Chapter Text
How long is it now?
It had to have been a while. You could hardly remember at that point, which should've been indicative of something, but you couldn't tell quite what. If you hadn't fled the homeworld you might've been able to dig deep enough into yourself and find the answer that already lingers on the outside of your thoughts, but if you had done so the question may never have existed.
You weren't stranded, luckily enough – yes, you were on an uninhabited planet, but you had your ship with you. It's in perfect condition except for missing energy. The solar panels were fully operational, but there was just this one problem; there's no sun.
Outside the thick, steel-lined windows lay nothing but the dead of night and the pulsing thrush of ocean water being pulled by the orbiting moons. Even with the outside lights on you could hardly see anything but the drifting sand caught in the still of deep currents. There was nothing above you – no rocks, no creatures, no sky. Just... dark. Like floating in a space where the stars had died.
Your ship, more dear to you than anything, was fortunately stocked with a variety of tools, both of use for survival and research. There is no living without discovery. As it happens, the government required both a spacesuit and a diving suit for each ship. One each.
So here we were; you had no idea which sector of space you were in, much less which planet, no chance of solar power, and a dwindling oxygen supply. You rifled through the storage closet containing the suits, digging about for a rebreather with shaking hands. Solitude was never something you feared nor despised. There was something different there, though – there was no option, no company in times of need, no help, no outside opinion. Already the stress was beginning to affect you, speeding your heartbeat and hastening your breath. Step by step, here.
Power source. This deep there had to be thermal vents, unless the planet was in the process of dying which, to be fair, wasn't impossible. From down in the depths it gets increasingly harder to tell, as the creatures grow into silence and shadowy disguises.
As you shoved your legs into the skintight suit, there was nothing in your head – hardly any plan at all except the thoughtless movement of your limbs. You recalled a long while ago you had taken a class that taught the procedure for being stranded on planets and islands with no hope of communication. Back then, like most of the students around you, you had never thought it would be of use. No one ever thinks the Thing will happen to them, and then it does. Because life likes to throw curveballs, and being stuck at the bottom of the ocean is the curveball that hit you in the back of the head.
It's alright. It will be alright. Humans would live on without you, and truthfully you had very few friends and relatives back on Keplar, the last remaining homestead of the human race. The extinction drawing nearer each passing century didn't occur to you then; I am not a necessity, you thought, but as a member of a dying species each of us becomes one. Each human was necessary to the cause, to breed out a new lineage, to outlast being hunted for sport. It becomes the purpose of life and it sickened you.
None of that mattered as you set the glass helmet over your head, the smallest amount of energy blinking the display to light. Tiny green letters appeared on the bottom of your view, telling you the date, the status of your health, and the chance of survival. Fortunately enough, it wasn't all that daunting, though you had to remember the suits' mechanisms had yet to scan the outside of the ship. Only the inside.
A voice can come along with the suit, but you had never used it before, and found it rather useless even then. You could read faster than she could speak. Later you would, most likely, use it due to the isolation of this place and the innate human need to be around others. For now you would focus on your own survival; find energy, find a water source, find food, and find the sun.
It's freezing. Or it would be, if the diving suit didn't regulate your temperature. The gauge in front of you said -1 Celsius, and with a shaking beat of your heart you thanked God for technology. As suspected you could see very little in front of you, aided only slightly by the lights of the ship, but generally left alone to your own discovery. Reaching for your belt, you pulled out the scanner gun, loading it up and hoping it would turn on.
A soft ding left the device once the display turned on, quickly connecting with the display in your suit for ease and practicality.
Depth: 221 Meters.
Life signs: Positive.
You sighed in relief as the words appeared. Life signs meant little considering microbes qualified as life, but you held out hope––something very rare for you to do––and began to step along the ocean floor.
It was as if you existed in a vacuum down here; nothing in, nothing out, nothing but nothing itself. The light inside your scanner shone onto empty air, rendering it useless besides the usual means of scanning. Funnily enough, your mind began to wander, imagining the creatures of a deep, isolated sea. Sight would be useless here, and in a flash you remembered sonar.
You fumbled for a moment with the triggers and switches, changing the settings to sound sonar which blew up a holograph out of the scanner. Lines of blue reflected onto the water, allowing a small map of the ocean floor to show itself to you. They ran in nearly straight lines that drew upwards, and after a second's thought, you realized this was not in fact a ravine that would have thermal vents, but rather a small but deep pit.
Fuck.
The scanner continued to beep softly as you kept the display on, holding it up higher in order to gauge the depth of the pit. If you were lucky, it wouldn't be too deep, though considering the overall depth of your crashed ship, you weren't likely about to receive any good news.
Curiosity began to overtake logic as your situation truly settled in. You knew you couldn't leave your ship down here, but there were life signs, and you were desperate to know if they were simple microbes or a full environment. Since you had yet to scan the entirety of the planet (since that would require a satellite and several samples of earth), there was no telling for sure. Excitement thrummed as imagination took hold, picturing a vast wilderness, unknown and uncharted. This was what you had always adored – discovery.
You swallowed the lump in your throat as you looked upwards, to the vast night and star-less waves that pushed the deep current gentle against your body. Even standing perfectly still you swayed – just slightly, just barely, mouth hung open as your thoughts left your own situation.
Is there a world above me?
Is there intelligent life?
Faster than your brain could process you were back inside the ship, stuffing the waterproof pockets in your helmet and belt full of food and water rations. Another one of those 'not-a-drop-to-drink' situations––eventually you would need to get a purifier from somewhere, whether that be from a simple boiling and condensing of water, or a technology that did the work for you. For now you would carry your food with you on your venture to the surface, and as you adjusted your rebreather you once more thanked God for technology.
Though it would be a long journey to the surface, you didn't bother finding or creating a water engine to propel you, which you began to regret about halfway up. The pressure changed slowly as you made your way up, popping your ears several times before the water even started to lighten. Ink faded away to a dark, seeping green, as though the water were sick, sick with tendrils of shadows that danced on the edge of your vision.
Water, now more slave to the moon's currents, began to pulse and thrush against your ears. The sheer level of noise paired with the constant popping of your ears made for an all-around unpleasant experience, bringing your eyes to water several times before you could blink the tears away. Although the current was gentle enough, it still sapped your energy quickly as you propelled yourself upwards.
Like climbing up into the sky, you breached the water's surface, relief filling your veins as you realized the long journey was over. A crystal-clear sky encased you, displaying the heavens in its' entirety. Again your mouth hung open in wonder––with no eyes to watch, you didn't have to consider appearances. Only your own fascination.
A tap against your foot sent you jumping away, eyes bulging as you looked down in surprise. Your heart continued to beat wildly despite your quick identifying of a fish, one with a single, massive eye.
Below the fish, still staring up at you, a swarm of life dwelled on the shallow ocean floor of soft, black sand. You inhaled sharply as your eyes flitted to every movement – the schools of fish, the pink and green coral growing out of hollow bones and crevices in caves and stone. This was where the life was, thriving on the surface that must've seen eons of sunlight.
Caught up in your own thrill, you quickly raised your head above the water once more, scanning the flat water world around you. From here you could see no mountains, or any land at all––only the scattered clouds and rolling waves against the dark of night.
You pulled your scanner out of your pocket, booting it up and holding it into the sky. It trilled for a moment, taking its' time to thoroughly scan the atmosphere, before reporting back with safe, breathable air. Another positive sign––the threat of death eased away, pulling with it your sense of unease.
For the next several hours, leading into a fast-setting night, you scoured the sea for the many different fish. The creatures on this planet were strange––as one might expect––but all relatively simple organisms defined into easy categories. To your continued delight, you found a grove nearby filled with pink and green corals, cradled in long strands of seaweed that stretched upwards like locks of tangled hair. The coral seemed to move, to breathe on its' own even with the skeletal structure this particular growth leaned towards.
Slowly the world dimmed into a halt, the surface of the water further blocking the light of two moons. The scarce light that hit the dancing waves reflected above you, glittering as though they were diamonds, caught in eternal movement. What light did get through dipped only a few feet before the rays vanished into the overwhelming dark. Bioluminescent flora and fish marked where the ocean floor was, dug into the layers of sand and hiding between the cracks in rocks.
You paused as the ocean fell into a hush. Even the waves had seemed to quiet, but it didn't occur for you to look upwards, as your attention was caught on the stillness of hiding fish. Suspended above the ground, you turned every which way in hopes of finding something––anything, really––that would tell you that you were safe. You had been so busy scanning the various lifeforms and adding them into the database it didn't occur to you that maybe some of them were edible, and that maybe you should've been catching some of them.
Biting the inside of your cheek, you tugged at the blisters already formed there from years of a bad habit. You checked your surroundings once more for any threats before pulling up your scanner, turning on the sonar projections and the small map it had automatically made during your little trip to the surface. Your ship was waiting––and it did no good to set up the solar panels during the day, as by the time they would be done, it would be nighttime. Instead you would have to install them now, and pray the eerie quiet of the ocean was just that: eerie. Nothing more and nothing less.
Why am I here?
There had to be a reason. You never did anything without reason, but you couldn't remember. It's possible you hit your head too hard when the ship came crashing down, though you didn't suspect that to be the cause, as you hadn't even gotten a bruise from the impact. The fire that engulfed the helm of the ship on the way down might've terrified you into a blackout, but again, you were not prone to forgetfulness.
With the solar panels set up amongst the coral with long, thick wires that led down into the pit, all that was left was to wait till morning. Until then you wouldn't be able to enter your ship – the oxygen was nominal there, and the rebreather only worked in water, pulling the oxygen out of it. Though exhaustion had certainly begun to drag down my movements, you stayed near the surface and stayed awake. Couldn't afford to accidentally drift away.
To pass the time, you toyed with the settings of your scanner, looking into the universal translator that had only come out recently. You'd never used it––nor any other sort of translator of your own making––so your interest was piqued when you spoke in Chen and it came out in English. Dr. Finnifer had come up with this. You never met the man yourself, but you heard good things, and enjoyed the various researches he had piloted.
"Bub."
Your head snapped upwards at the small sound, looking every which way for the source. Only when you found nothing and relaxed did you look down, finding a small crustacean scuttering along the sandy floor, with your scanner pointed right at it.
"Shrimp?"
You sat there, dumbfounded as you stared at the little creature.
"Bub. Bub."
You laughed. What else could you do? That was your first laugh on the planet, used on the translated thoughts of a small crab. There was, most likely, no better way to spend it.
When one is left alone with their thoughts, they find themselves thinking of things they never would've thought of around others. For you it was much the same––whenever you spent days on your own, caught up in the romanticism of your obsession with both the furtherment of humanity and the isolation of yourself, thoughts occurred to you that you wouldn't dare mention. The words flowed more easily, stating their points clearly and without stress. You would never be able to access that part of yourself around others. Too afraid of judgement. Too focused on societal manners. In those moments you could never remember your words.
This place was a haven, and as the only intelligent life here, you labelled it such. In the map of the stars you could only study after your ship was powered, you gave the stray planet the name Haven. Of course, it was entirely possible the planet already had a name and that it simply wasn't loading into the hologram, but considering you weren't about to talk to anyone anytime soon, you didn't care all that much.
Once your ship, the Treader, was fully powered, the first order of business was clean water. It had been about a day since you had drank anything, an irritation that was growing clear on your too-dry skin and parched mouth. You easily gathered salt water in a bucket previously used for vomiting, heaving it inside the ship and loading it into the purifier, which promptly began spitting out freshwater.
Most of yours days following the new steadiness of life here were taken up by tinkering. The tools your ship carried were suited for outer space, and while a few had already proved helpful, there were far more machines that would bring more ease into your work. A few of them you had began before arriving here, but the rest you were bound to create from scratch with only the materials you could find and the designs in the Treader's database.
your main priority was simple; slowly grow up the technology you had until you could fully delve into your research of the planet. Questions had swarmed your head from the second you took a nosedive into the atmosphere, and even now, the threat of death all too real, you craved answers more desperately than anything else. No planet is simply that––there is history, story in the layers of rock, in the evolutions of the creatures and the bloom of plants. It can tell you everything and nothing, depending on if you know how to read what it speaks.
The glowing blue letters above you were the only lights on in the ship, illuminating (albeit very dimly) the tweezers and wires in your hand. It was always black as death down here, and thus you set up a camera on the surface of the water, hoping to be able to tell the time of day without having to leave the safety of your ship. You had already spent two hours twittering about on this device, hoping the wires and batteries would cooperate to make a glider.
Compartments. Little... pockets, you thought to yourself, wondering where you could install holding places for the samples you would be collecting. The glider would give you easy access to the world around you, and with that, you could begin to take samples from the surface. From there you could begin to understand the world––log down the atmosphere's inconsistencies and the elements in the water. Catalogue the flora and record the creatures.
Only when you accidentally jammed the power button did you stop, no longer able to hold back my own exhaustion. A deep disappointment sprouted in your head, whispering that you'd worked for longer and harder before, but in the end you crawled beneath the sink counter and curled into your bed.
A clunk against the ship's hull stirred you, your eyes slowly opening as you rolled out of bed and flat onto the floor. With dragging feet and drooped shoulders, you made my way to the front of the ship, slapping the button for the headlights. A soft, long yawn came to you as you met eyes with a many-toothed, fat, scale-less fish.
"Go get fucked," you said, rather loudly, and you winced at the hoarseness of your voice.
The fish––surprisingly––didn't knock against the ship again. It didn't leave, but at least it wouldn't be bothering you anymore with the lights on. You crawled back into bed.
You woke again hours later, this time to rapid, high-pitched beeping coming from the ship's console. This time you were far more rested, though the realization that you'd drained the power with the headlights thoroughly depressed you. Apparently it was halfway into dawn, going by the camera you set up. With a sniff you resolved that however many hours you had gotten sleep would be enough, and that it was time to get back to work, which had been calling your name even in your dreams.
Now that the headlights were off, you had about ten more minutes of oxygen before you needed to leave to an area in which your rebreather would work. You could use that required outside-time to farm much needed materials and, if time allowed, take the first samples of Haven's surface.
Swarms of fish surrounded you, joined by the pink and yellow corals growing over the vast water-plain. At the shallow bottom of the ocean, sand had been pushed into small waves, decorating the ground in a pattern you noticed only when you turned to stare at your shadow. Stark against the pale yellow and the glittering sunlight.
As you skimmed along the ocean floor you committed the flora to memory, taking pictures of those more interesting and taking samples of all you could. Soon you would be able to categorize them––though, going by the different underwater species you'd seen thus far, there weren't that many different categories for them. One type had scales, the other had smooth skin, and that was it. Nothing more than that.
Your interest in the planet was comparatively mild, but there nonetheless. You had always taken to collecting things, even as a child, and this was a form of it. Collect specimens, collect information––understanding the earth better than you ever understood yourself. It's a way to calm the mind, and considering the other methods you could've chosen, this one works quite well.
The quiet silence of the ocean filled your ears as the fish began to fade away, movement coming to a halt the further you got. You almost paused, the motor of your glider slowing before you shook your head, continuing onwards. Hills of coral made way for a flatland of grass, filled with slithering creatures you could just barely see in the corner of your eye. The sun still shone perfectly bright, but the eerie of night had come before the sunset, clogging up your throat with anticipation.
You looked from side to side as you swam by. Whether it was from anxiousness or a simple curiosity, you couldn't quite tell at the time––too absorbed in your own thoughts. Still, you tried to keep your wits about you, as there is no better friend than a concentrated mind.
A loud bonk came from your helmet as you knocked straight into hard stone, sprouting a stinging headache from the bottom of your skull. A sharp gasp left you, but just as soon as the noise had come, it faded into bewilderment. Seated on a throne––twenty feet tall, a stone image of a King:
A human.
Beyond the statue lay ruins, structures and pillars of stone that had fallen into the dust of the ocean, yet to be concealed by sand. Vines of seaweed had overtaken many of the still-standing buildings, allowing fish to house up amongst the architecture. Surprisingly enough, most of the remains still held their original carvings, the intricate details that might've once meant something to a civilization long lost. Your heartbeat increased tenfold, eyes widening as you took in the sight.
This, you thought, this is perfect beauty.