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meridian_roseTitle: Day Thirty – Extracts from the DUŠKA log
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 394
Prompt: For the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
writerverse quick fic prompts 'to the moon!' and 'silence' and the bonus style of diary/log entry
Summary: A creepy one-shot in which an android crew member records the events over fifteen days as the crew become convinced they are being haunted and descend into paranoia.
Content Notes: Various deaths are mentioned.
Day Fifteen:
Crew reporting strange noises beneath the base. Computer systems found no anomalies. I asked for a description of the noises but received only vague and conflicting responses – "banging", "scuttling", and "like the wind".
Day Sixteen:
Maintenance crew investigated the gravity generators beneath the base to see if that's where the noises have been coming from. Some adjustments made. Noises allegedly continue. I have not heard anything untoward.
Day Seventeen:
Power shut off unexpectedly – see maintenance log. Full power restored within sixty seconds. Human crew insisted "furious" knocking noise and sharp screech or scream accompanied the power restoration. I witnessed no such event. I did hear one crew member, Jones, confide to a colleague that I could not be trusted, being an [expletive] android. On the contrary, my hearing is far superior to his.
Day Eighteen:
Crew report hearing more noises. Voices. Whispers. Computer systems found no discernable causes; no environmental toxins, no other life signs, no malfunction in the life support systems.
There is a superstition amongst the planet's inhabitants that of the three satellites, this one is sacred and should not be mined. A crew of mostly off-worlders was chosen for the mission for that reason. Now even they are talking of the impossible, of ghosts or gods. Of monsters. That we should never have come to this particular moon.
Day Twenty Three
Jones overrode the security system and ran out of the base without his environmental suit, screaming about the voices. I managed to close the doors without further loss of life. We retrieved the body but an autopsy found no cause for his sudden paranoia. The entire crew is on edge.
Fleet has been contacted for emergency assistance and/or evacuation but they advise this will take ten days due to a solar storm.
My attempts to reassure the crew members have failed. They insist we are not alone in the base. The lifeform scan was dismissed as inaccurate. They say there are things computers cannot see.
Day Thirty
I am the last of the crew. The rest are dead. Some took their own lives deliberately, others, like Jones, were killed by sudden recklessness. Some murdered each other. They all spoke of voices, haunting whispers that only they could hear.
I have shut down all but the most essential systems and await rescue and debriefing.
All I hear is silence.
Notes
DUŠKA - Pet form of Czech Dušana, meaning "soul, spirit." [X]
An original fic but not an original idea by a long shot. From the frozen wastes of "The Thing" to submarines and space stations ("Alien"), the idea of being trapped with something alien (or supernatural) and/or a descent into madness by a crew experiencing sensory deprivation is a prevalent one in fiction.
Here the android narrator insists they never heard the mysterious voices, which suggests there were no voices. Maybe the noises were due to an as yet undiscovered pathogen that infected the humans that the computer scanners couldn't detect.
Maybe there were ghosts or lifeforms of some sort that the android couldn't detect, being programmed much like the computer systems.
Or, and this might be a more original idea to pursue at another time, the android has been programmed to fake the computer readings and to cause the 'voices' – maybe by drugging the crew - and make sure none of them survive. And as the only survivor, the most rational crew member, who would disbelieve them and their log?
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 394
Prompt: For the
writerverse quick fic prompts 'to the moon!' and 'silence' and the bonus style of diary/log entrySummary: A creepy one-shot in which an android crew member records the events over fifteen days as the crew become convinced they are being haunted and descend into paranoia.
Content Notes: Various deaths are mentioned.
Day Fifteen:
Crew reporting strange noises beneath the base. Computer systems found no anomalies. I asked for a description of the noises but received only vague and conflicting responses – "banging", "scuttling", and "like the wind".
Day Sixteen:
Maintenance crew investigated the gravity generators beneath the base to see if that's where the noises have been coming from. Some adjustments made. Noises allegedly continue. I have not heard anything untoward.
Day Seventeen:
Power shut off unexpectedly – see maintenance log. Full power restored within sixty seconds. Human crew insisted "furious" knocking noise and sharp screech or scream accompanied the power restoration. I witnessed no such event. I did hear one crew member, Jones, confide to a colleague that I could not be trusted, being an [expletive] android. On the contrary, my hearing is far superior to his.
Day Eighteen:
Crew report hearing more noises. Voices. Whispers. Computer systems found no discernable causes; no environmental toxins, no other life signs, no malfunction in the life support systems.
There is a superstition amongst the planet's inhabitants that of the three satellites, this one is sacred and should not be mined. A crew of mostly off-worlders was chosen for the mission for that reason. Now even they are talking of the impossible, of ghosts or gods. Of monsters. That we should never have come to this particular moon.
Day Twenty Three
Jones overrode the security system and ran out of the base without his environmental suit, screaming about the voices. I managed to close the doors without further loss of life. We retrieved the body but an autopsy found no cause for his sudden paranoia. The entire crew is on edge.
Fleet has been contacted for emergency assistance and/or evacuation but they advise this will take ten days due to a solar storm.
My attempts to reassure the crew members have failed. They insist we are not alone in the base. The lifeform scan was dismissed as inaccurate. They say there are things computers cannot see.
Day Thirty
I am the last of the crew. The rest are dead. Some took their own lives deliberately, others, like Jones, were killed by sudden recklessness. Some murdered each other. They all spoke of voices, haunting whispers that only they could hear.
I have shut down all but the most essential systems and await rescue and debriefing.
All I hear is silence.
Notes
DUŠKA - Pet form of Czech Dušana, meaning "soul, spirit." [X]
An original fic but not an original idea by a long shot. From the frozen wastes of "The Thing" to submarines and space stations ("Alien"), the idea of being trapped with something alien (or supernatural) and/or a descent into madness by a crew experiencing sensory deprivation is a prevalent one in fiction.
Here the android narrator insists they never heard the mysterious voices, which suggests there were no voices. Maybe the noises were due to an as yet undiscovered pathogen that infected the humans that the computer scanners couldn't detect.
Maybe there were ghosts or lifeforms of some sort that the android couldn't detect, being programmed much like the computer systems.
Or, and this might be a more original idea to pursue at another time, the android has been programmed to fake the computer readings and to cause the 'voices' – maybe by drugging the crew - and make sure none of them survive. And as the only survivor, the most rational crew member, who would disbelieve them and their log?
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Date: 2013-05-21 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-23 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-23 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-24 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 05:45 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
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Date: 2013-05-29 05:55 pm (UTC)