – he believed – but he was fully covered in hood and robe. His face was concealed behind a metallic mask – the mouth turned downward in frown and the eyes exaggerated to show anguish. But his face was more than concealed. He seemed to have no face at all; nothing perceivable was behind the openings for eyes and mouth.

Zhu stood there silently for a moment, frozen. The rain beat down on him and the water dripped off his body. His clothing was uncomfortably soaked. Yet the man wasn’t even damp, and not a single bead or stream of water ran down his frame. He spoke to himself in his mind, a reminder that he had to be calm and authoritative. He swallowed to energize his throat and asked, “Who are you, and what is this place?”

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“I am a Traveler,” the man said without moving. Then, while extending his hands outwards toward the surroundings he continued, “And this is what you came looking for.”

“I don’t understand,” Zhu said with notable apprehension. He was uncertain whether the “traveler” could be trusted and tried to estimate the probability that he was Satan. “Where am I? I was on the Nineveh! What’s the meaning of this?”

“You’re still on the Nineveh,” the man answered with no apparent emotion. “And this is what you came for. You wanted to see aliens. Here they lay.”

“This is not what we came for!” Zhu shouted, anger now rising above his fear. “How did you get here, and what is beyond that gate?”

The Traveler showed no offense and did not raise his voice. He continued, calmly and rationally – or irrationally, “I am simply here as you are. And beyond that gate is another cemetery, and then there are others beyond that. Do you not have eyes that perceive?”

All at once, the cemetery brightened as the light of the sun came down strong. Yet the rain continued. Zhu looked up at a sky that was not sky and with no sun, and he saw that the walls no longer obstructed the view of the horizon. The horizon curved upward on all sides and closed over above them. But the horizon did not curve equally everywhere like with a sphere, they were instead within a torus of enormous size. And wherever he looked he saw the outline of the perimeter walls separating cemetery after cemetery – so many and each adjacent to the next.

He looked back at the Traveler in silence. What could he say? Fear had again overcome his anger.

The Traveler took his indecisiveness as an invitation to go on. “They’re all dead, Zhu. There is no one to talk to.” Then the Traveler pointed slightly toward Zhu’s right and added, “And that spot is reserved for you.”

He followed the direction and looked down at a nearby cross. It was inscribed with Zhu Honghui.

He didn’t ask anything else of the Traveler. He turned and ran, sprinting as fast as he could. He would race past the gate, and then the one after that. He would first find some place of safety – the safety of being alone – and then find a way out of this dream, this nightmare, this hell. And as he ran his breath became erratic and his eyes began to be filled with blinding light. The torus vanished into the light and he heard the garbled voices of Patterson and Chandna as the pain – the unbearable torment returned. Zhu collapsed onto a floor of nothingness, his head smacking down on ground which didn’t exist and choking on pooled water that never was. He screamed on and on.

And then Zhu woke up to blinding light, screaming in agony. The pain came from every part of him. He looked around and saw he was in the biohazard operating room within Sci-Med. His head spun and he coughed up something acrid and foul as the doctors attended to him while wearing full environmental hazard suits.

He could barely move; every joint was locked up solid. He felt Patterson’s hand gently squeezing his own as she told him that they have given him morphine and he should be feeling better now. The pain soon lessened, but he would in no case describe his condition as better.

He spit blood out of his mouth – for it must have been blood, even though it tasted alien. He felt it tickle down the side of his face. Chandna came clearly into view with a scalpel.

“Help me, Patterson. They’re all dead! I saw them dead. And I don’t want to end up like them.”

He gasped for air as they returned comforting words. Their faces though were turned away to something he couldn’t see. They did not pause their work for even a moment of comfort. It was probably best that they couldn’t see his face while he lay there on the operating table begging. It was probably best that he couldn’t see his own face.

I hurt so bad, Patterson. Save me, God! I want another chance.

The pain diminished further. He was grateful, even though he wished it was gone. He prayed the scepter he saw earlier in his dream would not return. I’ll do better.

Zhu would die three hours, thirty-five minutes, and forty-two seconds later. Patterson and Chandna surgically removed the alien growths without incident. But it did not prevent his body from further deteriorating from the scorched earth tactics from his own immune system. Patterson logged the fatality and sent her report to the Captain.