Size: Medium
Surface: Glacial
Atmosphere: Clear
Axis: Unknown
I came across Planet 002 suddenly, as if to shake me of my isolation. Planet 001 still lingered like the pleasant fragrance of a bittersweet memory on an overcast day. The idea of shaking off the subtle gloom was welcome. The act of doing so was much harder.
****
The planet itself, or at least what lay before me, was blanketed in snow. I stepped off my ship and began to establish a perimeter. Nothing much on the horizon, only white. White sky, white plains, white dunes.
Behind my ship, the displaced snow revealed something akin to ice. Thick, glossy, glass-like, but challenging to see through. I took a knee and brushed a section clean. Very little was revealed, kindling a human impulse.
I returned to my ship and rummaged for a bit. With a crunch, I hauled my way back to the cleared ice. My footprints were replaced by the sliding trail of a heavy metal cylinder. I prepared to work, the silence pierced by the spinning tip of metal shearing through glacial mass. I finished by lantern.
Staring down into the water was staring up into the night sky, revealing a darkness that glowed. I’ve always held the belief that a fear of heights was a fear of depths. Perhaps swimming was a reminder of how slowly we fall, or the ephemeral splendor of rising to the heavens. My inclination leaned towards the former interpretation. Floating is a surrealist’s drop.
Taking a glass tube out of my ruck, I filled the vial with the clearest water I had ever seen. So clear in fact, I wondered if I was taking a sample of a spirit rather than a combination of elements. On second thought, I poured the liquid out. It felt wrong to take. Like caging a bird.
I considered diving myself, but I couldn’t comprehend what I’d be diving into. Weighing my options, I tested if my equipment would survive a dive. It would.
I sunk my device deep into the depths, or perhaps it rose to them. The camera sent grainy footage back to me. I switched to night view, resulting in a haunting green film.
****
10m, 20m, 30m, my stomach lurched, a horrible quality for someone navigating space. The haunting glow remained, the depths flashing in my hands. I wondered if it would go clean through the planet, if that were possible.
The screen in my hands showed a shock of light. I turned off the night vision.
Then the soft glow of coral, or something reminiscent of coral. A wall of textured tubules lined my view. At intervals, the tubules expelled glowing fragments into luminous clouds.
Somewhere, clouds of dust and hydrogen gas are slowly forming a star. Down in these depths it happens in moments, over and over again. Once a galaxy was born, I directed my camera in the opposite direction towards an empty blackness. I switched the night vision on.
40m, 50m, 60m, I panned into nothing but space. 61m, my camera shook and rolled. I froze uncertain of the meaning. The camera steadied roughly 2m East from where it had been. I panned the camera and saw nothing.
At 65m, a golden glow. The camera rolled once more. I waited for the camera to stabilize and then panned around once more. I saw nothing.
At 70m, the camera went black. I floated it up to the surface where it snagged on a bit of ice. Reaching my arm beneath the ice, I pulled the camera free. I looked it over, inspected the screen, and checked the battery. No cracks. No condensation. No breach. It seemed fine. It had simply been turned off.
****
Leaving my ship, I navigated West towards two satellite moons. Standing upon the snow-covered ice, I thought of the push and pull of water. The calming effect it has — rolling tides, calming depths, a rocking back and forth. Then I wondered if that push and pull could account for the roll of the camera, and it could, but it could not account for the push of a button.
On the horizon was a jutting structure of ice. From a distance it appeared glacial, organic but as I approached, the edges rounded off – a trick of the light, perhaps.
A gust of wind whipped white the world around me. I took a knee and grabbed the ruck from my shoulder. An hour passed, thick with white. I set forth pitching a tent. The ovoid glacier on the horizon and to my left and right, nothing but alabaster plains. No cover, no shield from the winds. I double fastened my tent and braced for a long night.
From within the rattling rayon and mylar, I inspected my camera, turning the metallic casing over in my hands. No cracks. No signs of contact.
I played back the footage – luminous clouds dispersed by polyps, dancing fragments of light, the camera sinking further, and then the roll to the right, sinking further still, a roll to the left. I rewound the footage before tinkering with both the speed and the contrast. I played it again, slower this time. Several frames of darkness, the polyps, the roll. During the first roll, I paused on a frame. A glowing fragment, akin to an abstract thumbprint, appeared in the top left of the screen.
The next morning, I packed my tent and headed to the glacier. The sun had caught the surface, bright and beaming. I have always been partial to the opal sheen light can make on white, sunny days. The prairie was dotted by little windswept dunes, and I took pleasure in making footprints in the fresh snow.
The outline of the glacier continued to round, surrounded by a halo of light. The scene confused me. Large glowing orbs dotted the surface, moving as though in a silent dance, pulsing without a pattern. Biological chaos. Communication or breeding or hunting. I watched without answer. A light above. A light below.
***
I navigated around the glacier of twinkling light, crunching through the fallen snow. After a time, the crunch turned to slush, turned to water. I was hesitant to get too close for fear of falling in.
A ribbon was carved through the snow and ice, a rolling stream rising from the depths – or perhaps a stream running down into them. Regardless, the stream sat just atop the water, as though of a different volume. Perhaps three meters back I noticed a subtle glow. Beneath the surface were little glowing orbs. After a time, they clustered into groups of three, gathering further down the way. My footprints marked alongside their journey as I raced back and forth. I sought interpretation.
The river widened behind the glacier. Large orbs departed the water, floating out with bits of snow and ice hovering, rotating around them.
The pure water, the polyps, the luminous chunks, the binding of something new. The way they absorbed bits of snow and ice into their orbit like minute stars with galaxies all their own. I wondered if they were autonomous or a collective. Did they have free will or were they fixed within a system unknown to me?
****
I returned to my ship mulling over what I had seen. The axis of our lives was unclear. As snow fell without direction, I sat. And then I left.