Message in a Bottle

The bottle bobbed gently in the rock pool, green and unadorned. Charles had spotted it as he was walking in the surf.

Reaching down to pick it up, it was as he suspected. The bottle was sealed with a cork and there was paper on the inside. A message in a bottle. ‘Looks like something out of an old movie’ he thought.

Unplugging the cork, he turned the bottle upside down and shook out the paper. Slowly unfurling it he read the message.

“My name is Elijah Daniels, I am a scientist on the island of Maharatin in the South Pacific. My colleauges and I are here researching faster than light technology. Using particle accelerators, our group's scientists discovered “images”, of particles that traveled faster than light. It seems that there are some forms of matter which appear to exist on the other side of the light speed barrier. 4 days ago on February 6th we proceeded with the experiment. We managed to send a few atoms of hydrogen across the room, faster than light! Much celebration followed, but in less then a day our reasons for joy abruptly vanished.

3 days ago on February 7th we received our first visitation from “the entity”. Three of the laboratory technicians where setting up the test chamber for another experiment when a green mist suddenly sprung up inside the chamber with them. At first they thought it was a practical joke or some unforeseen side effect of the experiment and were not alarmed. That was until “the mist” solidified around one of the technicians. She was held and then vivisected in front of her two screaming colleagues. I say vivisected because that is what it was. The test chamber is under constant surveillance and upon further inspection one could quite clearly see the methodical and scientific process to her dismemberment. Though the process took less than a minute, all her vital organs, nerves; muscles; bones were separated and then placed carefully out on the floor in the room as if for inspection. Her two colleagues suffered no physical harm from the proceedings but one of them took his life the next day and we were forced to sedate the other to prevent him from attempting to leave the island.

At first we did not know what to do, the research center was in a state of shock. While there could be little doubt as to the fact that someone had tragically died many of my colleagues were (despite evidence to the contrary) extremely reluctant to assign blame to anything other than some bizarre and unfortunate accident. They seemed recalcitrant to accept that this poor technician’s death had been purposeful and indeed the work of intelligence. Even more unfortunately John Graham, the principal authority and head of research at the centre held to this view. As a result the poor woman was buried and no further safety precautions were taking besides that of venting the test chamber for a day.

The 2nd visitation from “the entity” was 2 days ago on February the 8th. It took place in the dining area. There were 24 people in the building at the time. It was the sounds of their screams that bought us running to the scene; we saw then that the green mist from the test chamber had enveloped the entire building. Despite or perhaps because of the awful sounds coming from within its eerie countenance no one who came was willing to enter that building. We all simply stared in mute and sullen silence as the sounds from within slowly grew quieter and fainter and then blessedly they stopped. That was when the mist receded, seemed to be sucked into the building; and a moment later, “it” opened the door and stepped or should I say scuttled outside.

“It” was as best as we could tell, an amalgamation of the people who had been inside the building. Countless legs and arms, eyes attached to the ends of limbs, faces transplanted and surgically attached to its chest. All held together by rolling tendrils of that green mist. Even though the sight of such an abomination would have been enough to make the hardest soldier retch; it was worse for us, because we recognized the faces, we had looked into the eyes which now stared at us from the ends of hands which we had shook in the past.

I say with no shame then that I fled. Screaming and incoherent I ran and only remember coming to my senses when it was dark and I was blessedly alone. Since then I have managed to find other members of the facility staff. We have barricaded ourselves into some of the bungalows. Just how long this will suffice I am not sure. Since acquiring a physical form we have seen no more appearances of the green mist. But “it”, hunts us now. It seems to take great pleasure in stalking and then slowly killing those of the staff it can find. We have no doubts as to its intelligence, nor that, “it” is purposeful. A group was sent to access the radio in the main office. It dragged two of them back to the front of the bungalows and spent the next 6 hours eating them in front of us.

The message you are reading is our last hope for rescue, a group will make a break for the beach in attempt to dispense as many of these bottles as they can. We don’t know how much longer we can survive here; but we would at least hope our plight serves as a warning to others. Whatever this creature is, we are sure it is inimical to our form of life. We can only deduce it was attracted by our experiment with the light speed barrier. Send help and take heed of our warning before next you think to break the laws of reality. You know not what nightmares may come through the door you have opened.