They are here. The other survivors. I found them in a clearing the ship’s cartographer never recorded. There are forty-seven of them. All crew. All wearing the same expression of beatific, vacant peace. They stand in a circle, perfectly still, as a fine, iridescent pollen drifts down from the canopy.
The jungle hummed. Not with the comforting buzz of insects or the rustle of leaves in a terrestrial wind, but with a low, resonant thrum that felt less like sound and more like a migraine trying to birth itself behind my eyes. Dr. Aris Baatar, call sign “Doc Ba,” late of the ISRV Gilgamesh , wiped a smear of cobalt-blue sap from his visor. Stranded on Santa Astarta -v1.1.0 Beta- -Doc Ba...
I step into the clearing. The pollen touches my skin. The thrum becomes a harmony. And for the first time since the crash, Doc Ba stops being stranded. They are here
But the jungle is kind today. The bell-flowers are singing back. The six-legged things are curled at the edge of the clearing, chittering the melody softly. There are forty-seven of them