Looting the aeons

There are legends told in the cosmos that speak of intriguing places and phenomenons in faraway unexplored systems.

I heard of a gigantic spaceship, forged in antediluvian times by the Gods themselves, abandoned on a silent planet with no name orbiting a dying star. The Machine grants a single wish to all who enter its entrails and touch its core.

Finding it was an effort in and of itself. The rumors guided me to this deserted world at the threshold of known space, hidden among forests of stars and nebulous veils. It was a miracle moment. I had gathered the clues and followed the breadcrumbs and the trail. Cosmic winds were favoring me, luck was on my side.

The wreckage rested on a dried out alkali flat, the remains of a lake that died at the same time as the rest of the world in times immemorial. The wind, nearly inaudible in the tenuous atmosphere, blew toxic salts to the horizon that held the limits of Man’s knowledge. The vessel was colossal, its enormity beyond reason. My own craft, so large for the needs of a single astronaut, was utterly dwarfed.

I landed my vehicle at a respectable distance. Mayhaps I feared, on a subconscious level, to offend the cosmic relic if I landed too close? I walked in the sand and salt for what appeared to be an eternity, so solemn was the moment. In my suit, the noise of my heart beating and my breath drowned what little noise existed outside. Anywhere humans went, they had to carry a bit of their own world with them, because the true world will kill them. Sheltered in my bubble, isolated from the exterior for my long walk, I was confronted with myself, and my perception of time was dilated. In this instant, I may very well have been the loneliest human of history.

Was I scared? In hindsight yes, but I cannot say I felt it as such at the moment. A more primal and instinctive part of me wanted to go back, retreat to the relative safety of my spacecraft, the comfort of human civilization. I drowned this dread by convincing myself I was there for glory, for science, for wealth, for fame.  I think the truth was that I was there for the puerile desire to break rules and taboos. Every step on this world was a transgression. I was Prometheus stealing fire from the Olympians, I was Adam and Eve sneaking back in the Garden of Eden beneath God’s suspicion.

There was, in the vessel’s hull, an opening large enough for a man. It wasn’t a scar from some whatever long-forgotten battle or a consequence of its crash landing. No, the opening had been built deliberately, as some sort of door or airlock, and left open by the crew, like an invitation, or maybe a trap.

I entered slowly, putting as much dignity as possible in my footsteps, to pretend I was paying my respects to the wreckage. Such hypocrisy, I was here as a thief, not a pilgrim. But this wasn’t a simple grave robbing, or a bank heist. I was looting the eons themselves. I was taking from the Gods themselves in their very temples. The prize was near.

The belly of the ship, I cannot describe it, as it was necessary to see it to understand. I was fumbling in the dark, with only my lamp to provide light, leaving flares behind to act as breadcrumbs. Yet even in the gnarled maze of this inhuman construct, without a map, I was able to somehow find by instinct where to go. It sounds absurd, improbable, yet I cannot shake the feeling those who built this place wanted others to find its core.

Its core. The core was finally there in front of me. It was a circular room, with a single ethereal light dancing in the middle, its cold light couldn’t overcome the darkness. And surrounding the light laid the corpses of inhuman beings, giants dead for so long they were halfway between mummification and fossilization. And I understood I was looking at the creators.

And then the core gave me a vision.

A city on an unknown world. A prosperous city. A magnificent city that stretched as much towards the horizon as the firmament. A city with more wealth and knowledge I could comprehend. It was like admiring Troy before the fire.

And then from everywhere at once came destruction that can only be compared to the fury of a God. The human mind cannot comprehend its magnitude or scale. A malevolent force ended in seconds centuries worth of civilization for reasons beyond knowing.

Terror

Flesh is consumed

Bones are pulverized

Eyes containing an eternity of malice and cruelty

Nowhere to escape

And now right in front of me in the room was sitting another entity, a wraith, a nearly amorphous shape like a human covered in a ghostly veil, its presence radiating fear, evil, malice, panic, exactly like the cursed vision.

"Leave this place", this wasn’t a voice I was hearing, it was as if the words, the concepts themselves violated my skull. "You are not welcome in this place. Leave".

I tried to convince myself that none of this was happening, and it understood what I was thinking.

The wraith made a sound like a laughter, a terrifying sound like the screeching of the damned, and even though I cannot recall what it sounded like I can still remember how it chilled my soul to hear it. Out of the ether itself it produced a long chromed needle, as long as the half of a man but only millimeters thick, ending in a cruel point that it thrust at my face, still laughing like an infernal scream.

I lifted my hand reflectively to protect myself, and the needle pierced it completely. I howled and fled in panic, desperately following the breadcrumbs back to safety while the wraith gave pursuit, always right behind me, so close it was like I could feel it crawl on my back, and laughing infernally in victory like a maniac twisting the knife in the wound, so it could savor as much of my fear as possible before I escaped its lair.

The needle vanished in the thin air it came from. Even to this day the wound never really healed, and sometimes it hurts just like the first day.