When Parker awoke from his short vacation from reality, he found himself exactly where he was, and yelped as memory flooded back and he quickly jumped to his feet. Able to only just barely see anything from the emergency lights, he used his feet to find the flashlight and picked it up. He picked it up, and was just about to turn it on when he noticed that he probably didn’t need it- the emergency lights gave him enough light in this room, and he would just lose his sight in the dark.
So he left it there and leaned over the computer, inspecting it closely and finding, to a sigh of relief- nothing green. It was a simple task to remove the ancient power cable and attach his portable battery, and once he did his heart skipped a beat as the gentle buzzing of a hard disk pressed into the silence.
Collecting himself with a deep breath he stood back, and leaned over the workstation, flicking the screen on and watching as the ancient phosphors flickered to a dim life. Colonial technology was built to last, wasn’t too surprising to find a command line computer powered by vacuum tubes and electron guns out here.
Strangely there didn’t appear to be any security. The computer just dumped him to a blinking command prompt, and he typed a few basic commands to get a layout of the system. Most programs would be useless- there was certainly no use for chat when everyone was dead- but he was here for data, and data is what he found.
Parker scrolled through email archives and found a bizzare lack of care for peoples personal lives. Everything was open, and he poured through the sex lives and just about every other detail of peoples lives that had been placed firmly in the open. Constantly something was mentioned- a meeting. With who it never said, and it never said when either. Just constant mentions of a meeting, running through everything from shipping logs to entertainment advertising.
The screen began to flicker and die as Parker rounded a half hour logged in and, sensing he wasn’t getting anywhere, he reached back to retrieve his battery. With a relatively bright flash of amber light the machine fell back to it’s deathly silence, and he clicked the battery back onto his belt before giving his rear to the command room and exiting to the hallway.
Parker’s nerves were quite on edge as he approached the corpse he had earlier, having been scanning every inch of the hallway for it on the way there. Once he spotted it his heart skipped a beat and for a moment he found himself breathless, but the second time was easier than the first and he passed by the green-covered thing without much pause. The sight of it reminded him of the stakes- and he checked how long he had been down here. Four hours.
One percent, per year.
With that reminder ringing in his head he stepped up his pace towards the “meeting bay,” pausing only at the intersection to look through the inky blackness back towards the surface. For a few moments he stilled his mind by imagining simply leaving, letting someone else come back and finish the job... but that was not to be.
Instead he forced himself to stride onwards, and was astonished by how wide the hall quickly became. It went to at least fifty meters wide within minutes, and dozens of smaller tubes fed into the gigantic hallway as he walked onwards. He suddenly found himself imagining throngs of people passing through the dull darkness like a great organic mass- but why?
Two great doors greeted him at the end of the hall, labeled quite ominously as “Meeting Room”. Feeling the cold steel of them he then stepped back and took notice of the obvious signs of extreme security. Gigantic pillars of steel that sunk into the walls on either side, and each door locked into the other with a series of toothy metal extensions across the middle. Tapping them with his hands he found they were far too deep to hear anything from the other side.
Shrugging, he stepped to the side and put his fingers into a small crevice, pushing down on a release that let a small terminal flip out from the wall. He quickly tossed up the battery from one hand to the other, replaced the power cable with it, and then his fingers glided across the keyboard to activate the override password. The doors made a great thunking noise as he retrieved his battery and flicked the terminal back into the wall, and as he watched them open with an awed respect for whoever made them, he squinted into the dark as something teased his mind.
Parker’s thoughts centered on the terminal, and he thought back to the command centre. He must’ve read about it somewhere and noted the code from an email or something, and his nerves had just been messing with him recently. Nodding to himself at this solution to the puzzle, he stepped into the gaping doorway and entered into a vast chamber.
Upon entering the darkness the doors immediately began to close, and by the time he noticed them quietly shutting and looked back- they slammed shut. Alone and in the silence, he peered into the blackness. There were no emergency lights here... but there was something. It took his eyes a few moments to notice it, but a faint green outline on the floor lead outwards.
With no real choice, Parker followed it in a meandering path for several minutes. It led him towards the faint outline of a stone pillar, with criss-crossing lines of green all over it.
Without thinking, Parker touched it, and was suddenly immersed in a bright light. He yelled out in a combination of terror and pain from the sudden blast of light against his eyes, and pulled his arm back- but it was stuck. Green sludge had glued it to the pillar, and his boots were suddenly filling with it as well. Locked in place, and surrounded by green, he grew more and more terrified as he frantically looked around.
The green seemed to go on forever. Above him, behind him, it was as if he were standing inside a solid, glowing, mass of green. It was utterly impossible to tell just how far the cave went in width or height- there was only green.
Parker found himself suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of utter and total loneliness, a hopeless desperation for contact as the fact that he was alone down here pressed on his mind over and over, like a hammer slamming against any thoughts he formed. Alone, alone alone alone. Centuries of being alone, so long since his friends had left.
That, Parker realized, was not his own thought.
He was not alone.
The green flickered suddenly and a hot pulse of pain tore through his body as suddenly the green sludge clenched around his hands and feet, squeezing powerfully and- from the feel of it- tearing his extremities apart. It was an incredible pain that over-rode all his senses, and his thoughts burned away, replaced only by pain as he cried out.
When the pain ceased, and he opened his eyes- he was no longer underground. Instead he was hanging in the brightness of space- so bright that it hurt his eyes- and looked upon the familiar shape of his home vessel. Presently it was stinging him with it’s lasers, but it was doing little more than annoy.
Not really in control of his movements he pressed closer to the ship, and was then hit again. It stung more than last time as the red flarings of light burned across his body, and in a sudden angry outburst he leapt forward and rammed into it. The lights upon the hull fell dark, and it floated away, crippled for the moment.
Green, again, and Parker gasped in surprise and confusion. His vision became fuzzy as his brain worked a mile a minute, and a rather painful headache throbbed through his temples as it felt like he was being forced to go over every bit of information he knew. Old memories, technical schematics, even snipped of old dreams. It hurt to have it all thrust before him all at once, the sum total of his human experience overwhelming him.
Then it stopped, and the green spoke to him. Not in words, perhaps not even in thoughts- but it did. It greeted him.
When Parker blinked in confusion he was torn back into space and viewed his ship again, watching as it slowly rolled in space and the engines flickered to life. It was leaving, that he knew- but it couldn’t leave. He was lonely, he had been lonely for so long!
Desperately he flew towards it, slamming into the rear and watching as those engines sputtered out for the moment. He encircled it and gently nudged it back towards the brown planet laying some million kilometers away. He just wanted to talk, to know them.
A wave of fear came over him as he remembered to what it was like up there just days ago, and he had came upon the ship with a desperate fury. Nobody had died, but fear had given them all sleepless nights and restless days as they began to resent and hate the visitor. They didn’t know how lonely he was, or how long it had been since he had contacted anyone. They were out here on a mission, a mission that he was interfering with.
One percent, per year.
Parker hesitated as the engines lit again, darting forward and then back, indecision clouding his mind. They need to go- but he couldn’t let them go. They had to stay, they had to stay with him. He couldn’t be alone- not even with his new friend. That was only one, and there had been hundreds.
He had saved them! Only humans were stolen, and they had not been human! They had been part of him, friends to him, a connection that protected them.
Parker remembered his loyalty to that ship, and his knowledge that their noble mission was the only hope humanity had left. The last ship of a dying people, a people that had known nothing but terror and confusion over a half century of facing their own slow end.
Parker drew himself back and curled up, a black shape in space that was viewed by the ship with terrified eyes as it sped into the brightness of space. Further and further, further... until he couldn’t see it any more.
Once again, they were alone.