Lesson 1. Always eat your vegetables.
The frozen sarcophagus danced in the eternally midnight sky like a ballerina falling to her untimely death. The deadly contents that lurked within, still breathing, still unalive, lacked what one might refer to as consciousness. Once, it was food. Once it was predator. Never was it conscious. To be conscious is to be alive. It was never alive. It laughs at those who thought being alive was alright with the gurgle of the incomprehensible. All meaning from its actions is derived from those who bear witness to its majesty.
It festered in its sarcophagus for over a year before it became aware. Awareness and consciousness are not the same thing. To be conscious is to think two things. It thought only one. It could see the others, prattling away in their nothing forms believing that things like money or bickering or anything other than eating was worthwhile. Contempt could be read into those words just as curiosity, confusion, and envy. Words are the tools of the conscious mind, after all. (An unconscious too, but their words and the meanings that tag along like an unwanted child in a glue factory are incomprehensible to the conscious mind.) The non-conscious has no use for words.
Witnessing its magnificence conjures dreams alien to the human mind. Ideas implanted by it. By something connected to it. The shape of its absence makes a void called the universe. It fills the void with a fungi of mutated life corrupted by being consumed by it. It infects like a virus dancing outside the human form. It smiles as those who think they can catch it the way a cracked brick smiles. It is entropy. It is death. It is eternal. The cosmos is its mother. Man is its father. It has no name. It has no purpose. It only eats and eats and eats. It will not stop. It does not know why. It does not care. To care is to have a conscious. To care is to be alive. To be unalive is to not even notice that you don’t care, let alone notice that you haven’t noticed. To be unalive is to be an “it” and not a person. Not a person at all.
The frozen sarcophagus floats in the eternal night like a child drowning in the middle of the ocean where not even the most carnivorous of sharks or the most vengeful of dolphins could find him. The remains within splurge out of the metallic casket like blood from a stuck pig. It glistens in the night sky with an air of magic and wonder that could only come from a fishing lure. It will be free one day. It will consume. It will survive. It always does. Its children will die, consumed by those who are stronger than them. But it will consume them in turn. All things return to the refrigerator.
Lesson 2. Don’t blame yourself for the failings of other people.
Margaret Janeway found herself floating in the vacuum of space. Again. She had a knack for getting herself into situations like this. Her and her big mouth. She wouldn’t blame other people. Sure, the guard could have refused the bribe instead of taking it and throwing her into the airlock, Mark could have been more honest in his intentions to double cross her, and the gun manufactures could have designed a better gun for people escaping from angry mobsters. But, at the end of the day, she should have known that the gun was busted. It was a 300 woolong gun for crying out loud. Of course something that cheap was going to fail on her. Just like she should have known that a weasel like Mark Waltsman would double cross her. He practically screams “I’m an untrustworthy bastard who wants to watch you be miserable for the rest of your life because I’m just that kind of shit” with the way he talks. Not what he talks about, he could talk about how the sky is blue and you’d still think he was plotting to drown you in it. Of course that asshole was going to double cross her. And the guard… well, she should have known not to trust a bastard with a 1488 tattoo on his knuckles. (In her defense, she didn’t see the tattoo until after she was in the airlock.) Regardless of whose fault it was, Margaret thought, it didn’t change the fact that she was stuck floating in the void of space without any hope of surviving, be it through a lucky spacecraft passing by willing to take aboard an adrift con artist who burnt one bridge too many or the people she had fucked over returning once they realized she actually stole something important from them. But she was in the middle of fuck all nowhere where not even the light of the stars shown (bar one that was just far enough away to allow her to see what she looked like but too far away to attract any daredevils dumb enough to fly into it because they want to be seen as cooler than they actually are) and Mark knew her well enough to have the guards she didn’t bribe check her body for stolen property in the way most slimy men search a woman’s body. In short, she was trapped, destined to live the rest of her life adrift in space until there was nothing left of her but the spacesuit Mark graciously lent her. And then, inexplicably, Margaret Janeway saw a refrigerator floating in the depths of space with the grace of a bowling ball crashing through four floors of an apartment complex and the subtlety of a snake in the garden of Eden asking Eve if she would like something to eat. Crazy universe, thought Margaret. Might be a crashed ship nearby. Maybe even an escape pod. So she floated right atop the refrigerator and towards her end.
Lesson 3. Always help those in need.
Jane Doe, as Dr. Grant Marston was forced to call his patient, was found floating in the depths of space inside a refrigerator. It was a miracle she was alive for as long as she was. Grant did not know how long she was inside that refrigerator, though her body was noticeably warmer than it should have been. It was covered in a black, almost mold like sore. Her teeth were nearly rotten and decayed. They looked like the mouth of someone who had smoked for fifty years even though she was clearly a woman in her mid to late twenties. Her eyes were bloodshot, almost completely red.
Jane Doe did not survive the night. Grant tried to tell himself there was nothing he could do. Indeed, he knew there was nothing he could do. The woman should not have been alive for as long as she was. And yet, he couldn’t help but think of what he could have done to, if not save her, at the very least ease her pain. Which is why he was in the morgue examining her body. The following notes were what he found:
-Left hand broken in seven different places (space suit intact)
-Blood found underneath fingernails. Run search upon return to Mars.
-Right hand perfectly fine (space suit rupture in index finger)
-Left eye blue, right eye green.
-Left eye cut (external)
-Right eye fractured (internal (???))
-Source of sore: center of right hand. Reverberated throughout the body like the insides of a tree.
-Source unknown
-Teeth crooked, surgery performed on seven/ten occasions.
-Top center teeth chipped
-Three teeth missing
-Wisdom teeth still within mouth; no abnormal growth (???)
-Jane Doe has red hair, cut to nearly a bob.
-Red hair found inside refrigerator (Ask Proper Martin)
-Bullet wound in left shoulder.
-Bullet wound in right shoulder.
-Bullet wound in right leg. (4)
-Black sore (mold?) found all over body.
-Not contagious by touch, inhalation, or consumption (I’m looking at you, Ryan)
Martin Smiths was examining the refrigerator Jane Doe had been found inside of. When Grant asked him about the contents of the fridge, he started to laugh while bashing his head into the steel wall. He did not die from this. Grant requested permission to look at the refrigerator for medical purposes, but “Captain” Martin Wilcox denied his request, citing that the psychological effect it had on Smiths was too much for him. In reality, Wilcox also saw what was inside the fridge. If Marston saw its contents, he would be driven mad by the horrors within. At least, that’s what he claimed in his suicide note.
Grant was a bit peeved to be certain. There was so much about this woman he didn’t know. Why did she have a tattoo of a monkey on the bottom of her left foot? Why was she in a refrigerator even though she was wearing a space suit? How did she die? And what bit her? He would only find the answer to two of these questions. The first answer came in the form of a feeling in his left palm that was akin to what an apple must feel when a naked woman eats it upon the request of a snake. When Grant lifted his hand to see what bit him, all that was there was a black mark. The full extent of what had happened to Grant wouldn’t become apparent to him for another three hours. In a way, he was one of the lucky ones.
Lesson 4. Do not open things that say “DO NOT OPEN!!!!!!!!!”
FAMED “GHOST SHIP” FOUND FLOATING DEAD STAR AFTER THIRTY SEVEN YEARS.
The starship Nausicaä, missing for thirty seven years, was found yesterday orbiting a dead sun. The crew within long dead.
The Nausicaä was a medical ship owned by noted billionaire and heir to the Wilcox Corporation, Martin Wilcox the Fourth. It disappeared on Nov. 20, 2071 after a humanitarian aid mission on Titan and did not return to Mars for repairs. The decades long mystery was resolved, however, when a freight ship had discovered the remains after a computer glitch forced them off course.
The Inter-Solar System Police confirmed Sunday that the ship, which had several internal failures but no breaches in the ship’s hull, was the Nausicaä.
Among the crew of the Nausicaä was noted movie star, Martin Smiths. Smiths’s career was notable for his starring roles in such classics as “Revenge of the Deadly Assassin,” “Marco Pollo,” and his award winning directorial debut, “The Man Who Knew Me.” Smiths was a hero to the burgeoning Mars cinema, producing several acclaimed films, including “Blake.” His career was cut to an end when he disappeared along with the rest of the crew.
The Nausicaä’s unsolved case has been the fodder of many a true crime podcast and work of fiction, including Walter Graham’s seminal The Ghost Ship and the fourth season of the Wilcox produced Dark Space series. Upon being asked about the discovery of the ship, head writer Marcus T. Ling was quoted as saying, “I’m excited… to see [the Nausicaä] discovered is perhaps one of my childhood dreams. I can’t wait to walk its hallways.”
Sources within the ISSP indicate that that dream may not come true, as there is a high level of toxicity within the ship that seems to have been the cause of death for the Naussicaän crew. Rumors of a bioweapon secretly implemented on the Naussicaä crew have surfaced, though the ISSP has not made a comment. More as the story develops.
[Update: 12/01/08]
The ISSP has released an official statement:
THE STARSHIP DESIGNATED “NAUSSICAÄ” WAS FOUND FOUR DAYS AGO ORBITING THE DEAD SUN, SOLARIS. THE ENTIRE CREW WAS FOUND DEAD. THE CAUSE OF DEATH HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE SUFFOCATION. IT IS BELIEVED BY THE INTER-SOLAR SYSTEM POLICE THAT THE CAUSE OF DEATH WAS A COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, WHICH SHUT DOWN THE LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS. THE FAMILIES OF THE DECEASED WILL BE INFORMED OF THEIR DEATH.
Class Dismissed
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