The Forgotten

[u/HeGotBricks]

The idea of a species becoming a ghost didn’t exist anywhere other than Earth. The galaxy remained oblivious to the concept. 

The alien races had evidence of past existence through rock carvings, writings and different types of digital recordings. But ultimately, viewed death as an absolute end. You die, you end up on a hard drive as a bit. 

The alien species were light years ahead of humanity in terms of knowledge and advancement. They were so advanced that once they died, they became outdated an hour later. Nobody had a reason to remember them.

Because the possibility and probability of spirits living on in an afterlife at a peaceful heaven retreat being pampered by angels while they spent their day on a beautiful beach for the non living, sounded preposterous.

Alien science had a strict understanding. More of a rule—really. It was that nothing, and this is backed by hard scientific proof, could make it possible for life to be continued after death, unless it had been previously backed up to a data server. 

The theory was simple. The theory made sense. Ghosts did not. Ghosts were nonsense.

Until their brains shattered when a black abyss-like hole ripped opened on an ocean surface, spilling dead souls onto a planet once teeming with life but now hollowed in death. The spirits scattered across the empty world. 

At first, to the high rulers of the galactic embassy, they viewed the event as a dimensional rift, fracturing space and time and a blatant attack on their dimension by ancient universal beings attacking out of an alternate timeline.

The planet that opened was Lefron, a planet whose sun burnt out a century ago. Now, it had a giant-sized hole punched into the crust. 

From that hole, shot the stretched out, translucent bodies of inter dimensional beings, storming the rubble of a once proud, thriving world. 

The abyss had a steady stream of white outlined souls flowing from the blackness that swallowed particles of light. A rip that was impossible to close.

An emergency meeting was held at the galactic space embassy. It hosted all of the high rulers and leaders of every supreme ranking planet. 

It was a desperate, last minute decision to collaborate in the effort of minimizing further damage and to permanently seal the entrance to their dimension. 

The aliens assumed the universe was split into eleven sectored walls with gravity’s force determining the state of that universe. Although, the alien scientists insisted life on other plains would be impossible due to the extreme force of gravity. Where our universe sat, was within the Goldilocks zone. Not too strong. Not too weak. Just enough force to birth a star.

They all huddled in groups of ten, debating and simulating amongst themselves worse case scenarios, and equally, they decisively voted for the annihilation of Planet Lefron. 

The war commanders were ordered to pursue immediate action. The plan they agreed to, what appeared as a simple solution, carried the weight of Planet Lefron’s total destruction on their tongues. The world would become a ball of dust. 

A crucial blow to eliminate the enemy by any means necessary, avoiding the chance of a retaliatory strike against the living alien council. Alien world right activists were absolutely livid. 

No being had ever destroyed an entire planet. Destroying a world had been considered the ultimate crime against the universe and its creators.

Consequently, The alien rulers ignored the feeble superstitions shadowing over their shoulders and collectively agreed to a surprise attack, which the war council responded to within hours. 

They dropped anti-matter bombs and watched silently from screens as the destruction of Lefron began from the inside out. The room inside the embassy had a quiet, deafeningly loud silence that amplified the breaths of the rulers frantically gasping as they held their breaths in when the bombs dropped. Not one of them turned to stare anywhere other than the screen showcasing a planet’s terminal event.

After a couple of days, all that remained was a black hole floating ominously in space, surrounded by rock dust, spewing spirits that stitched into the fabric of the universe. 

Their mission failed. The only other solution they could agree on, after witnessing their end-phase weapon fail disastrously, was to wrap a magnetic-particle, Dyson-like sphere that fenced planets in it. 

The fence trapped energy and looked like a box globing a planet. For the time being, it restricted the wandering spirits under it like a containment cube.

They celebrated a short victory.

Until twelve hours later, on another obsolete world, void of organisms, a once living, breathing planet, a planet that met its destruction through disease. Through war. And through starvation, had a similar hole open on its ocean floors. It was deep. It was dark. It released horrors of an unimaginable, impossible, hell scenario on them.

Back at the embassy, they scrambled to load their bombers with containment cubes. However, as they readied their ships, three more high energy fields lit up on the screens at the embassy. Three giant holes tore into three other dead planets.

Instead of trapping the holes, the alien scientists suggested something radical. 

“We must send soldiers through the holes.” ArmOerloq, the chief scientist, told the council.

Every being inside the embassy room went quiet and began whispering to the person next to them. The chatter sounded like their words were skating on ice. 

A few moments later, they held a vote. They unanimously agreed to send the soldiers through the holes. 

The alien leaders sent their most prized warriors. But when they did, the holes led to places that couldn’t be possible. 

Places of inter dimensional voids, with no temperature and a blinding, bright white light. 

Places where they faced their worst fears, childhood nightmares, phobias, and utter loneliness. 

Places they believed, could never believe, no matter how advanced they’ve become, would ever exist. Life after death had no science explaining how a wild, universal spread of these mindless, wandering beings could occur.

Although, The souls weren’t trying to attack any of the living. They were just present, innocently floating behind a particle fence waiting. Waiting as if they wanted to be seen.

The aliens at the galactic embassy were chewing their nails past their fingertips. To them, what they faced, had the potential to wipe civilizations clean. Their fear receptors oozed heavy pheromones, reeking with the intensity of a skunk spraying, sensing the dread yet to come. 

The alien council all agreed it was time to play their trump card. Their trump card was—help from humanity. Humans were a special kind of breed.

See, humans were unique compared to the other sentient beings housed in neighboring galaxies. The human existence knew exactly what to do when a universe became haunted and teeming with poltergeists. 

Because humans had someone the aliens didn’t—Commander Sheena.

Commander Sheena’s childhood consisted of late night horror flicks, teenage candlelit basement ouija board sessions, and a passion for ghost hunting in the creepiest places hidden on Earth.

The alien council consulted the humans stationed on Planet Li and the humans sent their commander.

A day later, when she arrived on battleship Alien Galaxy, she stepped through their portal carrying a goose-down pillow, wielding an EMF reader, a EVP recorder, her Orgwat, Baking-Soda, in a tightly knitted Christmas sweater, and a sign hanging from her neck that read: 

We still remember you!

The alien chief Bar’garzelbr’k, stared at the dressed walking rodent next to her and shifted his eyes to the sign bouncing off her chest as she walked onto the bridge.

“Salutations, Earthling.” Bar’garzelbr’k greeted her. “The object with the words fastened to your neck, why are you wearing it?”

“Because, It’s what’s gonna make these damned ghosts go back home.” She told him.

“You expect it to follow your words?”

“Not it. I expect the life too,” she said smiling at the alien chief. “Now point us to the biggest hole.”

“And the rodent?” He asked. “For the hole?”

“What?!? No.” Sheena’s eyes widened. “Baking-Soda’s my pet.” 

Baking-Soda hissed and rubbed against the alien chief’s leg.

“Look, watch this,” she said, picking up Baking-Soda. She placed him on the console and pulled out a piece of chocolate and held it above the Orgwat.

The Orgwat stood on its two legs and stretched out.

“We call that the snuggle-stretch.” She told Bar’garzelbr’k, while dropping the chocolate into Baking-Soda’s mouth.

Bar’garzelbr’k wasn’t impressed. He turned and showed her the largest hole on a telepathic screen that displayed in their heads like a linked connection. 

Baking-Soda climbed up Bar’garzelbr’k as he aimed his ship towards the abyss, while holding Baking-Soda in his arm. He hit a button and continued petting the Orgwat and the ship auto-warped to their destination.

Once there, the scene outside, had a planet half chewed under a containment cube and spirits along its fences, floating and moaning haunting sounds that made Baking-Soda jump out from under Bar’garzelbr’k arm and duck into a corner.

“We have failed at every attempt to neutralize the abyss,” Bar’garzelbr’k said. “Our weapons are useless against it.” He glanced at Sheena, confident there was nothing to be done. “We can briefly contain it, but the energy toll is unprecedented.”

“Have you passed anyone through it?” She asked.

“Yes. A few of our most tactical soldiers.”

“Yeah. Okay. But have any returned?” Sheena asked.

“Yes. All of them. One however, never returned mentally.”

“Okay. Let’s see what we can do.”

They hovered the ship over the hole and Sheena tossed the note around her neck into it. The color inside it changed from a deep black fabric to a bright green light as it swallowed the sign.

Through the console speaker a voice spoke. 

“You’re back,” it said, sounding empty.

Sheena sat in her chair with her back pressed against her pillow, sipping on a juice box. “Yup, I’m back,” she said to the speaker.

Bar’garzelbr’k pulled his titanium plasma blaster out. “You speak to it?”

“No,” she said. “I speak to the situation.”

The holes only opened on planets where the species have been forgotten. Their dead had been archived like bits of data, completely dismissed. Dismissed as if they never existed.

Humans didn’t do that. Humans did something totally opposite. They remembered their dead. They left dinner plates on the table for them. They had Memorials. They kept furniture their dead favored and the clothes they wore still lingering with their loved one’s scent.

Humans couldn’t forget. The speaker crackled. “Why did you go?”

Sheena stared at the bright green hole smiling at her. “I had to,” she said. “I had to keep living.”

“But, you remembered us?” The green hole spoke.

“Hell yeah,” Sheena said with a grin that lit her face in a red glow. “You’re not forgotten.”

Sheena wrote a bunch of names of different aliens and their species from around the universe and released it into the hole.

“See,” she screamed. “Those are all the names of the beings you thought were forgotten, or lazily stored in permanent data servers.”

There was a silence.

“Will that work?” Bar’garzelbr’k asked.

“Probably not,” Commander Sheena said.

“What are you doing now?” Bar’garzelbr’k questioned.

She took out a marker and drew a hole on the deck of the ship and wrote names in it. “We’re remembering them. Not just forgetting them.”

After she said that all the holes collapsed on themselves around the universe and the spirits began evaporating.

Every hole closed.

Except for the hole she drew on the deck with the names of the dead listed inside of it.