Dove Levy - Way Station

Well, that may be a bit dramatic. Aliens are probably weirder, at least weirder-looking. This is its own kind of weird, though, and for me, it’s one of the worst things we’ve found.

Holes, all over the facility’s walls, opening up the inside to the elements. At first, I wondered why nobody had put on their walking suits until we got to the room where they’re all stored and found that an entire wall is missing. It likely was one of the first places to have been breached, and there are holes in the tanks as well, letting out the oxygen and letting in the poison. And after that, the erosion continued throughout the facility until it reached the control room, where all the scientists huddled together and died together.

These walls — I need to stress this. These walls are made to withstand conditions ten times worse than anything Earth can offer — than anything. Anything Earth could throw at us — the worst storms, the most severe earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions. Anything at all, these walls can hold up against it and then so much more. Pressures at the bottom of the deepest seas would be nothing to it.

And there are holes.

Isaac hasn’t talked much since we left Telle Island. I haven’t, either, but I’ve started growing accustomed to conversing with him on these past few islands, especially on Telle. We talked for hours after finding those bugs, just sitting outside the facility, shoulder-to-shoulder, exciting over the creatures there and their gorgeous patterns. We talked about home a lot, too.

I told him about where I came from. I told him about my family, about my farm house, about the town miles and miles away that we’d go into for synagogue services every Shabbat and for as many of the holidays as my parents had time for. I told him about my brother and how much of a gentleman the little rascal turned into, up to marrying a nice girl and actually settling down, to the surprise of myself and my parents and anyone who’s ever known him. I told him about the woods as far from my home as the town was, but in the opposite direction. I told him of vacations and school and what led me to my job. And then I told him why I came to POGE. Why I sentenced myself to death with no jury or judge, no picketers outside fighting for my life, no lawyer begging for mercy on my behalf.

He didn’t tell me as much as all of that, but I didn’t expect him to. I told him it was fine, and it is. All people have different levels, different times when they’ll be comfortable sharing so much with someone who was a stranger mere months ago, and while he’s reached mine, I haven’t yet reached his. And that’s okay. The fact that he told me anything, that he talked to me at all, is more than enough.

He told me little bits and pieces here and there, mostly small stories that connected with something I told him, using them to keep the conversation going when it seemed about to peter out. He wouldn’t talk of his family, but he talked of his friends, of childhood sweethearts and his roommate in college who always teased him for preferring dead bodies to people — and here I couldn’t stop laughing for a good few minutes, because that’s the exact thing my roommate used to joke about for me. He told me about his first boyfriend and how he wished, now that he’s up here, that they’d still kept in contact when he was on Earth. He told me about his first Chanukah in college, when he almost got into a fight with his roommate for the fire hazard his menorah posed and compromised by buying an electric one. He told me about pets and plants he’s had, about how the ride up here to POGE was the first time he’s ever really seen the stars because he lived in the middle of one of the biggest cities in America and only ever saw a few stars at a time through the lights, no matter how clear of clouds the night sky was.

And then we just sat there, surrounded by creatures with galaxies inside them, and he laughed for the second time since we’ve been up here because I told him that he’s closer to the stars than anyone has ever been, in these creatures. We tried to find constellations in the slugs in our laps, as those flying around were too fast and never stayed still for long enough. When we ran out of constellations we knew — which really were constellations I knew and told him about, because he only knew what the Big Dipper looked like — we made up our own constellations.

After that, after my heart jumped a few beats and he helped me inside, all the aliens were gone upon our trip out to the ferry, and he was quiet again.

— — —-

Another storm came by here. Another weird storm, with its weird chemicals, and it led to dozens of people dying. Again. Just like before, just like on the southern continent, just like on Telle Island. This one eroded the walls — this one had chemicals strong enough to do that, somehow.

With all the evidence now available, it doesn’t take my degree to realize the centrality of these storms in the deaths of so many, and in the spread of alien life all around the planet when before there was nothing for the decade humans have spent on POGE. The only questions are how, and why now?

At first, while I was thinking about this on the ferry ride over here, I wondered if maybe the storms spread seeds or spores from somewhere. That would explain the fungus we’d found down south, but then it doesn’t explain the chemicals in the storms, nor the differences between them, or the animals. Nor does it explain why now, of all times, the storms started up, or even if these were the first ones or not. Who knows how many of these have happened over the years POGE has been in exile, if they’re common in this world or not? Maybe humans just got lucky and came in the middle of a dry spell, and then our luck ran out.

…

[sigh]

I have to cut this entry short. I don’t know why I feel the need to apologize — nobody is going to be listening to this but me. But still, sorry.

The distress signal came again. This one is way north, farther into the frozen land, miles out in the zone that the cars can’t traverse on their own without falling through the ice. It didn’t originate from a facility after all, but a small station meant for excavating specimens.

We’re heading out now.

Here’s hoping.

Yep, still freezing out here. Extremities are almost completely numb again, the joy of it. And, on top of that, it feels like we’re lost. The maps on our tablets work well enough out here, but it doesn’t change the feeling that we’re not coming back, that we won’t make it out of this white, featureless landscape the same as we entered it. Facility I is far behind us, as are our cars and most of our food, and though we did the math and brought as much as we should need, it doesn’t feel like enough.

At the very least, I wish we could drive out here. But the terrain is too unstable and there’s so much ice and collapsible snow that we’d die within an hour or two if we tried to bring a car.

There are the makings of a storm on the horizon. I can’t know what these strange storms look like, if they look any different from normal POGE storms, but I have to hope they do, because this one looks completely mundane and the last thing we need is for me to be wrong.

I’m exhausted, Isaac is exhausted, and we’ve covered maybe two miles in the past hour. At this rate, we’ll never reach the signal, if we can figure out where exactly it is in the first place. It’s somewhere within a five-mile radius about ten miles from where we are right now, the exact location uncertain as the farther north we get, the more distorted any signals become and the harder it is to pinpoint locations. I don’t want to have to scour five miles of mountains and switchback trails and the possibility of death at every step.