Planet Solitude

I’m hurtling through the atmosphere in a capsule barely larger than a washing machine. My gut feels like it’s been blasted with a cannonball, and no one’s cared to remove it. My ears are useless. Not for lack of sound, more like all sounds have been forced into my ear canal and held there by some invisible power. It’s enough to make a guy puke – if he wasn’t trained for this sort of thing.

There’s not much to do but hang on and wait it out; the trajectory is set and controlled by the computer. So, I press my hands against the capsule walls, plant my feet, close my eyes, and try not to think about how easy it could be to peel open this tin can and suck me out into the hostile void. Then again, if true solitude is what I seek...

I try not to think about the real reasons I’m here, either. Forget about patriotism, scientific endeavor, or just pure adrenaline chasing. I’ll transmit the data as per the mission for a while, but then perhaps there will be a mishap with the comms. If they bother sending an unmanned S&R — Search and Rescue — bot, well, I'm handy with a rock. There are plenty to be had here.

I’m here to escape. Escape what? People, places, and things. All the nouns. Emphasis on one of those nouns in particular; perhaps we’ll get to that later.

What I had to endure to earn the right to solitude is absurd. Unfortunately, it was the only real option. Have you ever tried to disappear? Try walking out into the wilderness and see how long it takes to starve to death or die from the elements. Never mind the Good Samaritans who take it upon themselves to rescue you from your peace. No, thank you.

Getting off the planet is what it took for me to find my peace. That was the intention, anyway.

It’s been a month already, and the isolation has been phenomenal, almost euphoric. Most of the biome consists of simple flora like stupid mosses and brainless lichens. At least they are beautiful, with their deep green and mint coloring, the intricate cross-hatching of the fine foliage. I’m the exception, of course: pretty and intelligent. Part of my mission is finding and identifying complex life forms, and so far, it’s been an exercise in futility.

Now and again, when I’m collecting another rock or adding water to another insulated bag of dried “food”, I’ll catch a whiff of perfume. Or taste the cloying smell of iron. Or feel a light touch on my arm. I ignore these sensations because they serve no purpose other than weighing me down with the past. With memories. Pointless.

One afternoon, I was trekking around in the rover, taking it off some sweet jumps, exploring ever farther from base, when I happened upon what looked like a cave opening. Turns out, it was. I parked the rover, then grabbed two or three light sources and my canteen. It was time for spelunking.

The mouth of the cave wasn’t much to speak of. It was about twice the size of your standard interior door opening – in a personal domicile, I mean. The opening was already in the shade of a cliff, so two or three steps inside, and it was pitch black already. I stopped and fired up my headlamp and the unidirectional lantern. What opened before me was nothing less than gob-smacking. Stalagmites, stalactites, benches, sunken rooms, and multiple levels; it was amazing to see. Talk about a sanctuary, a retreat in the truest sense of the word.

Further inspection revealed openings to several tunnels or rocky corridors; I had no idea where they led. Several small streams trickled over the slick, shiny rock. As I was following a small wet groove up one of the walls, my light illuminated some markings that looked suspiciously intentional. Stick figures in various poses and engaged in activities. They were all rendered with some ochre-colored substance.

My face went slack, and my hand froze in the air, holding the lantern up. My heart sank as fast and as deep as a lead ball dropped into the Mariana Trench. I felt my knees go weak.

This planet was chosen for a reason - it was supposed to be a dead rock - and this discovery just spat in that reason’s eye and then kicked it in the ass. I dropped to my knees and let the lantern bang to the cave floor as my arm went slack. I just kneeled there for a while, picking up dirt and letting it sift through my fingers.

I could barely drag my weepy ass back to camp, even with a machine doing most of the work. On autopilot all the way back from the cave, my mind numbly replayed all the briefings, the anthropological studies, the biological analysis; several somebodies needed to be fired. I signed up solely on the guarantee of being the only human being on this side of the galaxy.

It struck me then that this could still be true. Technically.

But shit - if some other organism lived here and it was engaged in frivolous, narcissistic behavior like painting itself on cave walls...

It might as well be human.

I never remember my dreams, but that night I sure as hell did. The dream started with me in the driveway of a house I hadn’t lived in for many years. I was bent over the engine of a huge station wagon, up to my elbows in grease. In the dream, I was stressed out and needed to get that car started as if the fate of the world depended on it.

My son – about eight years old then - walked up the driveway and asked if he could help me fix the car. I snapped at him and asked what exactly he thought he could do to help. He hung his head and walked away slowly.

I woke up in a sweat, my heart pounding so hard I was expecting my ribs to crack. I thought my face was slick with sweat, too, but I realized I was crying. For a terrifying and exhilarating moment, I frantically searched my quarters for my son, finally realizing I was still alone – exactly as I wanted to be.

“My boy,” I repeated that until I finally lay back down, exhausted, and fell asleep again.

The next morning, I woke up early and spent an hour and a half exercising as if I were training for a triathlon. I ate a hearty breakfast, studied reports and charts for a good long while, then headed back out on the rover in the early afternoon — burying thoughts of the dream deep in the pain pit of my mind — like I always do.

Concentration was an unreliable asshole that day. It would show up from time to time, but when it did, its heart wasn’t in it. At least I collected some material samples from a few cave formations and water.

Yes, I returned to the cave. It called me, and I couldn’t resist it. God, that sounds lame as hell. It’s true, though, in a sense. Getting back there was all I could think about. That’s a blessing, really, considering the night before.

Back at the cave, I entered and went directly to the art wall. After staring at the figures for a minute, I turned and leaned against the wall, sliding down until I sat on the cave floor. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, just listening.

Silence eventually prevailed. Even the faint dripping ceased. I started breathing heavily, and my eyes kept trying to cross.

In that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, there’s a weird sort of magic our brain can access, enabling it to open doors to spaces that don’t exist anywhere else.

I felt weight, tugging in a corner of my mind. In my peripheral vision, to my left, I felt or vaguely saw a being. Something hovered there and watched me. Struggling to turn my head, to stand up, to move at all, I found myself basically paralyzed.

Straining and struggling, I finally got my head turned, but by then the presence was right next to me. Somewhere deep inside the blackness of it, in a dimly lit cavern, I saw myself sitting on a cave floor, leaning against a wall, with a presence leaning over me.

I tried to scream, but I couldn't make a noise. With my mouth open wide and my facial muscles and throat contracting, I kept trying to scream. Suddenly, the paralysis broke, and I sat bolt upright, letting out the loudest scream I’d ever heard.

My heart pounded, and my body was drenched in a hot sweat. The cool air of the cave quickly dissipated the heat from my body, and I sat shivering, my reaction to the vision making it worse. A primal fear gnawed at the back of my brain, but I didn’t allow it to drive me out of the cave just yet.

I stood and retrieved a small knife from my supply pack, opening and locking the awl in place. Turning to face the wall, I raised the tool and began scratching into its rough surface — the sharp, hard stone fighting me — just under the existing art.

And there I scratched my own figures: One large, one slightly smaller than the first, and finally, a short, deliberately fainter figure at the end.