By: Aaron Geerts
JOURNAL ENTRY: 463
PERONELLE: CPT JAKE BENNEDICT SR.
LOCATION: MARS COLONY DELTA
TIME: 0200
EARTH DATE: 1/18/2422
If you’re reading this transcript, then you’ve discovered my colony has died and I along with it. Save your sympathies for a later time, however, they’ll only slow you down against what killed us all.
It wasn’t a plague, drought, famine, or technological malfunction that did us in. Hell, it wasn’t even man’s hubris or ambition this time which has always been a poetic way for human colonists to go. No, we never outkicked our coverage because Governor Lennox was a good goddam leader. Let that be archived, please, Lennox was the right choice in leadership and is not responsible for what happened to us.
The 100 colonists and I didn’t understand what was happening at first or why, but it all started with folks sleepwalking around the perimeter of the 3-acre bubble we called home in middle of this this dust ocean with tidal waves of dunes. It was innocent enough, but my security noted that the sleepwalkers were growing, well, aggressive when they’d try to wake them. Lennox did his best to psychoanalyze them, but to no avail because he began sleepwalking too.
Our ship began to sink when the sleepwalkers began killing. My security can only be in so many places at once, and people who weren’t sleepwalking grew paranoid and untrusting of their community. Doors were always locked, duties were no longer performed, and the colony began to unravel. When I realized the situation was beyond my ability to control, I sent an SOS to alpha colony. It was too late, unfortunately, because Lennox had already destroyed our communications in his sleep.
My frustration boiled over and I tried to wake him up with my fist. He screamed an inhuman scream and attacked me. I had no choice but to kill him for my own safety. Outside was bedlam as all the other known sleepwalkers – 20 in total – murdered around 48 other colonists. My security team and I were forced to put an end to it, to people we’d lived with for over a decade.
We performed autopsies after the last shots were fired. All had black – not red – dust spilling out of their bloodshot eyes. Under a microscope, we saw the dust sediments were all organic, each a completely independent and thriving organism unto itself. Our minds raced as to how the dust sediments fed or why they kept moving towards each other as if the table were vibrating. Then the breach alarm went off.
All 8 of my team activated our outworld armor by instinct and we rushed back out to the community square where the rest of the colonists were dying horribly – because I failed them. Above the bubble was a massive crack in the 10-foot-thick glass. Above that, a fucking nightmare staring back down at us. I gave the order to fire, and our plasma rifles erupted. When the salvo ended, glass, shell casing, and my men’s body parts floated idly in the low gravity.
Let it be known that I retreated to the armory like a coward while my men died. Put that on my record, but it wasn’t for not. For three days I analyzed the data we’d collected on the black dust. I’d even witnessed it float back into what I’m calling, the Dune Reaper. It’s not a singular organism, it’s a contagion that’s evolved over centuries into an Apex disease. I’ve never seen anything like it or the mind-controlling attributes. It’s like the embodiment of an advanced society that knows nothing but working in perfect harmony in the form of this monster.
Jake Jr. I know you’ll be leading the rescue team, and I want you to know your old man’s proud of you. In this transcript, I’m attaching my findings on the Dune Reaper which may help you kill it. Now, with what’s left of my oxygen, I’m walking out into those dunes and setting up a camera. It’s synced to my gun and will send a picture to the transcript as soon as I pull the trigger. This son of a bitch better smile for me, because I plan on dying with an empty magazine. This is Captain Jake Bennedict Sr of Mars Colony Delta, signing off.
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