PRELUDE: THE CURTAIN
The time-keeper strikes to its seventeenth tick, its noise tapping against the insides of Amry's skull. She lets out a deep sigh; Her Emptiness being bored out of her mind is nothing new, but not for this great of an interval, she thinks to herself. Seventeen ticks is far too long for anybody to wait for something, anything that could possibly serve as nourishment. Comedy and horror begin to blend to one inside her thoughts, tragedy becoming one with love, the thoughtforms formerly constituting any kind of meaningfully interesting content having been replayed over and over to no avail. So when her pod opens, she can hardly believe the sight in front of her. At first, she struggles to focus, her appendages nearly atrophied from being in perpetual standstill. His Tragicality stands above her, Sekri's face obscured by the shadow cast by the receding hull. Sekri waits before Amry until the pod opens and loosens her restraints, his figure being unflinching, as if the man before her calculated every thought he's ever had, at least from her perspective. In reality, he is dissociating horribly from the same cranial shock, but that's neither here nor there. Amry slides out of the pod, almost as if a fluid, and looks around at the bright pink room she used as her residency seventeen ticks ago. “so how was your hibernation?”, Sekri asks. “absolute dog shit, thank you ≈:P”, Amry replies, giving a significantly less than hearty chuckle, more akin to that of a wheeze. “such is. that notwithstanding, i trust you remember our purpose here – if you do not, then—“ “of course i remember??? do you take me for a fool, sekri?“ “you do play the part of one”, Sekri says, mimicking something almost akin to a facepalm. “only on television! besides, what exactly is the commotion? surely this isn't just a routine tick check, given your tone...“ Wordlessly, Sekri gestures towards the edge of the room, his fuzzy, blue appendages moving almost exaggeratedly far in order to get his point across. Amry, with her stature failing to cohere into anything parseable as a thoughtform, manages to get herself up just enough to see out the window. Outside, for the first time in ages, Amry sees something worth looking at. The window fails to portray the same, unending painting of inky space, but instead something almost prohibitively bright. At the top lies a sea of blue and white, and at the bottom, various rectangular structures litter the view. The blue persists, flowing around various objects seeming to pepper its surface. At the center lies a large white mass of stone and metal, connecting spaces that would have been removed by the blue. Amry lets out a squeal of delight. “how quaint ≈:D! the colors here are so vibrant...“ “you are still aware we're here strictly on business? or did the pod destroy even more of your remaining coherency”, Sekri asks, the mass of fur vaguely mimicking a brow furrowing regardless. “i know i know i am aware!!! but tell me you aren't even a little bit excited?“ “excitement implies a degree of enjoyment i fail to receive from this task“ “your title precedes you, then ≈:P“ “as doesn't yours. we should be coming in within ten blinks. gather your belongings and meet me at the doors.“ Just like that, Sekri hightails his way out of the room, terminally unable to deal with this for an instant longer.
Amry takes a look around her room for something to do. To her left lies a genuinely impressive collection of graphic novels, all seemingly centering around the same, almost generic-looking yaoi boys. One clad in red, one in black, the two seemingly constructing the colors of romance themselves, intertwining almost perfectly: it's frankly staggering how much chemistry these two have, Amry thinks to herself. Inexplicably, the series itself is called “FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU”. The entire room is almost lined with merchandise of this serial to a degree that could be considered obsession: there's a badly painted portrait of one of these characters on the wall, his grey skin looking alarmingly chiseled. To the right lies a pile of plush toys, each one lovingly named with not a single duplicate, and a ballpit full of nothing but green balls. It's not time for those right now, but one of these days... Amry sits in the normal chair, and not the plush pile. She- oh god damnit. Amry sits in the plush pile with a copy of “FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, VOL. 31: TOP CAT”, her favorite volume, and puts a green object vaguely resembling a pacifier in a hole vaguely resembling a mouth. The pile accepts her, her thawed form taking root in the contours, as she grabs a remote buried within its recesses and hits “PLAY”. An apparatus halfway across the room starts whirring up, its circuitry looking almost organic, and out plays some deeply eclectic electronic music, almost loud enough to pierce through the halls.
Meanwhile, as he's exiting, Sekri hears some incredibly loud eclectic electronic music piercing through the halls of their vessel. Go figure. He covers his audial receptors and runs quickly towards the navigation room, with the door therein hopefully being able to let him find some solace from the oncoming noise. It doesn't work. The music is still there, even after he slams the door with the force of an elephant. “is melody not meant to be melodic?”, Sekri thinks to himself, and he constructs a makeshift noise-isolation tool out of nothing but copper wire, duct tape, his wits, and noise-cancelling headphones. The room itself is lined with not just computers, but devices almost resembling classical seafaring navigation: a digital sextant sits towards the center, moving on various motors to get the right data. Sekri calmly walks over to the primary computer, typing in “planned location?”. The computer provides a barrage of data, but two points stick out:
LOCAL COORDINATES: 48.358312, -4.534063 NO ORGANIC INTELLIGENT LIFE DETECTED
That's great, Sekri thinks to himself. That's fucking great. Why would the computer route to an area with nobody alive on it??? Does it not understand the objective of what we're trying to FUCKING DO HERE? You've got to be kidding m-
IT WAS WIPED OUT
Oh. I guess it's fine, then. Honestly makes my job easier. Organic entities? Chumps, the lot of them. “other entities?”, Sekri says to the computer. Rather than responding in text, the computer begins attempting to render something — a wireframe mesh appears, with two strange triangular objects lying towards its top as the colors render in. Rather than doing so, however, the entire screen flashes a bright orange — ZAP! — and the entirety of the navigation systems flash in tandem, the entire computer rebooting. Sekri sits in silence until the computer eventually responds:
INFORMATION OVERLOAD — MANUAL INSPECTION RECOMMENDED
Figures as much, he thinks. Just my luck. “navigate to local coordinates. i guess”.
YOU GUESS???
“don't sass me. you are a machine. you have no right to speak in my holy tongue“
JACKASS
“oh, hush“ And just like that, he's gone.
Just a few blinks later, the vessel lands with a loud THUD! Its surface, vaguely resembling metal, crashes onto the land below, decimating green spires beneath its almost comically large wake. The land watches back as if it had eyes, the hills below almost perfectly fitting the ship's curved geometry. Amry gets forcefully ejected from the plush pile, her book falling from her tendrils, hitting the floor, and rotating with intense ferocity. As if it had agency of its own, it does a beeline straight for the bookshelf, landing directly in its proper slot in the collection. What a wonderful stroke of luck. Amry herself is not so lucky, instead falling flat onto the floor like a puddle. Somehow, her liquid form failed to leave any residue on the plushies she holds dear. Regardless, that's gotta hurt. “i did tell you that it would be a rough landing”, Sekri says as he opens the door. “...where did you get a larval cap?”, he says, remarking on the pacifier-like object in Amry's mouth. “HAHAHAHA DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT ≈:D ≈:D ≈:DDD NOT IMPORTANT— hi sekri!”, she replies, forcing herself slightly off the floor yet still firmly glued to it. “...right, well, we are here, get up“ “get up??? but dear sekri, i assumed that we could have done this remotely ≈:O“ “the computer and i appear to have a grudge. get up“ “computers don't talk, sekri!“ “have you ever used a computer?“ “not yours, maybe“ “then shut up, and get up“ Amry forcefully ejects herself from the floor, the “larval cap” being put into a drawer by the plush pile. Sekri, pretending that he didn't see anything, decides to hobble out of the room to avoid not seeing any further things.
The two make their way to the loading/unloading dock uneventfully. Perhaps stereotypically, it opens slowly, releasing gas outside the vessel as a ramp descends on a motor, the torque required forcing it to travel at a snail's pace. The gas being released, of course, isn't for breathing or anything. It's a fog machine, placed there solely for spectacle's sake, symbolic of whatever the culture on the incoming planet thinks of it. After all, cultures that have never seen space travel before have certain... preconceptions in their media, ones that need to be fulfilled in order to create a lasting impression — an impression that sticks in your mind like a fluid, pulsing through the wrinkles to create a coherent mental image that can never be removed. It's also because the fog just looks cool. Her Emptiness gets incoming communications as the door opens. She rejects them. When the ramp finally opens and collapses below, it reveals a landscape that Amry and Sekri find almost eerily serene. The green spires below, some destroyed by the whirring air of the engine, reveal themselves to be more than spires: some are almost ellipsoids, bifurcated along their center line and contracting themselves into a point, infinitely pinching themselves. The exact eccentricity of these ellipsoids varies wildly, though none are circular. Behind them, a sharp distinction arises between the green and an almost endless blue, so all-encompassing that it feels like you could fall in. A grey hexagonal prism, far from piercing the heavens above, lies within the green, an orange tip above seeming nearly transparent. It would appear that any path here that could be tread has already been tread, Sekri thinks to himself. Beautiful but stagnant, almost as if the life here made a clean break, an gargantuan implosion, a collapse in upon itself that was as inevitable as the unending hum of life and death. Perfect. Wordlessly, Amry and Sekri make their way off the ramp onto the green fields. Caught in the spectacle, Amry seeks around the entire area, her glance drifting all over the place. She catches some black amongst the green behind her, lining the area with something much flatter than any of the ellipsoids on the floor. The blackness winds and twists, some of it being more greyness than blackness. Amry thinks about touching it, but the moment she thinks just a bit too hard, Sekri grabs her by her tendril. Guess that's not happening. Sekri, knowing the commonalities that lie between alien cultures, heads towards the hexagonal prism with Amry in tow, identifying the structure to himself as some kind of building or shelter. He can sense Amry's visceral discomfort, her will to explore. But once again, they have a job to do. “okay, but what's the point in not searching around??? the job itself is searching around!”, Amry says. Taken aback by the sudden incursion, Sekri's fur stands up straight on his back. Immediately, he replies “DON'T- don't do that”. “do whaaaaat? try to get you to enjoy something for once in your miserable life? ≈_≈“ “if i needed assistance with the misery you seem to desperately wish to prescribe me as having, then i would have asked for it.“ “do you take me for yet another analyst? if i was, i would never resort to such spartan methods as just talking to you... besides, i just want to see you doing well!“ “i am doing well.“ “it sure doesn't seem like it!“ “if you want to convene with me, do it after our shift is over. we can play a game, we can do something like we used to, but surely you understand the importance of this. i mean, look at you-“ “look at what? what about me???“ “exactly.“ Amry pauses. “i will be fine, you know that, this too shall pass-“ “but only if we do something. inaction will not be tolerated.”, Sekri responds, his pace picking up. “fiiiiine. you worrywart.....“ “i worry because it is my job to worry.“ Amry lets out a sigh, unable to comprehend her acquaintance's career focus, as the two make their way to the hexagon, their gazes refusing to meet for more than a blink along the remainder of the journey.
Upon reaching the hexagon, a grey plate lies beneath their feet, and on the hexagon itself lies a red door, inviting and sinister in equal parts. Sekri busts down the door with his paws as if he's expecting something on the other side, before remembering that there is nothing here: there fundamentally cannot be, assuming that the computer's claim of perfect information retrieval is anything close to correct. “you don't have to act like that, jackass”, Amry says with a giggle. “every being is intent on calling me a jackass today, it seems...”, Sekri replies. Inside the hexagon lies a layout that the two of them find almost deceptively familiar: a spiral staircase, one much like the one on the vessel they flew in on. Sekri finds the simultaneity strange, an uncanny reflection of the culture that he comes from, if he can call it a culture. As he walks up the stairs, Sekri's shadow creeps up the wall as if it had a claim to existence of its own, refusing to cohere to his form, or to anything at all. Amry's shadow outright refuses to manifest, as if she was a hole in reality. She doesn't seem to be bothered by this. The two reach the top of the hexagonal spire, standing in the tip-tops of the area, as they see a very large circle alongside a large red lever. Upon the lever lies the text: “à utiliser uniquement par du personnel certifié”. Neither of them have any idea what this means. “can i can i can i??? can i pull it???”, Amry says, practically bouncing up and down in excitement. Sekri stares out the windows. “fine.“ Amry hits the switch, and the light stares alongside Sekri on the world they've found below.
The curtain unfurls to reveal the stage. The beaming light casts shadows on the serene, almost ominously quiet landscape. Not a whisper is given from the long, green stalks sprouting from the area, planted firmly below as if an inverted paintbrush. Nothing flies in the blue above, nor grazes on the green below. No hum or whir is present in the distance, no breeze is cast, no redness is spilled. The wheel of fate itself has almost stopped spinning, frozen in a block of ice unable to be pierced by the sharpest spear. The shadows refuse to shift, as if watching miniature figurines on a film set, each glued to their respective locations before anything can take place. A perfect machine, but one for which the gears stopped turning ages ago. On the line where the blue meets green below, a single piece of orange washes up, almost impossible to see from the current vantage point, two triangles lying towards its top. Some things stop for noone, and some things stop for anyone. Above, the Arbiter prays for returns.