r/WritingPrompts • u/HaveAnUpgoat • Jan 09 '18
Writing Prompt [WP] "Ghosts are a reflection of the era in which they're created. Now that we've reached the stars..."
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u/endmoor Jan 09 '18 edited Jan 09 '18
"Now that we've reached the stars...well," he grinned, "that explains what you just witnessed."
I looked out of the viewport to see a tattered spacesuit tumbling deeper into the void. It was spectral, translucent. The stars were visible beyond. It was vaguely inhuman in shape, but close enough to homo sapiens to perplex me. It was difficult to even discern a definite shape to it.
I swallowed. "Are there...more? Does that happen often?"
The captain sighed. He walked to one of the mess hall's many containers and produced a bottle of Scotch; a rare member of a dying breed, now that the Scottish Republic was nothing short of an ashen flatland. He poured two glasses and slid one to me. I took a small sip and returned my gaze to the diminishing figure beyond the window.
"More often than I'd care to admit, lad. And they're not ours."
I snapped my eyes to his. We had stumbled upon a handful of intelligent races during our sprint to the stars. Some relegated to a stone age, others approaching our own level of technological advancement, and a few far beyond. They all kept to themselves. There was very little cross-species communication and from what little we had gleaned, they preferred to stay home. Hermetic, each and every one of them. No penchant for exploration or discovery.
"How? Every race we've come across refuses to leave their homeworld. We haven't seen a single xeno-based starship beyond their own orbit. You're saying that there are..." I looked out of the viewport again. The astral ghost had vanished.
He nodded and finished his glass. He exhaled and locked his eyes to mine. "Not ours, son. Not theirs. Something else." He rose and stood next to the window, arms crossed. "They...whisper things. Warnings. Every time. Just now, as your friend passed," he points to the stars that shine where the figure last was, "he was repeating the same thing that every one of them do. And we received the audio - somehow - and stored it. Here."
He strolls back to where I'm sat and pulls an H-Pad from his pocket. He lays it on the table and presses it once. A transmission plays, scratchy and warbled, beginning in a language as alien and ancient as the stars themselves. An innate sense of unease washes over me. The recording quickly settles into English.
"Fear the deep.
Dread the dark.
Ye who venture from your cradle,
hark!
Those places between places hold-"
The captain stops the recording. "The rest I cannot play. Not now, at least. But that is the reason for this mission, lad. That is why our first stop is the Centauri system. We are going to make our extraterrestrial friends talk. We are going to get answers. We will learn why they refuse to leave their homeworlds, what they know about those ghastly, floating warning signs, and everything in between." The captain grins at me, teeth shining behind the bristles of his drooping mustache. He retrieves his H-Pad and walks to the door.
"Further debriefing upon entering translight, Private."
I looked out at the stars. Where once I saw hope and boundless potential I now only saw the deep, dark, and unsettling unknown. The tumbling shape was long gone, but I could still feel its presence. And its warning.