Supply Drop #42
Status: Received
Message: Can you hear me, Fleur? Can anyone hear me? These supply deliveries arrive at the same time, with the same things, every three weeks. Doesn’t matter what I ask for. They’re automated, right? Drone-dropped, scheduled ad infinitum. They will keep hail-striking from the sky long after anyone is here needing them. An expanding pile of silver boxes, uglying up the landscape.
Are these messages just a pretence? Something to make whoever is stuck out here feel tethered to home? And in 100 years (if things survive that long), some AI probing these archives for training material will be the only one to hear the pleas of us long-dead castaways, far too late.
It’s good to have a reason to speak, though. Not much use for a voice out here. And the dust is relentless. Crusting over the tools, invading the habitat, seeping into everything. It’s starting to harden along my throat. Slow strangulation. I keep having to cough it up, dirty red spatters streaking down the sink.
Supply Drop #43
Status: Received
Message: Apply for the colonies programme, everybody said. You have the exact experience they need. You’ll be right on our future’s cutting edge.
Well, I’m right on some damn edge out here.
In the last status report I transmitted, I was only 50% complete. But that can’t be, right? It was 50% in the three before that as well. Every day I trawl through more ground than I should, scraping up sample after sample. Processing them all evening, searching for any traces of metabolic signatures.
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There can’t be the same amount left to go.
Is it the winds, messing up the quadrant markings? I’ve almost reached the west perimeter fence. That’s far more than halfway.
I thought, by now, we were advanced enough to spare actual people from drudgery like this? Our tissues and membranes too precious to be so exposed. Surely a synthetic team without the need to sleep or eat could do this better. Without complaining. Without going mad.
Then more of us could be like you, Fleur. Safe behind screens. Directing things with lemon tea steaming and fresh-cut pears glistening, just a finger’s reach away. But, I guess from this distance, distorted through so many devices, we’re all just circuitry to you.
The drones could never see things like I can, though.
The sunsets here, Fleur. That frigid sear of Sun in the fading light. Then the deepest blue spreading, like a filter sliding over. Then the darkness pouring in.
Not that anyone would care. These preformatted report forms have little space for creative observations.
Supply Drop #44
Status: Received
Message: There are noises here that shouldn’t be. Like, physically shouldn’t be. Of course, the wind is a constant raving through the rock formations. But night-time comes with different noises.
There are shufflings that can’t just be rocks falling. They have direction. There are things calling out. Then others responding. Structured sounds. Hummings. Almost like chanting. Where are they coming from? It can’t be a throat. They’re not fleshy enough.
Fleur, what the hell is out here? Did you know about this? Nothing was picked up on the first mapping missions.
Supply Drop #45
Status: Received
Message: The noises are beyond the perimeter fences. I think. For now. Sound travels so strangely here. It’s been hard to sleep. It’s been days, maybe. Every time I close my eyes, I hear scrabblings outside the habitat. From feet? Hands? What appendages could crawl through the cold out there?
These walls are so thin, really. What is this membrane going to defend me against?
What we did wasn’t right, Fleur. I’m sorry it didn’t sit well with me. It kept slipping off. Slipping out. I’m too porous for such secrets. I guess I can leak whatever I want to up here. Whatever happened to Maddy? Where did she end up?
