The following is a short story taking place on Alpha Centauri roughly fifty years before the arrival of Zach Croft.
April 12th,
It was a long winter, and a lot of us starved.
We just don’t know enough about this terrain yet. Some plants appear to be edible but poison whoever consumes them a few days later. Of course, we’ve planted some grain we brought down on our dropship, but the cargo hold and command dropship were supposed to have far more.
If only we could find the wreckage of those.
Dreams aside, it is my responsibility to leave our camp and help identify edible species, so our numbers aren’t reduced any further. Even now, we’re down to a little over five hundred colonists. There’s hardly enough genetic diversity to last us beyond a few generations—less, if we can’t sort out the food situation.
But we have to retain hope. Hope is all we have left. I’ll keep this logbook up to date with my findings, so that those who come after already have a decent grasp of what will kill them and what will nourish them.
April 15th,
I’ve been following a creature for a few days—something that looks like a wolf-horse hybrid. It has black fur and a stripe of white down its back. Seeing as I am the first of my people to discover it, I shall call it Diremount.
Catchy, right?
The beast has noticed me a few times, but it hasn’t made any move to harm or even intimidate me. Perhaps this would be a good species to domesticate at some point. That aside, I discovered a plant with black leaves that has strange, medicinal properties.
When I ate a little, all of the ache in my legs disappeared. Of course, I fell unconscious a moment later and stayed like that for many hours, but I still think this was a worthy discovery. So many people are in pain back home. This might be able to help them.
I find it strange that we’re in such a sorry state.
Six years ago, the agency promised us so much. A new life on Alpha Centauri. The chance to be frontiersmen—but with all the technological trappings of Earth. The mission commander lied to us, it seems. But the mission commander is also dead, so perhaps he lied to himself as well.
What scares me most is not that we may starve to death but that we might survive and forget who we are. Knowledge is a transient thing. If people do not work to uphold civilization, it will quickly crumble.
Already, I’m noticing the formation of cracks in my people. Small factions are forming back at camp. People are fighting over our limited supplies. There’s talk of some groups separating. I don’t like it.
Hopefully, the knowledge I collect during this expedition will allow us to survive and maintain some semblance of a developed society.
I am not satisfied with my findings thus far, but I will continue to press north and west.
April 20th,
I write this log in a haste because I fear I won’t survive.
I was walking through the northern forests, following a group of rodents—one of which I caught and ate—when I noticed something rather odd.
A patch of ground and sky that didn’t fit with the rest. A half-mile radius of desolate black sand and churning storm clouds in the middle of lush woods. It looked to me like someone had cut out a piece of one map and glued it onto another.
I tried to walk inside it, but I quickly felt sick to my stomach upon entering, so I backed away. It wasn’t until I looked in my pocket mirror twenty minutes later that I realized I’d aged at least ten years. The wrinkles around my eyes deepened. My hair felt thinner. I’m not sure what I stumbled upon, but it is not the reason I write with such fear currently.
I am afraid of the thing that came out of it.
At least twenty-five feet tall, the creature looked like some kind of lizard, with layers of razor sharp teeth and horns placed at strange angles. It spotted me when I was sitting outside the desolate area, looking at my newfound wrinkles.
I tried to run, but it was too fast. It reached me in only a few seconds, swiping me aside with its clawed hand. Then, it kept running. It didn’t stop to make sure I was dead. It didn’t try to consume me. It just ran off into the trees.
I worry that it’s still out there, watching me, waiting for me to sleep.
The wound in my side is cause for concern too.
Untreated, it will probably fester within a few days. I think it’s time that I head back home, even though I’m largely empty-handed. I’ve eaten some of the black leaves to dull my pain for the journey.
April 27th,
I’m lost.
I should be almost back at camp right now, but I feel like I’ve been going in circles. My wound must be infected and messing with my mind. I have two main pieces of evidence to support that:
1. The wound has glazed over with a peculiar gray goop.
2. I’ve been having terrible dreams of that wasteland.
Though in my dreams, the expanse of black sand is much larger. I’ve seen mountain ranges and valleys filled with creatures like the one that attacked me. I’ve seen worms, and wyverns, and spiders the size of cars. They won’t leave me alone. I’ve been afraid to sleep because of these thoughts, though I know I must rest.
I think the creature is following me.
I keep finding tracks that no species I’ve seen could have made. I’ve seen scratches on trees and flickers of scales passing between them. I don’t know what it wants from me, but my instincts say it’s out in the forest for much the same reason I am—to look for food.
Why hasn’t it killed me, then? What does it want with me? Does the meat taste better when it’s afraid?
If this logbook ends abruptly, know that I have been consumed.
Huh. There’s a funny irony in that. Eat or be eaten, I suppose.
A paradise frontier, eh, Mission Commander?
What a joke.
May 1st,
I’m still lost, and I’m certain my wound is festering.
But I found a nice animal that sort of resembles a fox, and it is certainly edible. I dined on that this evening. I was going to cook it, but I got an urge to eat it as is. On Earth, eating raw meat would have caused an upset stomach, but I feel fine after eating this alien fox.
Well, not fine.
But not any worse because of the animal.
May 4th,
There are thoughts in my head that aren’t my own.
They don’t use words, but I know that they’re trying to direct my behavior. Am I really going crazy? I worry that much. I worry about a lot of stuff. I know I haven’t slept in three days, but it doesn’t really make a difference.
The horrible visions are no longer confined to my dreams.
I see flickers of the destitute wasteland whenever I blink. I hear growls behind me where no creatures are waiting. I feel like a computer that’s been unplugged halfway through a software update—confused, paralyzed, data scattered.
Actually, I lied.
I do think the growls are coming from an actual creature. I still think it’s following me. I’ve seen it clearly a few times now, stalking me with its inquisitive, sunken eyes.
It’s been days since I’ve had any sense of direction, but I will try to continue my duties as best as possible.
Today, I found a curious species of insect that I think is edible. I ate it, and I haven’t died yet, so that’s a good sign. There’s also a type of grass that I don’t think is poisonous. I’ll try that as well and let you know what I find.
May 8th,
Whisperroot, not poisonous.
Skyworms, partially poisonous.
My cuticles, not poisonous, though metallic in taste.
Maybe I shouldn’t bother writing about my findings. I don’t think I’m going to make it back to camp like this. I have no idea where I am. I’ve given up searching.
Sleep comes at strange moments. Oddly, it’s become easier to doze off now that the voices, the instincts, never cease—sleep isn’t so terrible when life is a waking nightmare.
And those compulsions. The compulsions aren’t intelligible in a human sense.
They’re just there. Omnipresent.
The wounds are glowing too. They do it every once in a while in these long, drawn out pulses of yellow. It’s during the flashes that my thoughts become fuzzy and I begin to move. I never know where I’m walking. It feels like I’m an outside observer, watching as someone—or something—else takes control of my appendages.
I’m having a hard time remembering why I’m out here in the first place. How did I get to this planet? I know this isn’t our home. I say ‘our’ because of that thing that’s in my head. We’re both foreigners here. Somehow, I know this.
May 10th,
It’s cold today. I don’t know what’s happening. There aren’t any animals out, and the plants seem to have shrunk a little as well. I don’t understand, and the world is spinning, and nothing seems right anymore. I really thought about giving up on these entries, but it won’t let me. It wants me to document this process.
How can I do that when I don’t know what thoughts are mine and what belong to something else?
May 11th,
Bark swallows, but hurts stomach after.
May 13th,
I’m scared. I no know why’s happening. It’s dark, but those eyes watching me from the trees. Don’t know how, but I see through those eyes and watch myself shift around. I unwashed, injured, and disheveled.
I certain it want from me.
But no know what it want to say.
May 14th,
STOP WATCHING ME, PLEASE!
It get closer every minute. Study me.
May 15th,
Creature sits with me. Gave food to me. Edible? No know. I eat.
May 17th,
Understand it now. It communicates with me. It doesn’t know where it is, but it says it has friends. Lot of them. Different species. Not edible. Not supposed to eat them. Not supposed to eat friends.
May 19th,
My thoughts are clearing, and creature no longer scares me. It no have a name, but it has thoughts and emotions. It’s quite human-like.
Not in looks and touch, surely. But it has thought—thought that transcends itself.
Thought that transcends me too.
May 20th,
This morning, we returned to the patch of black sand to find it larger. Another creature exited it. This one is a worm, but I can talk to it too. I’m human and from Earth, so I’ve seen how violent the food chain can be.
Animals kill and eat each other. Animals evolve specifically to kill each other. That doesn’t exist there, on Barrow.
The creatures don’t speak, obviously, but the buzz of their thoughts registers to me as sounding like the word ‘Barrow.’ It’s another planet, and it’s very different from Alpha Centauri. Personally, I prefer Alpha Centauri.
But there’s a beauty to the way they live.
May 21th,
I’m not scared anymore.
In fact, I’ve reached a feeling of calm that I haven’t experienced since before leaving Earth for Alpha Centauri. We’ve been doing everything wrong, we humans. We’re not different from common animals, the ones that kill each other.
Even back at camp, where everybody knows everybody, rifts are forming. I’ve talked about that in this logbook. I’ve feared it.
But then, this creature gave me the gift of seeing another way. I don’t think I could have ever come to this realization on my own.
The light flickering from my wound is a sign that there is a higher power out there, guiding the creatures from Barrow. We could learn a thing or two from them. I have.
I feel no desire to harm anymore. I have no desire for fame or riches. In fact, if the light emanating from me told me to sit down and die, I would.
Even more peculiar, I think I know the way back to camp now. It’s as if my brain needed to be torn out, washed in the sea, and put back into my head. The movements come easily to me now.
So, I will walk.
I will go home.
I will bring my new friends with me, so that my people can feel what I’ve felt:
Enlightenment.
A Prophet’s Logbook is a companion short story for Us Before Them.
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