#relics

Relic I, Watercolour, Pen and Ink Sketch, April 2020.

Relic III, Watercolour, Pen and Ink Sketch, April 2020.

letmeinimafairy:

Some Lovecraftian monsters on labradorite. The fact that painting cosmic horror helped me to calm down says a lot about our current situation.

Wuktish nervously groomed one large, clawed arm with his mandibles. His servant and assistant, Gavros, had already polished his old carapace to a dull gleam and he only managed to sully it with his saliva. The little ape was close by his side and scurried over with a cloth in hand to fix her handiwork. They were standing alone behind thick purple curtains, the only light shining from a sole vanity mirror in which Wuktish could see his lacklustre reflection. On the other side of the curtain, the crowd chattered with itself, and there were spotlights that would glare in his eyes and cameras to drink in every bit of his image for the galaxy to see. For the first time in a long time, Wuktish felt self-conscious about how others perceived him.     

“Big day, huh?” Gavros tried to make small talk as she furiously polished the splotchy, red and black shell. She wore an all blue jumpsuit with holes for her head, hands, feet and tail to stick through. A black leather satchel hung around her shoulder. Dark brown fur used to cover everywhere but her palms, the soles of her feet, and her face, but the fur had grown grey with age. Two large, green eyes focused intently on Wuktish’s claw as she worked and her tail whipped back and forth mindlessly, the once razor-sharp bone protruding from the tip dulled with age and use. Wuktish’s employer, an incredibly wealthy and philanthropic Zezik by the name of Ensset, had offered him an entire team of professional cosmetologists to help him prepare but he did not like the idea of entrusting himself to the hands of strangers and had tasked Gavros with making him presentable. The little Pedinoid had done her job to the best of her ability and succeeded in making Wuktish more appealing for the cameras. She told him his decrepit old exoskeleton had “character” and made him look, if anything, more respectable. He was glad for her kind words.    

“Yes. Very big.” Wuktish agreed in his slow, guttural tone. The hulking Oyroy stroked the fabric of the decorative robe draped over his shell with his free claw as Gavros did her work. His thick shell didn’t allow him to appreciate the soft and luxurious material. He didn’t normally wear anything over himself and he felt somewhat constricted in the flowing white and green robes but this was an event that called for formality. His shell was splotched dull red and black with age, marked with scratches and dents from previous fights and accidents. Wuktish was overdue for a moulting but he would rather address the galaxy wearing an old, ugly shell than none at all. Gavros had brightened the colours of his shell somewhat, using vegetable oil, and had even covered up some of the uglier scars by pressing an epoxy into them and then painting over it to match the patchwork coloration of the rest of his shell. Soft, yellow flesh lay beneath the shell but all that could be seen of it were the long, pallid eyestalks that protruded from the top of his head.

“Don’t worry so much, this is going to go off without a hitch. I have your notes, right here. You’ve prepared for this for a long time, I’ve no doubt you’re ready,” the little primate produced several thin, plastic tablets from her satchel, on which Wuktish had instructed bits of information for her to etch into them, to keep him on track during his speech. The outer surface of the tablets was white but beneath it was all black so that the writing could be seen easily. “I can tell you’re excited. A lifetime of work all culminating to this… I’m a little nervous too, to tell you the truth.”

Wuktish clicked his mandibles in reply, feeling a little sick. He appreciated the little Pedinoid’s attempts to ease his troubled mind but he was feeling nauseated nonetheless. Gavros had served him since he left the Dark Suns when she was very young, and she had grown old in his service. However, she was not the first Pedinoid to enter his employment; during the course of his mission he’d gone through six others, five of which had retired after growing too old and one which had perished as a direct result of the mission. A lifetime of work, for her, was an understatement. To Wuktish, it was nothing. The Oyroy did not weaken and die with age, as the Pedinoid or so many other races did, but grew stronger and more virile with each moulting. Wuktish had never bothered keeping track of his age; it was as meaningless to him as the number of stars in the sky.

Wuktish carefully took the plastic tablets in his free claw. Most people had moved from the archaic method of information storage to electronic tablets, which held the advantage of weight, storage ability and flexibility, but the tiny buttons and touch-screens were unresponsive to his touch. Gavros finished polishing his other claw and he began carefully flipping the tablets over and asserting they were in order. He wished he had taken the time to actually write a speech instead of simply having Gavros carve down bits and pieces of information. At the time it had seemed like a good idea; he usually felt more comfortable talking about a subject than writing about it. His employer, Ensset, had offered him a writer to make a script from his notes for him to follow but Wuktish didn’t trust anyone aside from himself and his servants with his research. Now that it was time to deliver the speech, however, he was beginning to regret not taking her up on the offer. He had no idea how he should end his speech. From the other side of the curtain, the sound of conversation ebbed and was replaced by Ensset’s voice.

“My friends! My friends! Oh, how long it has been,” her unnaturally amplified voice rang out. A voice in the audience answered “Too long!” and was responded by the laughter. “Oh, too long indeed! Let me be the first to welcome the Oyroy of the hour, my associate, longtime friend and the one responsible for this momentous occasion… I sent him away three hundred and seventeen years ago to uncover everything he could about the Signal and he has finally returned with a translation… please welcome the esteemed Wuktish!” With this, Wuktish walked forward to the stage. Gavros stood off to the side, where she could not be seen by the audience but could still watch her boss.

“You’ll do great!” Gavros raised her thumbs at him, a Pedinoid sign that meant ‘good’. Wuktish chittered affectionately before stepping onto the stage.

Wuktish walked onto the stage to the sound of polite applause. The first thing he noticed was that the lights weren’t nearly as glaring as he thought they’d be. There were several small cameras on tripods around the stage but they were very different from the large, clunky devices he had seen commonly used for important broadcasts before he had left civilised life to begin his mission. Had he really been away for so long? The crowd wasn’t as large as he thought it would be, either; it was composed of the high-class friends and associates of Ensset, as well as several other high-profile individuals, seated at tables with various, species-specific meals in front of them and a cylindrical screen in the middle showing the pictures Wuktish’s various servants had taken during the course of his mission. Wuktish recognised the bright red robes of the Listener, the head of the Holy Canev, and the gilded scales of the Ralharan’s new Queen. He gave a nod to a sole Oyroy seated near the back, Yokdur, that he remembered from his time lecturing at the Gorox University. Yokdur had been pursuing a research grant at the university and Wuktish had put a good word in for him. Oyroy rarely left their homeworld and those that did would occasionally cross paths and come to know each other. It was a lonely existence for an Oyroy away from home. Their people didn’t die of old age, as almost every other species did, and it was a difficult to come to terms with the ephemeral lives of their intragalactic neighbours. He recognised a few familiar races and outfits signifying royalty or wealth but he did not recognise his old employer.

 When Ensset had first reached out to Wuktish she had already passed the prime of her life. The Zezik Wuktish met still had the lustrous feathers of her youth, her beak shiny and black and a sharp glint in her eye proclaiming her steely resolve and cold, calculating logic. Ensset had made her vast fortune by spearheading the terraforming initiative when many other entrepreneurs had written it off as a ‘mad pipe dream’. She had cornered the market while everyone else was focussing on satellite cities to combat their population growth and by the time the galaxy began to notice the work she was doing her ‘pipe dream’ had become a reality, and she was making more credits than she knew what to do with. She decided to use her vast wealth to fund research into answering questions that had long perplexed the galaxy and herself, and even finding new questions to be answered. If it was yet to be discovered she would undoubtedly have a hand in discovering it, from uncovering dead civilisations, discovering new sentient life, creating cures for sickness… and, of course, decoding the Signal.

The Ensset Wuktish knew was different from the one he saw before him. Always caught up with her work and the various projects she was funding she had never had time to start a family, let alone stay in touch with an old employee. He had sent her regular progress reports but hadn’t seen her face-to-face since he left on the mission. The colourful, shiny feathers had all fallen out, revealing pale and flabby flesh underneath. She was wearing a flowing robe made of a dazzling material which shimmered in the light as she shifted in her chair, as though to compensate for her featherless form. Her black beak had faded nearly to white. She had once stood taller than Wuktish on long, scaly legs but was now confined to sit in a wheelchair. Several thick tubes led from a strange apparatus on the back of her chair to a metal device embedded in the middle of her chest. The Zezik were much shorter lived than the Oyroy and it was obvious to Wuktish that she had extended her lifespan through mechanical means.

“Ah, I must be quite the shock to you. As you can see, Wuktish, I’ve been waiting quite patiently for a very long time.”  Ensset’s voice was somewhat more hollow than he remembered but he could still make out her accusatory tone. When she laughed it sounded gravelly, a horrid imitation compared to the musical laughter she used to possess. Wuktish avoided her gaze, partially in shame. The steely glint in her eye remained, as sharp as ever. Everyone wanted to know what the Signal said, but did she really want to know it badly enough to go to such great lengths to extend her life? “Oh, relax, old friend. I knew it would take a long time, that’s why I hired an Oyroy. You think I’d miss out on the Signal’s translation? It’ll take more than old age to stop me from tasting the fruits of your labour!” Some members of the audience laughed and Wuktish felt a little more at ease. Ensset had always called him friend, or partner, but he had only ever known her as his boss.

“Thank you, Ensset. It is an honour to be here.” Wuktish glanced over at the Listener. The Canev wasn’t the only religious organisation based around the Signal but it was certainly the largest and claimed to be the oldest. “I just hope we can all leave here knowing a little bit more.”

“Me too, Wuktish, me too. Now, I think I’ve been up here long enough. Hell, I think I’ve been alive long enough!” Laughed at her own morbid joke. “So, my friend, please tell us the true meaning behind the Signal so I can finally die in peace.”  The aged bird still held the dark sense of humour she had during her younger years and the audience laughed and clapped as the old Zezik wheeled down a ramp to take her place at her own table. All eyes were on Wuktish and he was suddenly alone. The laughter and applause died down quickly and the easy atmosphere was replaced by a tense feeling of anticipation. Wuktish adjusted his notes and stepped up to the podium, finding it the perfect height for himself. A tall glass of murky, lukewarm brine water had been placed on it, as well as a microphone for him to speak into. Ensset had put a lot of thought into making sure Wuktish was comfortable during the big speech. He looked up and saw her in the crowd. The cold look in her eye had been replaced with one of curiosity.

“Before I can discuss the Signal we must first understand the Still Ones. Their ships can be found floating all throughout the galaxy, or occasionally stranded on planets, but one of their fleets, known commonly as the Dread Fleet or the Gods’ Grave, persists in our galaxy. The fleet, numbering two hundred and forty-seven identical ships, remains unaffected by the forces of gravity and magnetic attraction and seemingly untouched by the passage of time and impact of space debris. For generations, we wondered how and why they have remained intact for so long, and for generations, it was attributed to the work of the gods. We know now that the Still Ones are responsible for the Dread Fleet and are not of this dimension. Whether or not the Still Ones are gods, however, is still up for dispute.  

“The material that makes up the impenetrable hulls of the Dread Fleet is no known alloy or element. There is no known method to damage the ships and so I could not take any samples. Instead, I had to rely on remote-controlled drones to study the ships closer. However, any attempts to observe it remotely by drone led to one mechanical failure or another of the robot, and any electron microscope images recovered from the drones appeared black. I hypothesised that the matter that makes up the Dread Fleet is, like the matter that we are familiar with, made up of condensed energy, but condensed more densely than anything found in this universe. As such, it has… unusual properties. Properties that have lent themselves to the ever-persistent nature of the Dread Fleet, but also to certain, strange phenomena.

“Contact with the Still Ones’ ships seems to disrupt minor flows of energy, Like an EMP disrupting the flow of electricity, except with almost any kind of energy. This explains why all of the drones ceased to function, why any electron imaging was fruitless, why we faced constant technical errors on our ship during our time there but, most importantly, the death of one of my servants, a Pedinoid by the name of Kurja. You can feel a strange tingling sensation simply by being in the proximity of the Dread Fleet, which I merely dismissed as an interesting but ultimately harmless effect of being in the ships’ presence. After half a decade my companion’s health began to deteriorate rapidly, seemingly without cause. He died shortly thereafter. I took tissue samples and found that his DNA had been damaged significantly. Suspecting the worst, I broke open my own shell and took live tissue samples from myself; the cellular processes involving the transformation of chemical energy, the creation and bending of proteins the duplication of DNA and many others were all erratic. Fascinating, now that I look back on it, but I was terrified at the time. Finding myself alone on that ship, I decided the meagre knowledge I could gain from remaining wouldn’t be worth the personal risk. I did not know if it was the natural longevity of my kind that saved me or merely the vast size difference between Kurja and myself but I left. The Gods’ Grave could have very well been my final resting place.”

Wuktish took a moment as he flipped over one of his plastic tabs to, very carefully, take the glass in one large claw. He poured some of the brine over his head, soothing his tired eyes. As the water trickled through the cracks and grooves of his head and face and into his mouth he could imagine he was tasting the salty spray of the ocean. He placed the glass carefully back onto the podium before continuing.

“We may never know where the Still Ones came from nor why they came here. However, there is something that has become quite clear; their intentions were not peaceful. Before I came to work for Ensset I had spent quite some time travelling the galaxy, studying dead civilisations. The conclusion I came to then was that almost all of these civilisations were related; they shared similar architectural styles, farming patterns, building materials and even worn statues seemingly depicting the same bipedal beings. Throughout the galaxy they have been known by many different names, such as the Before, or the Old Ones, or the Faceless, just to name a few. I believe these ancient peoples’ are one. For simplicity, I shall refer to them as the Extinct. Judging by the proximity of Still Ones to the planets where the ruins of the Extinct remain, as well as the damage inflicted on these dead cities, it is evident that the two were at war.

“The Extinct cities and the ships of the Still Ones permeate the entire galaxy. There are billions of planets with Extinct cities and these are only the ones we have been able to find. It is possible there are other ruins yet to be discovered, and ships to be found. The scope of the war was… immense. It was a galactic war, possibly stretching out to other galaxies as well. We cannot say what started it or exactly how long ago it was, or even where it began. We know very little about the war. What we do know is that it involved the Still Ones and the Extinct, possibly other dead races which we’ve yet to distinguish from the Extinct. We also know it was very one-sided. We have never found a way to damage the Still Ones’ ships and we have never found one that was not wholly intact. On the other hand, we have found the ruined remains of the Extinct’s ships throughout the Galaxy. Entire planets littered with their ancient hulls, asteroid belts consisting solely of their demolished fleets. It is easy to lay claim that the Still Ones were the victors; after all, it is not their dead civilisation that lays in ruins throughout our galaxy.

“This was my first conclusion but it left one question unanswered. Why would the Still Ones leave so many perfectly good ships behind? They clearly wiped out the Extinct, why not bring their ships back with them? Or use them for the further conquest of our universe? Why leave them floating aimlessly through the void? That is when one possibility dawned on me. The Still Ones did not win their war. It was at this time that I decided to risk the journey to the origin of the Signal.

“For a very long time we have known of the Signal’s source, but to reach it? An impossibility. The mad pipe dream of an adventurer. My generous benefactor, however, was all too familiar with turning the fantasies of dreamers to reality. The Signal is located midway up the Black Arm, a branch of this Galaxy which, for previously unknown reasons, has gone dark. For much of our galaxy’s history, we thought it void of anything. All we knew was that it was dark, and cold, and dangerous. There are no stars dotting the dark expanse of the Black Arm to guide your way, and there are automatons, Sentinels, older than written history with arms long enough to wrap around entire moons that haunt that infernal branch. Traversing the Black Arm is treacherous, to say the least, so Ensset had the ingenious idea of minimising the risk by making the journey from a neighbouring arm, through the sparse solar systems in between.

“There is nowhere to stop for fuel in the Black Arm, and no stars to guide your course. Ensset had a fleet built and manned by an army of mercenaries to guard my vessel against the horrors that inhabit the Black Arm as we navigated towards the Signal’s source, with enough fuel to travel there and remain, on low power, for a decade or so before returning. It was difficult to plot our course to avoid the dark solar systems and thereby the sleeping Sentinels and on more than one occasion we strayed into their notice. These automatons were colossal, propelling themselves through the void through unknown means. They lack conventional weapons but were equipped with long, powerful arms, which they used to attack our fleet, stealing ships and taking them away.  

“The ships they took were brought to mass graves of the Still Ones, where their ships had been bound to dead planets en masse through the liberal application of some unknown adhesive. The Extinct knew they could not destroy the Still Ones, and so sought to entrap them instead. However, for every living Sentinel we encountered there were ten more, deactivated or destroyed, either by the Still Ones or simply due to the passage of time. It was a genius, though temporary, solution. The Sentinels, designed to simply subdue the Still Ones, crushed our own ships. Of the hundreds of ships and thousands of people who went with me to the Black Arm only a handful returned… but what we discovered in the Black Arm, I believe, was worth it.

“We found that the suns were not missing. Nor were they merely extinguished. The Extinct had encased them in vast spherical structures, which I hypothesised were used to harvest their energy. I decided to call these the “Dark Suns.” The Sentinels were clearly still drawing power from them, even after millions or billions of years. A veritable source of unlimited energy, it was difficult to believe that the Dark Suns’ sole purpose was to power the Sentinels. We spent years searching for one which was uninhabited by Sentinels and once we did we set up our base of operations. It was a simple matter of tapping into the Dark Sun to power our own ships and, upon further study, I was not only able to confirm my hypothesis that they existed for energy harvesting but also that they were transmitting that energy wirelessly by firing a powerful laser at a specific location in space.

“It did not take long to find and study the trajectory of the laser. The Dark Sun was sending energy to the origin of the Signal, and the other suns were presumably doing the same. Imagine, an entire arm of the galaxy doomed to eternal night in order to draw out all of its power and send it to a single pinpoint in space. While I was studying the Dark Sun, the mercenaries had not been idle. Leaving a reduced guard in the event that a Sentinel should appear, they went and retrieved any dead Sentinels they could find, for my study. These automatons are large enough to embrace entire moons and built to grapple with the Still Ones’ ships; it would have been futile to blindly force our way through the Black Arm. We needed to know more about them if we were to travel in relative safety to the Signal’s source.  

“We found one Sentinel which was almost wholly intact. Not destroyed by the weapons of the Dread ships, but merely deactivated after spending so long fighting with them. The first thing we did was dismantle the arms of the robot. Five mechanical arms situated around a giant mechanical eye were the norm among the Sentinels but it wasn’t uncommon to find them missing a limb or two and still functioning. We quickly found that the alloys used to create the Sentinels were far stronger than anything we have invented, though still far beneath the indestructible nature of the Still Ones. It took weeks to dismantle the arms and three days to isolate the onboard computer, then another year to repair the damage that had been inflicted merely by being in close proximity with the Still Ones for so long. The Extinct were not able to nullify the energy-disrupting effects of the Still Ones but dulled them somewhat by keeping the general design of the Sentinels incredibly simplistic. The computer which controlled the Sentinel was encased and engulfed in some kind of hardened polymer-based foam. It was simple enough to drill through and remove. I believe the liberal use of this material provided incomplete but effective shielding against the energy disrupting effects of the Still Ones. It was difficult to restore functionality to the computer. We were working blindly, and we had to start over twice. When we finally brought the dead Sentinel back to life I was both amazed and relieved.  

“With no possible way to interface with the Sentinel, we had to measure its responses to stimulus manually. I proposed that, since it was attacking our ships, the instruments of the Extinct were, like ours, unable to discern matter from the Still Ones’ dimension. I postulated that the Sentinels were able to see in the near-complete darkness, from the light of distant suns. We inserted electrical measurement gauges into certain areas of the computer and experimented by driving different ships in front of its solitary mechanical eye and measuring its response. It took only a few days to learn that it paid no heed to ships beneath a certain size; namely, two to four-person pods, usually meant for emergency situations or short distance travel. It was then that I made the decision to travel to the Signal’s origin without the remains of the army Ensset had hired.

“We took the two largest pods that we dared and tore out much of the hardware unnecessary to the mission or the overall performance of the pods to make room for the instruments I thought I’d need, a haphazardly installed water recycling system, my servant who would work the instruments for me,” Wuktish held up his large and ungainly claws for the audience, which incited a small rippling of laughter through the room. He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but continued unperturbed. “a small cryo pod for her, and enough nutrient capsules to keep us barely alive for several decades. These pods are not built to travel long distances. Instead, I had a trajectory for the Signal’s source and we were torpedoed towards it, to conserve the fuel we did have. I froze my assistant and I went into hibernation for fifteen years while we waited to get to the Signal’s source.

“When we arrived and awoke I immediately knew I had made the right decision to travel uncomfortably, rather than ask Ensset for another army. There was one source of light, the rapid flashing of the lasers as they hit what I presumed was the energy gathering mechanism of the Signal’s source. This light was enough to show me that there were hundreds of sleeping Sentinels perched upon or orbiting a relatively small Dark Sun, as well as others drifting aimlessly through the void of space around the local planets. I don’t believe there exists an army large enough to subdue that many Sentinels. However, the mechanism that gathered the pulses of light, the source of the Signal, was nowhere near the Dark Sun; it was orbiting an insignificant planet, with vast, frozen oceans. Specifically, the third planet from its sun.

“We travelled as closely as we dared; this relatively little satellite was channelling the energy of an entire arm of the galaxy. The machine orbiting it resembled a large, dark rectangular prism, with a small cylinder coming off the side to collect the energy that had travelled across the galaxy, but it was apparent that, despite sending out the Signal for aeons, it had not been activated since the time of the Extinct. We tethered our ship to the satellite, well away from the furnace of the collection port, and began scouring the old structure for answers. What we found was… unnerving. Terrifying, even.

“My assistant, Gavros, stumbled upon a room filled with ancient terminals,” Wuktish paused for a moment in thought. This was supposed to be his discovery but was it really his? The journey wouldn’t have been possible without Ensset, so it was hers, too. Similarly, he wouldn’t have been able to operate the terminals, and the information stored within would have remained undiscovered unless Gavros had been there. In fact, he owed a lot to the Pedinoid. More than they could ever know. He looked at the little grey primate standing off to the side, out of his spotlight. He gestured her over and she meekly obeyed, unused to being the centre of attention. “This is Gavros. She discovered the old terminals and is responsible for uncovering this galaxy’s darkest secret.” The audience neither clapped or even seemed to acknowledge her contribution but, for a brief moment, all eyes were on the old Pedinoid. She kept her own eyes firmly on the floor. “None of the terminals worked. However, upon opening one computer, we found that almost all of them were made of interlocking pieces, each one shielded with the polymer foam we found within the Sentinels. All of the pieces in almost all of the computers were irreparably damaged, either due to the passage of time or something else entirely but we eventually were able to piece together a functioning terminal.     

“Through experimentation and sheer luck, Gavros was able to interact with the Extinct computers, through an operating system and user interface older than her entire species. She discovered something truly remarkable; footage of the Extinct, and the final moments of the war with the Still Ones. For the first time since they died out millennia ago, the Extinct have a face once more. Without an interface with the old technology of the Extinct, we could not take the files with us, but Gavros had the idea to film it directly off the screen. What you are about to see is an event predating all written history. Be warned, it is somewhat… shocking.” Wuktish stepped out of the way with Gavros as a large screen lowered behind them. The video and audio were somewhat distorted due to being filmed with a handheld device, not to mention being older than all known civilisations. Alien voices began speaking. They were either wholly alien or completely garbled due to degradation of the files but it was unintelligible either way.

Three tall beings, the Extinct, stood on the screen. One of them was slightly shorter than the others and had short, brown fur on top of its head, and transparent lenses in front of its wide, brown eyes. Another, with long black hair, stood on its right. Its eyes were somewhat narrower and darker. The third stood off to the left and was wrinkled and its head was shiny and smooth, with huge lenses magnifying its large, blue eyes. All of them wore long white coats, and the black haired one held a small black rectangle in a five-fingered hand. Behind them, a window overlooked a massive adjacent room. Each of the Extinct spoke in turn, gesturing to themselves as they did so. Their voices came out in different tones like musical notes, before the one with the short brown hair walked towards the screen, disappearing behind the recording device and bringing it closer to the window to pan across the massive room beneath and beside them.

Through the window, they peered into the gargantuan enclosure. It was all blue and was well lit but completely empty. The opposite wall was bare but, as the video panned left and right, it was revealed that there were massive steel pipes and cords to be seen lining either side. The video panned right, to the Extinct with the long hair, who raised an opposable thumb in affirmation. The ancient being pressed a large red button before the video quickly swung back to show the right wall of the large room. Arcs of electricity jumped between the chrome mechanisms and there was suddenly a tear floating in the air. The rip grew larger and larger until it superimposed the entire right wall. Through it the grainy but distinct image of a strange planet could be seen in the distance, surrounded by a Still One fleet. The ships immediately turned towards the tear and began rapidly approaching.

The camera swung to the Extinct with no hair. It didn’t look up from the window before pressing another large, red button. The camera swung quickly towards the left side of the adjacent room. Electrical arches appeared similarly as they did on the right side but with such intensity that the image on the screen was momentarily gone, replaced with nothing but white. The white faded to reveal another portal, though this one shimmered dangerously in comparison with the last. The camera turned to the right once more, just as several ships exited their own dimension into the large room. Suddenly, a gurgling screech exploded through the room, like the screams of a thousand creatures being boiled in tar. One of the audience members fell off his chair as the camera swung to the right to reveal a writhing mass of tentacles and teeth rapidly leave the left portal, momentarily fill the room, and then exit through the right portal. The bright room was dark after the being passed. A moment later several lights flickered back on, dimly illuminating the scene.

The camera turned shakily to the left to show that the bald one had collapsed. It turned to the right. The one with the long hair was bent over, its face obscured. It shuddered and shook, making sounds like it was choking. Bright red fluid poured out of its mouth and onto the ground. The camera was finally turned around, shaking the entire time, to reveal the operator of the camera had also fared ill. Dark red blood was seeping from the corners of its wide eyes, and from the two holes in the middle of its face. It said something before baring its pearly white teeth. The video cut to black and the screen began ascending out of view.

“It is difficult,” Wuktish cut in before the murmuring of the audience could overtake the room, “to understand what we just saw. It is even more difficult to explain it, given what little evidence we have. I will do my best. I believe that the Extinct, facing their hopeless situation, decided to make a final stand, knowing or ignorant of the fact that they would die but willing to take the risk either way. They harvested the energy from somewhere between twenty-five and a hundred billion stars to tear a hole into the higher dimension of their attackers and then another hole into another dimension much higher than that one. If the Still Ones are not gods then the cosmic horror the Extinct tore from its own dimension and forced through ours and into theirs certainly qualifies. Perhaps more hideous than we could have ever imagined and as uncaring as it is powerful but a god nonetheless.

“Similar to the death of my assistant, Kurja, at the Dread Fleet, this cosmic horror was able to disrupt life processes, though to a much greater extent than the Still Ones ever could. Merely passing through our dimension was enough to wipe out almost all life in the galaxy, if not the universe, including the lives of the Still Ones piloting the Dread Fleet. Some life remained, of course, evolving into the beings you see around you. Trapping the beast in their dimension would have ensured a complete and thorough eradication of all life. There would be no coming back from that. The Extinct knew they would die and decided they would rather die on their own terms and, in the process of doing so, kill the ones who forced them to make that decision.” Wuktish paused. Gavros stood awkwardly beside him. He took the glass of brine and poured it over his head again, relishing in the cooling water. “We can never truly know or understand the Extinct, nor what they went through. However, we now know their motives. Or at least, what could have been their motives. Their technological progress was, in desperation, driven further than ours ever could. Their sole motive wasn’t survival; it was spite. Their relics have stood the test of time… Perhaps with which they wished for whatever came after to remember them.

“I…” Wuktish paused again and shuffled nervously on the stage. He looked over at the Listener. So many of the cultures in the galaxy took root in the Signal and their own interpretations of it. “I failed my mission, in the end. I could not translate the Signal.” The atmosphere of curiosity, wonderment and even fear had, in that instant, been replaced with cynicism and disappointment. He noticed the Listener looking somewhat cocky, his vibrant red robes as resplendent as ever. He couldn’t bear to look at Ensset. “I am terribly sorry. It is an impossible task. That, or one that is beyond me. Thank you for your time,” Wuktish mistakenly glanced over at Ensset. The steely look in her eye was harder and sharper than ever. “…and I’m sorry for wasting it.” Wuktish left the stage, hastily shuffling behind the heavy curtain as the murmuring of the crowd grew louder and louder. Gavros climbed up the podium and took his notes before following the venerable crab backstage.

———————————————————————————————

“Wuktish? Are you alright?” Gavros asked when she caught up with him.

“Yes, I am alright. Perhaps… no, they will never be ready. Go prepare my ship. We must leave before Ensset catches us,” he directed her.

“Not another step,” a familiar voice commanded. He had spoken too soon. “Where do you think you’re going, Wuktish? Do you know how much money I’ve spent to fund your little journey across the universe? How many credits I’ve thrown at extending my life? I’ve spent my fortune giving you everything you’ve asked for this journey. I’ve spent my life waiting for an answer.”

“I… I know. I’m sorry.” Wuktish could not turn around to look his employer in the eye.

“Don’t feed me that line of shit, Wuktish,” she spat. She paused before speaking again, her tone softening somewhat. “I-Isn’t there anything? Some… some small chance that you could have missed something?” For the first time in a long time, Ensset’s voice wavered as she spoke. Wuktish turned to face the old Zezik but kept his eyes from locking with hers.

“I’ve been as thorough as possible. There was nothing.” Wuktish kept his eyes firmly away from hers. Behind him, Gavros shifted back and forth, unsure whether he wanted her to follow through with his original command, now that Ensset had caught up with them. Wuktish had never been one for confrontation. At least, not the verbal kind. He braced himself for the tirade that Ensset would unleash.

“Oh,” she eventually replied, defeated. There was a pregnant pause before she spoke again. “I guess this is goodbye then, Wuktish. I think… I think it’s time I finally stopped. It hurts, you know. It hurts to extend your life for as long as I have… Ah, but what would you know, you’re an Oyroy.” She paused for a moment. The sound of conversation had grown significantly and was drifting in through the curtains. “I just really wanted to know what the Signal said, y’know? Thanks for everything, old friend.” Again she called him friend. The old bird turned away, ready to die. Wuktish stood, frozen, as the old Zezik wheeled herself away. The chatter on the other side of the curtain had turned to joy, and Wuktish could hear laughter. No doubt at some joke cracked at his expense if the context of his speech hadn’t already fallen to the wayside.

“Wait. Ensset, don’t go,” Wuktish called out. “Not yet. There’s something I need to tell you, first.” Ensset’s wheels stopped turning before spinning her around slowly. Wuktish scuttled towards her, Gavros following close behind.

“Wuktish, the only reason I’ve stayed around for so long was to hear what the Signal said. Let me go rest, my friend.” Ensset looked older than ever, her eyes dull.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you. I… I know what the Signal says.” Wuktish hazarded a look at Ensset. She had perked up in her seat, her eyes lighting up with curiosity and suspicion.

“Go on.”

“In all honesty, I’ve known what the Signal says for centuries,“ Wuktish confessed.” Before I was under your employment, long before you were even born, I spent hundreds of years studying dead civilisations. One of the Extinct’s cities that I visited was orbiting the Pedinoid’s homeworld. It was there that I found an ancient manuscript, preserved almost perfectly in a sealed container for millennia. It was a manual, of sorts, which translated one of the dead tongues of the Extinct into a series of glyphs that I did not recognise at the time as hand signs. There have been countless such artefacts found throughout history but they have only translated between the many different dead languages of the Extinct. However, my guide at the time, a Pedinoid who’s name I can no longer recall, recognised it almost immediately. What I had discovered was a translation to the first language of the Pedinoid, known as Sign Language. Their ancestors must have inherited it from the Extinct before they went, well, extinct. This language used to be used widely on their planet but now exists only for their mute to communicate. From there it was a simple matter of translating the Signal between the unknown tongues of the Extinct and into the ancient Sign Language of the Pedinoid.”

“Then… then why did you let me waste so much time waiting for you to return from your expedition? If you had known all this time… why did you go on such a long and dangerous mission? Why not just let the galaxy know of your discovery?”

“I… do not believe that the galaxy should know what the Signal says. It is in everyone’s best interest to remain ignorant. Call me arrogant, if you will, but I have come to terms with my decision to withhold that information.” Wuktish conveniently ignored her first question and addressed the second instead. “We have so many religions and cultures based on the Signal. Entire ways of life rooted in it. If we took it away… if we nullified their interpretations, or worse, gave them something solid to interpret… the backlash would be incredible. People would die. I think it would be best to let them hold onto their perception of the Signal and assign meaning blindly.”

“Yes, well, I don’t care about their interpretations.” Ensset waved a featherless hand dismissively. “I want to hear yours. I want to know the translation.”

“There was one thing I did discover on the mission which I withheld. Emblazoned on the Extinct’s machine was the word ‘Mjolnir’.” Wuktish told her. Ensset stared at him, waiting for him to explain it to her. “There is no known meaning of the word. It could possibly an acronym but we can never know. Not until a translation can be found, assuming one exists.”

“So their final super-weapon was called Mjolnir. I didn’t know that I wanted to know what they called it… but what of the Signal?”

“The Signal, yes.” Wuktish took a deep breath, feeling the filtered air rush passed his gills and into his lung. His eye stalks felt dry and he wished he had another glass of brine water to run over them. “It says…” Wuktish paused for a moment more. “I think… I think it would be best if you read the translation for yourself. Gavros, the last tablet if you would be so kind.” Gavros gave him the tablet without a word. Wuktish looked at it quickly to affirm it was the right one, then handed it to Ensset to read. “At the very bottom.”

Ensset sat for a moment before looking up at Wuktish more confused than ever.

“I believe it wasn’t meant for us. I believe it was meant for the Still Ones,” he explained and Ensset’s face instantly lit up.

“This is what the signal says? Oh my gods, if people knew that this is what the Signal said… haha!” She laughed in glee. She laughed and laughed, cackling and shaking in her wheelchair until Gavros started laughing along with her. Wuktish stood awkwardly. His kind did not laugh.

“Do you see why I kept it to myself all this time? At first, I was certain that I was translating something wrong but that’s what it says. That’s all it’s been saying since the war.” Wuktish habitually cleaned one of his claws. He couldn’t wait to get out of his constricting robe.

“Ah, that’s hilarious. Thank you. Thank you for this, Wuktish.” Ensset said as her laughter died down. She took on an accusatory tone once more as she looked up at the Oyroy. “But you still haven’t answered one of my questions. Why did you let me waste so much of my life waiting? Why let me waste so many credits sending you all over the galaxy? If you had gone somewhere nice I’d believe that you were simply scamming an old Zezik out of her money to go on vacation, but everywhere you went was a total shithole.”

Wuktish thought about his answer before putting it to words. “Ensset… I have known for so long what the Signal says. Now I know what it means.”

“I guess we both do, now. Alright, Wuktish, you’re off the hook. I can finally die happy. Gods, it’s been a long life.”

“Too long,” Wuktish replied, though whether he was talking about hers or his he couldn’t say. Ensset laughed. “You can keep that if you want but please… for the sake of everybody, don’t let anyone else read it.”

“No, no, I understand. I’ll melt it down before I go,“ Ensset assured him as she turned around in her wheelchair. "Thank you, again, Wuktish. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.” Wuktish chittered something at Gavros and she scampered out a nearby door to prep his ship. He scuttled slowly behind, wondering what he would do next.

———————————————————————————————

   Torib had been a servant in Ensset’s house for thirteen years now. The old bird had passed away recently and she had wished for her property to be sold. She had no close friends and no relatives that she didn’t hate. The fortune in her bank and the credits to be made from liquidating her assets would be distributed evenly among the various surviving scientists and scientific organisations she had hired over the years to answer her ludicrous questions and make discoveries in her name. A final thank-you to the ones who made her life worth living. Torib gave a deep sigh. He would have liked to receive some of that money, too.

Torib was vacuuming the floor in Ensset’s study. He took the nozzle head off to get all the dust out of the corners where the wall and the bookshelves met the floor, and underneath Ensset’s old desk. The great big chair which had predated his own employment had been removed when she found herself wheelchair-bound, so there was nothing to move as Torib vacuumed behind the desk. It was a nice study with tall windows to allow plenty of natural sunlight. During the cooler seasons, there was a great big fireplace at Ensset’s back to keep her warm. It had been a while since somebody had disposed of the ashes. He placed the nozzle back onto the end of the vacuum as he considered how he would go about removing the ashes. Torib stirred them with a nearby poker and placed a feathered hand on them to make sure that they were, in fact, cool, before taking his vacuum cleaner to make short work of an otherwise tedious task.

“Ugh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Torib groaned as his vacuum cleaner began making an ear-splitting whining sound. Grumbling to himself, he removed it from the fire pit and turned it off. The whining stopped and ash fell out of the end and onto the carpet, followed by the culprit of his woes, a partially melted piece of plastic. “Aw, piss. Stupid fucking vacuum. Why’d that old bitch need to have fucking carpet by her fireplace, anyways?” he swore as he turned it on again and tried to fix the mess. He had always worked silently but found himself being much more vocal about his displeasure ever since Ensset passed away. It was easier for him to curse on the job without his boss possibly rolling in on him. Torib looked at the melted plastic out of curiosity as he struggled to get all the ash out of the carpet. Most of the writing was completely unintelligible, but at the bottom, one line could be read clearly, despite the ash and disfigurement from the heat.

Eat shit and die.

Torib did a double take before looking around the room, half expecting the ghost of the late Ensset to be glaring at him after seeing his accident and overhearing his colourful language. Realising his foolishness, Torib shook himself back to his senses.

“Yeah, fuck you too, you greedy old crow.” Torib threw the melted plastic in the trash and kept vacuuming, bitter that he hadn’t been squeezed into his former employer’s will.

needybitch0307:

Literally went to this church today which is apparently 400 yrs old and has the body of a saint whose long dead and got pretty weird vibes, idek what to say…..

Should I be concerned being someone who can see/feel energies both humanly and paranormal

I wouldn’t worry about it. Getting weird vibes in a place that’s very old, very quiet, uncharacteristically depopulated (like a school building after hours), or which contains unsettling things (like preserved remains) is perfectly normal. It’s your situational awareness letting you know that something is out of the ordinary in a way that it can’t quite define and is therefore labeling as a possible threat. (See also: Why We Find Things “Creepy”)

Churches with saintly relics may have an energy to them, but in my experience, that’s usually based on the weight of all the history that’s happened on those grounds, plus the added strangeness factor of glorified human remains. It’s nothing that’s likely to cause harm or follow you home because it’s either residual or tied to the site itself. So long as you don’t do anything foolish, like touching things marked Do Not Touch, you should be fine.

The most you might experience could be strange or unsettling dreams brought on by memories of the experience. But they won’t be anything to worry about either. Just your mind mulling over recent events and playing Free Association with the images.

Hope this helps!