Threads Of Dust
Entry Log 1
Eric here.
This will be the only post I title, I’m sure you know who I am.
We set off in 2416, among many colony-sleeper ships. Our ships are capable of traveling within just a hair of light-speed. So close to it that in all honesty it makes no difference whether or not you were actually traveling at the speed of light. But it makes all the difference if you want to still exist when you get to your destination. Turns out once you hit that barrier of the speed of light you disappear.
There are a lot of theories as to why this happens, some believe you enter a different ‘level’ of space that no longer interacts with physics in the normal sense. Others think that perhaps you go to another dimension, while still more think you just collapse into pure energy and dissipate as you cross the cosmos.
Either way, you don’t get where you want to be.
We woke up one Earth day ago. It takes some readjusting. We travel in what we call sleeper-ships. When you travel hundreds of millions of miles to get to another galaxy, you kind of need it. Otherwise you’d die well before you make it to even another arm of the galaxy.
We’ve been traveling for, let me check the computer, two and a half million years. Though honestly it feels like yesterday we docked near Sedna, the furthest planetoid from Earth. And also its final way station in the solar system.
The second we left we went to sleep, sell most of us. Some say they stayed up for a day or so. I’m not sure what they were doing, maybe reading?
It doesn’t matter. What does is we are traveling to the first planet discovered in Andromeda. Telescopes became better and better, using the our own sun’s gravity well as a lens. It turns out the planet wasn’t alone; there were other planets.
And one had water.
Earth long ago became overcrowded. We colonized the other planets, built stations around others. There is room to spare.
That is not why we left. In a way all humans are explorers, its just some of us like to take greater risk than others. There are a thousand people on our ship. Even if it turns out the system isn’t habitable, we can still take orbit around an object of our choosing and settle in for the long haul for terraforming.
Check back next time.
Entry Log 2.
We eased into the system, naming it after the planet Lethe, the Greek God of forgetfulness. It was a hot debate, some wanted to call it Goldilocks, for obvious reasons, but Lethe won out.
We figured our expedition has been long forgotten by earth. It’s been millions of years since we left.
Our ship doesn’t look like the ships of old. In actuality it looks quite a bit like a smoothed out plane of the 20th century. It turns out that when you go at a fast enough speed space begins to change, and in a way becomes heavier, or at least more dense. You are no longer traveling through just the vastness of space- there are particles, and at a fast enough rate you run into enough to impede your speed.
But our ship is far, far larger than any plane. It’s larger than some of the countries we left behind. And most of it is devoted to carrying supplies, from plants and vehicles, to the shelters we would live on in the ship and then move to the surface.
I’m sorry to cut this entry short, there’s been an announcement for a ship assembly. I guess something’s happening.
Entry 3
Sorry for the late entry. Though I suppose you wouldn’t know it. I don’t even know who’s going to read this. I guess my descendants, if I have any.
We found something amazing; extraterrestrial life! Or at least, direct evidence of it. Around Lethe are a massive number of ships. They number in the thousands, and we are still finding more. They are of all sizes and shapes, from thick block-like structures to some that look like rockets, and others clearly more advanced than the others, perfect spheres. Our computers cannot even calculate the perfection of them.
Lethe is perfect. Only 2.03x the size of earth, and 1.1x its mass, we’ll have all the space we could need and not even have to worry about a change in gravity to cause us, and more so our descendants any problems physically. We won’t even notice that we feel slightly heavier. We are fortunate.
Something odd we have noticed; the ships do not move. The planet rotates, but they are in a fixed orbit, but even that does not do it justice. They do not move at all. It’s like they are anchored in place. We can’t even imagine the technology to do this, to keep something completely stationary in space, even as they follow the planet’s orbit.
Incredible.
Entry 4.
We are beginning to do surface scans, and are finding some strange anomalies. When we had left earth the surface composition had not been green, just a blue. But now that we are here we can clearly see that there is plant life, and in all the colors the plants could have been to process the system's sun; from blue or black or red and yellow, they are predominantly green. I suppose chlorophyll is the same no matter where you go in the universe. There is life down there!... even if just plants as far as we can tell.
There are huge configurations on the surface, some might call them cities, but they are thousands of times greater than anything we had on Earth. Nothing is coming from them though, for all we know they could just be huge geometric designs.
The commander has cleared a mission to visit one of the ships, see if we can sort anything out. I volunteered and was accepted. We are going to dig into one; they appear made of a material that is quite regular; some kind of treated metal. Our techs assure us we should be able to cut into them.
I wonder what we will find?
Entry 5
This will be my last entry. I need to figure out with the others what we found.
We reached the nearest ship before entering orbit. It’s hull was perfect. Not a scratch. The ship had been there for years, yet looked as if it had been made just the day before. Who knows how old it was. I was dubious we could cut into it, because of that. But the techs were right; it took some time, but eventually we breached the hull.
We entered, a team of ten of us. The inside was a sharp contrast to the outside. Something like dust covered everything, every wall, the floor, the ceiling. That grayish-yellow kind you might expect to see from a wood shop.
There was a lot of it, but spread thinly. We left footprints behind us from where we walked. There was no gravity- Even though our own ship could produce its own, I suppose whatever system had once run the relic had long since shut off.
The air contained oxygen, carbon-dioxide, and nitrogen. It was basically air, but none of us removed our helmets. We had strict orders to not risk anything, and besides, the temperature within was well below a killing point.
We wandered the ship for an hour, through hallways that were spacious for us to travel through. Eventually we entered a chamber which split into multiple paths, but we opted to stay together. Our light beams from our helmets illuminated the space around us, but it was just more metal surface, and more dust.
It was another hour before we found it; the helm at the front of the ship. If you could say a perfect sphere had a front. We entered the command bridge and I can only describe the experience as if my heart had stopped. Dust, too, covered everything, especially thick there. But it was not the dust that gave us great concern;
The bodies of the former crew were slumped over the controls. Some were on the floor curled up, while others were lying completely straight. Though they were controls we could not recognize, it was Briggs, a fellow crew-member who noticed it first; all the bodies were skeletons, and not just any skeleton-
They were undeniably human.
We stood, stunned, for a long while before we could move. We took a sample, starting to crystallize into fossil. As we separated it, the skeleton collapsed, its pieces spreading through the cabin. They were covered in dust, leaving a trail of beige to follow behind them in their path. But by some sheer coincidence the skull did not. It stayed on the council as if stuck to it. And I would be damned if I was to touch it. We left minutes later, returning in a near state of half panic. Our minds then and there could not process what we had seen.
The sample we brought back, that tip of a finger came back positive; it was human. The skull on the ship told us that though.
Who knows what advances those we had left behind made while we were gone. While we slept and flew past the stars on stellar winds.
But we know now that the cities below us on Lethe were human, once. They are empty now, the entire world empty. Dead as those in the control room of the ship. A crypt spanning an entire world, its tombstones that graveyard of ships.
It seems we took too long to get here; from what we can tell their civilization died years ago. At least a million. There are no signs of war, they just… died one day.
None of the crew is relieved that we have the world to ourselves. What joy can be had in a dead world?
We know we cannot go back- what if this was what Earth was like?
For now we will stay in orbit. We have no choice but to stay, but none of us want to. We cannot leave, this was a one way trip after all, with only the fuel to get here. We feel lost after what we saw, even those back on the ship who watched the recordings of what we witnessed in the ship.
Are we doomed as they were? To become another ship among a fleet of the dead, the final member to join it? Already one person aboard has committed suicide. I understand-- How can one have hope above a dead world?
And all I can think of are the bones of someone long dead slumped over the controls. I know what the dust is. Was. I’ve read that more than 80% of dust is dead skin. When the ships air system shut down finally, and the bodies decomposed in the air, over thousands of years they broke apart to become what we had left footprints in.
What will they find of us in a million years?
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