S.N. Prasher's Blog

Three: Altemens

A second wave of reverberating noise filled the bore, but this time it was somehow less deafening. Lars heard voices echoing around him, but could not focus on any one in particular. On the inner surface of his eyelids, a kaleidoscope of impossible colors danced and pulsated, and, in that moment, Lars was unable to see anything. In his last moments of consciousness, the voices around him grew louder, as he felt his body lifted up, and then swiftly dragged down with force. He drifted into a cavernous, gaping maw, where nothing of him remained but the chaotic, frantic chatter of a mind suddenly freed from all physical constraints. The kaleidoscope before him swirled and heaved, as whatever abstraction of his former self continued to spiral down, ever deeper. Somewhere, in that dissonant vortex, a version of him existed, born out of the sacrifice of his corporeal form to a deep and uncaring void. Somewhere, in a place where time and space existed only as vague memories, and where life and death were traded in the same currency, he could feel himself tether to an innate and boundless reality. Somewhere, beneath the light and the darkness, between the pain and the acrid gas that filled his lungs, within the electronic chatter that resounded in his bones, and among the voices that rambled in their unceasing, ancient drone, Katerine was waiting.

Two: Warrant Conviction

The ship lumbered and creaked against its own considerable weight. From out the side of a small porthole in his quarters, Oren Yadrette watched the myriad of infinitesimally small, unblinking lights move slowly across their deep and endless canvas. On most days, he could trick himself into thinking one of these distant specks was Earth—was home—but today he was having difficulty maintaining the illusion. Each day passed quickly by chronometer, but without real sunlight they all blended together. For the first year of his mission, Oren found respite from the oppressive blackness through his work as the chief of science and engineering aboard Warrant Conviction, his all-too-familiar home—or prison, depending on his mood.

One: Beginnings

Physically, the vessels were tall, muscular, and exquisitely pale. Their skin possessed no discernible flaws, and, for all intents and purposes, it appeared that they lacked hair altogether. The one currently before him appeared exactly as every other vessel did, as it did not make sense to have individual and unique bodies if they would simply be carrying out the will of a greater collective mind. In fact, if a creator were to design the most efficient, durable—yet altogether uninteresting—bipedal being, he might have constructed a vessel. The one notable feature that each alien possessed, however, was in their eyes, where gold rings concentrically radiated out from their pupils and terminated at the edge of their irides. The only known human analog of this anatomical quirk was found in patients suffering from a rare condition called Wilson’s disease, where copper precipitates in the eyes and organs of those affected due to their inability to excrete said element properly. Human physicians could not confirm their suspicions as, at least on record, no vessel had ever been examined medically.