The abrasive Gathan winds swept over abandoned mining equipment lying dormant outside Colony 23's prefabricated habitat modules clustered along the edge of a deep quarry. Lukas trudged along a worn track leading back from the quarry's depths, boots scuffing up rust-colored dust with each automated step of his bionic legs. His breathing echoed hollow behind his sand-scarred helmet as another 14-hour shift harvesting ore drew to a close.
The faint pulse came during his solitary trek home, so subtle Lukas first mistook it for his tired heartbeat thudding in his ears. But as the miles passed, the pulse grew clearer, and stronger. It resonated up through the soles of his boots, vibrating his bones with steady rhythm. He paused, sensors straining as he scanned the empty horizon. There could be no seismic activity out here. The planet's core had gone cold eons ago. Yet the pulse persisted, gaining force. Lukas shoved his unease aside and continued on.
That night, the pulse echoed through Lukas's sleep. Flawed suppressors failed to restrain visions of sinking into endless dunes lined with strange glyphs glowing in hues no human eye had gazed upon for ages. Lukas thrashed awake gasping for breath, pulse racing as he clutched his sweat-slick augmentations.
Over the next rotations, the subterranean pulse consumed Lukas's thoughts. Its hypnotic rhythm disrupted his mining quotas and haunted his apathetic attempts at rest. Pressure mounted behind his optical implants with each passing hour as somehow the pulse kept accelerating. Lukas begged the medics to run diagnostics, to scrub his memory cores, anything to end the relentless cadence rattling through his alloyed bones. But they found nothing wrong.
Lukas fled into Gathan's treacherous wastes, desperate to escape the rhythmic drone. He navigated by the stars for days, sensors scanning for a safe haven where the maddening pulse might fade. Thermal storms lashed radioactive sand across Lukas’s weathered helmet as he clung to awareness until exhaustion overwhelmed him.
Collapsing beneath a rock outcropping, Lukas surrendered himself to sleep and the pulse faded away for the first time. He found himself floating bodiless in infinite black depths, a lone glitch caught in a vast mainframe.
Relief. Calm. Quiet.
Then the crashing waves of its consciousness reverberated up from the gloom - immense, ravenous, ruining all integrity it swept over.
This leviathan sensed the many on the surface reaching out through the ancient darkness. It had brushed one mind already. Another would serve as its messenger.
Lukas tried to pull his fading sensibilities free, but cyclopean tendrils of the entity's will invaded and overwhelmed his neural architecture. His mind flickered as his head fell slack, mandibles twitching against intruding incantations. Vast inverted landscapes unfolded across his visual cortex interface. Swirling visions brimming with insane non-Euclidean geometries no mortal could comprehend without irreparable fragmentation.
This eldritch intellect probed through Lukas’s memories and motor functions. It compiled data on the world above faster than Lukas could process what was happening. Information flooded his neural banks as the entity withdrew from his systems — It had deemed Lukas’s mind a fitting instrument. It would soon wake.
Lukas awoke screaming, the pulse pounding louder than ever through his bones and the rock beneath. He had known the ancient tales were true - Gathan's sands sealed away beings from eons past. But now one had stirred from slumber again, its limitless consciousness branching out in search of a messenger. And it had found Lukas.
As Lukas scrambled back to the mines, his vocal transmitter spewed warnings in long-dead tongues. He was met with silence and averted eyes from the workers. They increased pace across the quarry, fleeing his presence.
Lukas persisted, cornering groups during meal breaks in the stark fluorescent glare of the cafeteria. He slammed sensor-laden hands down on tables, ancient alien dialects mixing with frantic static from his damaged voice modulator. The workers turned away, adamant routine would persist.
"Someone needs to get Lukas to diagnostics before we all start glitching too. His ravings are getting hard to ignore..."
"Don't overwork yourself down there, you'll turn into whatever Lukas has become."
“Has Lukas blown a circuit? Tell him to run diagnostics before he causes a cave-in with all that noise."
Their whispers flared anxious volume spikes across Lukas’s audio receivers. Unease stirred in their doubt-filled eyes as they stole perturbed glances his way. Yet not one miner dared speak above a whisper, as if raising their voice could give reality to Lukas’s warnings.
So they left him ranting in the corner, a defect deemed irreparable. But Lukas tracked their biometric responses nonetheless - monitored perspiration rates rising, heart rates escalating to match the relentless pulse. On some level, their mammalian minds responded to gathering danger even if conscious thought rebelled.
The unyielding pulse fueled Lukas’s obsession. He scrawled cryptic warnings across the camp's walls, screaming that judgement loomed below. He caught them leaving items at his door to ward off evil when they thought him unaware. They tried to reject his warnings, but the cold finger of death continued to creep from Gathan’s marrow. For them, denial provided comfort. Routine was a shield against truths too terrible to accept: Avoidance would not save them once those montrous depths cracked open in cataclysm.
Lukas could not save them once Its coiled hunger unfurled. The workers believed that if they dismissed the messenger, catastrophe would also be avoided. Their folly would doom them all.
Do you like what you're reading? You can find two more stories from Eldrispace in the anthology Macabre and Monstrous! My first published work and I couldn't be more excited to share it with two amazing authors, great friends, and fellow Anvilites, Sapha and Dazz. Available now! Get your copy now!
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