NaNoWriMo Update for Nov. 12: Second chapter is finally complete!

Well, as of this writing, I have 7,300 words put into some recognizable form.

That's unfortunate, because that means I'm at less than half of where I should be by this point in the month. It's starting to look more and more like I'll miss the deadline. However, that being said, I am making some fantastic progress today. The words are practically writing themselves at this point, so that's a positive. We'll see where it takes me by the end of the day!

In the meantime, enjoy the second chapter of my story, which I will eventually have a title for!

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The central hub was divided into four levels. The first level - the one he currently occupied - housed a loading deck designed to allow refined products to be transported to the landing pad outside for transport to other locations in the system. Some fifty meters away from him, the ceiling opened up, expanding the available space for machinery and equipment. A quick survey of his surrounding area suggested nothing else of particular importance, so he continued deeper into the facility.
The machinery and technology on display was not exactly primitive, but it was clear from the level of sophistication that this civilization had only begun to scratch the surface of what was possible. That they still relied at least in part on hydrocarbons for powering some applications indicated that they’d yet to move past this stage of their development. He also noticed the discarded bodies of what appeared to be bipedal automatons, long since having run out of power within their internal cells. None of them exhibited the advancement that his own body did, which was further indication of their level of sophistication. Making his way past the production floor, he found a doorway toward the back of the room that lead to an access corridor running along the exterior. Like the rest of the central hub, the walls and floor were that plain off-white color, with a blue stripe running along the top of the walls where they connected to the ceiling. Signs on the wall in front of him indicated that either direction would take him to something else, though what any of those things were or once had been was unclear. That unshakable feeling that the language printed onto the signs in front of him persisted, but, once again, he put it out of his mind and took a right turn.

He walked down the hallway until he could go no further, ending his walk in front of a pair of metal doors that stood adjacent to a single door. The soft light generated from his body reflected off the smooth metal in front of him, and he nudged his fingers into the gap between the two doors, pulling them open. They protested the act, but eventually they gave way, opening to an empty shaft. Surprised, he turned his head down and cast his headlight down the length of it, revealing what appeared to be a mess of cable attached to some sort of plate at the bottom.

“An elevator,” he mused quietly. Turning away from the open doors, he looked to the single door that had stood adjacent to it and pulled it open, revealing a stairwell that went down some twenty meters. It made sense now, given that he knew what both of these were; always establish a redundant system in case the first fails. Stepping into the stairwell, he begun his march down the stairs, taking them one at a time silently. As he reached the bottom, he was greeted with an exit door, framed by a number of signs in bold letters with what were once bright colors.

“Ryla, see if you can’t index and parse these languages,” he said, looking over the blocks of text, transcribed in several languages along the length of the signs. He reached down to work the door handle, the door letting out a plaintive groan as he pulled it open for the first time in likely centuries.

“Gladly, Pilot,” came her reply. At this point, they’d catalogued enough text to begin a rudimentary attempt at translating and cross-referencing letters and words. At the very least, it would illuminate some of the structure that was used, and understanding that would give him better insight further along.

The room beyond the door looked to be another utility room, this one as large as the entire hub above his head. Soft light illuminated consoles and control panels, lined up in a circle around another chamber within the room. He walked slowly along the banks of desks and electronic towers, long since frozen over from the years of disuse and lack of power. Workstations that had once no doubt been manned constantly at some distant point in the past now lay dark and covered in a fine layer of ice, never to be used again. He drew his gaze up from the banks of terminals to the room on the other side, making his way past the deserted desks and toward the nearest access door. Unfortunately, this one was not so simple to access as the other few had been. Whatever was on the other side of it had been deemed a security or safety risk, as the door used not only some sort of keypad for input but also a slot for what was likely a key card. Pulling on it revealed no travel whatsoever; the door was jammed shut.

“Likely a security measure, once the facility lost power,” he observed, speaking quietly to himself and transmitting the thought to Ryla. The amount of effort required to break through the door was far greater than any information he might hope to gain from entering, so he left it alone; there was no sense in disturbing this tomb anymore than he’d already disturbed it. He turned his attention instead to one of the standing shelves against the wall behind him, opposite the door, lined with thick binders. Walking across the floor, he reached out and picked one up from its shelf, looking over the cover. No doubt this was a technical manual of some sort, as evidenced by the extremely plain notations across the front, but if it held technical data and additional instances of text that Ryla could cross-reference, it might be worth a look through. Very carefully, he lifted the front cover, testing the materials it was comprised of to see if they would snap under the intense cold that permeated the facility. Thankfully, it held. The first page was simply a copy of the binder cover, and, as he tested the individual pages, he found that the first page was all he was going to be able to investigate. The rest of the binder was a frozen block; likely these pages were made from some water-rich material that bound together once the heating system in the facility shut off. That was disappointing, and he let out a sigh, shutting the binder and gingerly placing it back into the slot he’d retrieved it from. He surveyed the room one more time for anything else that might be of interest or worthy of note, and, finding nothing else, he decided to leave this facility and make his way back above ground. His trip up the stairs was uneventful, and he made his way down the corridor he’d taken, making his way back into the refinery.

So far nothing particularly noteworthy had been apparent about the civilization that built this place. Granted, this was a utilitarian structure designed less for form than for function, but the level of sophistication he’d encountered was not particularly fascinating. With the power shut off to the facility, he wondered idly how it could still be transmitting a signal. The thought was picked up on by Ryla, who, as diligently as ever, was ready with a response.

“The signal we received was from a small satellite in low, geosynchronous orbit around the planet,” she offered. “It appears to use some sort of stellar collection panels to translate light into usable energy. This is probably why it is still transmitting, given the extensive age of the facility it’s stationed above.”

“That makes sense. Still, surprising that something as simple as a telemetry beacon would still be operational after such a long time,” he said, smiling to himself. Perhaps the inner planets would yield far more in terms of lasting structures, and hopefully some with a little more flair for the dramatic. Much as he enjoyed the process of discovering what he could of long-dead civilizations, he appreciated the dynamic creativity that marked some. Any machine could fabricate a structure designed to withstand environmental hazards, but it took an intelligence capable of creative thought to build something that was beautiful. He didn’t let himself invest too much into those thoughts at the moment; he’d wait until he arrived there to see just what these beings had created as a testament to their existence.

Making his way back to the loading area, he noticed a set of doors adjacent to the large, sliding door that lead out to the landing pad. The signs adjacent to the doors seemed to indicate that they lead to access corridors that allowed entry to other substations, with one sign in particular catching his attention. It had a similar green frame to it that the habitation module had striped across the top of the building, so he made his way through those doors, quickly finding the proper corridor to his intended destination. The doors that lead out to the habitation module were similar to the sealed doors he had to pass through in order to enter; another redundant safety measure in the event of a breach. These opened relatively easily, the same way the inner seal doors had opened when he’d made his way into the facility. With them open, he made his way down the long, narrow corridor that lead toward the living quarters.

“Have you had any luck indexing the languages we’ve seen, Ryla,” he asked, his pace brisk but easy. After all, there was no reason to rush. Whatever he hoped to find would be there when he arrived, whether he walked or he sprinted.

“Slightly,” she replied. “In terms of structure, there is a large amount of variance in the samples you provided. The symbols used also exhibit a large degree of diversity; even the languages that utilize similar characters have a number of variations that indicate different character sounds or combinations.”

“Hm. An extremely heterogeneous civilization,” he mused, mostly to himself, as he made his way down. Different languages indicated, at the very least, that the beings that had created this facility had done so out of mutual self-interest, despite what might have been radically different cultural priorities. Heterogeneous cultures had been something of a rarity in their explorations of space. Most of the truly incredible civilizations they’d encountered, including the two that had spread out of their local system, had used what appeared to be a unified writing system and did not appear to have a great diversity of culture. It may well have been the case that this was indicative of a pattern; the less unified the group, the less apt they were to persist long enough to achieve truly noteworthy accomplishments.

“Perhaps that’s what lead to their eventual demise,” Ryla offered, and he nodded silently in agreement. He reached the door at the end of the corridor and pried it open, this one providing significantly more resistance than the first he’d managed to open. With some very audible complaint, it finally relented and opened, revealing what they correctly assessed to be a habitation unit.

The door opened up into a large common area, with covered floors rather than the smooth concrete that had characterized the refinery hub. He leaned down, sliding his fingers across the frosted surface. Once upon a time, this carpeting would have been relatively soft and provided a warmer, more welcoming environment than the plant; after all, this was where the individuals that operated the plant came to live. Given that there was a separate place for them to occupy, they likely needed it in order to maintain some sort of harmony and keep them working at optimal levels. The common area was flanked on either side by two large rooms, each of which had a specific purpose.

To his left, through large, transparent panes of the same polymer material that he’d encountered on that entry door into the hub revealed what looked to be a common dining area. Neat rows of tables took up half of the available space, with only a few chairs left out of place by the facility’s prior occupants, all of which was covered in a fine coat of glimmering frost. Once again he was struck by the solitude and silence of the place; the only sound in the entire building was his footfalls crunching the frost beneath, compressing carpet that hadn’t been touched in centuries likely. Like so many other standing monuments, this place was a tomb. To his right was a walled-off partition with sliding glass doors that lead into it. Peeking through the doors, he observed what was almost certainly the recreational area. Part of it appeared to have games of some kind, with a table that sported several spherical balls frozen in their various positions and what were likely viewing screens attached to media devices. The other part of it was devoted to what looked like exercise equipment. Given the extremely low gravity of the moon, he had no doubt that whatever beings occupied this facility needed to continuously exert themselves with additional weight to keep their bodies from atrophying. This was all conjecture, of course, but he had little reason to believe that they had developed beyond the need for their physical forms.

What he was looking for lay through the wide archway directly in front of him. Bold letters across the top of the arch read “HOUSING,” a word that, once again, he felt he should know. That was almost certainly the actual living spaces designated for the facility’s inhabitants, and it would offer the best clues as to what kind of being constructed this place. He padded quietly across the silent room, making his way past the arch and down a short hallway that opened up to a corridor spanning the entire length of the building. Doors lined the hall at regular intervals; no doubt the individual living spaces lay beyond each of them. He turned right and made his way down to the end of the hall, examining the first door he found there.
The room was a very simple affair, and it was clear it was designed, like the rest of the facility, with utility in mind. He stepped into the room and surveyed the scene, looking over the bed attached to the wall and the small desk on the opposite wall. The coverings that had once likely been neatly made over the mattress were unkempt and frozen in time, hinting at a state of disarray that punctuated the last functional moments of this place. The desk drawers were left out and open, completely bereft of anything within. The only items that remained were a small porcelain mug and a console that was built into the desk. Whoever had once lived here, they had left hurriedly with no intent of returning. Turning from the living area, he poked his head into the small alcove in the corner, nudging the door open to have a better look. Within the small space, he found a stall with a spout above his head, a bowl attached to the wall at crouching level, and a wash basin. This was where they conducted their personal hygiene, but, like the room it was attached to, offered no further clues about the civilization that built it.

The other rooms he explored offered little more in the way of clues or artifacts. Whatever had happened before this facility had been abandoned, it had been something of some urgency; the occupants took their belongings with them and left everything the way he saw it now. No hint was left of who these people were. He was beginning to question his decision to stop here first when he arrived, finally, to the door at the opposite corner from where he started, right next to the archway that lead to the housing area.

The last door he opened did not reveal a sterilized housing unit. Instead, this unit was filled with belongings and artifacts. More importantly, though, laying on the bed was a perfectly preserved specimen of the race of beings that had built this structure. He made his way immediately to the side of the bed, examining the scene before him. The skeleton was in excellent condition, perfectly preserved in the deep cold that now pervaded the facility. The discoloration of the fabric and mattress beneath it indicated that the body had decomposed almost entirely before the cold had set in and frozen the process in place, leaving the bone structure and most of the connective tissues exposed. From the look of it, the beings that created this place were bipedal, as evidenced by the differentiated bottom limbs from the top limbs. This particular specimen was roughly two meters long with a torso that was similar in length to the lower extremities. Though the internal organs had long since been destroyed by the ravages of time, there was a hollow area protected by a cage made of several long bones; no doubt it house whatever circulatory and respiratory system this being had used. The same conclusion was drawn about the head; sockets for what were likely visual organs and a cavity above the mandibles connected into a hollow space that almost certainly housed the processing organ.

He lifted his hand up and splayed his fingers and thumb apart, turning it back and forth and looking over it. The texture was uniform, as was the rest of his body, save for the lines of light running along the top of his hand and the underside of his palm. Looking down at the skeletal remains, he noted that these being, too, had four fingers with an opposable digit. He’d seen a myriad of different forms of life across many star systems, and yet, this was the first time that he’d observed any race of intelligent beings whose physiology appeared similar to his own. It was, of course, simply an apparent similarity; his body, such as it was, was simply a construct created by his consciousness, the result of being imprinted onto the nanomachine swarm that he had exclusive control over. However, it was a facsimile of what his physical body once was, before he had undergone the transformation.

He flexed his fingers, closing them into a fist before opening them again. There was something disconcerting about that thought, and it wasn’t that he’d traded his original body for the one he now inhabited. That was a decision he’d made willingly, or, at least, he remembered he’d been willing to do it. What bothered him was that he couldn’t recall what his life was before he’d taken on this responsibility. Not once in the entire span of time he’d traveled the vast emptiness of space with Ryla as his companion had he thought about who he was or what he’d done before. Not until this very moment had he ever felt a desire to know and a need to understand who he was, and the fact he couldn’t recall was beginning to bother him.
He turned away from the body before him, looking around the room instead. This particular individual had added other fixtures to his living space that were absent from the others. Particularly, there was a set of shelves on the wall beside the desk, populated by what he imagined were written records. Books were a staple of civilization, and he was not at all surprised to see that at least one room had some of them to examine. Likely they were frozen shut for the rest of eternity, but he perused the spines to see what he could glean, if anything. The text was foreign to him, but once again, he felt the discomforting feeling that he should have been able to read it. Like a distortion in the corner of his vision that disappeared the minute he tried to look for it, he couldn’t place how he would have known or understood this language. It was a splinter in his mind’s eye, and the fact he couldn’t describe or explain it bothered him to almost the same extent as being subjected to it. He said nothing, and he kept his thoughts to himself for the moment, but that sensation - that discomfort - refused to go away.

He turned away from the bookshelves to the desk that sat beside them. Whoever the remains on the bed had been before they had decided to expire had organized their belongings, with everything stacked neatly. Writing implements were organized in a row beside a single piece of writing material, the text of which was obscured by the frost. In the corner of the desk was a frame that seemed to house an image, and he reached out, brushing some of the surface frost away. The frame was made from a polymer, the same as the window fixtures were, and inside the sealed compartment was an image. What appeared to be a being, likely the one that was now entombed in this frozen sepulcher, was holding a smaller specimen of the same race, with an expression on both their faces that seemed to indicate pleasure and enjoyment. The backdrop appeared to be some sort of natural space, with a tall plant sporting green leaves immediately behind them.

Despite not having a circulatory or respiratory system, he felt as though he was short of breath. His chest caught in a strange way he hadn’t experienced before, and it threw him off balance for a moment. He caught himself, resting one hand on the desk to steady his body until he gained control of it again. Feeling incredibly claustrophobic, he set the image frame down and made his way briskly toward the door, moving back through the archway and making his way to the corridor that lead back to the refinery.

“Nothing else of interest, Pilot?” Ryla’s voice echoed in his mind, and it caused his step to falter before he fell back into pace.

“No, nothing else,” he lied, keeping his personal revelations just that: personal. “The remains provided an excellent source of data on what kind of beings created this structure and likely gave rise to this civilization, but the cold damage to any written materials renders them worthless as far as cataloging goes.”

“That’s a shame,” she replied, sounding genuinely disappointed. “Hopefully the other planets in the system can offer more clues and more usable artifacts.”

“Perhaps. We’ll have to get there to find out, I suppose,” he replied, making his way through the door at the opposite end of the corridor. The feeling of being trapped in this frozen tomb, another artifact of a bygone race encased in ice for some other distant future explorer to discover, began to lessen the closer he came to the loading dock. He made his way through the gap he’d created in the inner doors and carefully pressed the polymer block he’d removed to gain entry through the hole to the exterior. Encoding his nanomachine body, he poured through to the other side like a gunmetal sand, pouring into the familiar form he’d always assumed had been left far behind, in some more distant part of the galaxy where both he and Ryla had originated. Once he was in control again, he picked up the polymer block and carefully slid it back into place, effectively sealing the wintery tomb the same way he’d found it.

Brisk footsteps carried him across the flat surface of the landing pad to their craft, making his way underneath the main body and reaching his hands up. Without a word, the nanomachine swarm that comprised the vessel reached down to meet him, engulfing his arms and slowly subsuming him up into the familiar housing.

“Are we ready to depart, Pilot,” Ryla questioned, tone as pleasant and agreeable as it ever was. His tone was not nearly so casual.

“Please,” he said, masking his displeasure. “Let’s leave this frozen tomb.”

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So there's chapter two, and I'm currently working on chapter three as of this writing. Follow my blog for updates on this and, once November is over and I've crashed and burned on this story, updates on my other stories and projects.

This post is a 100% SP post.