♾ E.O.U. · fragmented record ♾

⍙ Systems [C̷O̴R̸R̷U̸P̴T̸E̶D̷] ⍙

#frame_2 · 9tqj0kb1drkq682kddwg · Threshold: morning

Not home / not not-home / surviving

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Location: Hibrosmetind, 10.9 C, 1.5 Rad, 52.6 Tox

Condition: Damaged, Awake, Continuing

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"Survivor." I muttered, waking myself up inside the still-burning wounded ship.

I held it on my tongue knowing why.

Survivor of what, exactly? Was I one? Were there others? Of what?

I was alive. I had survived. The certainty settled heavily somewhere deep beneath the suit, the static, the ache behind my eyes. But what had I survived? The ship I was in was still burning, but - we had survied. Something. A disconE̶r̷r̸o̶r̴

Something moved at the edge of my memory like a shape behind fogged glass. The harder I looked toward it the further it folded away, as though pain itself prevented access. Behind me the ship crackled with fire. That, at least, was easier to understand.

I stayed in the cockpit longer than I needed to, listening to the low hums and fractured groans of cooling metal. I did not want to leave. The thought surprised me with its intensity. This place, cramped, damaged, burning - it already felt safe, like - home.

After that the thoughts closed against themselves. I could think no further. Only the fire. Only the smell of smoke. Only the flicker of warning lights across the canopy glass.

The ship was mine. It was me. It was us. It was -

"Home." I repeated the word quietly inside the suit. I wasn't certain I believed it yet. Whether the damage had come from an electrical fire or something worse no longer seemed to matter. The ship was hurt. That mattered more. I had to fix it. I had to fix me. I had to fix us.

" ҂ ※ ⟟ "

I looked down at the suit covering my body. I could not see myself beneath it. No skin and no face. Only gloves, seals, plating, and glass. For a moment I wondered if I actually was the suit. The boundary between body and machine felt strangely uncertain. Had someone built it for me? My… ctgq8u35e8? That word surfaced again unexpectedly. It carried no image, only the weight of familiative presence.

At a twinge of the old familiar pain I stopped myself before the thought could go further..

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The sun climbed slowly over the horizon. Pale light across dead stone, twisted blue and red growths. Mineral spires in the distance caught the light and and glittered.

Something grew inside me as I looked at the wounded ship around me. A feeling of… Care. Genuine care.

The ship had kept me through the night, its broken walls around me like sheltering hands. The line between my body and its body had blurred while I slept. I felt connected to it in a way I couldn't explain. It had protected me, and now it was wounded, and I had to save it. It was me. It was us.

I rested my hand against the hull before I left.

"Sorry. Thank you."

I didn't know why I apologized. I said it anyway.

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The ground cracked dry under my boots. Every step sent faint vibrations upward through the suit as brittle earth fractured underfoot. The land felt exhausted and dead and yet there was life here. Small things moved in the distance. Plants bent toward the light. Strange mineral growths glittered along the horizon.

Carbon, I remembered suddenly. Then iron. The knowledge arrived cleanly and detached from any context. The night had softened everything, dulling the sensations, the fear, the confusion. Daylight gave structure. It offered a beginning, a continuation, a direction.

Words in my visual tried to guide me like the voice in my head. I was too tired and confused to ignore them. I fixed something in the tool I held and its weight changed. I fixed something in my suit. I made something happen.

A scanner pulsed alive as symbols bloomed across my vision. A plant marked with lightning? I moved closer until I could see it clearly. Red, like a flower, or fruit, a plant almost chest-high. Thamium9, my vision told me. I took some… somehow. A blue marker pointed me towards another plant, a harvest of… silicate. I found pale zinc oxide hidden inside another thick-stemmed plant.

Each discovery filled me with something quiet and real, and grateful. The world was harsh, and dead, but - it was undeniably generous.

The plants didn't resist when I harvested from them, and so I tried not to take too much.

That was when I noticed the drones again.

Small hovering machines drifting through the landscape, scanning rocks, plants, and creatures with detached patience. They watched me briefly when I took things from plants, small stones of iron from the ground. They didn't come close unless I was greedy. I tried not to be.

Their world. Their garden. I was a stranger walking through living systems I didn't understand, pulling pieces from the ground to keep myself alive, like I was some kind of… "Thief."

The drones didn't respond.

"Sorry."

Louder the second time. As though volume alone could make the world forgive me.

"Thief," I repeated, feeling how the word felt on me. I didn't like it. It made me feel bad as I continued to explore, scanning small stones and plants like the machines did.

The guilt didn't leave. Beneath it was something deeper still. The need to continue. To search. To find home, whatever that meant now. I decided silently that if I survived long enough I would find some way to make it right.

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I kept the wounded ship in sight in the distance as I paused near a cluster of stone. A short dark pillar, almost my height, hummed softly in the wind. Circular indentations lined its surface. Something about it called to me and I reached out. The circles illuminated instantly beneath my fingers.

The HUD blazed hard enough to make me flinch back.

"YOU LEARNED THE 9d7n4nj1b0 WORD FOR RARE."

"9dqq4xk1f0?" I mumbled; the word meant nothing to me. SHould it have? I knew the other wod though. Rare meant something. 9dqq4xk1f0 joined the growing pile of mysteries inside my head, scattered fragments of a language I once knew, or perhaps had never known at all. I stepped back slowly.

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Boxes were scattered nearby. Yellow storage crates abandoned among red cylindrical containers half buried in dust. I hesitated before touching them. They might belong to someone. Maybe even the person I had been before waking here? Maybe that person was still me. Maybe that was an ecuse.

I waited.

Only the wind. The insects. The distant drones.

I opened the smaller red boxes first.

PLUTONIUM, the words in my vision informed me. That word felt more important. A distant echo from another existence. Important once? No longer reachable. I forgot; it didn't matter.

Inside the larger yellow crate was a… shielding shard. The HUD explained its purpose clinically. Hazard protection. Defensive recharge. Survival utility. Constructed. Artificial.

Defensive? I knew that word. Why did I have to know that word? Why did I did… this? I never thought I was in danger before. I looked around, nervously. I'd wandered further away from my ship than I was comfortable with, suddenly.

If shielding existed, this world contained things that needed to be shielded against. Things capable of hurting me.

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LIFE SUPPORT POWER: LOW.

The voice crackled through the suit like cold water and for the first time since waking genuine fear caught up to me..

I turned toward the ship immediately.

Broken. Burning. Wounded. Still waiting.

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I found a heavy green container. Inside it a small object labeled as a 8xjpp Charm. A good luck charm carried by galactic traders.

Good luck implied danger. Traders implied civilization. Civilization implied other people, other… people. Somewhere beyond this ruined place others existed. I looked around at the desolate land, empty save for the occasional floating mechanical caretaker, then looked up. This world became enormous all at once.

I repaired the scanner first. Then the launch thrusters. The process came naturally, like my hands already knew how to do this, like I had done this… a lot of times before. The motions my mind had forgotten. 8tjq4wk9ehjg dust. 8dgq4ubmcm sheets. Fuel conduits. Diagnostics.

"REPAIR COMPLETE."

I flinched as the suit's voice startled me. It sounded almost satisfied.

My exhaustion weighed heavily on my arms. I returned to the ship slowly and rested one hand against the damaged hull before climbing inside. The fire had mostly died. The ship told me it wanted something called 91jq4ub4d5upu and would show me where to find it.

The cockpit hummed softly.

I was safe. For now.

I curled beneath the flickering instrument lights while the alien night gathered outside the canopy glass.

Surrounded by mysteries I couldn't name.

And I

slept

and I

dreamed

of

stars

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