The stranger arrived on the planet in an even stranger way, without a shuttle, without a pod, and instead with a piece of a space station used as a shield. Not only did this Stranger arrive hiding behind said metal shield, it arrived wearing the colonial space uniform taken from one of its victims floating somewhere in the vacuum of space above. The grayish material lined in patterned placements with a dark deep tan beside a crusted shimmering yellow, running from upper shoulder down the side of the pant legs to the boot rings at the lower shin. This uniform wore itself in the shape of a man, though that was the only way to tell if this was the accurate gender by sheer shape. The head and face were covered with a colonial helmet. Set about in a circular form that then morphed with straight rectangular panels leading towards the back of the head in a sort of shutter like vent looking contraption. The front of the face was nothing but a smooth shield with two vertical lines wrapped over the entirety of the helmet over the eyes, in that same cat urine yellow. The helmet of course was part tan, and part gray. Down at the hands were covered in tan and yellow gloves with the insides a matte yet somewhat sticky looking gray. The gloves were the same design as the boots below, with that gray being at the sole of the foot. The entire uniform, designed clearly for a person in outer space, was not what would be worn on a planet and thus seemed strange..
These gloves reached up from the concave hole now steaming and billowing smoke from a superheated entry of the exterior panel of the now destroyed SS LAMOR, which was somewhere above in the orbit of AURORA floating in its forever frozen death dance. The panel had been the shield of this man shaped being’s entry. He, and we shall use the term HE simply to quickly describe the Stranger especially as our story intensifies, had torn the panel free from the ship. Yes, he had done so with his bare hands with a strength which one could argue was nowhere near human. He had then placed both boots onto the outer hull of the once lively garden pod. A Pod which had once teamed with life and fed hundreds of thousands of human beings as they floated through space. Now that same pod was a shriveled tube of mangled death, stained in dark blood in various places among the torn metal resembling the room as a deceased spider rather than a room at all. He had set the shield panel over his head and then pushed off with immense strength in the direction of our moon AURORA.
Holding the panel tightly to his body, he endured the extreme heat whipping around him and held strong to his shield. Forcing it forward as it fought to buck and spin, knowing that if it was to shift even slightly the flames would ignite his body and he would be no more. The landing, crashing hard into the red sanded AURORA surface wasn’t painful at all. It was instantly celebrated with the feelings emitting within him, then with limbs that should have been exhausted, he clambered out of the smoking crater before standing on two legs to observe his surroundings.
A planet such as this showed cleared signs of having been desolate for billions of years.
It was red, and covered in hills and rock formations which clearly had once been mountains but were now buried under this crimson sand. The sky, a grayish tint, bore no clouds of life and rather drained the red color of the planet below into a sort of desaturated rust. With the Stranger standing there, he nearly completely blended in with his surroundings even with colors that should have contrasted very obviously. The planet was drained of everything, it had no life.
With footsteps twice as heavy as they had been in the stars the Stranger moved onward in search of what he suspected existed here. His suspicions came from somewhere deeply primal, somewhere that he could not explain even if he had the ability to speak in the way we people do. He was a being without sight, though he felt all. He was a being without hearing, but he understood all. He was a being without all the necessities any other creature would need in any of the places he had been, that he had somehow thrived in, yet all he had needed to find this success was the hunger within. The hunger drove forward and like an energy smelt off the wisps of the wind he could sense this. He was drawn to it, simply by its mere existence he was taken there in the primal sense of hunting one’s prey without any real intelligent decision making to do so. He was not a being that could rest, not a being that could stop moving, he was a being that moved toward its meal in order to survive with every ounce of his being.
So here he moved. Over the various hills of red sand, around the tips of mountains and through the canyons of silent death and utter complete existence. He climbed when it was required, rather robotically and effortlessly scaling whatever wall or cliff face now in the path. There was no water here however at times the sand would give way like mud. He was forced then to wade through it, feeling it wave and shift around his body, slowing his progress immensely as he drifted underneath the surface. His feet would move in this floating space somewhat like it had in actual space, though here there was friction. Here it was heavy to move, hard to put one leg in front of the other. He used his arms, pulling and pushing off, continuing as his body spun slowly and fell at this incredibly delayed pace down til finally he hit some hard surface. It was the bottom of the pit, and now he found himself completely upside down.
Getting a grip on the hard surface above him, he pulled his abdomen area down as hard as he could and realtered his position until he was again standing. At the bottom of the pit he waded through the sand with a great effort that no normal human being would be able to muster. While he forced away the heavy curtains of now sheer blackness, and pressed himself into the opening, a normal human being would have been frozen in place. The normal human would have been motionless except for the tiny centimeters of movement he or she could use to bang their head side to side in their helmet screaming and crying in terror, to shift their fingers in that tiny space of the thick space gloves, and to curl one’s toes around the sole of your boots as if trying to claw your way back upwards to freedom. A normal human would have died here, but the stranger walked. The stranger pushed, and the stranger found the side of the pit.
He then reached and found handholds and forced his way upwards, pushing through the sand above and making his way through sheer weight and pressure toward the surface. It took him time, but not nearly as much as one would expect. For if one had decided to stand at the top of the pit, off to the side in the safety of hard surface nowhere near sinking, then one could have popped up an umbrella and a fold out chair. Then that one could have sat down and attached a drinking pouch to their suit while relaxing into the fabric and kicking one’s feet up. The strain of the chair would be unnoticable as one brought up a data pad or, if one was so inclined to be classical or rather chique then they could have an actual paper or hardback novel. Reading from the pages would render them probably at about halfway through the story, peering through the space helmet and avoiding the glare of HERMES the red sun of AURORA as it traveled over the sky in the the time two days would have passed back on Earth, before suddenly the sand at the surface of the pit would start to give way. It would fall towards the West side of the pit, just twenty meters from where the one reading would’ve been placed, and then within a few more moments the Stranger would appear and quite literally drag himself out.
Without dusting himself off the stranger would continue on as if nothing happened, of course if there were no reader which there is not. So then, upon his leaving of the pit that would leave nearly any other species dead the stranger presses on towards what only he can perceive.
We watch him with his determined movements and awe at his mysterious ways. We wonder why he is traveling, of course we wonder where he has come from and what he is doing, but for now those questions we feel will not only be answered but do not matter currently. Currently we are trapped in the frozen consideration of what he is. Being called the stranger, being formed and shaped as a human being, being able to do so much that a human being could never imagine even surviving a moment of, we know this is not a human. So what is this stranger? Our most important question, our focal point upon the discovery of this being, is linked directly to our instantaneous action toward our supposed introduction to him. For what would we do if his journey was to lead him directly to our doorstep? Can we truly feel safe, since he is on a planet we have never heard of, since he is in a story we deem complete fiction and entertainment? What if he was walking towards us, wherever we sit and read. What is he? What would he do?
Could he actually make it to Earth?
We understand quickly as we watch him now crest over a very high hill and peer down from the rim of a massive crater the size of a large town that would fit at least three supermarkets and a couple hundred houses, that he is not coming for Earth. Can we feel a sense of relief? Do we strangely feel some hint of dread? We can ignore it for the time being for here and now where the stranger is I can guarantee is no close distance to where we are now. I can also guarantee that if he was to travel to us at the rate he has currently shown, then we would be billions and nearly trillions of years dead by the time he arrived. Unless there is of course something we don’t know about him, something that hints at how he arrived on this planet in the first place, at how he arrived onto the SS LAMOR floating dead up above.
His attention focuses without the normal signals any human brain would understand, to the signals of life down below. In the crater, deep within nearly the center, is a facility.
Inside that facility the Stranger senses movement, senses heat and energy, he senses life. Like out in space he can find what drives him forward, here it is much stronger. As space is not alive there is nowhere for one to clearly sense through space as if one was standing on a planet. On a planet, there is a form of heartbeat. The planet, if alive like this AURORA is, will speak through a sort of rhythmic energy. The stranger reads this message as if standing on a vein, understanding that there is something on this planet. It speaks to him, telling him of this alien existence. Rather than tattling the planet is simply overjoyed at having this life upon it, it nearly shimmers with excitement as something upon its crust is now moving and adapting. With the facility there, an added weight upon its body, it feels a sharp sting full of energy. Some device has been injected into it, and now from that device flows a new source of energy the planet has never felt before.
AURORA, the moon, is excited.
The Stranger walks.
He comes to the edge and turns his back, climbing down the cliff face that of a three story building in terms of Earth measurements. His boots hit the sand at the crater bottom and then he turned forward. The facility is rather large, it expands completely over the center of the crater where large scar marks stand from massive ion engines. A ship had landed here and dropped off the supplies to create this place. It had taken off, and been returned to orbit possibly on the other side of the planet from where the SS LAMOR now floated. Or maybe it had been from the SS LAMOR, unfortunately we currently cannot tell from our vantage point. We are with the Stranger, and the Stranger does not care. The Stranger only walks towards the buildings, most are square shaped and large with many different floors inside leading up to a third level. There are three other domes, large and covered in a thick glass strong enough to deflect a meteor strike. A bit further he can sense the energy of many bodies working, there is an entrance and near it a grouping of three vehicles. Two are more like speeders with four wheels and four seats, the third one has six wheels and twelve seats and sits heavier than the rest.
As the stranger passes, a strange stick-like device erupts from a small metal disc device embedded into the ground, the head then forms into that of a sphere upon the stick and tracks onto his frame. He does not give it more attention than the turn of his helmet, as he continues forward. The device beeps loudly, sending an alarming signal to those inside.
He can feel the energy shift inside the facility.
Only a few souls inside know of his disruption, the other three hundred have no idea and he can feel this from their lack of change. Those that know are in a large tower, the only tower in the encampment and the one with the most energy flowing out of it toward the wide expanse of space. Those people inside shift and move around like scattering insects unsure of what to do. He can sense the fear and concern.
Then there is another shift of energy, that coming from the entrance he now walks towards. Between the vehicles he pushes onward toward the large airlock doors just as they begin to surge with energy. Blinking yellow lights signal this to the outside world as the large metal object shifts on gears and glides open. Inside, a man in a dark orange suit steps out, his helmet is different from the strangers. His suit is much heavier and is covered in armor like panels except for the bending and shifting points of his body. His face plate is clear and see through exposing a face hardened with concern. His lips and lower jaw are hidden behind a large bushy beard practically smashed into the helmet, and cannot hide the look of this confusion.
“Are you alright?” He asks, his voice modulated and robotic as it comes from external speakers.
The Stranger stops moving, and slowly nods.
HARRISON reads the name plate sewn onto the left breast of the man in the orange suit. He looks severely uncomfortable, mostly like he has seen a ghost, and with a heavy swallow he beckons the stranger forward. “Come on inside!”
The Stranger does not hesitate, in fact he lowers his head and walks into the airlock with relative ease and comfort as if he has done so many times. Harrison watches as he moves and then presses the button the wall closing the airlock doors. The Stranger does not face him, instead he just stands toward the inner door in a statue-like rigidity as the door shuts out all of the HERMES sunlight. Together they are then buried in darkness save for the spinning yellow lights on every corner of the room.
In silence Harrison watches the Stranger, his eyes checking over every visible aspect of him and sending signals to his brain for the answer of whether this is friend or foe. He does not find an answer, instead he finds concerns. Concerns like the fact that the suit this Stranger wears is not meant to handle or withstand AURORA’s atmosphere, how he is covered in remnants of sand from head to toe, and part of that sand is clearly the muck of a quicksand pit which is something he should have never been able to escape from, partnered with the score marks on his suit with the blackened edges clearly from fire and severe heat. All of these facts are cause for concern of course, but there is only one that causes Harrison’s heart to leap with fear.
The Stranger has no rebreather attached, no tank and no way to have oxygen.
How…. is the Stranger…. Breathing?