Unification – Iteration 5: Spirillum, Coccus, & Bacillus

Iteration 5: Spirillum, Coccus, & Bacillus

Jonas made his way through the empty corridor adjacent to where he entered. He soon found himself inside the base’s Medical Pod. Just like everywhere else, papers, devices, even clothing were strewn about the surgery tables and lab equipment, all of which were held in isolated rooms to minimize the spread of any diseases and to reduce unnecessary infections. These rooms, to no surprise, were sealed by heavy emergency bulkheads. Some of the workstations appeared operational from where Jonas stood, but like the surgery tables, they were all locked behind the bulkheads. 

Seeing everything laid out in such a manner sent a cold shiver down the archeologist’s spine. What in God’s name happened here? he thought to himself. The entire Medical Pod, or Med-Pod as it was commonly called, was designed much like the others: circular structures that spiraled upwards with minimal vertical passages such as stairs or ladders. This designed, while meant long continuous walks, enabling easy access to the various rooms and accessibility when needed. A welcomed feature when all of the heavy equipment moved on wheels rather than legs.

Fortunately, along the walls of the Med-Pod, massive windows were installed, allowing the doctors and scientists to observe both in person and in safety. Through these massive 10 meter panes of glass, Jonas could see even more items just left out in an unorganized mess. It was not until he began his third revolution through the Med-Pod that something eerie struck him. Despite all of the items he had encountered, neither he nor David had found any sign of the Ares Prospect staff. Just that they used to be here; no longer here; gone; seemingly vanished into the thin Martian air, and while that last thought Jonas felt was a scientific impossibility, the evidence he had encountered thus far pointed towards something else entirely.

He continued his route through the empty Med-Pod, his footfalls echoing along the corridor, his eyes observing all that he could through the curved windows. As he approached the pinnacle of the pod and rounded the final bend, something stopped him dead in his tracks. In the final room, the primary clinic, lay row upon row of medical stretchers and beds, most of which were occupied by covered bodies, or objects that appeared to be bodies. Another shiver slithered along Jonas’ spine as he counted nearly twenty bodies. His eyes became transfixed on the sight before him that he failed to see a floating shadow just beyond his sight and around the next bend. 

One of the patients had their arm exposed from the surgical sheet, and from what Jonas was able to observe, there were distinct bite marks along the deceased forearm, roughly the size of a human mouth. Their skin was pale, a sort of faded grey, and covered in blotchy spots, similar to bruises, yet far more intense in their purples and blacks. His vision sharpened as he soon realized that the blotches were not in fact bruises, but rather patches of darkened scales-like abrasions. Jonas immediately thought about ichthyosis, an extremely rare genetic disorder that caused its victim to be born with fused legs, scale-like skin, and eyes forming inside-out, but this was something far different.

Could there have been an outbreak or mutation? Jonas postulated to himself. Leaning in closer, Jonas placed his left hand upon the glass without thinking much about it only to quickly remove it the instant he made contact. 

“God, fuck!” he swore uncharacteristically and twisted around, cradling his harmed appendage. At first, he thought he had burnt himself somehow, only to realize that it was an unnatural cold that burned his skin and not an intense heat. Looking back at the deceptive glass, Jonas could see his handprint clear as day, while minuscule ice structures formed around the outline, but unlike the ice back on Earth, these ice green crystalline structures seemed alive, almost like a grouping of bacteria feeding off of a larger host. Jonas found himself fascinated by what he was seeing, hypnotized even as his imprint slowly diminished. After several tense seconds later, his mark was gone, as was the sensation on his hand. 

My hand, he suddenly remembered. He moved his palm to his sight and saw small crystals, much like the ones he observed on the glass, forming upon his hand. Moving in as close as humanly possible, he could see the tiny structure growing, but their movements reminded him more of fungus or jungle vines, then crystals. The colors appeared to pulse, almost like a heartbeat, brightening to a blinding lime color before darkening to a near moldavite shade. An unconventional and ill-disciplined wave of panic washed over the archeologist as he quickly stood up and tried to find something to wipe his hand on and even something to sanitize himself with. 

Remembering a medical cart he passed on the way there, he turned back the way he came in a hurried jog, never seeing the floating shadow from before or the fact that it was no longer there.

A few minutes later, Jonas found the cart he was searching for. Opening its various trays, he searched for some disinfectant cloth and rubbing alcohol. By this time, the lack of sensation had morphed into a feeling of electricity in his hand, as if his hand was in a constant state of charge, yet never discharging. Finally, in the third compartment, Jonas found what he was looking for. He took the bottle of rubbing alcohol and generously bathed his hand in the liquid before reaching for a packet of sealed disinfectant cloth. Unceremoniously, Jonas opened the packet and immediately wiped the alcohol and crystalline fungus off of his hand with rugged determination. Careful not to touch the infected side, he placed the soiled cloth within a biohazard bag and secured it within the cart’s disposal bin.

He could feel his heart pounding against his chest. He eyed his palm for any sign of the mysterious infection and after a long and careful deliberation, let out a sigh of relief when he saw no new green, alien crystals forming on his hand. Despite all of this, a terrible unease still lingered in Jonas’ gut: could this be the source of all the problems on the base? he asked himself. This was something he would need to tell an expert, but at that moment the only microbiologist that came to mind was M.I.A.

“I hope you’re alright, Sarah,” he whispered, almost pleading to the dead air inside.

☍

In an empty room, far from where Jonas had his encounter, several lights at a computer terminal suddenly blinked in seemingly random patterns. Soon, several large LCD monitors turned on and began to display dozens, if not hundreds, of lines of code every second. A complex algorithm of ones and zeroes cascaded down the dusty monitors. This, however, was nothing special, it is the DNA of all computing, those zeroes and ones are analogs for the adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine found in DNA, the simple code that houses all of life. No, what was truly remarkable was the inclusion of two other symbols, neither zeroes nor ones. Although made of the same similar structures: a line and a circle, these symbols were not originally a part of the code being presented upon those lonely monitors. They were added, some time ago, by an outside source. A source that neither creator nor creation truly understood or will ever understand, but will eventually come to meet in one form or another.

It is here that those stranded will find something so far beyond their being that every single thing they know will come to make sense even if they cannot make sense of it all. In the end, everything is just zeroes and ones.

☍

The LED lights of the Maintenance Pod gave birth to strange shadows among the heavy equipment and spare parts. They twisted and turned at queer angles, combining, diverging, and separating in locations that made no sense and yet were there nonetheless. A small whorl of dust broke free from a disused tire and fell, crossing paths with several shadowy projections. The motes of debris seemingly vanish from existence only to reappear on the other side of the shadow. The shadows themselves were like a portal to another place, an untouchable place; a place of unknowns and unimaginable postulations.

As Sarah suspected, there were plenty of parts and pieces left in the base to replace all of the major components with plenty of extra leftovers. She found it odd that the domed structure was left so untouched despite the emergency that had occurred. Even more so, it was very unusual that so little inside the pod had been disturbed when she had seen several excursion vehicles, not in their proper parking locations. 

Everything we’ve seen so far has been in disarray, and yet here, in what should have been the busiest part of the base during a time of the disaster, everything appears untouched? Unless the disaster struck so swiftly that no one was able to react, but the airlock. Sarah could not wrap her head around the oddity. A sudden wave of unease crept through her nerves she slowly turned around and faced the deserted decontam chamber and airlock beyond. Her vision sharpened, relaxed, then focused once again. Ever since that dream, something had been nagging her thoughts, words, and ideas danced upon the tip of her tongue, but they just could not come together in any sort of cohesion. 

The sudden twang of a metal pipe striking the hardened floor caused Sarah to spin frantically. Her torso remained balanced, but her feet were another story. Before she knew what was wrong, she was falling. Crashing upon a stack of Teflon storage containers, she tried to catch herself. A domino effect of collapsing stacks of crates and boxes fell, one after the other, sending an echo through the entire pod. The crashing equipment seemed to go on for a full minute as if they were already precariously stored away like some manic Rube Goldberg Machine awaiting the right push to bring everything all down. Sarah half expected the various shelves to begin falling over next as she had seen in so many comedy films, but much to her mundane surprise, the disturbance ended with the crates.

Shaken, but not unnerved, Sarah gathered her wits and carefully stood up. As she did, her left arm nudged a shoebox-sized container, which pushed over a much larger storage unit. At first, this appeared to be yet another cascade of disturbance, but instead, the larger, coffin-shaped box merely moved aside and, ironically, revealed the corpse of a young man. Sarah let out an audible gasp as her hands flew to cover her nose and mouth. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of the poor man and her blood ran cold. Without really thinking about it, she opened up her communications device and spoke.

“David?” she spoke, doing her best to keep her voice from wavering, “Jonas? Can anyone read me? This is doctor Sarah Hutson of the ISC Marathon, over.” Silence befell the pod once more. Sarah took another step away from the propped up corpse. Its back was pressed up against the wall as its legs spread along the floor. In a way, it looked as though the man, whoever he was, had given up and expired where he sat, resigned to his fate. Sarah did not want to think about what had transpired moments before he died and did her best to focus on what she knew, and what she knew was what she observed. 

The corpse was pale in color, almost a blueish-grey of sorts. Some areas of the skin seemed almost translucent, like that of a deep-sea creature or a troglobite. The man’s lips had begun to peel back, exposing his gums and teeth, which appeared to suffer from the same discoloration as the rest of his outer flesh. His eyelids had gone away like his lips as well, leaving behind the milky pallid orbs of his eyes. His uniform appeared to have been scorched in various states of burning, as did his exposed forearms, but unlike his clothes, the burns on the man’s arms appeared to have originated from within his flesh. 

Another peculiar thing that caught Sarah’s attention was the complete and utter lack of smell from the remains. While it could not have been that long ago when the man died, there was always a distinct smell that swarms and permeates around the bodies of deceased organic masses. Had the body been decaying for even longer, that odor would be even more pungent and hard to ignore. All of this of course made no sense, as Sarah stood a meter away and could only smell the lightly dusted air of the pod.

“Sarah? Are you there?” her comms burst to life, “Sarah, it’s David – where are you?” Sarah once again gave a start, but not as uncoordinated as the first. 

“David, thank God you’re alright. I managed to get into the base,” she spoke calmly, not wanting to relive the frantic search she endured for an operational airlock. “I’m in some kind of storage facility near the south area. I’m assuming it’s the Maintenance Pod. Is Jonas with you?”

“No, we…” David’s voice trailed off abruptly. A flash of worried sweat beaded along Sarah’s forehead, and for the briefest of moments, she felt someone watching her. “We entered through separate airlocks, as ordered. I’m at the primary Habitation Pod and Jonas entered at the Med Pod.” Silence. Absolute. Ambient.

“Sarah?”

“Yes, David?”

“It’s good to hear your voice again. We tried to search for you after the Marathon went down, but we were ill-equipped to do so. We figured our best bet would be to reach Ares Prospect and launch a search from there. I guess what I’m trying to say is tha—”

“It’s alright, David,” she softly interrupted, “I know you and Jonas wouldn’t have left without your reason. It’s part of our training after all. I would have done the same had we been switched.”

“Still, I’m glad you’re alright. When did you get here?” Sarah detected a hint of anxiety in her crewmate’s voice but attributed it to everything that had happened up until that point.

“Fifteen, twenty minutes? Probably closer to thirty to be honest. David,” she paused momentarily, unsure of how to pose her question. “Have you found any of the station staff?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing. Unfortunately no. And last I heard from Jonas, neither had he. This place is giving me the creeps. Papers and equipment lying around. It’s like a gust of wind came in and made a mess of the place. Either that or everyone was leaving in a hurry.” David’s voice trailed off, but Sarah did not say a word. She felt that he had more to say, and sure enough, he continued. “The thing is, remember how you called Mars dead and I said it was more like a graveyard?”

Hearing that word, graveyard, gave Sarah an uncomfortable chill and slowly, almost cautiously, fearing what she may find just outside of her vision, outside of her sight as her very sight came to rest upon the corpse she had found moments ago.

“Yeah, I do. Before all this shit went downhill and we nearly drowned.”

“I’m starting to regret those words.”

“Tell me about it. I’m standing here next to a corpse of all things. It looks like a male, thirty to forty years of age. Skin is pale, almost translucent in areas; eyes appeared to have ossified somehow and his lips appeared to have been through some sort of dehydration effect, exposing their teeth and gums. Parts of his uniform appear to have been burnt by a separate source, but the strangest thing of all, David, is that they look like they were also burned from the inside out. I can see clusters of boils in varying sizes around and on the darkened flesh, but none of them seem to have broken the skin.” Sarah’s voice was controlled, medical, and sterile, but inside, she was shaking with fear. Something was incredibly wrong on Ares Prospect-1. David was quiet for what felt like minutes, but in reality, it was only a few seconds. 

“Did you say they appeared burned?”

“Yeah, but not like charred or incinerated, more like a quick, but intense broil. As if they were exposed to a source of great heat or radiati—” Sarah cut herself off as the same thought raced through both her and David’s mind.

“Don’t worry, Sarah, I know what you’re thinking, but the base does not have any radioactive power sources,” David reassured her.

“That’s not exactly what I was thinking,” she replied, this time her fear crept into her voice.

“Then what?”

“What if they found something here? Something hazardous, maybe even dangerous to organic material?”

“I mean it is possible. The Universe is highly radioactive in some ways. The chances of a radioactive isotope or cosmic object landing on the surface and being discovered by the staff is not out of the question.”

“And what about ALMA?”

“If ALMA is radioactive, we would have detected it long ago.” Sarah digested David’s assurance carefully before she formulated her next question.

“But what about what was inside ALMA?”

“That I can’t answer, Sarah. You know as well as I know that everything went dark shortly after they found that thing opened like a walnut.”

“Or a casket.” Sarah did not like the idea of something being released from within that Martian obelisk. Suddenly her mind flashed back to her dream deep within those primordial jungles of alien lands; the panther, the boar, and the mysterious construct they encountered.

“Or a casket,” David echoed. “Still, if there was any radiation, the Geiger counters and alarms would have gone off. Such systems are independent of the base’s main power. They’d remain operable even if most of the facility has been destroyed.”

“I guess that would eliminate that possibility, but still doesn’t explain the condition of this corpse.”

“Maybe Jonas knows more. He was at the Med Pod, maybe he’s learned something about what’s happened here. And I haven’t checked in with him in a while. Knowing him, he’s probably listening to our conversation intently right now.” Confidence brimmed in David’s voice, though he knew there was no reason to feel that way. It had been some time since he made contact with his commanding officer, and while nothing serious had happened yet, his assumption that Jonas would know anything could not have been further from the truth, and while the astro-archeologist was skilled and knowledgeable in many things, his experience and expertise could not prepare his for some of the truths he was set to discover. Truths that would turn their entire mission inside out.

☍

Jonas Salk had indeed been listening to the conversation between David Baltimore and Sarah Hutson, but their voices were merely background noise to the sight that had his utmost attention. After reassuring himself that he had sanitized and neutralized the crystalline structures he found on his hand, he made his way back to where he was, being extra careful not to touch any unnecessary surfaces. As he reached the location of his encounter, a sharp pain racked his mind as images of frantic crew members struggled to escape the room he found the bodies in. Their faces were disfigured, scaly, almost rotten in some places. Everyone was screaming, trying to get out, but those on the other side of the security wall did nothing. Inside, the ones afflicted pounded upon the reinforced medical glass with all their might, their flesh splattering with every strike as if they were falling apart on a molecular level. 

One particular being stood out from the rest, quite literally. He or she just stood in the rear of the room, covered in scale-like skin and an abundance of crystalline growths all over their body. Those who were not affected watched in abject horror as they witnessed what could only be described as a fusing of bodies. Whenever someone came close to the crystalline person, they appeared to be dragged closer to them by some invisible force, much like in the way a cowboy would lasso a steer and reel it in. The hapless victim would scream and claw and struggle the entire time until, without much ceremony, they would make contact with one of the many crystals. The crystals would seemingly evaporate once touched, transforming into a cloud of dust or spores. The scaly, rotten flesh of the poor victim would form tendrils that would reach out for those crystal spores, much in the same way a single-celled organism attacks its prey.

Filaments of flesh grew and fused themselves with the spores, feeding upon them, reaching out towards their source as the two bodies fused together in a monstrous amalgamation of organs, sinew, and humanity. One by one by one, the bodies were lured towards the ever-increasing mass of the abomination. Some people pounded upon the glass with more tenacity after witnessing what had happened to their companions, while others, resigned to their fate, sat in accepting silence. Their bodies tearing themselves into shreds as they united with the horror trapped within the room with them.

Jonas found himself leaning against a structural support beam with a hand pressed upon his temple. His brow was sweaty, his hands shook, and his heart raced, threatening to break the very ribs which protect it. He was not sure if he was seeing something conjured up by his overactive imagination, remnants of one too many movie nights with David, or if this was somehow a vision, a transmission of sorts. While the idea of extra-sensory projection had been around for thousands of years, serious academic studies had not been undertaken until the 20th century, and even though many of the experiments were inconclusive, small, unexplainable phenomena lingered and drove the fantastical ideas of fiction and reality. There was just so much that humans, let alone Jonas himself, knew about and the more they learned, the more they did not know. And so the paradox of knowledge is slowly opened.

Regardless of whether this was a vision or a figment of his imagination, he could not deny the fact that something strange and beyond their comprehension was happening. He could feel the answers lapping at the shores of his discovery, yet receding just as he tries to dip himself in the waters.

Jonas steeled his nerves and stood back up. The corridor was almost as he left it. He squinted his eyes and scanned the area. No, not the same. Something had been changed, something shifted, misaligned, bent and distorted, just out of sight, out of reach, yet he could not quite place a finger on it. Slowly he proceeded down the corridor, keeping an eye on the interior of the medical room. Several mobile desks and medical carts were flipped over, which blocked parts of the passageway, creating a sort of obstacle course. Jonas pushed aside those that were upright, but others he had to climb over. Rearranging and climbing over the equipment seemed to go on for nearly an hour before he arrived at the final bend of the pod. He landed on his feet as he leaped off the final desk and stood in shocked silence at what he found. Before him was the entrance to the primary Medical Office, and in front of the doors hung in suspension a body, pale and scaly with the same crystalline structure he had seen in his vision. The body floated with its legs slightly apart and its arms outstretched at its sides, forming a sort of cross.

The blood coursing through Jonas’ veins ran cold and the bottom of his stomach dropped to unknown depths. Whispers, voices, shouting, yelling, screaming, shrieking — they all bombarded his senses. His head felt like it was in a vice as he tried to cover his ears, in a futile attempt to block out the noise.

They’re coming – barricade that door..!

What’s going on..!?

Somebody get Breckhart on the comms..!

Please, I don’t want to die..!

This is what we get – we deserve this..!

Dreams came true, the dreams came true..!

The voices repeated themselves, reruns of a past that had already passed, and yet was stuck in the present, unable to pass on like ghosts who did not know they were already dead. Clenching his teeth, Jonas felt a paralyzing jolt rack his body. He fell to his knees, then to a fetal position. His gut twisted in obnoxious and uncomfortable knots, creating a pain he had never felt before.

“Jonas,” he heard someone call out to him. “Jonas, can you hear me?” That voice, a woman, someone he knows; someone he knew. The archeologist tried to focus on that voice as if it were a lighthouse in the middle of a tempest. “Please tell me you’re alright, Jonas.”

Reaching down, Jonas unclasped his radio and answered the call. His voice was ragged, his breaths came in shallow gasps as if he had just been saved from drowning, and maybe he had been.

“This is Jonas. I hear you, over,” he spoke, teeth clattering, yet he maintained his control somehow. Seconds passed at first, then moments before a response came crackling back.

“Commander, is that you? It’s good to hear your voice again,” Sarah replied.

“Is something the matter?”

“No, I mean outside of the obvious.”

“But didn’t you just call for me?” A wave of tension rippled through Jonas, a sense of abandonment, of loss, of heartache, and of fear.

Did they find it..?

Paradise..?

It’s so nice there…

“I swear I heard you calling for me over the radio,” he continued. His lips dried and his throat tightened. Voices began to pierce his thoughts, pricking holes into the blanket that shrouded his vision. 

“Commander, are you alright?” This time it was David who came through the comms. “Do you need one of us to come over there to check you out?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Jonas did his best to sound reassuring but the words came out quick and sharp. He knew something was indeed terribly wrong as the images of the staff morphing together flashed in his mind. He stared back at the floating corpse before him and shuddered“I think I just need to sit down for a moment and gather myself. Haven’t really taken the time to calm down from all the excitement in the past twelve hours. Not to mention, we’ve got to maintain our secondary orders: stay alone; stay alive,” he reminded his companions. 

“Copy that, commander,” the other two replied.

“But if you are in trouble, do not hesitate to call us, orders be damned,” Sarah insisted. For some reason, this small act of compassion and rebellion made Jonas feel safe for the briefest of moments.

Dreams, always dreaming…

They came true…

They are coming…

The slumber is coming to an end…

The cycle continues…

But that comfort was short-lived. The voices in his mind continued, echoing over one another, overtaking, overlapping, fusing, blending, dissolving into a glossolalia of commotion. He glared at the floating corpse with rage, his eyes burning with hate, though he did not know why. His hands shook as they filled with mean blood and vile intent. The voices continued to rummage through his mind until he could not take it anymore. Grabbing hold of the nearest heavy object, a medical cart, he picked it up and threw it towards the paranormal body only to witness the cart and its contents crash against the door of the office. The body was gone as were the voices. Containers and other objects rolled and rustled along the empty hallway, sending their tiny echoes through the hollow hallways.

“I need to rest,” was all he mumbled to himself as he steadied his footing and walked towards the heavy door. There, he found a similar palm pad like the one within the airlock. He pressed his clammy hand against the reader. It scanned red, turned orange, and finally flashed green. The door opened with a gentle hiss of air as it slid off to the left, concealing itself within the structure’s wall. Jonas carefully stepped inside the deserted office as the door closed behind him, leaving him alone with his thoughts once again.

☍

As the door closed, a shadow appeared, neither touching the ceiling nor the floor. It merely floated there. A decaying body covered in blackened scales and delicate crystals. Its eyes were as milky as pearls, and its mouth hung open, slack-jawed and broken. It levitated on the other side of the entrance Jonas had just entered but did not seem to care. Its blank stare seemed to be focused on someone or something else beyond the door, beyond the room, maybe even beyond the base itself. Several seconds of haunting silence passed, before the floating corpse seemingly glitched like a distorted VHS tape of old, before blinking out of sight entirely.

☍