Them Beyond Us

CHAPTER ONE

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. And yet, here I was hurtling through that wretched vacuum, screaming at the top of my lungs with not a soul around to hear me. Well, except of course for me. It really shatters that whole “tree in the woods” analogy. In hindsight, it was rather embarrassing and knowing what I know now, I’d say the theatrics, as real as they were at the time, were a bit over the top. I’ll submit my nod for an Emmy and move on.

Speaking of the vast void of space, have you ever deserted civilization for the wilderness just to glimpse the chaotic beauty of space? It really is humbling, seeing all that is out there, and truly centers your perspective.

I recall when I was younger, I spent a summer at Camp Caroline Furnace with my Christian youth group. A lot of good it did me as my favorite and most memorable moments from the three years I spent there were of me and my small wayward group sneaking away from the cabins and into a distant field so we could glimpse the stars. As rebels we liked to challenge the thought of God by viewing the universe in all its splendor and I have to say, nothing will cleanse your moral pallet more than shrinking beneath the heavens, as it were.

I remember being out in that field on a clear evening and the light of the moon and stars was so magnificent that it lit the field better than any man-made streetlamps could. There is an image burned into my memories of the milky way galaxy visible to my naked eye. Stars freckled that dark canopy like grains of sand on a beach. Incredible would be an understatement.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would be free-falling through that ocean of stars at breakneck speeds, fearing for my life, but life has a funny way of bringing you full circle, I suppose.

As if to sour the mood, the hazard signal began blaring in my helmet and a fun little red triangle blinked on in the bottom corner of my HUD alerting me that my oxygen levels were dangerously low. Suffice it to say that my large inhales of breath between screams would have to stop, as enjoyable as it had been. All good things must come to an end, I suppose, including my existential crisis.

I peered down at the control display on my wrist and tapped a few commands to silence the infernal alarm signaling in my helmet. I changed the neon red triangle to a percentage of oxygen. It showed fifteen percent and of course displayed the numbers in pessimist red. So, I changed the color to blue to fit the space motif. They say blue is a calming color.

I’d say staring out at the stars and distant planets would be calming by its own right, except for the fact that I was spinning like a top, so everything was just a blur of light and color. I exhausted a bit of oxygen to combat the spin and set me on a gentler glide, spurting puffs of air out of ports on my suit like tiny booster engines to control my motion. It cost me two percent of oxygen, but damnit, if I’m going to die, I might as well enjoy the last few moments I have.

I was now facing this galaxy’s star, it was a good distance away, and I could see a few specks dotted in between that must have been a few of the planets circling it. There was some debris floating around me, casually hanging out as I drifted through the lonely chasm. Likely the debris from my ship, but who knew at this point, it had been a day.

I decided to take a break from all that there was to occupy my time and examine what was around me, really breathe in my environment. I saw shards of plexiglass catching the lights as they twirled in the darkness, some tendrils of wires, and a rather large section from the ship’s control board bringing up my rear. I flapped my arms to swim to it. Fortunately, this chunk of ship held the black box, still in-tact. I unlatched the release levers and removed the box from the console.

As I slid the box out, I pushed on the segment of ship, causing it to glide away from me. I watched it propel into the distant endlessness for a moment before turning my attention to the black box. I engaged the power system and activated the playback. An automated voice recalled the start time of recording:

“Log date: August 13, 2516 – Axiom Deliverance . . .”

There was a pop of static and then silence for several moments; longer than I expected. Finally, a voice broke in, something distant at first but moving closer as it spoke. It was a woman’s voice.

“The damage is greater than we initially anticipated. If he does recover, I suspect there will be severe brain damage.”

“What do you mean ‘if he does recover’?” another voice chimed in, this one was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it.

There was a ruffling of paper. I heard machines beeping.

“His heart had stopped for twelve minutes; his brain was deprived of oxygen for a great deal of time. This level of trauma, historically, has a high risk of severe brain damage in cases where the patient does not die.”

I heard the soft whimpers of a woman crying. Something inside me, call it intuition, told me it likely wasn’t the doctor . . . or the nurse. Whatever this woman was. But the bigger question poked at my mind like a kid with a stick. What the hell is going on?

This doesn’t seem like a ship recording; this sounds like a hospital. If it is, then who the hell are they talking about? Just then heavy footsteps entered, clapping against the tiled floor. It sounded like a small team of people entering and they weren’t wearing the comfort shoes you would expect nurses or doctors to wear. A gruff male voice entered.

“Status report,” he said impatiently.

“The patient is still in a coma, Colonel Jacobs,” the nurse or doctor replied. “Early prognosis does not indicate that the patient will recover within the next few months.”

“Don’t you have any sympathy,” the crying woman said scathingly. “Do you have no respect? He is here because of you!”

“This man is an asset to a multi-billion-dollar operation,” Colonel Jacobs replied coldly. “Nurse, prep for immediate surgery, we have been authorized to enter him into Project Epsilon.”

So, she was a nurse.

“No,” the woman cried. “You can’t do this, I don’t consent.”

“Mrs. Daniels,” another man stepped in, his voice was nasally and direct. “Lieutenant Daniels signed a consent form before entering this program giving us the ability to make these decisions if he were ever in a position that he could not make them for himself. Please, these men will escort you out, we do not have time to waste.”

She wasn’t happy, her dissident screams indicated as much. But eventually her voice shrank away, her cries echoing from down a long hall. There were no more voices, but the rattling of equipment, slap of cables, and squeak of the wheels told me that the patient was being moved. They wasted no time. But sadly, the recording popped again followed by more silence.

I gazed up at my surroundings. Now that the spinning had stopped, the sight was quite amazing. The star that I was hurtling towards was closer now; it had increased in size, and I could gauge a rough speed at which I was moving. It was impressively fast for as little force as I felt. I shifted focus to my HUD and saw that my oxygen levels had dropped to ten percent.

The cloud of debris around me hadn’t moved. We were our own little universe and they remained within my field of gravity, accompanying me on my journey. The debris was mostly non-descript pieces of ship, from what I could tell, but among a cluster of useless bric-a-brac, I saw a key floating. It was antique looking, aged brass or copper that had splotches of green tarnishing the coat. I swam toward it, holding my hand to the black box still, and grabbed the key once I was close enough.

I turned the key over in my hand a few times, examining it. The hilt of the key was a decorative piece, while the business end was three-pronged, and the center prong extended further than the others and branched into two more prongs of its own. It obviously wasn’t useful to me here, I was floating in the vast emptiness of space, for Christ’s sake, but it was an attractive piece all the same. I opened a pouch on my suit and slid the key in.

The black box crackled to life again, the voices returned.

“Status report,” Colonel Jacobs demanded. A man of pure business; how bland.

“The operation was successful by all appearances,” the nurse replied.

“By all appearances?” the Colonel questioned.

“Well, it’s not like we have the ability to test it,” the nurse responded impatiently. “The patient survived; the device is intact . . . that’s really the limits to which we can confirm success.”

Colonel Jacobs sighed but didn’t say anything yet. Obviously contemplating his options, I imagined, as if rational thought was possible for a man like him. I hadn’t met him, but I already didn’t like him. There was a groan, it was much louder, closer to the mic – it wasn’t the colonel.

“Ok, fuck it,” he resigned. “Ship him off with the others.”

The audio lasted a moment longer, a few shuffling noises before the audio popped off again.

This was maddening. It wasn’t helping. I felt as though I were simply listening to soap operas on tape. Who gives a shit about some coma patient part of some military experiment? My oxygen levels were down to eight percent, and besides the mindless floating towards some distant light, there seemed to be no real purpose for me here. I even battled the will to survive, because what was the point? There had to be something more that I could do.

I scavenged my environment more. I started shifting the debris and making what movement I could, swimming among the pool of stars and debris. It was then I realized that I was actually among small orbs of light. As I moved my hand through them, they shifted out of the way as if they were nestled in some liquid.

I began moving more actively and from my frantic movements, I could see ripples echoing out away from my body. Ocean of stars seemed more accurate now, but stranger than that was that I eventually hit a wall. It wasn’t visible in the darkness around the stars, but I could feel it.

I followed it, pushing my hands along it to propel myself quicker. Now I was heading back towards the star at the center of the galaxy. It was approaching much more rapidly, but I hit another wall. I was in a corner. I followed this wall, the sun in the distance strafing across my vision, left to right. I was moving quickly, but my motion was starting to push me off the wall to where my fingers barely grazed it. I tried to swim back towards the wall, but I couldn’t find it.

Seven percent.

I searched desperately around me looking for some bearing again but found no wall. I was making my way towards the sun again and I finally found the wall. Instead of trying to move left or right, I went up. No dice, I collided with what I could only assume was a ceiling. Once the pain in my head subsided, I tested my logic and swam down to find the floor. I did. But I also found that the wall in front of me was gone. I swam forward again toward the sun. Using the floor to propel myself forward even further.

As luck would have it, I collided with another wall. We really should stop meeting this way, I thought. The picture became clear in my mind. I was trapped in some kind of maze. The walls were translucent or hidden from me somehow, but it must have been filled with water and a simulation of space was projected around me. The sun must be the exit and I simply need to maneuver my way through this labyrinth, relying on nothing but my touch to find my way out.

The static pop returned over the black box with more voices.

“Listen up,” an angry man yelled. “You have all been selected for this project due to a tailored list of characteristics that we determine yield a high chance of success in overcoming obstacles that we have encountered and potential success for more obstacles that we expect to encounter.”

I could hear the rhythmic cadence of the man’s shoes slowly clapping along the floor and echoing through what I imagined was a large empty chamber.

“Welcome to Project Epsilon,” the footsteps stopped and the voice through the black box was louder as if the man had moved closer to the microphone. “The details of this assignment are highly classified. Five years ago, we encountered an anomaly just beyond Mars. Several of our satellites collided with an unseen object. We attempted various forms of Imaging to process the anomaly, ultimately CMOS sensors were used to detect low levels of gamma radiation that revealed the object.

We don’t know how it got there, but we do know that it is not naturally occurring. We sent several probes into the object, but due to the composition of the object materials, we lose contact with them shortly after they enter. Therefore, we have selected you as primary candidates to enter the object and observe and report your findings.”

It was me . . .

The man in the coma, the one who received surgery, the one now entered in Project Epsilon . . . was me. This must be where I am now, inside the unknown object, which as it turns out, is a maze. I must have tried entering in a ship, which would explain the debris, some pilot I must have been. But that doesn’t explain why I can’t remember anything that happened to me before this. How long have I been here?

Six percent.

It had been a day indeed, or a few. Hell, I can’t remember. All I know is that my oxygen is depleting, I’m lost inside some kind of maze that may or may not be underwater. Who built the maze? Earth’s mightiest scientists can’t even tell me. And why me? Hell, if I know!

Deep breath . . . ok. I can do this, I thought to myself. I heard positive thinking can inspire miracles, or something.

I take another look at the control pad on my wrist. Scrolling through the settings, I find a category for “HUD Overlays.” I select it and begin scrolling through the options: Night Vision, Thermal Vision, Infrared Imaging, and . . .

Ah, CMOS.

I select it and a grid of lights spans out across the glass display of my helmet, there is a quick analyzer that runs across like a scanner light and then a strange purple and green aura displays. It looked similar to light refracting off oil, but this gives me a bearing. As I look around, I can see the vague shape of the room that I’m in. I can see the wall I swam beneath and possible options that I can take to work my way through the labyrinth.

However, as the swirl of memories begin to return to me, fractured disheveled images and snippets of my life, I begin to get the unnerving feeling of being watched. I’m a rat in cage . . . despite all my rage. Classic. It’s times like these that I’m thankful for my unwavering wit and humor, even if no one else seems to appreciate it. Either that or the decline of oxygen is affecting my sanity. Time will tell.

Five percent.

With some visibility, immeasurable hope, and the ignorance of a child, I braved the unknown of the labyrinth. I pushed off the ground to an opening I found near the ceiling and began working my way through each passageway as quickly as possible.

Now, I’m a humble guy and I’m not one to boast about my own achievements, but this maze was not very difficult to navigate. Having translucent walls has its pros, like being able to keep your eyes on the prize. But the cons, I think, are pretty apparent, pardon the pun. Invisible walls are immeasurably challenging to navigate. Let’s just say it took more than three licks to get to the center of this tootsie pop. But the moment of truth finally arrived. I turned the final corner, and like a magician using sleight of hand, the sun that I saw shifted into a whirling translucent sphere. It was like looking at a glass ball that at the edges, stretched all light and matter exposing its shape.

It was like its own planet, the center of its universe and floating around it were roughly a dozen probes and four bodies, the previous Epsilon explorers, who clearly were not as lucky as I was. But none of this was as terrifying, and quite honestly nothing could prepare me for, the creature that swam out from beyond the singularity.

At first, all I saw was the skeletal structure of the creature. Really, it was the most obvious thing as, just like the maze, the body of the thing was translucent. I could see the veins and tendrils that formed its nervous system all the way to the stalks of its eyes. It was very much like an eel, in many ways, but it had hands, or rather claws. It simply lumbered around its den lazily until it spotted me.

Four percent.

I heard an inhuman screech and it jolted forward, nearly disappearing in the void of space; its only focusable points being the skeleton which became a blur beyond its movement. Before I could react, the creature had hold of me. I felt the sharp pain of claws puncturing my shoulders as I was forced backwards at incredible speed. I slammed into the wall hard.

I don’t know if it was the trauma to my brain or the absolute shock of the moment, but the piercing pain disappeared from my shoulders. I looked to find blood streaming out from my right shoulder. It didn’t disperse through the water like a crimson cloud, instead it streamed out in jagged spires, like a slow forming column of lightning.

I had to shake off the surprise. I had to react. The inhuman screech returned, but I couldn’t find the creature at all. I looked and saw the purple/green aura of the walls and sped around the first corner I found. Before I arrived at the singularity, I came upon a notch in the maze. I stumbled my way there now, hoping it would buy me a moment of peace from this wretched creature so that I could process and plan my escape from this maze.

I clambered into the tuckaway and heard the creature stream past angrily. My heart was screaming within my chest, rapping at my ribcage furiously. My breath was coming in quick sharp bursts. I had to think. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Even more troubling was how I would even get out?

I heard voices crackle in, muffled and distant. There was a moment of confusion, but only a moment.

“Fuck!” I breathed harshly.

The black box. I dropped it in the core of the maze when the creature ambushed me. The voices were too distant, too muffled to make out. But it was enough to bring the creature back. I heard the aggressive screech signaling the monster hearing the noise. It would be hurtling back this way. In hindsight, that would have been the perfect moment to try for the singularity. The thought of entering it terrified me but comparing that with the certain death that awaited me, it could be worse. Life is all about perspective.

Three percent.

An idea struck me, and I immediately began tapping through settings on my control pad until I found the HUD Overlays section. I scrolled through the options, watching each ignite my display until I landed on one where I could make out the creature. Just in time, because I saw it barreling down the passageway just outside my hideaway. I could now see it despite the walls.

I watched it snatch the black box at full speed and drag it across the room at the center of the maze, gnashing at it with its razor-sharp teeth, peeling it apart section by section.

“Get busy living, or get busy dying,” a favorite line of mine from the Shawshank Redemption.

I pushed off the wall and around the corner back to the room. I swam like hell towards the singularity, but the blaring screech from the monster reverberated around the room and I saw it turn to me, abandoning the black box, which now made no noise. I rushed, hoping the cluster of debris that circled the singularity might offer some protection.

Two percent.

I swam as hard as I could, my shoulders throbbed in painful revolt, threatening to force me to stop with each movement, but I couldn’t stop. I pressed on with every ounce of will I had left. It’s amazing how ambitious one can become when faced with certain death, the will to live is a powerful motivator.

I felt the claws of the creature dig into my calf just as I entered the debris that circled the singularity, and I was surprised to find that the creature didn’t follow me in. I looked around frantically trying to spot the thermal image of the creature, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Looking behind me, I found that I couldn’t see anything beyond the singularity, it was a swirling void at this point, and much larger at this distance than it was from the entrance to the room.

I reached for an approaching drone. All this chaos and here this drone floated lazily along without a care in the world. It was torn to shreds, shards of metal jutted from it. I grabbed one and worked the piece free from the husk. I wielded it like a sword, brandishing it in front of me as a meager defense.

I felt the sharp pain of claws puncturing my calf and the unnerving jerk as the creature dragged me away from the singularity. For a moment, I was dumbstruck and unable to move, but when I felt the other hand begin to climb up my body, my adrenaline kicked in like autopilot. My fingers tightened around the jagged shard I held, and I drove it into the creature’s flesh. I saw the blade glide through the air, hitting nothing, but I felt the catch. When I removed the blade, I saw blood stream from the creature, but as if it manifested from thin air.

I heard a new sound, an inhuman whimper of pain. I didn’t stop, for the life of me, for my life, I couldn’t stop. I plunged that spear of jagged metal into the creature again and again. I did not stop until the claws that held me slackened and eventually released me. My final puncture sent the creature into retreat, taking my jagged shard with it, still protruding from its flesh.

One percent.

My shoulders were heavy with pain and my right calf was searing. I used what adrenaline I had left to swim back to the singularity. The calming blue that I had set the numbers had transitioned back to the pessimist red and now they blinked violently. But I couldn’t think about that now. If I stayed here, I would surely die. I may even die by trying to enter the singularity, or I could die by whatever was on the other side. At this point it didn’t matter.

I approached that translucent orb and paused for a moment, but only a moment. I cautiously dipped my hand into the singularity but felt nothing. There was no change in pressure or temperature; I felt no sensations overcoming me. So, I pushed my hand further and suddenly, I felt my body lurch forward and my vision went black. Even the lights on my HUD sank into darkness, but the pressure; the pressure was extreme. I felt as though my head were being split into two, the pain was incredible. I reached the pinnacle of pain, just at the threshold of where I thought I would pass out, when the pain eased.

There was quiet, everything seemed still. I opened my eyes and found that I was laying in a field of grass overlooking a valley below. The oxygen in my helmet cut off and the air began to close in on me, the suit I wore never seemed so close as it did now. In an act of pure desperation, or insanity – it’s reasonable to assume that I’m insane at this point – I removed my helmet.

I took a deep gasping breath . . . then another. The air here seemed quite fine, better than fine, it smelled fresh. I stood, gazing around at my environment, some sort of mountain range.

I noticed that I was clasping something in my hand. I looked down, unfurled my fingers and found that I was holding the key that I had grabbed in the maze. It was still splotched with green, but now, it was glowing. It emitted a soft light all its own. I looked around again and found a stone nearby with a passage carved into its surface:

From the sea, now the land

A creature slain, a key in hand.

Travel further, watch the skies

Keep thy wit and steal its prize.

I repeated the riddle several times in my head trying to make sense of it, but nothing came to me besides the obvious. I need the key for whatever prize awaits. But the challenge it signaled made no sense. Watch the skies? And who would I steal this prize from?

Suddenly, a shadow descended over me, and the torrential gust of wind sounded like thunder in the sky. I watched the shadow scale the landscape and I looked up in horror at the dragon darkening the sky. The massive, winged drake that consumed every inch of sky I could see. Suddenly, the riddle wasn’t so complicated to figure out, but the “how” seemed a puzzle all on its own.

I looked once more at the key emitting its soft glow. The pain in my shoulder made itself known, followed by the screaming pain in my calf. This was not just a maze, but a series of challenges. Who put this here? And to what end did these challenges bring me?

“Lieutenant Daniels,” I heard a voice in my head. “Come in, are you there?”

“Hello?” I responded

“Thank god,” the voice breathed, a woman’s voice. “We saw your signal re-appear, but we can’t find your location, are you still in the labyrinth?”

“No,” I huffed. “Not quite.”

TO BE CONTINUED . . .