Entry 10
Set out the next day toward a nearby settlement my portable beacon picked up. Two hours on foot, no storms for once. The planet is beautiful in its own strange, toxic way. Everything here should kill, yet it thrives. Air, soil, water, all hostile, yet full of life. Noted to run the Fresh Milk through a proper filter before selling it. No doubt it’s carrying more than just nutrients.
The settlement was abandoned. Long abandoned. Im guessing fifty years at the least. Found the terminal inside. Its surface was coated in Residual Goop, which I carefully scraped off and stored with the rest in my jar. Still not enough to justify refining. Refining it takes a long time and I'd rather do that while I can do something else in the meantime.
Once cleared, the terminal flickered back to life. Its central eye burned red and transmitted a message, timestamped fifty-eight years ago. Close enough.
“One day, your voice will speak to you, telling you of some fate, some signal that needs answering. It will tell you of some secret at the heart of reality, some puzzle that needs to be solved lest all life falls into decay and oblivion.
Do not listen to it. If all the world is a lie, then nothing is true, not even their explanation.
Abandon it. Abandon me. It is inevitable.”
After the message, the system offered me to restore the settlement. I kindly declined. Whatever happened here, it ran its course long ago.
Whoever left that message wasn’t stable by the end. Or maybe they saw something they weren’t meant to see. Something that broke whatever certainty they had left. The words feel familiar in a way I can’t place.
Could be they were talking about the Atlas. I wonder if this was the being the people at the Comms Towers where looking for. I hope they found them.