One percent, per year.
This thought echoed in Parker’s mind constantly, as much a constant background noise as the soft downpour outside against the aluminum of the small shuttle he had taken down to the planet. When he pushed the button to shut off the engine he winced as the ancient machinery groaned with the bending of steel, part of him hoping it would just explode and save him the trouble.
It didn’t. The artificial lighting shut off in the cockpit, and Parker was blind for a few moments as his eyes adjusted. His mind drifted back, and repeated it once again.
One percent, per year.
Parker slipped out of the control seat and wrapped his utility belt around his waist, thumbing at his firearm as he did. He knew full well that if anything was out there it would be next to useless- but it felt good to have. He then flicked the switch to lower the boarding ramp just a half meter behind the seat, and took a deep breath before striding out into the ink blackness of Fort Democracy.
Perhaps a strange name for a planet, Parker had no knowledge of why it’s citizens had decided on that. Regardless, it was abandoned now, and that knowledge- that he was no doubt the only human on this planet, reminded him again as he put his boots to the mud.
One percent, per year.
When Parker reached for his flashlight and flicked it on, he instead threw it away and yelped in panic as his communicator suddenly flared to life, spitting out noise and light into the darkness and gentle drizzle of constant rain. With a thick splash the flashlight hit the ground, and he sighed before flicking the communicator open.
“Hey, Parker- you still alive?”
Parker gritted his teeth. If he wasn’t alive, how in the hell did he open the communicator? His response was silence.
“Uh, taking that as a yes- check back every hour or so. If we don’t hear from you we’re going to assume... something happened, and we’re gonna split. It’s creepy out here man... whatever that thing is it keeps....”
The communicator broke into static and then gave the annoying tone that meant there was some sort of error in transmission. Parker just shook his head and slid the now-wet thing into his jacket, and reached down to pick his flashlight out of the muck. The muck that, it turned out, was green underneath the surface of brown. He shuddered and flicked off as much as he could before starting off properly, waving a beam of light around as if he was chasing ghosts.
The only proper settlement on the planet was mostly underground, and an outcropping of buildings just ahead marked the surface-level entrance. Constant rain had sent the settlers underground, you couldn’t even grow plants in the muck up here- it washed away too quickly. Honestly he wasn’t even sure why they had chosen to live here- but the databank said they had been here for 200 years.
Hopefully, command figured, that meant they would know what it was that had been corralling them into the system. Whatever it was had ‘seen’ them from lightyears away and came on them fast. If they tried to leave, it rammed them.
So it had been that Parker had been volunteered to come down here and see if these long-dead people had known what this was. Once again he was reminded of his luck.
One percent, per year.
While Parker walked towards the buildings he grappled with his mind, trying to allay his fear with statistics. Even if he was the only one here- a year was a long time. It would take three whole days to even reach one percent... but statistics had never really helped. He knew that he was on borrowed time, period, and any second...
Parker looked up, saw the twinkle of a distant star through the clouds, and shuddered again. Nobody even knew where they went- just that they went.
He was not eager to find out.
So the man trudged along, and was thankful that at the very least it was a warm downpour as he stepped through the mud towards the buildings. A quick sweep of his flashlight revealed them to be in poor condition- but that was all the better. He didn’t come all this way to be stopped by a locked door, and found the first one he tried to be rusted.
Parker tried it a few times before a wave of terror coursed through him, the great banging sounds seeming so unnatural against the soft rain that it put him on edge. With a kick he caved it in, and then quickly stumbled inside and waved his flashlight towards the outside.
There was, as Parker suspected, nothing there. Regardless his heart was beating quickly and he had a great need to leave. The room looked to be a sort of sheriffs office, disused for centuries after the surface was abandoned. A few open metal cells full of grime laid just behind a doorway, and closer to him was a simple desk.
Behind the desk was a door, and to his extreme relief- a ladder leading downwards. It was crampt in that hole, and he had to hold his flashlight in his mouth as he descended, but somehow the pitch-black of the underground seemed more comforting than the vast shadowy unknowns of the surface.
At the bottom of his descent he found a sealed door, and with some effort managed to turn the wheel and get it open. He shut it behind him, and utter silence descended- except for the dripping of water echoing down the tubular metal structure from a point unknown.
Flashlight at hand, Parker set onwards not knowing where he was heading- but happy to be heading somewhere. Along the walls he found posters of entertainment and advertisements mixed in with what looked like government messages- he recognized a colonial variant of the Star Flag. A green circle added to the usual triangle of stars that represented the first settled worlds. He pulled one out from behind a motion picture poster, and studied it curiously.
While he read he opened his communicator to report back- finding the public announcement quite disconcerting. It was a warning, and an odd one, that informed citizens to refuse any medical aid from Earth, lest they develop some strangely named disease. The writing was strange, not quite in the standard alphabet, but it looked like ‘Disque Nexusazzion’
Open receiving another error code he sighed and tossed away the paper before setting forward with a faster pace. Thankfully the tube broke into an intersection soon enough, and signs pointed towards different directions. He chose “Command” over the others, “Recreation” and “Meeting Bay.”
The tube widened as he walked now, and the faint shimmer of ancient emergency lights, glowing a soft yellow, broke into the dark now and then. Parker began to notice a little bit of the green sludge from the surface here and there, and then he halted before a long shadow cast by his flashlight down the hallway. His heart raced as he looked down, and then his face paled with a wave of cold fear.
Parker was looking face to face with a corpse, a corpse that was sprawled out as if had simply fallen when walking and died where it lay. More of that green sludge interleaved with the yellowed and ancient skeleton, and he glanced back, for a moment feeling more than anything like he needed to leave.
It was only the knowledge that he would surely be sent back, combined with that reminder of his eventual fate, that drove him to step over the skeleton and set on forwards at a jog.
One percent, per year.
With only the sound of that dripping- sounding somehow like it was right next to him despite being either behind or ahead- echoing in the silence, Parker began to talk to himself to keep the chill of fear away. At the moment he was lamenting his fate, mumbling about the unfairness of pulling straws and wondering if anyone had rigged it. That settled his nerves for now, and he finally reached the end of the corridor.
Another sealed door had been left ajar, and Parker stepped through to enter into a wide and tall room full of banks and banks of computers that pre-dated the country he was born in. They all sat silently, and Parker looked suspiciously at one of the chairs parked before one. He poked it, and it promptly collapsed with a nerve-shattering noise that echoed down the halls for a seeming age. Frustrated, afraid, and starting to simply not care; Parker pulled a portable battery from his pack and reached around the back of the computer to find the plug.
Parker yelped and withdrew his hand after only a moment, feeling something wet and squishy. He fell on his ass in his haste and dropped his flashlight beside him. Utter horror filled his face as the light rolled to a halt and illuminated his hand.
It was green. Green, and getting less so every second. The goo was vanishing, but to where? It wasn’t dripping, it wasn’t evaporating. Parker shrieked in panic and tried to shake it off, but it was too little too late- painlessly, effortlessly, it had sunken below his skin.
As he stood there, breathing through his nose rapidly and with his vision spinning, he heard the dripping noise increase in pace. Faster it went, until it became almost a downpour and he threw his hands to his ears trying, clasping them tightly and trying to keep out the noise- but it wasn’t coming from outside.
Then it stopped. Silence.
One percent, every year.