Recently, a very old file was dredged up from our main computer systems. Apparently it had been transmitted there a very long time ago in some sort of emergency broadcast, and our filters had caught it, but never notified anyone of its existence. As I was quite bored one morning, I pulled it up on the digital converter and was delighted to find that it was a record of sorts, though of an era from which I had very little knowledge: I’m afraid the Splinter between the Annex and the Unaffiliated Military Conglomerate is something buried deep in the sands of time. Here I will share a brief excerpt or two, though I expect more shall follow as I manage to translate them from the old datatypes into functional logs once again.

System Log USMV Emerson

Commander: Unaffiliated Controller Jeremy Gray

Target Planet: Excelsior Terebann

Target Element: Solid Carbon Isotopes

Colonist Presence: 402 Individuals

<Mineral Total: 108 Kilotons of C-14>

<Storage Bay Approx. 59% Capacity>

<2 arrests performed by colony police between 1200 and 2300 hours>

<6 miners have registered complaints with medical bay regarding arthritic symptoms: all treated for dustjoint and released>

<Main mineshafts maintain acceptable standards of internal stability: 74 % solid rock structure support>

It is difficult to understand what calls us to the stars, that surreal feeling that tempts us to throw behind the cradle of the Earth we know and to step forth into the dangerous, heartless vacuum of the universe. Space holds no pleasantries or comfort for men, we were not designed to live outside our atmosphere, beyond the gentle fingers of gravity and oxygen, and yet we cannot resist the desire to see everything that has been spread around us by the casual hand of chain reactions; we must bear witness to the splendor of chemical creation.

—

“Every mining crew has a canary, right. Just like the old days when miners would put a little bird in a cage, and if it died, then they knew that were in trouble.”

            “They let someone die to test if the mine’s safe? Is that even legal?”

            “Well, it’s not EXACTLY like the old days, obviously, but the job’s still dangerous as all hell. Not a lot of people want to do the job, and it’s hard to keep a bird for more than a couple months.”

            “Wait, what do you mean ‘people’?”

            “Huh, I guess ‘people’ really isn’t the right word. I mean, they look human some of the time, but birds are fucked up, kid. There’s something not right about ‘em. The training process and all that time spent underground would leave anyone in a mess.”

            “Training process?”

            “Yeah,” and then the older soldier gave a suspicious look around, “Look, kid, some things are better left in the dark. I hope you never have to learn about that sort of stuff. But come on, we’ve got some work to do in the mess hall, better get there before the Sergeant gets annoyed. Let’s go.”

—

            “Open the birdcage,” shouted the foreman, and the four miners lowered the iron box with evident relief, placing it as close to the shaft entrance as possible. Three of them retreated back towards the marine unit while the fourth pulled a stun rifle from his belt and clambered on top of the metal structure, then gave a thumbs up and aimed his weapon in front of him. One of the three miners pulled a remote from his pocket and pressed it. The box creaked, and then a sharp metallic rattling echoed as the front side loosened from its moorings, the loud echo of iron on rock sounding as it clattered onto the ground. For a moment, there was silence, then the clinking noise of chains moving, and a low, throaty cry wafted through the air. From the black square of the cage, a thin, almost translucent hand appeared and scrabbled at the loose stone in its reach and then pulled back suddenly. The miner on top of the cage stomped on its lid sharply, and the thing inside gave a high-pitched squeal and suddenly thrust its entire body out of the cage, whipping around in a flurry of chained limbs to hiss at the miner on top of its prison. Its entire body was similarly lacking in pigment, and the crisscross of dark veins beneath its skin pulsed unpleasantly in the fading sunlight. Its face was thin and vicious, and two dark pits lurked in place of eye sockets, the faint scars from lid-sewing seeming like absurd caricatures of eyelashes upon its waxy face. The lips were pale and thin, and when they drew back, revealed yellowed and pointed teeth between which a long and pronged tongue flittered and curled. It had vague patches of brownish hair atop its skull, but no apparent ears, and the sides of its neck, torso and arms were patterned with something almost resembling gills, but in place of open slits, a thin sort of webbing held them together as they twitched under the open air. The chipped, dirty fingernails at the end of its long hands scrabbled frantically against the thick metal collar around its neck and it crawled backwards on thin, much-scarred legs, shrieking loudly when the chains stopped its movement yet again. The miner with the pulse rifle looked at it dispassionately and then fired a low-beam into its shoulder, and the monster slumped over, whining heavily through its long and strangely flattened nose. The three other miners swiftly rushed forward with a case of tools and began to swap out the heavy restraints for other forms of constriction. A thick bar connected its wrists and short, slimmer chains ran down to link around the ankles, forcing it to hunch over, and preventing it from lashing out with any of its limbs without losing its balance. The thick, low collar around its neck stayed on, and the more slim chains were locked into it, and then pulled backwards, forming a sort of leash. One daring man forced its mouth open while another held its head back as it panted horribly, and jammed a painful-looking metal bit between its jaws, so that its face was held in constant macabre smile, “Keeps it from biting someone. These things are nasty little shits” explained one of the miners nonchalantly to a shocked-looking soldier. 

 —

I’m afraid this is as far as my program has been able to go, and even then, it works only in sporadic patches. Perhaps feeding it into a supercomputer array will speed up the process more significantly, as I greatly desire to read more of this historical piece.

Due to the relatively quiet nature of my location, I often open up the communication channels and allow various signals and transmissions to pass through my network, occasionally reading the ones that seem interesting or beneficial to my continued presence on this planet. The result of acting as a relay system is that my own telecom address is available for public access, and thus I often receive random messages from unknown sources who seem to have no real grounding in the real world; a sort of intergalactic spam, if you will. Usually I simply delete all messages from unknown authors without examining them, as they tend to be encoded with nasty formulas that can wreck havoc on an unguarded system. However, the other day, I noticed what appeared to be a legitimate emergency transmission from a planet halfway across the galaxy. Curious as to whether or not it was actually what it appeared to be, I swiftly assigned it to one of the artificial data construction rooms (places that act as individual processing units, so that dangerous files can be opened, and even if they are infective, the entire construct can simply be deleted and rebuilt) and decoded it. 

Much to my surprise, it was from a very old acquaintance of mine, a certain Commander Farrow, with whom I had once worked as a data-trawler a long, long time before my investment in the IGWI establishment. The commander informed me that he and an elite team had been sent in to investigate a certain group of rebels on one of the non-IPAG planets in the Arcylh set, and had been forced to result to violent and drastic measures in order to ensure their own safety, much less those of their intended subjects. It was, he reported, only himself and a small handful of others who had survived the vicious guerilla combat, and they were now holed up in an old Colonial fortress on the outskirts of the planet’s habitable range. Because of the planet’s extreme outlier position on the trade routes, it had been impossible for them to find an appropriate means of escape, much less adequate supplies for their current situation. He had been relieved, he stated, when he recognized one of my old call-signs, because the planet was nearing the cold season, and he and his comrades were hardly prepared to deal with the suffering and challenges the enduring such a time entailed. Could I not, he begged, find some way to communicate his plight to an interested party? Or, barring that, at least find a way to send supplies and munitions his way? 

I am hardly one to turn my back on fond acquaintances, and so I immediately called a council of easily-manipulated IPAG leaders and impressed upon them the necessity to do something to alleviate the suffering of their heroic colleagues. They seemed most grave and thoughtful upon being shown the truth of the matter, and I have no doubt that they will aid my old companion with his trials. 

The experience left me feeling rather nostalgic, however, and I suppose I had forgotten a great deal of the being that I used to be all those centuries ago. When I was only a young graduate of a human university of dubious merit, I, like many of my peers, found it extraordinarily difficult to attain proper employ. Most conglomerates were simply unwilling to hire those who could not offer skills that could compete with the training and education available to off-worlders at alien universities. And so it was that I found myself performing the most menial of tasks, hooked up to an ancient computer terminus, searching the entirety of the data available over the public pathways for certain keywords that would aid some better, smarter person with their own research. It was lonely work, knowing that one was simply a tiny speck in the greater whole of the trawler network that stretched out over hundreds of thousands of planets. I cannot say that it was not fascinating, and that it was here that I learned a great deal of the information I later on my rise to power, but spending twenty hours with electrodes plugged into my brain and false-scleras mapping my eye movements left me alone in the dark, with little time to do anything besides perform the necessities of human function and return to work. I was nothing but a number spread across the wideness of space and existence. 

You can imagine my surprise when I received a message one day during my work, a brief blip in the tactile data stream that I assumed was nothing more than a translation error being improperly filtered. However, the blip refused to go away, and I when I called my attention to it, it focused itself into a strange but friendly message. It was from another trawler, it said, who had selected an employment number at random and fired off an encrypted file in hopes that the other recipient would open it and take the contents to heart. This work is killing me, it said, don’t you agree? It was with this tiny exchange that a strange and tumultuous friendship was born, and my distant companion and I commiserated and worked in a much happier state than before. This stranger was to become a commander of the IPAG fleet, and I was destined to become one of its leaders, though neither of us could have possibly imagine the possibility at that time. Our friendship lasted only for a brief while, however, when one day he seemingly vanished from the face of the universe and our communications went silent. 

Many things have changed since the last time we spoke, not even in relation to our various professions, but much to do with the sorts of creatures that we have become. Both of us have lived far beyond the recommended life span, even for this modern era, and indeed I am generally no longer constrained by a corporeal form. Military technology had likewise preserved my companion from the ravished of time, and he seemed much more andritic than I remembered him last being. It seems that the universe has its own ways of guiding some of its children towards goals that they hardly could imagine themselves ever attaining, and eventually bringing some of them back towards one another. 

I suppose what I really mean to say is that it is a great honor to once again find a long-lost friend out there among the cold and distant stars. Welcome back, #HCX-19387203.