Primer

Originally printed in “The Online Journal of Gary Buckle, Cognitive Detective”: from The Space City Chronicle, Exclusive Retro-Edition Vol. 23, April 6, 2046

This month, I am saddened to bring you the announcement that this will be my last report from the Harvestman 5. Something terrible is happening, and I simply don’t trust the vessel that I am in. Admittedly, I am also deeply concerned about information security in the Hypercos. I don’t trust anything anymore, save for the two other crew members of this ship, and this is very difficult for me to rationalize while trapped in deep interplanetary space.
If you have been following my reporting for the last few months, then you may understand what I so gravely fear. Many of you have reached out to me to express love and support, and I am profoundly appreciative of this. It has kept me going for the last few days, and I don’t know what I would do without your support.

Honestly? As I write this, I don’t know if I will survive the next few hours, let alone the three days until we reach port at the Mars Horizon Station. We may not even make port, as the Harvestman 5 has a mind of its own now, and we are unable to control it.  

Three days ago, our esteemed mining vessel steered off course, and plotted a vector toward Martian Lagrange point L4. Two days ago, the lights and electronic equipment began malfunctioning. System diagnostics revealed hardware failures where there were none. We eventually traced the glitches back to re-formatted software and found that the control networks were reconfiguring themselves. This is impossible without command authorization. That is when I knew what we were up against.

At zero six hundred hours today, the Harvestman 5 arrived at Martian Lagrange point L4. As the eight arms unfolded to deploy the solar collection cells, our life support was cut off.  This sent the three of us into a mad scramble to save our skins before the worst befell us. The problem was traced to a software reconfiguration, and once I re-mapped the order of operations, life support was brought back online.  

The Harvestman was toying with us, but it wasn’t really the operating system of the mining ship. The object of my long-time investigation had finally tracked me down.  I was looking for proof, and I did not consider that this proof would find me first. 
With life support restored, we found that the Harvestman had configured the superconductive solar cells into a 4-Clover Formation. Parallel cells were drawn close together, worryingly flashing with spontaneous plasma discharges. While we were distracted by the loss of life support, power had been re-routed from the engines to the solar cells, turning the cells into giant superconducting diodes. We watched helplessly as our solar cells radiated the stored energy from the fission chargers into space.

Rico, Thuja and I were at a loss to determine why this was happening, but we discovered that the Harvestman 5 had found something. A heavy object had struck one of the solar cells. Three of the four cells had shut down while the fourth, now bent by the projectile’s impact, remained illuminated by plasma radiation. 

Thuja steered one of the external cameras toward the center of the flashing cell, where a tiny black object could be observed captured among tentacles of plasma arcs. While we watched, a second arm from the Harvestman’s port-side articulation reached over and clasped the black object, extracting it from the plasma field and withdrawing the object from camera range.  

Thuja and Rico expressed their horror at what happened, for they now knew what I knew.  That is why I am disclosing this to the person, or persons, who receive this letter.

As part of this last journal entry, I am publishing something that was handed to me a year ago from an undisclosed source. (If you gotta go out, go out with a bang!) The addendum is entitled “On the Nature of the Shrill,” from a Federal-era Department of Defense officer with high-ranking classified clearance.  

Under normal circumstances I would not publish a document that I cannot verify the authenticity of. Documents like these were destroyed or purchased by private interests after the Great Collapse of 2029, so it is impossible for me to confirm the contents of this letter.  However, after the events of this morning, and not knowing if I will ever make it back to Earth, I feel I must take drastic action.

I believe that the black object relates to something extraterrestrial that is mentioned in this letter. Beyond that, I can only speculate. If I don’t survive this trip, I must rely on you, dear readers, to pursue and expose this. 

To those who have been following my journal, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart. For those in the know, I regret to say that our fears are confirmed. The Archeai is real, but it gets worse. 

If you, like me, are struggling to comprehend what this means, it means that no one can trust electronic information. Everything is infected.  For this reason, I have prepared this last journal entry on old-fashioned paper while Thuja and Rico refit a remote probe with an analog navigation system. If you are reading this, then somehow our message in a space bottle arrived to you intact, and hopefully beyond the reach of the Archeai. This message is grim, but it remains a sincere warning to you all.

Although I am unable to confirm it at this time, we encountered a large low-reflectivity asteroid while crossing the Taurid stream. Its otherwise benign trajectory was altered by something that I can’t even describe right now. Our last calculations suggest that the object might be aimed at Earth. 

I can no longer verify this, and so it falls upon my astronomy friends back on Earth to detect it and to plan accordingly. Please take this warning with great urgency.

And finally, to the Transient, X^G 5FXL^ inbound at LX6^0AZ. 

Pass! The Black Golf Ball is coming back to you! Go get it!

As always, We don’t fear the darkness. Instead, we pursue it, and find no end to the final depths of light.

My love to all,

Gary Buckle, Cognitive Detective,
March 15, 2045

Continue to the next chapter: The Nature of the Shrill