Chapter Text
Kel walked down the small gravel path to where he would be staying for the next 6 months.
He had just gotten a job at the Alpine Signal Observatorium, where he would be living and working for the rest of his contract.
Usually this would be fine, but considering it was 1:00 in the morning by the time Kel arrived, it made every single noise especially terrifying, considering he was in a desolate forest miles away from any other people.
Despite this, Kel kept heading towards the facility he'd be staying at.
As he approached the building, he noticed a small paper.
Code is 1111.
"Real Original." Kel said. "Nobody's gonna be able to get in here with a code like that."
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Kel shouted, upon realizing that the entire first room of the building was covered in garbage and stains.
Kel decided to just try to ignore the trash for now, and looked throughout the base.
The first door he noticed was the garage, which had another keypad on it, and in the garage was the atv he would use to traverse the forest, a small lift that led to some kind of storage room with a mannequin leaning onto the door, seemingly to scare anyone who tried to open the door, and a door leading to the admin room.
Upon entering 1111 onto the admin room door, the door was still locked, but kel tried to enter "1234" instead, which luckily worked.
Upon entering the admin room, Kel saw the light switch for the main room, and a mannequin in the corner of the room.
In fact, now that he thought about it, there were a TON of mannequins in the building.
They really creeped him out, and he was considering buying a wood chipper to get rid of them all.
Exploring more of the base, he found a small break room, with a microwave and some tables and chairs, and next to that room was another small stoarage room, which was only about 3 feet wide, and 10 feet long.
The next room had stairs going up and down, Kel was going to go down first, but it was incredibly dark and he did not want to go down there, especially at one in the morning.
Upstairs led to a hallway with a coffee machine, and door leading to the same storage closet from earlier, and the bedroom, which had frames for many bunk beds, but only one actually had a mattress, and there was a fridge and oven, although the oven didn't work.
The fridge only had a banana, an MRE, a burger, a packet of shrimps, and a drive.
"Guess I have breakfast." Kel joked while grabbing the drive.
There was also a bathroom, with about 5 stalls and two small showers. (And a mannequin, of course.)
The final room was the one he'd been saving for last, the Signal Downloading and Processing room.
It had 4 consoles to triangulate, download, listen to, and process signals, along with a computer that looked straight from 1987.
There was also a small radar panel, which showed one dot, which was most likely the ATV, and a data tape recorder, which already had two tapes in it.
Next to the signal room was the server room, with about 25 servers and a console to check on the satellites around the array.
Kel wasn't tired, and there wasn't much to do besides cleaning the base, so he decided to get to work.
Esranki was about to leave her world- the Arirals home world, for the next 10-14 days.
She was on a scouting mission to explore a forest of anomalous activity on earth, and she was ecstatic.
Life on her home world was nice and all, but could get boring sometimes.
The area she was going to had no human life for miles, and hadn't had any for the past 6 months.
She would be accompanied by her best friend Argemia Armuntela, who was also the leader of the tall Arirals (quick authors note but if you don't know much about Ariral lore just read the wiki I don't wanna explain all this.)
The scouting mission would only be for a few days, and the purpose was to see if it would be necessary to conduct a longer mission to research the forest.
"So, Argemia, what exactly are we gonna really do once we get to earth?" Esranki asked.
"Well, we will just have to wait in the forest until any sort of anomalous activity begins, then we report it, and we'll return after about 4 days on earth."
"But that's such a short time," Esranki said. "What's earth like, anyways?"
"Well, for one thing, it's much colder than our planet, a whole 20 degrees Fahrenheit (ik Fahrenheit doesn't make sense here but if I called them gleebie gloops or smth you wouldn't understand) colder than our world, and the area we are going to who'll have very uneven terrain." Argemia responded.
"So basically the our planet but way less advanced and colder?"
"Pretty much."
"Huh, and those "humans" that live on earth?"
"Well, we won't see any of them in person, but they have no snouts, can only be as tall as a short, and are much weaker and slower compared to an ariral. Also most of out bodily fluids are poisonous to them."
"Huh, I would be thought humans were at least a bit stronger" Esranki said.
"Compared to the other creatures on their planet, they are actually very resistant to poisons, so everything else on their planet is even weaker." Argemia responded.