Counting Down

The wind flows across the plain, its ragged progress that of a pack
of wolves, over the ancient ice, across the primordial snow and
unforgiving sharpness of broken rocks and stone. It is the exhalation
of frosty emptiness, the uncanny silence of far-off, subteranean
spaces. Its' voice, howling in the night, is heard by no-one. Its' home
is the heart of loneliness. Its' destination, icy obscurity and the
unmapped distance of an untrodden desert. The spirit that hides within,
spinning in these shreiking currents is absolutely alien.

There are stars. Constellations rise above the jagged horizon.
Majestic. The overarching sky, pierced. A million silvery points of
light, glimmering and inscrutable, rejoicing in their namelessness,
pouring their brittle luminescence over the land. An unheeded
libation.

The nights are long here. An impotent sun sets, withdraws its thin
illumination and the brief day is easily forgotten, lost within the
more densely woven fabric of the frozen twilight. We were bound to feel
nervous here. Become neurotic. Our instability was natural. We were
only human after all.

Through the laminated quartz of the observation window, I can watch
faraway snowstorms forming, monitor their development with implausible
accuracy. Their wild gusts and whistling flurries, their towering
clouds of unbreathable vapour. Information gathered in and stored by
equipment far beyond ordinary understanding. Some of the circuitry
still functions. An observational machine, suspended high above the
crystalline methane cirrus, still sends its' unheard reports.
Electrical voices muttering in the void. Silicon sparkles in a
fathomless ocean of shadows.

Our refuge seemed impregnable to us but proved poignantly fragile. We
were naive to imagine that our frail technologies could have protected
us. Now, the energy levels are diminishing. A cascade of damage, minute
system failures, will, in time, incapacitate life support mechanisms. A
final darkness is encroaching. Our eyes are closing. There is sadness
but no regret. For we could not have forseen what was to be. We were
unprepared.

How easily our first optimisms were overthrown. How childishly arogant
our plans seem now. We came to this place to plunder it, imagining
almost inconcievable riches lay beneath the barren hostilty of the
surface. Minerals and base metals. Gold and radioactive elements.
Crucial to the continued survival of our own exhausted world. A supply
plentiful enough to perpetuate our heavy industries, guarrantee our
ascendancy for ever. Our hearts burned with a new-found enthusiasm. Our
minds crackled with unspeakable avarice.

The station was constructed, over many terrestrial years, by our agents
of machine intelligence. They arrived, as instructed, landing their
glittering vessels in the wintry region later to become known to us as
'The drifts of unconsciousness'. Coldly, methodically, enhanced
platinum limbs impervious to onslaughts of corrosive rain and the
terrifying power of the soltice typhoons, they constructed, from
modified crystal and lab-created, self-healing bronze, the delicate
prismatic structure that was to be our home.

It was beautiful. Shining warmly. Amber in the steely penumbra. Bright
windows and landing bays sending a soft glow of welcome out into the
weather, warming the turbulent atmosphere. A beacon of welcome at
journeys' end.

And years of travel, ten thousand days of vaccuum and silence. Bathed
in amniotic resins, we lay entombed, the stillness like death. Our eyes
open but unseeing. Oblivious to the dim flickering of guiding computer,
the cold fires of passing comet. Waiting, the clock ticking, counting
down, ticking in the sterile quietness, waiting for our moment of
mechanical ressurection. At last our hearts struggled back to life.
Cocktails of reanimating adrenalin and blood plasma, painlessly
administered by delicate robotic fingers, and we felt, beneath us, the
rumbling of the engines, the deploying of landing apparatus. We took
poccession of our home and our work began.

We were many. The task almost insurmountable. But we rose to the
challenge, adapting seamlessly to our new environment, dispatching
probes to colonise uncharted valleys, energetically seeking out
possible areas for exploitation. Our success was astonishing. Our
processes expanded, grew more complex. Predictions had been correct.
Each of the mines we created yielded quantities far beyond our
expectations. Cargo carriers departed every day, returning the bounty
to Earth. We recieved requests, with increasing regularity, from other
outlying colonies, for more silver or copper or consignments of
magnesium or noble gasses. For the extension of production. For the
exploitation of expanding markets. The introduction of new weapons. We
encountered no resistance, for our research, painstakingly carried out
by infallible, artificial-thought units, indicated that no indigenous
life existed here. Nothing could evolve in such hostile conditions.
Nothing ever would. All our calculations had been correct. Perfect.
Complete. Without flaw.

Yet, things did go wrong. It is difficult to isolate, precisley, when
the unravelling of our proud undertaking began. In small things, maybe.
In quiet ways. First, we heard rumours, from farflung outposts, of
probes sent out, failing to return. Vanishing completely. Irretrievably
lost in the arctic wilderness beyond the perimeter wall. Tales of
perfectly balanced machinery becoming eratic, breaking down and a
strange forgetfulness in some people, an inability to recall training,
methods of repair. A general downgrading of many of our
programmes.

Then, a sense of presence, reported by many. The intuition that, out
there, in the drifting snows and ceaselessly spiralling winds,
something lived. Inhabiting the trackless landscapes, concealing itself
within the sudden storms and whirlpools of liquified carbon dioxide,
moving undetected by our sensors. Softly, deftly, approaching
inexorably. Gaining access.

They came to us first in dreams.

In the cloistered warmth of my private quarters, I let myself drift,
quite easily, without struggling, into a deep-sleep state more
all-encompassing than I had, hitherto, expeirenced. And was assailed by
visions of extraordinary intensity. Moonlight shattered in deep water.
Broken beams of icy radiance shot through the submarine depths of my
sleeping mind. And voices mumuring. Some partially understood
half-language resonant with desire, the shivering anguish of the
unfullfilled. Then a blurring, dissolving lack of definition. A gentle,
ebbing surrender.

Upon waking, alarm summoning me to the secondary work cycle, I knew I
had been changed. An arid exhaustion, some profound and unfamiliar
lassitude lay over me. A strange fragmented premontion of approaching
breakdown. I detected, or thought I detected, similar symptoms in a
number of my colleagues, found myself imagining one dream experienced
simultaneasly by many, knew I was unable to articulate any of my
thoughts.

The dreams came rhythmically and with increasing frequency from then on
, each rest period characterised by a gentle descent into some
glimmering, oceanic abyss, cavern of low voices, archaic word-cries, a
shrill, almost feminine keening echoing through my subconsciousness. I
began to think I could see them, moving in the periphery of my dreaming
vision. Shapes, limbs sinuous and gleaming. Eyes, fish-scaled and
sheeny, watery and reflective.

At morning, the paralysing exhaustion, the sharp, painful probings of
so many paranoid fantasies. In the faces of my co-workers, in their
haggard expressions, the same, barely contained hysteria. Sipping
nutritional liquids with pale, trembling hands, speaking hopelessly of
returning soon to earth, to friends, to skies that weren't always black
and filled with demonic hale.

Then, the dissappearances. Reports flooded in, from substations and
orbital mines, from oxidising plants and intelligence facilities, that
large numbers of workers, even team commanders and section leaders,
were failing to report for duty. Routine enqiries were made, but no
trace of these people could be found anywhere, in any of the
installations. Tales of suicide reverberated, of individuals,
distressed and delusional, hurling themselves through airlocks into the
toxic fury of the exterior world. But the bodies had not been
recovered. No remains, no vertebae or flake of skin. No tattered
remnant of company uniform or sub-skin ID implant. Reconaissance
vehicles, the few that returned, reported that settlements beyond the
blizzard-swept crags were completetly empty, devoid of personnel,
technologies faltering, lights flickering . Fading everywhere.

Panic. Each morming, after a night filled with the strangely draining
visions, more people were absent. The daily rituals of the working day
continued to be observed despite diminishing numbers, a melancholy
attempt at preserving normal functioning. We eyed each other with
facinated pessimism, wondering who would be next, picturing the
circumstances in which someone vanished, visualising possible pain,
certain fear. And all the while, the members of the Central Control
Board worked insanely, striving for a solution, coming up with nothing.
Distress beacons were activated, sending our prerecorded cries for help
into the darkness of space. No-one responded. No answer came.

Little by little, we shut down our operations here. Commands were sent
out to abandon our deserted industrial centres, our powerless
computers, our madly malfunctional machinery. As our population
thinned, we withdrew to our final enclave. Sealed ourselves into tense
quietness..

I am the last.

The progress of the phenomenon was startlingly swift. Almost overnight,
all of those I had counted as friends, companions in our great
adventure, were lost to me. All vacancy and emptiness, offices and
deserted hallways drowning in a smothering silence. . Miles of
corridors plunged into glacial stillness. Generators winding down. All
work, ceased. Crystals of frost in the air.

My time must certainly be coming. I see them, sometimes. Pale figures
in the snowfall, hear them moving, not far away. I wonder why they
hesitate, why they allow me to continue living, deeply breathing the
oxygen-poor atmosphere of my final refuge.

Ice is forming on the outside, unyielding and heavy, like granite. The
winter is deepening. Soon, it will not be possible for me to see the
mountains, the vulnerable, milky, light of the day. The view from my
window will be obscured. Snow is falling, heavy soporific flakes
settling on the roof, piling up against walls, against bulkheads and
exterior doors. Burying everything.

Sleepily, I remember the rescue-ships. Will they see our bright lights
of welcome in such a storm? Hear our fatalistic requests for assistance
in such gales. My eyelids are heavy. The clock is ticking. Counting
down. There's water, deep green and shining and songs from miles away.
Waiting. Ticking. Numbing in my brain. Counting down. Five. Four.
Three....................................