Unification – Iteration 5: Spirillum, Coccus, & Bacillus

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.

Unification – Iteration 4: Stay Alone; Stay Alive

The sandstorm raged on relentlessly. Sarah did her best to control her breathing. She was not going to let years of her training go to waste just because her mission refused to go to plan, or else what would be the point of training in the first place? She could hear the individual grains of sand pelt her visor like raindrops of stone. She checked her instruments again: vitals remained steady, oxygen levels were still good. She had been walking for nearly an hour, but with very little direction or indication of how much land she had traversed, it was hard to tell how much further she had to go. Still, she pushed on.

Unification – Iteration 3: Landfall

In the sky, a new kind of star fell. Its fiery tail cleaved through the vaporous dust clouds, tearing the sky asunder like a sea of red. Sand and dust swirled along the rocky surface of the Ares Vallis, that ancient lakebed that was once the site of catastrophic flooding, now lay arid and bare, patiently awaiting a flood of another kind to come, a flood no one would expect, let alone imagine. A flood that has been coming for many eons and is on the verge of arriving, of welcoming the three inside their tiny nutshell spacecraft. Something is coming; something is waiting for them; something has been awoken and yearned to be free…

Unification – Iteration 2: Greeting Ares

Marathon hung in the Martian sky like a firefly suspended in a breeze. Down on the surface of Mars, the landscape was eerily quiet, save for the sounds of hollow gusts and ticking grains of sand which rained down upon the rock-strewn terrain that is Ares Vallis. Running approximately 1,700 kilometers, the broad channel originates from the vast sunken region in the northern hemisphere known as Iani Chaos and descends southward into a delta-like region where it merges with Chryse Planitia. Discovered in the 1970s by the Viking orbiters, the area had long been of interest to astronomers as a possible place to find signs of life, or at the very least, their remains, due to its uncanny resemblance to a lakebed or flood region, and though it would be explored by the Pathfinder rover in 1996, it would not be until Jhana, in 2031, that the region would be revisited.

Unification – Iteration 1: Incarnadine Twilight

Everything changed in January of 2042. A seasonal dust storm approached the base, and though they had weathered through their fair share, the Argus Array Climate Orbiters measured this to be one of the largest ever recorded. By the time it neared Ares Prospect, it had engulfed roughly half of the planet. Communications went dark, yet it was to be expected. The climate orbiters, which formed a geosynchronous network high above the Martian surface, relaying all information and transmissions back to the ISC on Earth. The storm would only last for three days, and when it cleared, a terrible message was sent from the base, ending in the words “stay alone; stay alive.” Nothing else was heard from since and on February 7th, 2042, the ISC Marathon was launched.

Unification – Iteration 0: The Panther

The panther stalked its prey through the jungle underbrush, its bright intelligent eyes pierced through the thick, green foliage, and directly at its prey. The unsuspecting boar continued to drink from the quiet stream between two walls of mud and damp leaves, crushed beneath the paws of other creatures. The sunlight struggled to break through the jungle canopy, appearing like misshapen stars upon the shade-filled ground below.

“I could be bounded in a nutshell,

and count myself King of Infinite Space,

were it not that I have bad dreams.”

Hamlet, Act II, Scene II by William Shakespeare

Tag: Unification