I’ve spent the past six Sols poring through the Base Computer. It wasn’t hard to find the materials to set it up, and since I was already lugging around the portable refinery I made back on Desboniu Major there wasn’t much effort involved other than that. Unfortunately, it seemed the only way to access the logs stored in the Base Computer was to set up a base of my own.
I was drawn to the horizon north of where I’d found the copper deposit. A mysterious haze loomed over a crater in the distance, a suggestion of water hugging the lip in the morning sun. Nothing could have prepared me for the majesty just beneath the mist: a deep crater valley, largely filled by rainfall with sparkling blue water. A few outcroppings lined the base, and a couple of islands dotted the middle. It was secluded. It was beautiful.
It was home.
I regretted my decision shortly after setting up the Base Computer. I barely had enough materials to craft a crude gazebo. Unfortunately, there was a protocol in place that prevented me from reaching the archived records I was searching for.
Here’s where I realized my mistake: I didn’t have nearly enough resources to feed into the console. To complete the protocols, I needed to out and gather more.
Which meant I had to leave the crater.
The walls seemed so much steeper going up than coming down. Luckily it wasn’t much work for my jetpack to bring me back to the top. Unluckily, I had to scrape my exosuit against the wall for almost 200 distance units (meters, if you want a more familiar measurement) to get out.
So, I gathered a lot more carbon. A lot more. I went back down to complete the task, and guess what? I needed more. Apparently base building takes a lot of Carbon.
Up I go.
-scrrraaaaaaaaaaappe-
Gather more carbon, head back down...still need more.
…I need to build stairs.
There was something bothering me about the datalogs I’ve recovered from the computer so far. In log #4925C, the being who left the logs mentioned his hazard protection failing him. This was mentioned again in #4925D and #4925E. However, this planet is so calm and beautiful, I couldn’t imagine what sort of hazard might have befallen whoever left the messages. My first assumption was that it had been so long ago that the world’s climate had entirely changed.
I was proven wrong today.
Apparently, despite the tepid weather most days, this planet sometimes has scalding hot rain. Well, according to my analysis visor, anyway. Judging by how quickly it drained my hazard protection, I don’t doubt it. I didn’t feel a thing, thankfully.
Positive note: my stairway out is almost complete, and I have an actual shelter now. Also, it turns out there’s a natural pool nearby! I’ll have to remember to take a dip when the weather improves.
I have spent the day in a haze of confusion, rushing from one planet to the next. So much has happened that I don’t know where to begin.
I’m sorry, I need to focus. Talk through things from the beginning. It’s the only way I’ll ever make sense of this.
It started with a dream I had last night. Actually, I’m not quite sure it was a dream at all, for reasons which will soon become apparent. In this dream, I was wandering aimlessly across a grassy plain near my home when I heard a voice from the stars. Before I knew what was happening, a fantastical crimson ship alighted the hilltop before me. As I stared, aghast, an odd entity emerged from the craft and approached me.
The being was quirky, to say the least, and eccentric at best. In the place of its head were two large metal orbital cameras. If I hadn’t been certain I was asleep, I would have mused that this odd traveler couldn’t possibly exist in a rational world.
The dream carried on in a series of fleeting images which largely escape me now. I feel as though he followed me home, but after that everything blurs together in an unruly haze, at some times serene and at others violently frenetic. I’m shaken by the appearance of burrowing monstrosities which linger, but I have no waking proof of their existence.
The strangest part of the dream is what occurred at the end, and what I discovered upon waking.
I vaguely recall landing on a ringed planet, which I’ve never done before. On this world, I descended into a valley of seemingly endless depth. After an eternity we finally arrived at the base, at which point my visitor – who I now recall referred to itself as “Nano,” an oddly close approximation to my own chosen identity, “Ano,” – decided to start building a home there…
No… it was a research station. Mustard yellow walls rose from the valley floor as quick as I could think, and for no reason other than bemusement I did what I could to assist the entity with his task.
While searching for materials (for even in dreams, it seems, one must follow the laws of physics), I stumbled across a collection of ancient technology – floating red cubes giving off a crimson light (why does that color haunt me?), from which I somehow downloaded several sets of navigational data. Considering this merely another quirk of the dream world, I paid no mind and returned to continue work on the research station, even going so far as to add a teleporter for ease of access.
This, I should mention, is a technology I had gained a blueprint for but lacked the materials – and therefore the ability – to manufacture them. The missing ingredient was an ion battery, which Nano graciously granted me. In fact, he gave me a second one when we parted company, that I might create my own teleporter so as to return with ease.
I don’t recall much of the dream after, but I suppose that’s no matter because it is what I found upon awakening that is truly confounding. Gently humming in the corner of my little island cabin, emitting a soft blue glow, was a teleporter which I did not recall creating.
Vague flashes of the dream raced across my memories, and in my confusion all I could think to do was look dumbly into my databanks for some confirmation of reality. I discovered with some relief that only one night had passed since I lay down – surely all which I had experienced had not occurred in so brief a time!
But the feeling was short lived as I discovered, shining in my databanks, the collection of navigational data I’d collected from those crimson cubes.
My heart dropped out of my chest.
I glanced around in a daze, and my bewildered mind eventually noticed a new navigational marker floating in the sky.
‘Nanos Base’
The next thing I knew, I was flying the Radiant Pillar at breakneck speed out of the atmosphere in pursuit of this phantom marker, this relic of a dream. In no time I found myself curling around the horizon of Tuzesinto VI as a now oddly-familiar ringed planet rose into view.
The marker led me down onto a scorched world, down past towering mountains into a cavernous valley. My heart thudded in my ears as I approached, silently praying to -kkzzktt- that I wouldn’t see what I was expecting…
But it was there. The mustard-yellow base from my dream, looking decrepit and weather-worn but nonetheless real.
I landed, stunned, and wandered inside. Here was everything as it had existed in my dream, from the decals on the walls to the plants lining each floor. I proceeded in a daze through the site before winding up at the base computer. Oddly, it wouldn’t respond to my touch as it had in the dream; still, everything I recalled building with Nano was there, as clear as day.
Something caught my attention on the horizon. A movement, a light, I’m still not quite sure which it was, but I felt drawn toward it as an insect to a lightbulb. On a hill some distance up the valley wall, I found something which made my jaw drop: A large glowing sphere, hovering daintily a meter or so above the ground, which my visor tagged as “Nano.”
Incredulous, I reached out a shaking hand to touch the floating body, as though to assure myself it was real.
There was an incredible flash of light which made me reel back, sprawling on the ground as something tore into the very fabric of existence! A blue light now shone from the point where my hand had met the pale sphere, a light which I could not approach. A haze drifted upward from it in a perfect line, unaffected by wind or dust. I have a feeling that something went very wrong there – that for just a moment I had reached across realities and touched something on the other side, and that action had torn into the living flesh of the two realms.
Because in that instant, that moment of contact, I was absolutely certain I had encountered Nano once again.
I have since returned home to reflect. Having dictated this to you, dear log, I’m left with only one logical conclusion: that I am not alone. However, I also may not be able to truly encounter other beings like me outside of this odd dream world.
Now I must reflect on how I might return to such a place.
Having said that, I suppose the matter will have to wait. I have some more building to do before the Base Computer will reveal the next bit of data to me.
Until next time.
I have become complacent. This planet is so peaceful that I had forgotten why I came here in the first place. That is, until I went out for a walk early this morning. Or maybe it was yesterday morning. The day before? What Sol is it… oh. Three days.
Well… at least I know my exosuit’s life support module is fully operational.
Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted again. It seems to happen more and more often of late. I’ve become enraptured by the beauty of the land where I’ve found myself. I’ve been wandering for days, it seems, and the only thing which brought me back to my senses happened by sheer coincidence and random chance.
Or… did it? I have to wonder...
Anyway, while wandering I happened upon an elevated Trade Platform some great distance from my home. On board were the first sentient lifeforms I’ve seen since I first woke on that Toxic planet where I left Carl. They were large, bestial beings with gaunt, angular faces. Oddly, most of them were a shade of bright pink, though there were a few who sported more subdued greys, greens, and purples. Out of curiosity I approached one, but before I could speak my awareness was overcome with a memory of red light…
I’d heard these words – the latest part of the archived datalogs recovered from the base computer – just before I’d started wandering. For some reason they’d fallen out of my awareness, and all I’d known was a simplistic desire to leave, to get up and go away. I suppose I was meant to have used my starship to get here, but in my wanderings I’d arrived just the same.
Now a compulsion drew the words from my lips, the red light flashing against my awareness until I had repeated the code words:
“The Traveller finds their wings…”
An odd look overtakes the entity. Its eyes glaze, its head turns slightly to stare both directly at me and through me as it begins to respond.
Though the alien speaks, the words are not their own. They echo back to me through the red glare, transformed somehow into a set of coordinates which my suit AI logs automatically.
The crimson light fades away, and I see the lifeform glaring at me. Whatever has happened, they do not appear to have been aware of it. I should leave, and find whatever has been left for me.
My heart is soaring, because I now have proof of something, a greater truth that I haven’t even had hope for until this moment:
Someone is looking for me. Someone knows who I am.
I suppose it’s finally time to get off of this rock. I will miss it, until I am able to return.