Nightmare Fuel Day the Third - Notes from the Survey

Day the Third, posted on Day Four.

Again, the usual suspects do more with imagery than I do. I'll give you some prettier word-pictures as the months go on, I promise.

I again adore a neat bit of atmosphere from Jenny Persson. Blake Sinclair joined us with a bit of a pun, but one that contains a message. Charles Moore continues to walk us through desolation, toward what conclusion I can't quite yet imagine, though I am enjoying the trip.  Samantha Dunaway Bryant's take was not entirely dissimilar to mine, and I'm not really sure which is darker. Kary Gaul took us to more of a fantasy setting in a tale which is nicely atmospheric. 

Mine follows. Final line is, of course, from a famous old SF novel.

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Notes from the Survey

"Just more of the dumb quadrapeds. None of the ones we left."

The survey team had been at this for nearly a full circuit of this planet around its star. They'd known for quite some time that there was nothing to find, but that didn't stop them.

A parent never gives up hope.

"I kept saying that we should have visited sooner, to check up. Before it was too late."

"and I kept saying that argument is over. What's done is done. Besides, we haven't checked everywhere. Perhaps some survived."

The survey team had such hope as they approached; Decades of electromagnetic broadcasts in varying frequencies and then, when they grew nearer, artificial satellites. The ones they'd seeded this planet with had come a long way. These would be children with whom they could talk, and learn. These would be friends and companions in the desolate galaxy.

Or they would have been, had they not all killed themselves.

In a few places their artifacts remained in the growing wilderness. Here, in the early dawn's fog a sign exhorting passersby to be on the watch for children. When the survey team finished deciphering the language they'd find the inscription ironic and sad. Poems would be written about it.

The visitors had poems. They'd have liked what grew of the seeds they planted here.

A month later, the last of the survey team left, after placing platinum-iridium alloy markers in various locations, and another on the moon. 

They never returned.

We guessed much of that. It was a long time ago, long before we'd pulled ourselves out of the ocean on then-unsteady tentacles, long before we tamed first fire and then the atom, and then other secret energies.

Someday we'd read the markerstone that they left behind for those who'd walked before us on land.

Someday we'll leave here.

And, perhaps, someday we shall meet them, our late cousin's mothers.

In Loving Memory of People. They were better than they thought. They never figured out what they were doing here.