Seolfor

Writer: Ethan Cheung

Edited by: Vinnie Cheung

A loud clunk resounded throughout the ship as it touched down on the frosted surface. Not long after, the monotone drone of the ship’s AI came through my headset. “Arrived on Adera system 10-Chi-B, please ensure your suits are secure…”

I tuned the rest of it out. It was a message I had heard time and time again as an explorer of the Empire. When you have explored as many hazardous and deadly places as I had, checking your suit at least five times over became an unconscious habit. Besides, it was not just myself who I was supposed to be worrying about. I turned my head around to check on the rest. We were a motley crew of 6, each member was assigned a job to keep the team moving forward. “Hisato!” I called out to a crew member standing by a monitor. “What’re the conditions out there?”

“Stable!” Hisato called back. “It’s still pretty cold but there shouldn’t be any snowstorms catching us by surprise.”

I grunted my acknowledgment and turned to a blond-haired crew member sitting behind the ship's controls. “I know what you’re about to ask, cap,” she said before I could get a word out of my mouth. “This is the farthest we can go without risking the ship being ripped to pieces by snowstorms. You should probably get a move on before this damned storm gets any worse.”

“Got it,” I replied. “Chen! Get the rover ready. Kapoor, I want you to program the rover to drive, not fly off a cliff!”

“Oh come on, cap, that was just-” Before Kapoor could finish, Chen grabbed him by the shoulder and led him back to the screen, though not before flashing a thumbs up accompanied with a “Got it captain”.

Giving the two a brisk nod, I turned to our final crew member, who was currently suiting up with all manner of tools and surveying equipment.

“Hiori,” I began. “You’re not going to want to bring that much equipment with you. It could slow you down.”

“I know that,” she replied, bunching her long black hair together using a frayed hair tie. “But we’re gonna need everything I’ve brought. The place we’re going to isn’t like the usual caves and plains.”

“Right.” I was reminded of why we had come here. A few days ago, the mothership Trailblazer had received a transmission from Kraal, a planet frozen white by some natural disaster long ago. That in itself was enough to be concerning, but what was interesting was the transmission itself.

Containing nothing but an artificial voice reciting letters and numbers, it was enough to puzzle even the most analytical of cryptologists as it did not adhere to any known cipher. However, after the raid of a ship belonging to the interplanetary terrorist organization, soldiers uncovered information on a previously unknown cipher that happened to match up with the message. It contained coordinates, followed by a mysterious message. And so my crew and I had been sent to investigate.

Tires crunched over shards of ice as the ship grew smaller in the distance, beginning to be concealed by the edge of a vicious snowstorm. Even though I had gone on similar missions, some more dangerous than this one appeared to be, a pit rested at the bottom of my stomach, unwilling to seal itself back up again no matter what I did to reassure myself this would simply be a routine investigation of a research facility.

Well, as routine as you could get for this job anyway.

“We’re approaching the target now.” Hisato reported suddenly after half an hour of silence. “Best we get ready to walk through all this damned snow.”

“At least it isn’t affecting the rover,” Chen responded. “That’s strange really. No snow getting into the innards of this museum piece? Maybe the techs upgraded it during our last equipment check-up.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Aarav skeptically replied. “They would need to install the new OS if they didn’t want the thing to break down the second the rover was deployed.”

“I think you should all should stop talking and start getting ready,” Hiori cut in, looking wistfully out the window. “It’s pretty rough out there, you know…”

“Hiori’s right. We’ll need to get moving soon-”

It came before any of us had time to think about what happened. A spiderweb of cracks shot out from beneath the vehicle, dashing across the floor and rapidly scaling the cliffs on either side. A shadow cast its ominous gloom over us, just a second before a huge chunk of ice narrowly missed us, and another, and another.

“Everyone!” I struggled to make my voice heard over the icy assault of groaning mountains. “Brace for impa-”

With an ear-deafening crack and a heart jumping from its place in my chest to my throat, the biting frost, falling rocks, and metalline snowballs were no more. I was only vaguely aware of a falling sensation, right before a crash that bashed my brain around my skull. That was all I remembered before the world went black.

When I awoke, muffled sounds of an alarm was all I could hear. Still strapped in by my safety belt, I fumbled around and attempted to locate the release with the limited senses permitted to me. I could barely feel the buckle I was grasping for. My vision was a blurry mess. The smell certainly didn’t help either. The metallic tang of what was possibly blood was inhibited by taste. Was I to lie here until I starved or died of an injury I couldn’t yet feel?

No. I was still alive. That meant I had to keep fighting no matter what.

Finally feeling the cold metal buckle, the safety belt released with a satisfying click and whoosh. I had to check on the rest of my team.

“CHEN!” I yelled as I stumbled out of the rover. “KAPOOR! YUIKAWA! ARE YOU ALL OKAY?”

In response, a groan sounded from the off to the side, followed by a slight movement at the corner of my vision. A uniformed shape slowly rose from a pile of rubble, long-haired and matted with dust and snow revealing it to be Hiori.

“Ow…” Hiori dusted herself off. “The hell was that? I thought Hisato said the terrain was stable…”

“It was! At least, according to the scans,” replied Hisato, picking himself up off the floor. “I don’t always know if my equipment’s faulty. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s Kapoor-”

“That’s enough, blaming others isn’t gonna get us anywhere. We need to find out where we are. And where are the other two?”

A voice came from beyond the haze kicked up by the falling debris. “Hello?! Anyone?! Kapoor’s hurt, where are you all?!”

“Over here! Don’t move-” Hiori rushed forward readying a bag of medical supplies.

Aarav lay with his back against a half-crumbled pillar. Chen stood over him, attempting to staunch a bleeding wound with his clothes. Judging from the sheer amount of red pouring out, it wasn’t working.

“Oh thank god you guys are okay,” Chen breathed a sigh of relief. “Aarav got hit by some metal beam. I don’t know if it hit any vital organs but…”

“Move aside. I need to take a look at him.” Breathless, Hiori crouched by Aarav’s prone form and examined the wound and the beam. “Not good,” she concluded after a moment. “We can’t remove that beam; there’ll be too much bleeding then.”

“So what do we do? We can’t leave him here can we?” inquired Chen.

“Moving him would be too dangerous. And I don’t think he would be able to move on his own.”

“It’s…fine” rasped Aarav, drawing surprise from the rest of the team. “Go ahead…I’ll be fine here.”

“But we can’t do that!” came a protest from Hisato. “What if another one of those avalanches happens? You’d be crushed!”

“We…came here for a mission,” countered Aarav. “What’s…the point of coming here…if we’re just gonna stop cause-”

Aarav said no more as splotches of red splattered the ground in front of him, bent over as he coughed violently.

“He’s right,” I said. “We need to get going now if we’re going to get to the bottom of that signal”

“But-”

“Aarav said it himself. We need to go. Plus, we can come back for him when we’re done.” added Hiori.

And so we entered the facility, its hallways sometimes coldly uniform and other times a mess of twisting corridors and mismatching doors and doorways. The emergency lights flickered on and off at times, casting an eerie glow on the icy metal walls. Bits and chunks of ceiling settled on the floor, likely due to the avalanche. While the machinery was mostly dysfunctional, we managed to kick one smashed terminal to life.

“What were they trying to do here? There doesn’t seem to be anything that they would be researching.” Chen glanced around, finding the facility to be nothing more than a collection of doors and hallways.

“Hold up…” Hisato bit his lip in concentration as he attempted to extract information from the unresponsive terminal. “There we go! This says something about…recreating extraterrestrial environments with virtual technology? What’s this all about?”

I pondered for a moment. “I remember hearing something like that a while back. Some researchers were trying to make data collection easier so that explorers didn’t have to risk their lives gathering information in dangerous environments.”

I remember that it failed for some reason or other,” Hiori added. “So why is this all here?”

The hallways and doors suddenly disappeared, replaced by an endless void filled with an uncountable number of stars.

“Huh-what?” None of us had time to comprehend the sudden shift in the environment when it changed. And again. And again.

Snow-carpeted plains and the biting frost. A humid jungle filled with feral screeches and squawks. The scorching sun beating down on an endless sea of sand. A windswept plain where cracks ran through the ground and dust swirled through the air. All time seemed to disappear as we hurtled through worlds, rooted to a dusty metal floor beneath.

And for some reason, I felt a sense of satisfaction traveling through this simulation. It felt as if I was alone, solitary, and yet accompanied by a thousand comrades. I closed my eyes. Where would this simulation, and life, take me next?