Neptune’s Fury
The year
was 2900; Earth was far from inhabitable. The remnants of human civilization
moved away from the burned out hull that was once a beautiful and fertile world
to the far-off world of Ganymede. Scientists and space pilots had been
searching for a hospitable homeworld for nearly 900 years. Most of the found
planets were too harsh for life. Life on Ganymede was only possible through
centuries of vast terraforming and atmospheric alterations. With the advent
interplanetary travel came the arrival of space adventurers. Often-times, these
were people paid as contractors to journey into the vast unknown in search of
resources and a new home. Some people simply enjoyed the thrill of exploration.
Neptune was the least-visited planet due to its extremely high winds and
poisonous and inhospitable atmosphere, though some pilots still made the long
voyage to the great blue god of the abyss. One pilot, a man by the name of
Chuck Starkey, took his five-man space crew to Neptune. Like so many before him
and an equally great number after, Starkey and his crew never returned to their
Jovian home. This is their story.
Chuck
Starkey was dining aboard his 160-foot model 1260 spacecraft. Starkey was on a
voyage to Neptune and was approaching Saturn. From his seat in the craft’s
galley, he could see the gas giant and all of its glorious rings. The journey
was to take four months but nobody was waiting on Starkey or his crew, so
nobody would notice their absence. Neptune was still a relatively popular place
for the more adventurous of space pilots. Many flew into the top layers of
Neptune’s atmosphere for an extra burst of excitement but none had actually
flown deep inside the Neptunian core and lived to tell about it. Reports from
some time after Starkey’s reflection at Saturn’s rings show that Starkey
entered Neptunian orbit on July 14, 2900. He and his craft and crew entered the
planet’s atmosphere and dipped down into the core. Within the hour, they again
exited the planet’s atmosphere and went on their way. Starkey and his crew
began an easy way home. They plotted a course for Star Dock 61, a popular
refueling station and orbital rest platform. On their way to the Star Dock, one
of Starkey’s crew noticed what looked like light green oxidation on the Main
System Evacuation Panel. When the crewmember touched the oxidation, a substance
of the same sort quickly attached itself and advanced up the man’s arm. In an
attempt to brush off the substance, the man’s arm fell to the ground in a light
green puff of dust. The man quickly collapsed in shock. The ship was thrown
into a panic.
Closer
inspection of the ship showed that the green was all over the ship, from the walls
to the instrument panels. Quick research on what was left of the onboard
computer showed no results for the described organism but the crew began
calling it a parasitic organism. Observation showed that the parasite had
attached itself to most everything but took much longer to decompose metal than
it did organic material. As a crewmember looked out a porthole, he observed
pieces of the ship falling away as the parasite made its way inside and out of
the craft. Within ten minutes, there would be no more ship and there would be
no more life. Some of the men onboard prayed, some simply stood there and
waited for the inevitable end. Moments later, the ship was a trail of green
dust and debris on an irrelevant dot in the endless dark.
This report
was created from transmissions and radio data from the ship of Chuck Starkey,
the Fury received seven hundred years ago. It was a much more chaotic period
then. What is left of the population of Earth have settled Ganymede as their
new homeworld. Chuck Starkey’s story has been inscribed on a monument in front
of the Ganymedian capitol. In schools, children recite a pledge honoring the
brave space pilots who helped settle our world, much as the children of the
former United States of America did some two millennia ago. Ganymede as a
homeworld is very peaceful. There are no wars, no pollution; there is no hate.
Relics of books thousands of years old that have been recovered and transcribed
from Earth would describe life here as utopian. Unemployment is at 100%.
Everyone has a purpose with mine being transcribing and cataloging antique and
ancient records. My job is to sort through books and recordings recovered or
brought from earth. Data is entered into computers where it is catalogued by country
of origin and century relevant. The country for which I was assigned is the
United States of America. I have nearly 2,000 years of archived material thus
far. Hopefully in years to come, these records will be looked at and read so
that the bright history of our history as humankind may be known to future
generations.
Time Read Through Dust
– An Epilogue Companion to Neptune’s Fury
Ganymede – Five thousand years
after the filing of the report on the final voyage of Chuck Starkey and the
Fury.
The cities
and settlements of Ganymede had long since crumbled. Alien life had been
searching the universe in search of intelligent life but to no avail. All they
had found were the remnants of ancient civilizations long-since past. What they
lacked in findings, they made up for in immense knowledge of former life in the
universe. It happened that one day, they landed on Ganymede, at the former site
of the Ganymedian capitol. After some searching, they found vast libraries
cataloguing the lives of these humans. They found rooms full of thousands of
years of history, though the records stopped some four thousand years before
the day of the arrival of these beings. Again, the beings resumed their quest
for sustained intelligent life. Three thousand years later, the beings would
find a planet some distance from Ganymede covered in lush ferns and deep
oceans. Through the thick and fertile jungles, they found similar remnants of
civilization teeming with creatures that walked upright and used tools. Though
they possessed no powers of speech with which the alien beings could
communicate, they seemed to communicate among themselves with loud shrieks,
hoots, and howls. They also seemed to know some form of hand gestures with
which they communicated on a basic level. Before the alien beings left, they
deemed the planet in their own language, “Erth”.
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