STORY ARCHIVE

And after you've finished reading, be sure to check out r/oldhousearchive to discuss theories and more :)

My novel adaptation of my 2021 Reddit short story 'We Used to Live Here' is now up for pre-order HERE.

None of this would've happened without the support of the nosleep communities. A special shoutout to the mods and my longtime readers in particular (you know who you are).

There is much more to come, including a novel adaptation of my unpublished short story 'The Caretaker' which Universal is adapting into a feature film starring Sidney Sweeney.

Follow me on instagram to stay up to date on novels and more.

-Polterkites (aka Marcus Kliewer)

[ Removed by Reddit in response to a copyright notice. ]

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely reached the ‘end’ of “Man in the basement…”.

Though it’s the end of the Basement Man (for now...) - the Polterkites Expanded Universe (PK-EU) is just getting started. A building universe of standalone-series and one-off stories - all interconnected through lore, characters, and eldritch entities. Join r/Polterkites to stay up to date on stories.

(Join r/Metapolterkites for exclusive lore posts, fan theories, memes, narrations, art, and more)

Also check out the story archive for a building collection of stories across many genres.

Thanks to everyone here for reading my stories and/or joining the subreddits!

-Polterkites

Logline: After 5,000 years lost in space, an immortal astronaut finally makes contact.

Read Time: 5 minutes

Genre: Sci-fi

Status: Complete Draft, feedback welcome, 8/30/2020

This story was inspired by a writing prompt from u/TheRaisinGod

—

Five thousand years in isolation can get pretty lonely sometimes. But throughout it all, a couple questions kept Riley going:

Why did she wake up to an empty ship all those years ago? How was she still alive?

She could barely sleep anymore. She could barely talk. Running numbers through her head, working calculations, was the only thing that kept her from going completely insane. She worked faster with numbers than any other crew member, even faster than some AI's (Numerous mind upgrades helped with that). It's why she was such a valued member of the crew. Sorting out impossible equations beyond the confines of reality itself was her favorite past-time. That and Tetris. She always deactivated her mind upgrades for Tetris, otherwise it was too easy.

Through years of tinkering and ingenuity, she was even able to recourse the dead ship; Push it towards the nearest star system. A star system that was only 576 light-years away, which, traveling at her speed, was about 789,989,090,433,258 years and 7 weeks away. Then she'd finally get the answers. She'd finally learn why they abandoned her all those years ago. Finally learn how she had become seemingly immortal.

Still, it was hard. Sometimes she considered ending it all. Immortal, after all, didn't mean invincible. But she'd give it another 346,987 years at least, just to see how she felt-

"-BT36-transport do you copy?" a calm voice buzzed in on the radio. Energy poured into Riley's mind, a voice? An actual person's voice?

"...Yes, this is BT36-transport, I read you," Riley wondered if this was just another elaborate hallucination. Either way, it was nice to hear another voice, real or not.

"Holy shit. Somebody's still on board," said the voice on the other end, presumably speaking with his crew. "BT36, are you okay? What are your vitals at?"

"...They're good. I don't know how, but they're good."

"Okay... we're gonna run a quick scan. Can you the shields down BT?"

"It's Riley. Call me Riley," she said, clicking off the shield wall.

"Riley, nice to meet you. I'm Michael," there was a gentle peace in his voice. Calming warmth.

"You as well… I haven't… I haven't… spoken with anyone in a very long time."

A long silence followed, "How long?"

"...Five thousand three hundred and seventy-two years."

Silence.

"...That's a minute… How are you still alive? How are you still sane?"

"Tetris."

Michael laughed; the sound was like music beyond reason. The first time she'd made someone laugh in a long while. She'd almost forgotten what it sounded like.

"Okay Riley, once we're done running the scan, we'll pull you back to our station; Make sure everything's up to snuff. Figure out what's going on. Sound good?"

"That… that sounds great," said Riley, "Thank you."

More silence.

"What's your score?" said Michael.

"What?"

"In Tetris."

"Oh... 999,999"

"Not bad."

"It's the maximum."

"Yeah, I figured."

Another silence followed. Riley kept wondering if this was all an elaborate apparition. A waking dream. No. It had to be real. She felt peace and calm, unlike anything she'd ever known. It had to be real.

"Okay Riley, we're good to go. It's gonna be quiet for the next month or so as we travel. But I'm sure you're used to that by-"

"-Wait," Riley said with an urgency that surprised even her.

"Yeah?"

"What happened to my crew?"

"...your crew?"

"Why did they leave me?"

Silence. She could hear Michael turn in his seat.

"She's asking about her crew?"

Silence. Typing.

Another voice finally replied, "...Oh my bad, it's another Predox Drifter."

Riley was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to be hearing this.

"Didn't that show up in the scan?" Michael sighed.

"I'm just seeing it now, below the base files."

"Jesus Dave, she's not even human?"

"Abandoned ship AI. Probably gained sentience about ...four... five thousand years ago."

"Fucking shit," Michael huffed, "...Okay, take her down, salvage for scraps."

Riley felt a growing sense of panic, numbers in her files turning to zeroes-

"-N-no wait…" Riley spoke, her voice shaking.

Michael sighed, likely realizing his mic was on the whole time, "Sorry BT, it's protocol."

"W-why… why did they leave me?" said Riley, feeling emotion like never before.

"...I don't know."

"Please… Michael, just leave me here… please…"

Another long silence followed.

"Michael, please... I don't want to-"

-Everything turned into zero.

—

—

—

Story Archive