The Gray Area

The Gray Area

By: Travis Lee

Final Draft (more or less...)

Ripples slid across the sea of stars and condensed to form a puddle. From this puddle, reality opened its mouth. It spit out a long and narrow silver spaceship that passed a dead moon at blinding speeds. The top rear thrusters sparkled blue and slowly dimmed as the ship approached its destination: a dead planet with a solitary moon.
         Like all planets they visited, this one had once hosted life. But, something had gone awry on this world. Death and silence nestled where life once had. A pestilent gray mist smothered the atmosphere. Something had indeed gone wrong, but their mission wasn’t to determine what. Their mission was to study this planet and this race that once was and could have been.
         The thrusters erupted into red sparkles as the ship descended through the gray haze. Early reconnaissance had shown that the toxic atmosphere was fairly stable. Every team member hoped that reconnaissance proved true; many a ship had been lost in storms on other worlds, many lives lost.
         The designated landing spot was close to one of the major cities. Or, rather, what had once been one of the major cities. As the ship slowed to greet the surface, Antos quietly observed the dark ruins through the view port. Never had the team studied a tragedy that was so recent. Not even a quarac ago, this city had been a teeming center of life and civilization. Now, it was a teeming center of chaos, full of shadows of memories and lives that had been forever erased with just one push of a button.
         Landing tentacles stretched out and each team member felt a jolt as the ship stopped one final time.
         Antos and his other team members equipped breathing units. The planet was a toxic nightmare, most especially this area.
         Multi-colored lights beeped. The circular outline of a door burned through the hull and spread open. From that door, a small ramp found its way to the cold surface. Antos lead the six team members down the ramp. They stopped and equipped the most essential mission piece: the chronometer.
         Antos adjusted his. It read: 25 quaracs.
         Sparks of sunlight struggled to penetrate the dark sky. A light, gray mist hung in the air, mostly collected around small holes in the ground. Ruins stood lifeless in all directions. Most were the mercilessly charred remains of buildings. The ground was black and shaped in an unnatural way. Broken white and yellow lines extended in several areas and to the ship’s left a small collection of machinery rotted away.
         Antos gazed in wonder and thought of this city that once was. Once, mighty buildings had extended to meet the heavens. Millions of people had journeyed on the streets. He envisioned the city’s bright lights and how they may have shined at night.
         A spectacular display of this race’s achievement, he thought proudly. There was once such life here.
         Now, there were only geysers vomiting toxic fumes.
         Antos split from the team and snuck over to one of the geysers. He could feel the poison being pumped into the air.
         Fear grabbed him, but it didn’t grab hard enough. Antos extended his hand over the geyser. It sensed his hand and spit out more gas. A gray fume encircled his arm before joining its venomous brethren.
         Antos continued through the ruins, alone. He examined a collection of skeletons that lay near a pile of ash. The skeletons were nearly rotted away. Their bony fingertips were tightly clutched around one another. The arms of one were firmly wrapped around another’s neck. The bones were a mess. It was impossible to tell just how many had died in that one spot. Antos swallowed a lump in his throat and pulled a yellow holocam out of his suit. He scanned the bones, creating eternal snapshots of the horror.
         The rest of the team was moving deeper into the ruins, but Antos stayed. Curiosity had ensnared his mind; for this planet was unlike any other he’d seen before. What kind of beings were they? What had they looked like? Did they have a single, powerful form of government? These questions along with dozens of others ran through his mind. Antos now felt not only the urge, but also the responsibility to find out.
         He grabbed the bones. They turned to ash on his fingertips.
         Antos watched the ash fade away. He stared at it until something in the distance caught his attention.
         There were strange gray paintings on the wall.
         Amazing… Antos rushed over to the wall. Maybe here’s something that can tell me more about this race, he hoped. Antos’s hope was dashed to pieces when he closely examined them.
         The paintings were crudely drawn pieces. If art was the insight to a culture, then this race must not have had much of a culture. The paintings were gray outlines of what Antos assumed to be the planet’s native race. The outlines were relatively close together and shaded gray. Paintings, yet something about the paintings didn’t sit right with Antos. He had to find out why.
         He pulled the recorder from his suit and opened it. He spoke: “This is troubling. These paintings indicate no creativity whatsoever. They appear to be rough sketches of the native species. They are very crudely drawn, as if everything was somehow slapped on at once. Yet…” he paused, trying to find the right words. Then he asked himself, “Are these even paintings?” He was tempted to flip the recorder off and finish speaking his piece, but he refrained. He was the first to find these paintings so he had the right to give every possible hypothesis on them.
         He couldn’t explain what else they could be. Something was wrong; they weren’t ordinary paintings by any means. Yet, he couldn’t explain what else they were.
         “The fact that these… paintings survived the catastrophe that claimed everything else on this world is simply astounding.”
         If they’re paintings.
         “Okay, let’s suppose they’re not paintings. Or, better yet, let’s suppose they are and that they didn’t survive the disaster. What would we be upon?”
         He slammed the recorder shut. He knew what they would be upon.
         The race wasn’t extinct. They were still alive.
         Alive and doing bad artwork too, he thought with slight amusement. That thought was quickly dismissed. He refused to accept the fact that this race wasn’t dead. All sensors had indicated that life had already waved “bye” to this planet. It was unlikely that the most advanced technology in Orovna was wrong.
         “But, what are we dealing with?”
         Antos heard a soft beep from his wrist. He paid it no attention. He needed an answer to this riddle.
         The only answer was dead silence, interrupted by the occasional hiss of the geysers. He sensed his teammates far away, growing farther, but he didn’t care. He had to solve this mystery.
         He popped open the recorder.
         “I’m scanning these paintings and then I’ll search for more. I hope to find more and hopefully their origins will be revealed.”
         He clicked off the recorder.
         “If they’re paintings.”


As Antos walked away from the paintings, he became aware of the thickness of the gray gases. The gases had been light and airy before, but now they were thick and hazy. The geysers were all around, pumping more gas, faster and faster. He couldn’t see very far and the toxic air level readings were bursting through the top.
         Antos sent a signal to his teammates. Where are you?
         No response.
         He tried again. Where are you?
         Again, he received no response.
         He reached out with his mind. He felt for his teammates and felt nothing but emptiness, lifelessness.
         Death.
         Nothing but the gray mist, all around.
         A terrible thought occurred to him, one he had thought could never happen to him.
         We don’t stick around and search. Once time’s up, time’s up.
         The mist had grown darker. The sun was gone, along with most of the gray clouds. The moon had risen to take their places and proclaim its dominance over the night sky. Streaks of moonlight now invaded the shades of this dark, dead world.
         Antos made his way through the mists to where he’d last felt his teammates.
         There, the mists dissipated around a small geyser.
         Antos stepped close to the geyser and looked around. The gas was not very thick in this area. As his black eyes frantically swept the area, hthey found no sign that his teammates had ever been in this area. He whipped out the scanner and set it for the ship. Its rays swept the vicinity.
         It emitted a cold, dead beep.
         No ship detected.
         The scanner fell from his hands.
         He was trapped.
         “No,” he whispered. “No, there…” his voice trailed off. He looked at his wrist and covered the chronometer with his hand, uncovered it, covered it, and uncovered it again.
         Negative twenty-five quaracs.
         Antos couldn’t possibly understand why this had happened to him. He had never imagined it could happen, but here he was, trapped all alone on a dead planet. No one was coming for him.
         There was no help.
         There was no escape.
         Nothing but the gray mist, all around.
         Antos stood still. He couldn’t see anything but gray, those sick fumes blanketed his vision. He cautiously took a step and then retracted; the geysers were seemingly everywhere. By one single misstep he’d tumble down that incumbent mouth where things worse than gray fumes lurked.
         With moving around no longer an option, Antos thought. He thought of the stupid rules and regulations. Exploration was dangerous. The studying of dead worlds was even more so. Something had exterminated each world; entire races and cultures just didn’t suddenly disappear on their own. Accordingly, something had caused this—-these poison fume puking geysers, the charred buildings and skeletons, and the paintings, most of all the paintings. They weren’t paintings, Antos decided. They couldn’t be artwork. Even the worst-drawn images had some element of life to them, but the ones he’d found lacked any resemblance to art created by a living creature. Whatever had birthed the geysers, the fumes, and the ruins must’ve been in a giving mood that day, for they'd also decided to sketch blank voids onto walls.
         Well, let’s hope that this something has already finished its work.
         His mind suddenly exploded: Damn the Elite Council! It felt even better in words, thus: “DAMN THE ELITE COUNCIL! DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!
         At the start, the motto of the teams had been: “Leave no member behind.” And that motto had been fine. It still should’ve been fine, but no. Too many casualties kept occurring. A member would disappear and another would be sent to find him. He’d disappear as well. That cycle would continue until the team was depleted. Then, another team would be sent to search for the missing team, and the great circle of death would continue uninhibited.
         The catalyst for changing the rule was the incident on Tranas V. The other incidents didn’t do much to sway the Elite Council’s opinion, but the incident on Tranas V had been a serious wake-up call to authorities. As far as Antos was concerned, Tranas V was the reason he was trapped on this lifeless world. They should’ve left Tranas V alone. No team should’ve ever been dispatched to that diseased world, yet the enlightened ones in charge of Orovna had done just that: dispatch a team to a world that had been wiped out by a plague, a world on which the plague was still very active. And the rest of the story fell right into place: team member got lost and was infected. The other team member went out, found him, got infected too, they both came aboard the ship, and effectively distributed the plague to everyone else. The ship stopped for recharging at Bios Dimourgos, the Belmeonian home world, and half the system’s population had been wiped out. Containment crews had spent several thousand quaracs eliminating the plague. More accurately, they’d eliminated the infected. Over seven billion beings had been exterminated. Their bodies had been jettisoned into black holes.
         Antos shivered. He remembered that. The containment crews had run out of weapons (after all, killing billions of people took a lot of resources), so some of the infected were jettisoned alive. He imagined the begging and pleading they’d done with their emotionless murderers and couldn't help but wonder if the races he worked for were any different than the being responsible for these dead worlds.
         Extermination. It was a lot easier than finding a cure.
         That had started it. For many years, Antos had lost many friends. He’d sat through endless head counts, and when someone came up missing, too bad, time to go. He had Tranas V and Orovna's Elders to thank for that.
The gray gases were starting to dissipate. A path was now clear before him. With no other options, he walked the dark path carefully, hoping for some miracle and knowing that a single misstep would lead deep into the belly of the dragon.

Negative sixty quaracs.
         Antos unlatched his chronometer and tossed it away.
         He walked in an area of black surface that was relatively free of the gray gas. The poison lurked around the corners of various ruins, peaking out, watching Antos, waiting for the right moment to jump out and sink in its claws. The fear of running out of air lingered in his mind. Right now, he had plenty. However, who could guess what new path fate had woven for him? Quaracs ago, he had been on the ship, fully expecting to leave this damned world with his comrades. Now, he was expecting to explore and maintain his air supply. Fate could bring a rock that was hidden from his sight. One single trip, and there went the cord in his breathing unit. The gray gases would then infiltrate his body and consume the inner contents of his soul, leaving yet another casualty in the never-ending graveyard.
         It wasn’t a very pleasant thought, so he turned away from the gases and concentrated on the ground. Many scattered yellow lines decorated the landscape. These lines weren’t like the paintings, though. A cold, lifeless influence hadn't touched these. Though the lines weren’t natural, they seemed as if some living being had made them. Their making, however, hadn’t been recent. The lines were faded and worn out, but still, they weren’t as unnatural as the paintings.
         Up ahead, the path winded through the ruins to a clear, open area. As Antos wandered through the ruins, his heart thumped a little quicker. He had a feeling that something lay in the area up ahead. And, as he entered the area, his unfortunate plight escaped his notice for a moment. He felt the same surge of excited curiosity he’d felt during earlier missions.
         The same excited curiosity that was responsible for this.
         He stepped into the area. The unnatural black ground continued under even more unnatural abominations.
         No gray gases dared hide what lay before him. Stretched as far as his eyes could peer through his visor were rows of small beings. All their eyes focused on him and he felt their pain. A bright flash obscured his vision and the small beings were gone, their death-spheres marked by paintings… paintings?
         Antos tried to think, but no clear thoughts surfaced. He tried to speak, but no words could describe what he’d just seen. The only sound was silence, interrupted by hissing of the geysers. The sound of the vomited poison caged Antos at all angles. He fell to his knees onto the horror of the lifelessness and his situation. There, he let the silence take over his body, for he finally knew the truth of his existence. His existence meant nothing; on the infinite realm’s landscape he wasn’t even a small blip. No one cared for him. No one cared of his fate. The wicked universe was a harsh beast to deal with.
         Antos stared at the hundreds of paintings—the unmarked graves of the damned. Night turned into day and he kept his vigil, the only action that made sense to him. Warning sensors buzzed in his helmet and he ignored them. He knelt here among the damned.
         After awhile, he lay beside them.