Dove Levy - Way Station

I mean, I would die pretty quickly if I had to breathe in the air here, so I’m not going to be trying it very soon, but it’s an interesting thought.

There’s a lot of technical stuff stored in these files, but I brought some of the more basic ones out here with me to read on my breaks. A fair amount of the composition is similar to that on Earth, though no Earth life would be able to survive here unassisted. There’s nowhere near as much oxygen as we need, and what does fill the empty sky is poisonous to us, but the similarities were enough to have trees, unlikely as that is.

Not trees like Earth trees, but they look enough alike. Solar based, with leaves and branches and bark, hit by facility lighting that makes everything look yellow instead of what it actually is, which, as I’ve seen from some of the files in Facility A, is more bluish than the plants back home. The trees have nervous systems, though, and more of the plants eat similarly to venus flytraps than those that don’t. Can’t imagine what the sentient life must have been like.

Still, the possibility of this place one day being a home to people other than scientists was real and could be again if Dr. Federman and I can put all the pieces together and find safer ways of existing here. With only a little work, the soil is farmable and the water purifiable, as evidenced by C’s POGE-grown food supply, though sensors would need to be made that could identify and purge the fungi and its spores from anything one would eat or drink. Walking suits aren’t that difficult to move around in once you get used to it, and larger stations could be made, more windows and softer lighting added around the outside so residents could see what’s really out there.

I wouldn’t like to live here, but many others would.

So long as fungus is the most inimical thing there is.

I got a lot of lectures as a kid. Seemingly everything I did got me into some kind of trouble. Not with my parents — I wasn’t a child who misbehaved a lot, though I didn’t have a spotless record, either. But into other kinds of trouble, like getting lost in the woods, falling into ditches, climbing up on my friend’s horse that I thought was lonely and needed a hug but actually just really, really didn’t like people, or other horses, or anything at all that had a heartbeat. Including me.

Those were productive lectures. They felt terrible at the time, and I wouldn’t have believed anyone telling me I’d understand when I’m older, but I do understand now. Being embarrassed was better than being hurt or dead, and I respect the parents and teachers and, once, a park ranger, who had to put up with my whining and wishing on top of the harm my adventures brought me.

The one that stuck with me the longest was the one I don’t think was productive at all, and that was the only one that, at the time, actually felt right. That’s a good piece of information. If, as a kid, you’re comforted by a lecture instead of chagrined, then it probably means that lecture is a load of crap.

I got hurt a lot. Cuts and bruises, obviously, and a few broken bones over the years until I finally learned caution going into high school. But I also got my heart broken a lot, my hopes dashed. I hoped too much, Mom used to say. I hoped and cared too much, without giving any thought to the reality of the situation. I’d hold onto grief longer than my peers, my mood would drop dramatically at even the slightest frustration or disappointment on what I’d thought was a good day, and I would cling too hard to everything I had that even the thought of losing something or someone, that any little argument, had me paralyzed in fear.

Emotional management is an important skill for anyone to learn, especially when they’re young enough that they’re not yet making mistakes bigger than can be fixed, but I don’t think the answer is to just give it all up.

Mom told me I hoped too much, and that was why I hurt too much. If I would stop hoping, if I would look only at reality, then it wouldn’t be as bad. Reality was always colder and bleaker than the world inside my head, and so if I would just stop hoping, stop caring, it would be easier.

That’s not a good lesson to teach your kids. I know she meant well. She meant well in everything that she did, and she’s the reason I’m here today—

Scratch that. I could die here. I don’t want to blame my mom for that. No, she’s the reason I took a job I love, helping people find closure for their loved ones. She’s the reason I made it through all my problems and she always encouraged me in my studies and interests. But she’s not the reason I went to POGE.

I’m losing my train of thought, but — yeah, yeah. Though she meant well, I think I would have much preferred feeling things as sharply and painfully as I did instead of retreating into this dullness. I did have hopes for POGE, but they were the dry, realistic hopes. I hoped to do my job, and I am. I hoped to set foot on an alien planet, and that’s not really much of a hope in the first place, because unless I got critically injured before the ship set off, as soon as I took the job it was certain I’d be standing on some really foreign soil.

If I was younger, or maybe if I hadn’t internalized what she’d said so much, I would have hoped for much more. I would have hoped to see gorgeous sights I would never have been able to make up, hoped to have an adventure, hoped to live. To survive this.

Even if I was disappointed on any of those counts, at least I would have had those moments of happiness. That’s better than the vague, fleeting pleasantness I hardly feel at anything kind here. I would have been ecstatic, had I hoped for it.

I passed a few flowers just now. Quote unquote, flowers. They were thick, with frozen little mouths at the ends. Accidentally crushed one under my foot, but it’s okay. Can’t feel anything when its nerves are already long dead.

This little discovery would have made me giddy had I allowed myself to be open for it, would have blown away the fear of these past few days. Instead, I’m still thinking of that head.

Oh, found someone.

Back in the lab. 8 bodies are still missing, but we don’t have time to go find them.

I think there’s a—

[coughing] [crash] [hurried footsteps]

There’s a very… interesting smell now coming from all the bodies. It’s outside, too, stronger in the direction the storm had passed. We couldn’t tell before, with the walking suits on, but we have the chemical makeup from the bodies now, and scans show traces of it left in the air.

It’s… weird. Almost like pheromones, and not matched in any station’s logs. Now, it’s rotten along with the bodies, its effects gone stale. We have to leave soon, and we don’t have the proper equipment to study gasses here in the first place, but there’s a theory.

Something called the station members outside, and they didn’t have a choice.

Dr. Eve Strauss, Research Facility D on the southern continent of Way Station, assisted by Dr. Isaac Federman. Walls are intact and the life support system is running at optimal capacity. Food storage and air supply are clean. All of the research team was found in the viewing room and adjoining labs. These rooms have signs of struggle. Evidence indicates the struggle was not with each other.

Examination review of Naomi Thompson, ID number 161, details in file. Full autopsy report in temporary file, pending transfer when communication channels open again. They were found clothed in the viewing room to the underwater study locations alongside approximately half of the team members. Numerous puncture wounds, grouped in fours, are along the neck, wrists, backs of the knees, and feet. All the blood has been drained from the body.