The Oubliette

This is the first chapter of a story that I’m currently working on, titled: The Winds of the Ecclesiasphere.

I thought I must’ve been dead, I was unconscious for so long that I was starting to dream, and I ended up dreaming my entire life up to this point. Gray Guthrie, born 2022 to Francis and Holly Guthrie. I am 26 years old. I was born with gray eyes, the doctor told my parents they would probably change as I got older -they never did- but that didn’t stop them from naming me Gray anyway. I could see my life blur right past me, early childhood where I would sit in the sandbox making castles only for them to collapse from the breeze. I learned a lesson that day, nothing ever lasts forever. In the split second, I was already past my High School years, getting into College and learning engineering so I could be an astronaut. I spent those years working in my room, drawing and reading blueprints. It was after college when I met Zora, the first person who I truly fell in love with. They were amazing, smart and loving, but as I remembered them, I also remembered what came next. I remembered the nights of crying in my mind, the lethargy that kept me from leaving my bed, and the many days where I just couldn’t stand living in such a loud and difficult world. I remember seeing them reach in to drag me out, but I was too afraid that my grip would be too powerful and that I would drag them in with me instead. In that moment I could hear my own voice clear as day, “They’re better off without me, I may as well shoot myself off into space.” 

I hadn’t designed the ship, but I knew it well enough and I didn’t care what would happen to me. A brand new model of spaceship, installed with a prototype Faster-Than-Light drive, never before tested in actual flight. It looked kinda funny, with the way that the center of the ship was expanded to make space for the drive, it almost made the ship look like a fish about to take off into the sky. The scientists designed it to be humanity’s first interstellar spacecraft, like something out of a sci-fi story, so of course it looked like someone tried to make a plane out of a rocket. It even had reinforced windows facing out of the cockpit, whatever the use that would be. The scientists kept reassuring me, “It’s been tested on the ground”, “The theories are solid”, “You’re going to be alright.” Part of me wanted to laugh when remembering this but the other part remembered, or rather believed, that I was dead so I couldn’t. Instead I continued reminiscing, remembering the early hours of my flight, the anticipation to get off the ground and into the stars. I fidgeted in the space suit they gave me, a dark blue jumpsuit with boots and gloves. I should’ve known something was off as soon as the ship broke orbit and began to drag itself across the void, its engines just barely providing enough force for the behemoth to scoot ahead at a slow pace. How could this thing handle faster than light if it can’t even normally move faster than molasses dripping down a tree? It didn’t matter though, I was willing to take the risk; or perhaps, I went because of the risk. Either way, those risks showed themselves at once the moment I touched that FTL control. I could suddenly feel the engine of the ship shake as the rocket boosted its speed incredibly rapidly, the walls shook as we were beginning to reach maximum speed. I could see the stars surrounding me start to stretch out in front of me and cover my vision, a tunnel of light that I was flying right into. And then…

My eyes opened, dragging me out of my unconscious trip down memory lane and into the cold miasma of reality; or so I thought at first. I woke up in the pilot seat of the ship, I could tell that I had gravity now because I was hanging from my seat belt looking at a cracked open cockpit window filling up with dirt. My body felt like it was in all kinds of pain but especially my head, I had no idea how long I was hanging upside down. So I clicked the latch on the belt, unfortunately my head was filling with blood so I didn’t think to hold on to the chair before I unlatched the belt. I hit the roof of the cockpit with a heavy clang which reverberated slightly. It took me a moment to gather my bearings and pick myself up. I was uneasy, weakened from the crash but not dead, I was bruised and exhausted enough to believe so. I took a look around the cockpit, a moderately sized space with several chairs and consoles lining the walls. I didn’t even need to check to know that the equipment was damaged now, and definitely needed fixing. I walked across the ceiling of my ship until I reached the doorway out. I believed that I was simply back on earth given the fact that I was still breathing without my ship’s oxygen supply turned on. What awaited me out there was nothing that I could’ve expected. I opened the door to see a vast landscape, the ground was covered in dirt but every so often there would be spots that looked to be made of marble that jutted out of the ground in odd shapes and angles. I couldn’t see a blade of grass in sight. I carefully took a step out onto the ground and looked around, it was night, or at least, I thought it was. The sky around me was filled with bright stars as far as I could see, however my eyes suddenly focused on the biggest thing hanging in the sky: the moon. It was a large and luminous thing, similar to our own moon but closer and most interestingly with a large handprint shaped crater visible on its face. I stood in a mix of awe and confusion for a moment before I came to my conclusion, either I was stuck on some alien planet or actually dead and this was purgatory. It would’ve been much easier for me to understand if either were fully true. 

I suddenly felt the full weight of my body in that moment and dropped to the ground just outside my ship. I could only stare straight ahead as I processed what I should do next, whatever sense of self-preservation in my mind was working overtime to figure out what to do in this situation. Eventually my instincts told me to pick myself up and take a look at the rest of my ship, and in doing so I saw that it was, as I gathered already, upside down and sticking out of the ground at a forty-five degree angle. The thrusters were gone too, that section of the ship seemed to be torn clean off and I couldn’t see it anywhere nearby, and much of the outer plating was torn as well, scattered in a breadcrumb trail that marked my fall trajectory. I walked back into the ship and searched the mess of electronics and computers that had fallen down onto the ceiling-floor for the toolbox, luckily it was only partially buried under a canopy of wires. The toolbox was about the size of a foot locker, inside it kept several tools meant for key repairs and adjustments to the ship. An adjustable wrench, a welder’s mask, drill, nails and metal wire, and perhaps most importantly: a Plasma Cutter, the ultimate cutting and welding tool on earth. The Plasma Cutter was a handheld device, a blocky stick of metal with holes in the middle big enough to slip your fingers in and grip the device. When activated, the plasma emanates out of the opposite of the grip in an adjustable triangle of energy hot enough to both cut and weld metal. Of course however, if I wanted to get the ship in working shape, I would need a whole lot more than what I currently had here. As I examined the tool box and glanced around at the ruined remains of my ship, I felt a twinge of hopelessness at the prospect of actually fixing anything. However, I thought, if I should die on this alien planet, I’m not going to do it sitting on my ass at least. So I shut the toolbox and dragged it with me back outside. I turned my attention to the trail of metal plates which had fallen off the ship’s outer hull and set down the toolbox while pulling out the Plasma Cutter and setting it on my suit’s belt. I then went about picking up the metal plates scattered about and leaving them in a pile by my crash site. Some plates I could hold in one arm while others were wider than my whole body and needed to be dragged across the dirt and marble surface. As I walked further out from my ship, I was able to get a better look around my surroundings. The trail of plates went off in the angled direction of the ship, and walking along this trail I could see mountains of marble in the distance, jutting out of the ground in geometric pillars and shapes. Looking in the direction of where I came from in my fall trajectory I could see two massive pillars of marble that seemed to crash into each other at parallel angles. Just on the horizon past those pillars I could see a dark speck, I had a feeling that I knew where the thruster went. I noted how despite there being no sun in the sky and all signs pointing to it being night, my surroundings always appeared to be decently illuminated and I was able to see a good distance ahead of me. 

I wasn’t keeping track but it felt like I had been picking up metal plates for at least an hour, and as I was dragging the last slab of metal towards the crash site, I noticed something else peculiar. A sizable rock of marble, at least bigger than me, which was just right under the lower half of the ship sticking into the air. What was particularly peculiar about it was that I didn’t remember seeing that rock there before when I first took assessment of the damage. I tried to pay it no mind, brushing it off as if it was there the whole time and I just didn’t notice it at first. Why would I bother to notice a rock anyway? I thought, it’s just a rock, there are tons of rocks all around me… but another thought suddenly broke my blissful ignorance. I wouldn’t notice a rock sitting in a spot unless I knew that there wasn’t a rock there to begin with. And so now my attention was devoted to the ankle high lump of marble sitting so inconspicuously under the shade of my ship, looking as if it always belonged there no more than any other rock belonged anywhere. Hesitantly, I walked up to the stone and felt it, it was smooth and rounded like an egg that someone buried into the ground. My hands went to the bottom of the stone where it sunk into the dirt and as I touched the ground I could feel it suddenly get warm and felt a subtle rumbling. In an instant I could see the ground around the rock crack and push itself around, the dust and chunks of dirt crumbling into each other. I hurriedly scrambled away from the rock while keeping my eyes on the ground around it, expecting it all to suddenly sink under its own weight and open a hole with which to swallow the only form of shelter that I had. Only when I looked closer, I noticed that the ground wasn’t caving in, it was pushing out as the rock of marble began to rise higher out of the ground. I watched in awe as the stone emerged from its resting place and peaked itself just under the tail end of the ship. I could hear the metal groaning as the rock just barely pushed itself into the ship’s form. I was shocked at what I just witnessed, a rock of marble rising out of the ground like a monolith. My feelings of shock quickly mixed with a feeling of awe and confusion as I stared into the face of this rock, literally. It looked like the head of a Greek statue, its head was completely smooth and bald leaving only its face that looked carved as if by a trained artisan’s hands. Its eyes and mouth were both slightly open, behind which were a glinting gold metal patterned with flakes the size of a reptile’s scales. It gazed out at the milky stars with a look of concern, it was worried about something. It’s expression invoked that same worry in me, it was an omen. An omen that the things I believed I knew would be challenged by an unfamiliar planet…