affreux Survivante

The below seems to be a stream of consciousness that was fired across the cosmos from a distant planet, that orbited a distant star, moments before that planet was partially destroyed. From what we are able to observe of that far off region of space, it seems a planet that was once capable of supporting life now exists as a cluster of rocks orbiting a star that once gave that planet warmth and light, gave it life. The below message was unusually transmitted as pure energy, that is to say it was attached to particles of light rather than a radio wave. Take this as an oversimplified explanation, imagine a small star or ball of light racing through the universe like an asteroid rather than a wave and you’ll have an idea how we first observed the travelling ball of energy. It was the unusual nature of that light travelling through the universe that drew our attention to it. It would take us many years to find the message attached to the photons and many more years to roughly translate it. The below is a loose translation, we do not know much about the world it originated from or what that world looked like. We do not know if the life on that planet was hominid-like, though the message seems to indicate that life on that planet evolved down a similar route as our own. We do not know what trees or guns would have looked like or if their version of a “farmhouse” is similar to our own, we have simply used our imagination to attach meanings and concepts as we understand them to a completely alien message. Specific names, such as the names of tribes or locations, of course cannot be translated. It also seems that the message was not sent through a deliberate process but was instead the anguished cry across the cosmos of a life form in pain, suffering and likely dying. How any of this is possible is beyond our current understanding of the laws of physics.

The translation:

As I came to, I noticed the earth beneath me was scorched black. I rediscovered consciousness with half of my face pressed against the burnt dirt. Gasping for breath I raised up from the ground as best I could but the atmosphere felt heavy and weighed down on me. I looked around, the entire landscape had been completely changed by the weapon. The sun was nowhere to be seen in the darkened and swirling deep blue sky overhead, but the constant bolts of lightening that cracked through the clouds above provided plenty enough light for me to see. Never had I seen such a sky, such continuous lighting strikes, before in my life. It was as if I was caught in the eye of an electric storm. All around the air itself seemed to fizzle with a charged energy that I could feel prickling against my skin. Rolling thunder claps above and a constant buzzing were the only sounds I could hear, though, they were near deafening. The ground below, that had been grass and soil when the battle had started, was no longer greenery and mud but looked to be millions upon billions of grains of blackened sand, I watched the grains slip through my fingers as I attempted to take up a handful. Questions raced through my mind; How was this possible? Such a rapid change in the environment. How long was I out? How did I survive when everything surrounding me had been reduced to charred earth? Why did I survive when nothing else had?

I had seen the weapon hit. I’d never imagined that the [Enemy] would possess such a weapon or that they would ever dare use it, they must have killed a good number of their own forces in the strike. My regiment had been engaged in battle with an [Enemy] platoon in the [Alien name] Forest for days. On the fourth day of fighting the battle had devolved into a pitched firefight across an open plain, a grassy clearing somewhere deep in the forest. I had been rotated up to the front and was crouched behind a felled tree. Adrenaline was pumping though me, I was sweating through my fatigues in the dense heat trapped in the forest. I was returning fire whenever I could briefly poke my head above the trunk of the fallen tree, that’s when the weapon struck behind our lines. A bright blue beam of light shot down from the skies above and made contact with the ground not so far back from my position, like a giant laser sight from an [Enemy] surge cannon. It was difficult to see on approach, a blue light against the cloudless sun-bright sky, but was clear to see once it had touched down. As I stared it took a moment for me to realise that it seemed all gunfire had stopped, even from the [Enemy] across the plain. Seemingly every combatant in the forest was staring with me when a sudden ball of white light raced down the beam, a pulse of pure energy that struck into the ground like a bomb hitting. As the impact rippled out I found myself lifted into the air and flung into the clearing with no more cover from enemy fire, but I wasn’t shot, not when I went thudding into the grassy earth nor when I attempting to stand back up. The same shockwave that had sent me through the air had also uprooted and broken trees, it had tore up a layer of dirt and soil from the ground and sent everything scattering with dizzying force. It was chaos already and that was just the first hit. Soon another ball of white energy followed, and then another, and another and they continued to come one after another, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing into the ground and the earth did quake beneath me. I was thrown all over with each shockwave that rippled out from the impact and soon found myself plunging into a ravine. For awhile I was submerged and feared I’d drown. I had to escape the water before death found me but with everything chaotically rumbling around me I had no way of knowing which way was toward the surface and which was deeper. As the urge to breath water into my lungs grew my survival instincts took over, and I flailed, and I kicked my legs until I broke through the surface. I clambered out of the ravine and looked back toward the beam of light only to see that a ball of energy had broken free of it and was coming straight at me. It was going to hit me, I knew in that instant that I had no time to duck out of the way. As I glimpsed the white ball of light racing toward me I only had time to tense up and brace myself, and then nothing. I was out.

When I was conscious again I was caught in the electric storm and everything was changed, even the many trees of the forest were gone or reduced to charred stumps, and I found myself on a never-ending open plain of scorched earth. I dragged myself to my feet and wondered why would the [Enemy] do this? The war between us had been long and dogged but did they hate us this much? Was their hate so much that they were prepared to use a weapon of such mass devastation so close to their own territory? I attempted to gulp but couldn’t for the strange vibrating sensation in my throat, in fact, I felt a vibrating all over but as if it was inside my skin, a barely describable feeling of my body trembling internally. An instinct told me that I must drink something so I scrambled in search of the ravine that had almost been my death. I found a body of water, a stream that look too shallow to have been drowning in but with everything having been so utterly destroyed by the weapon how could I know if it was the same water or not? I dipped my hands into the water to cup some out for myself to sip but the moment my fingers touched the liquid a bolt of electric tore through me and I was again tossed back. After struggling to my feet, I crept back to the water and looked upon it to see fizzling blue strikes run across the surface like miniature lightning bolts. The liquid had also become charged with electricity but how? how was that possible? Still, I needed to drink, my whole body felt cooked so there was a desperation inside me to take in some water. I knew if I attempted to cup the water with my hands again the same would happen, but in my desperation, I thought if I quickly dipped my head below the surface with my mouth open I may still receive a shock and be thrown backward but if I could get a mouthful of water it would be worth the gamble. So I got on my hands and knees at the waters edge, breathed a last breath and crashed my head into the stream. Jolts of pain did indeed run through me but I found myself able to gulp down the water despite the torture surging through my body. I drank, and drank, but soon felt my equilibrium shifting again. Everything was becoming dark from my peripheral vision inward, I was about to black out but was being shocked rigid and could not lift my head from the water. As the darkness consumed me and I was on the verge of losing consciousness again I thought to myself this is how I die.

The next thing I remember I was walking already and apparently had been walking for some time. I do not know what happened, I knew less where I was walking to, I only knew the instinct to keep moving. Either the electric storm had ended or I had walked free of it, however, there was still no sun in the sky but a swirl of black and grey clouds. Despite the gloomy clouds overhead there was still light, even without the sun, as those same black and grey clouds were luminous and glimmered as if they contained thousands of sparkling diamonds. In reality those glimmers were sparks of electricity as the clouds were also charged and were glowing. The air was thick with a constant static that pricked at my skin as I walked and even stabbed at my lungs as I breathed it in. The static made moving and breathing more difficult, slowing my march considerably but never stopping me, I thought it must have been my survival instincts that drove me to keep moving but maybe it was something else all along. The ground beneath my feet was no longer blackened sand but was still charred, the effects of the weapon were far and wide, had the whole region burned? I do not know how long I walked the smouldering earth, it must have been days but without the sun rising and setting measuring time was near impossible. There was no day and no night and the light from the glowing clouds above was constant. Time lost any meaning for me, all that mattered was that I kept moving. I saw no other living thing for much of the journey, not plant nor animal. There was the occasional scorched stump but no trees. All I could see laid out in front of me was torched landscape all the way to the horizon. As I walked on I slowly became aware that I hadn’t eaten or even drank for some time, probably days if I could have measured, nor did I have any desire to eat or drink any longer. I should have been dead already without food and water for so long, but against the rules of nature I kept moving. Kept going. Not eating or drinking was the start, I could feel myself changing. I could feel a corruption within myself, like a virus was taking over my body but I kept going. I didn’t care. Kept going.

Also, my mind. Think. Thinking changed. Was becoming something else.

Eventually, bodies. Dead and dying animals strewn across the landscape, the blackened soil. I passed many dead animals, many corpses. Everything dying, effects of the weapon spreading across the land.

My head began to throb. Not an ache but a sort of electric pulsing. A pulsing. A pressure behind my eyes. Pulsing. My brain like it could explode.

I walked from under the clouds. For the first time in a long time, could see the sun. And in the distance, plants, trees. And across an open field, a farmhouse. There was grass, still black as if it’s burnt, but grass. And, at last, a farm. Maybe someone else alive. Another survivor. It had been so long since I’d seen another. Another survivor, maybe they could help me. So I came here, to the farmhouse.

As I neared the farmhouse, The Farmer rushed out to me, they must have seen me coming through a window, how long since they last seen someone? Did they know what had happened? But, The Farmer suddenly halted in front of me. Face twisted with a fear. And they turned. And they ran. Ran back to the farmhouse. Slammed the door shut. I quickly followed but could not push the door open. Locked. Or they had pushed something against it. I knocked and hammered to no response, just wanted to be let in, wanted help. I lay both hands on the door to push but didn’t possess the strength to open it. I felt an anger inside me and a surge of that anger ran through my body, through my finger tips and to my shock the door was blown away.

I entered the farmhouse to eventually find The Farmer cowering in a corner. The Farmer pleaded with me to go away, to leave them alone. I attempted to ask for help. Attempted to ask what was wrong but The Farmer didn’t seem to understand me. The words, they didn’t seem to come out right. Could I not correctly form the words that were in my head? As The Farmer cried and begged for me to leave, a rage was rising inside me. I just wanted help, wasn’t it obvious that I needed help? Why wouldn’t they listen? The Farmer just wanted me to leave. Why couldn’t they listen?

What happened next is a vague memory. I’m not sure I can describe the violence. The Farmer shouted for me to go away. The rage became too much. I had no control. The next I knew I gripped The Farmer’s head with both hands. Electricity surged within me and seemed to pulse through my hands into The Farmer’s head. Pulsing and pulsing. And soon The Farmer’s head was cooked. I released my grip and The Farmer’s body fell to the floor. I stared at the dead Farmer awhile, their scorched head. Had I done that? I looked to my hands but couldn’t recognise them as mine. They were blackened and like bone, as if the skin had been burnt away. And tiny bolts of electric surged between my fingers.

Why hadn’t I noticed my hands before? What of the rest of me? Oh what does the rest of me look like? I searched the farmhouse. Searched until I found a mirror. Though I feared to look, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what The Farmer had seen.

I am now looking at my reflection.

What? What is that? What am I? My skin is charred black all over with cracks that are seeping some concoction of my bodily fluids. My lower jaw hangs down oddly from my face, as if detached from the rest of my head. I hadn’t even thought of my mouth since attempting to drink from the stream and now I’m staring into it, gaping wide open with a flickering light inside. My teeth are mostly gone but those that remain are cracked and jagged, like shards of broken glass pressed into my gums. And my eyes. Oh my eyes. They are like two bright shining lights, my eyeballs wasted away and replaced with blue lights, blue like the targeting beam of the weapon that did this to me. What am I looking at? What I see is not a living thing anymore, I am something else now. Something other, a creature with a furious power inside. I am the monster that chased and killed The Farmer and I can feel the rage that did that building within myself again. How could the [Enemy] do this? What have they done to me? I need to scream, and release my anguish.

The light inside my mouth is no longer flickering, it is burning brighter and stronger now, a solid and continuous light. Bolts of electric are beginning to surge over my blackened body in waves. From my blue eyes burst two beams of light like lasers. And my head throbs. I feel a pulsating power that I am incapable of understanding throbbing in my head, behind my eyes. I need to scream, need to shout and cannot contain this fury. What happens if I release this anger that I feel rising inside me? What happens when I let go and shout my anguish to the skies?

I am corrupted.

I am a dead thing.

And I must scream.