CASE FILE: XIIITER54554
DESCRIPTOR: DIARY ENTRY, TERRAN #CM492, RELEVANT EXCERPTS ONLY
HANDLER: GUINAH MORAS, XENOBIOLOGIST
Terran diary entry discovered on planetary surface (Terra), sector A-10, within subterranean habitation by Xenoremoval team (XT-654).
NOTES:
Species relocation order commenced in accordance with post-constructional planetary procedure PP1432.
Planetary Candidate: XIIIXIO34671
Terran casualties minimal.
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February 6, 2044
The blue planet. What a name for a planet with so little blue.
Blue is an illusion, my fortunate, and apparently alive reader. The color blue hardly even exists. Not as its own entity, that is; not as a pigment.
“What about blue jays, or blue butterflies?” you may ask… Illusions, all the same.
Tricks of the eye, the kind that only a God could create. Microstructures that bend and capture light, allowing for the release of the singular blue.
The only blue.
A feat of engineering by God. How magnificent. How pure. How illusory.
Will I ever see the color blue again?
April 10, 2044
If there is one thing I have learned after what I’ve experienced these past few years, it’s that nothing is as it seems with Gods.
At least us mortals are predictable. Predictable in our idiocies, our dogmas, and our denials. We fret and strut our hours upon the stage like pigs in mud until our lights go out, and we are no more. Until all we see is the void. Until all we see is black.
Did you know that black was the very first pigment we ever discovered?
Before all other pigments, black had its earliest origins in our mind’s eye.
And so it has also began, with them.
A single, black dot on the surface of the Sun. Singular. Pure. Alone. Then not alone.
What is happening to our life source? Our sustenance?
Have we taken it for granted, all these years? Did we anger something? Someone?
May 14, 2044
A year is what they are giving us. A year before the Sun is completely covered in black. After that, everything will die. The planet will freeze. Nothing will survive.
The effects are already showing themselves. Colder temperatures, longer winters. The forecast will soon be perpetual winters. Unforgiving, unrelenting, cold. Ice. Death.
We will lose power soon, along with heat, and will have to leave our home, but how can we?
December 23, 2044
We’ve begun digging. Digging deep into the ground towards geothermal deposits of heat and energy. It is our last hope. To crawl closer, draw closer, to Mother Earth. Utilizing these geothermal hotspots, our scientists estimate that we can survive, albeit meagrely, within specially designed bunkers.
Our lives, however, will never be the same. For the rest of our days we will be surviving on MRE’s, they say. Rations, for the military. We will Live underground like rats. I don’t know what to think of the future that awaits us.
March 21, 2045
Teams of soldiers are going to the surface in search of supplies, but for the most part, the surface of the Earth is left to the devil.
What else could explain this darkness?
Stories are circulating amongst the soldiers. The ones that went to the surface. Stories of “things” out in the darkness, “things” that would take soldiers.
But we have no choice. We have to send them up, knowing full well many will not return. We must survive. More and more soldiers will go missing, until none are left. Then civilians will have to go.
June 24, 2045
The Sun is now completely covered and I am doing supply runs. I hate doing them. We all hate doing them. It is absolutely frigid, and the weather is unpredictable and chaotic. Freak storms are common, and our meteorologists are our most prized commodity. Their predictions have saved lives, but they also lost them. It is a tough life for meteorologists.
But the darkness, my God, the darkness, is unbearable. In every direction, just black. We are surrounded by the void.
The stars really are incredible though. An entire sea of little lights revealed. They are now the only thing we look forward to when we look up.
August 14, 2045
It turned on. In an instant, the rarest color, the loneliest color, the lost color, overwhelmed this darkness. Blue had beaten black.
What is it?
It is anyone’s guess. It appears to be a machine of some kind, glowing and pulsating a vibrant, deep blue, the color of which emanates from a pattern of distinct, robotic lines stretched across its surface.
Others disagree. Others even say it is God.
“God is here!” the zealots scream as I write this entry. “Our time is here!”
They have likened this event to the biblical flood. We are, after all, flooded in blue. Desperation has taken control, and people are clinging to psychological rafts, their arks of disillusionment. Our best scientists have no answers, and because of this, the zealous are growing in number.
August 29, 2045
the zealots have begun leaving in droves. After placing their lives in God’s hands, they have been going out into the darkness clothed in nothing but white linen. Reports indicate that many are freezing to death within minutes.
Few people remain now. But we will now survive longer, as the supplies we’ve accrued so far were intended for a much larger population. At least we will survive. At least.
But what kind of life is this?
Our tunnels, our hallways and habitations were designed with comfort in mind, but this lifestyle has become repetitive, and drab. Depression and anxiety have become a rampant virus, and insanity is rearing its ugly head.
In the face of all this fear and panic I feel lost, but I gain solace in knowing what nobody else does:
I know what it is. I always knew what it was.
The Dyson sphere, as Freeman Dyson theorized many, many years ago, is a hypothetical megastructure designed by an advanced alien race capable of capturing all energy the sun emits.
What I’m saying is that the monstrosity in the sky, the glowing orb of death, is assuredly no God, but a giant solar panel.
What does this mean for us?
Well, go ask the orangutans, or the tigers. We wanted something and we took it. Just like we’ve stolen the homes of animals beneath, so too have these extra terrestrials stolen from us.
Our species is being disregarded. We are collateral damage in the expansion of a foreign alien race. And now we hide like the animals they’ve reduced us to.
I keep these thoughts to myself, though. Why tell the others? Why tell them their struggle is hopeless?
Even if I did tell them, what could they do? Their only choices are to attack, or to beg for mercy.
So I remain quiet. There is no reason to tell anyone.
September 7, 2045
There aren’t many of us left now. 135, to be exact. Once our colony was 10,000 strong. Starvation, disease, murder and anguish has decimated our population. Who can blame them? If you didn’t starve, and you didn’t die from some disease, the desperation that followed would likely lead you to murder your fellow survivors for food, or even to eat them.
That’s all that remains now. The cold. The wretched. The debauched and depraved. Those who are willing to do what is necessary to survive, to cling to a life barely worth living.
Thankfully, my intelligence has allowed me to persevere. The leader down here, an atheist, has no idea what this blue thing is, but he does know that it is no God. He sees my worth, so he keeps me around. Keeps me alive. But these animals. I can see it in their eyes. They’re jealous of my special treatment.
The moment I become useless, I die. I need to find a way out of here.
September 29, 2045
People are disappearing. It’s obvious what is happening. The weakest of the crew are being eaten. This isn’t a life anymore. This is a living hell.
I have begun stockpiling rations and preparing myself for an expedition. I know that there is another bunker due east of our location, far beyond the limits that even they would go. If I could make it to that bunker, I may be able to get inside. Hopefully, things are different over there. Hopefully, they’ve kept the sane in charge.
I have gotten a hold of some old maps, the kind the soldiers used to use when they would go topside. The maps indicate that there are enough buildings to make the journey in steps. Each night, I could sleep in a building, then move out as soon as the blue sun rises. It will be risky, extremely risky, but anything is better than this place.
I also managed to put together a suit, a suit capable of lasting the extreme cold for a period equal to 20 hours. I could recharge the battery each night with portable cells, the journey is possible.
Fear is my only concern. The soldiers tell tales of creatures in the night taking their fellow soldiers, kidnapping 200-pound men as if they were children.
My only guess is that these aliens are now among us, and I do not know their intentions. My best bet is to avoid them.
October 23, 2045
I will make this quick as I am currently on the move. I have escaped the tunnels and made my way to the surface. Unfortunately, I do expect a search team to come after me. I am still a commodity, after all, and they will soon discover where I have gone. I am no believer but by God may this diary reach the bunker, along with my still breathing body.
October 28, 2045
I have seen them. These… things… they exist.
A day passed before the search crew eventually caught up to me. Off in the distance, a group of men, four to be exact. Then, suddenly a flash of bright white. I saw it. The tentacles. Emerging from the darkness like a kraken from the depths of a dark sea. The men were overwhelmed. The quiet night erupted in gunfire, then suddenly nothing. Utter silence. My assailants were taken.
Then, the sky opened. A craft in the shape of a cigar, undefined, pulsating a deep purple emerged from the very fabric of reality it seemed. A ripple, a distortion, then nothing. The stillness and silence that followed was unforgettable.
November 13, 2045
I have reached the bunker and have taken refuge for close to a week now. It appears to have thankfully never been used, and I have survived off the plentiful rations that are available. It is possible for me to live here for the rest of my life, and I think that I may.
I want to feel grateful, but now that my hunger is satiated, I can’t help but still feel empty. Hopefully my time spent here will remind me of what’s important.
I am alive. I am healthy. While the world quietly dies in the cold, I subsist in the warmth. This will suffice. It will have to.
June 15, 2048
I have no reason to leave, but also no reason to live.
Life has become burdensome, a psychological challenge. I am thankful for this oasis, but the weeks have turned into months, and the months have turned into years. I am beginning to lose touch with reality. My mental health has deteriorated significantly, and I have been considering my options very, very carefully.
I am thinking about leaving this place to meet them. Perhaps they can be reasoned with. Perhaps I can talk to them. I was never a believer, but I feel as if I must do this. Something compels me.
I hear voices in the night. Calling out to me. Some I recognise, others, seem distant, foreign. But I fear they are figments of my imagination, my mind losing itself to the void.
They have no source, they do not come from the vents, or the cracks of this structure. Honestly, I am terrified. Perhaps it is nothing. Perhaps. Perhaps.
June 20, 2048
I will be leaving tomorrow. An explanation, even in written word, would serve my reasoning no justice. It is not a logic I can describe to you, nor any other human. If this record of events reaches human hands once again, keep fighting. There is hope. I have heard her in the night, and she calls to us. All of us.
Would love to read more like this Mr. Stoll! Awesome short story