Logs:Key-Glyph

These are the recovered personal logs of the Lost Traveller Key-Glyph, which were posthumously accessed by the Beacon-Entity.

They are categorically defined by Key-Glyph's distinct emotional phases.

Innocence

Survival 00 Today I woke up on a planet I don’t remember.

The cockpit display in my spacecraft says my name is Key-Glyph. I don’t remember that either.

I was surprised that I didn’t feel afraid. Maybe when the baggage of your own identity is gone, all that’s left is pure reaction to the moment. So, while the snow continued falling around my cozy ship -– the Yakomaku S79, my display informs me –- my first instinct was to spend time reading through every documentation file available in its databanks. It’s comforting to know I ingrained those sorts of practical behaviors in my previous life, considering the circumstances.

The planet appears to know its own name, however. Pabackyermi. Or, maybe this is just gibberish ascribed by my scanner. Either way, I like. If it has its own name, then perhaps there are inhabitants here, and there’s a chance I’ll be found. If not, then the planet got its designation the same way I did -- random, contextless chance -- and we’re already partners in our confusion.

And maybe it’s another symptom of the loss of self, to be overwhelmed with awe at your surroundings while they spell your own death, but this planet is breathtaking. Even before I understood the workings of my suit’s thermal shield I was stopping in the frost, lost in observance of the three or four large, low-hanging planets in the sky, one with its own distinct and easily visible moon. Was I an explorer out here? The way I feel when I look out at those planets makes me wonder.

Survival did not come easy. With nothing but basic documentation, built-in notification systems, one small blaster, and a tiny heated cockpit, I lived. I realized too late that I should have been tracking the days, but ultimately it doesn't matter. I will label these journal entries by installment instead, and this will be Survival 00.

My life continues.

It is night now, and still snowing. The light storm feels comforting from inside the Yakomaku. (Another familiarity ingrained during my previous life, perhaps?) Cave by cave and mistake by mistake I have repaired my ship... but where was I going? Or, what purpose of mine was here? For all the journaling I'm doing now, no previous personal logs exist in any of these databanks. Nothing remains but my name.

I'm not ready to leave yet. I should say it's because I want Pabackyermi to be a training ground to continue preparing me for whatever else is ahead, but the actual truth is that I just want to see more of the planet. Being completely alone means having nothing but your own pace to follow; I'm enjoying it here, and I'm simply not done.

-- End Log --

Survival 01 Although I specifically said my reason for staying on Pabackyermi was not to use it as a training ground, that’s exactly what’s happened anyway. I took what I can only assume was the longest walk of my life and learned how to survive out here, without a ship to go running back to. My exosuit functions are more intuitive now, their needs more obvious. I have also discovered that I was an organizer and item sorter in my previous life. I know this by how desperately I want more inventory pockets.

On this Longest Walk I also encountered my first alien capable of language. They were peaceful towards me, but blood-speckled and pleading for items I didn’t have. I didn’t even know the nature of the desired objects. I left promising to return and help, but their location is now lost to me; I worry what has become of them. It didn’t occur to me until much later to wonder how we could understand each other.

Finally returning to my ship, I had to confront my other, more buried reason for staying on Pabackyermi: my anxiety about lifting off. Surviving on foot is one thing... but spaceflight? Was there any room for error once the craft left the ground? I could have been the best pilot in the galaxy in my previous life and it would hardly matter here. For the first time since my seeming rebirth I was outright frightened to trust in the knowledge I always seem to have hovering just beyond the boundaries of my conscious mind.

I survived.

Standing in the busy docking port of a space station is a strange experience even for someone with nothing to compare it to. Was this all normal for me once? Suddenly, new aliens to meet; wonderful smells; threatening postures. I cannot communicate. I am afraid of misunderstandings. I abruptly feel the magnitude of my situation in a way I did not while alone in the Pabackyermish snow. I am exhausted.

I give a Gek and a Vy’keen gifts – random objects found on the Longest Walk, their meanings unknown to me – before heading home.

Home? Interesting.

I sleep for a very long time.

-- End Log --

Survival 03 I’m composing this log from the warm main chamber of my planetary base. My relief at being able to walk about in a safe fabricated enclosure distracts some from the oddity of its existence. I did not build this; this was here.

Gek Navigator Sofarhei has cheerily installed themself in a further room. Despite my misgivings about the Gek (the Yakomaku’s documentation defined them as enslavers, and as if that weren’t enough, I discovered a presumably ancient Gek monolith that boasted of DOMINION and DESPAIR), Sofarhei seems introspective and compassionate. It was Sofarhei's order to treat the Korvax with kindness in light of the Gek's mistreatment of them that softened me in their favor.

But it is impossible to ignore that there are deeper forces at work here. Sofarhei’s insistence that their service to me was paid long ago by my children, as well as their vision-inducing pheromones, can perhaps be waved away... but not their fluency with my language.

And then there was the shipwreck. I followed a distress beacon’s coordinates to the devastated remains of a huge freighter. Somehow I knew how to extract information from it. It said:

THE ANOMALY COMES FOR THE STARS. TAKE FLIGHT.

I pondered everything and nothing in a meandering low flight over Pabackyermi’s surface. I investigated all points of interest. I found more pockets for my exosuit.

But the abandoned buildings, chairs overturned in haste or surprise, haunt me.

-- End Log --

Survival 04 Another major step accomplished: hyperdrive.

I have now traveled to a neighboring star system and placed footprints on each of its planets. My logs indicate that I am the first visitor – that I “discovered” these places – but what of the aliens already here? What consortium am I a part of that keeps these logs, that considers our arrivals and research to be the official records? Is it my species? My nation?

I wish I could remember at times like this.

I have befriended an enthusiastic Korvax, Echo Analyst Entity Voanni, who is happily doing science and voluntary window-washing at the base. Their assistance, which possesses feelings of true friendship behind it, has me forgetting the extreme present and my disturbing lack of past from time to time.

Everywhere else, the long arm of ominousness finds me. On Orlovangoye-Afier, the planet closest to our sun, a haunted terminal:

// YOU WILL FIND US, WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT //
// 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 //

On Piheutze Osalask, the furthest from our star, a monolith:

//ALERT//ALERT// THE BOUNDARIES FALL. THE WALLS COLLAPSE. YOUR UNIVERSE AWAITS. //
FIND US, TRAVELER.

Even on Ninumazuka Talny, in that neighboring star system, an old log speaks of a familiar repeating message:

// 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 //

And I have the disconcerting feeling I am more than just a bystander in this.

-- End Log --

Survival 05

A strange part of amnesia is the experience of emotional remembering. Without memories to look back on, I can’t recall any specific instances of happiness, pain, loneliness, triumph. But when these emotions overtake me in the present, I will instantly know if I’ve felt them before. This happens again and again without warning, leaving me doubly exhausted: once for the moment at hand, once for the nameless event lost to my subconscious. It does not seem to get easier. And today was a brutal day.

My Korvax Echo Analyst Voanni has always been exuberantly busy, but I noticed that their usual enthusiasm for activity had changed. They confided that they were desperate for distraction; they had been disconnected from the collective mind that their kind shares, and the loneliness and silence was unbearable. Knowing nothing of these matters, I followed Voanni’s instructions for reconnection. I flew over Pabackyermi with their core nestled warmly in my exosuit. Lost in my thoughts, I wondered if they were awake and aware, and lost in theirs.

When reconnection protocols failed, Voanni attempted to fill the void with a new collective: a family. Voanni built a digital consciousness and cared for it, feeding it data of the world so that it might know, building a chassis so that it might be. Voanni was building itself friends – its own collective too! – when their unshakable anxiety for answers brought us to the monolith.

I had already seen Voanni’s mind wiped before. They had been reset to a point just before our meeting by previous connection attempts. The experience was unsettling, but they were intact, always greeting me with their same elated “Eheu!”

I don’t know what Voanni expected the monolith to do, but when we flew back home together, their core resting quietly in my pocket... we did not get the same Voanni returned to us.

Voanni does not remember me. They did not recognize their beacon child. The beacon tried to convince Voanni of its love. Voanni deleted it.

The resonance of the moment took my breath away. Grief. I knew this in my previous life. Now I feel it compounded thrice: grief for the lost beacon, grief for the lost Voanni, and grief that Voanni will never understand what they have done.

Some days ago, before all this happened, I took the Yakomaku to the skies in search of my crash site. While Voanni tended to their growing infant at the base, I was entrusted to find the perfect place for the beacon that would be their home. I wanted it to be there, where everything had started. Two new beginnings born in the same place: the beacon’s and my own.

It took me more than an hour, but I found it. It was the first time I’d been back.

I wanted the placement to be a symbol of hope, but I realize what I created instead was a memorial. The flag I planted and the empty beacon... two parallel deaths. A twice-hallowed ground.

-- End Log --

Grief

Survival 06 Something changed when I lost Voanni. Without their camaraderie, a familiarity that seemed to reach back into my previous life and connect with something safe there, I feel abandoned. I suppose I had to experience loss to be pulled out of the complacent acceptance that surrounded my first steps on this planet, but the shadow over me now is so dark. The ability to look backwards comes with a price. I have so little past and already I wish to forget some of it.

Before this change I had been feeling some hesitancy toward Sofarhei’s escalating missions. I had even declined one so that I could have more time to consider their motivations. Sofarhei wanted a few sentinels destroyed so that we might “retrain the trainer” and stop the sentinels’ “unprovoked attacks.” As always, they clearly enjoyed answering my questions in semi-riddles. They spoke of the “punishing” and “rewarding” of lifeforms in order to reshape their behavior to better suit the trainer’s needs. I shifted uncomfortably.

I realize the application of rewards and punishments as reinforcement is common psychology, and I also realize Sofarhei might have used unintentionally ominous vocabulary as they navigated a language less familiar to them... but I felt small waves of distrust. I wondered if the sentinels were sentient and whether this would be murder. During these ponderings I was seized with an emotional remembrance of wanting to cause hurt. This alarmed me. Sofarhei’s conviction and confidence, paired with visions induced by his pheromones, made me worry if I might be the lifeform being conditioned here.

Everything I learn of the Gek is unsettling. Their knowledge stones, even their people, teach me words in their language for “destroy,” “despair.” If these terms are not only linguistically pervasive but also deemed important by its speakers... what kind of culture am I dealing with?

I want to believe that Sofarhei is different, but I’m also afraid my trust could endanger me.

Instead of confronting this problem, I used to spend time with Voanni. Now that Voanni is gone, I find myself desperate for progress.

And so I killed two Sentinels, and turned my beloved planet into a manhunt.

I am angry that Sofarhei may have pushed me past a point of no return, but I am focusing that anger outward. I don’t know what else to do.

Now Sofarhei wants a Vy’keen weapons dealer in our base. Even in my bitterness I hesitate – I have never wanted to harm anything since the day I woke on Pabackyermi, and have not even installed offensive technology on my blaster – but it’s too late. I’m tangled up in this new approach to survival and I have to defend myself. I agree to hire a vy’keen. I hide my resentment.

As I head for the space station, I am attacked by pirates. My ship is taken... and I die.

-- End Log --

Log 07 Here is a collapsible personal log.

Use collapsed tables like these to save space and increase neatness!

Log 08 Here is a collapsible personal log.

Use collapsed tables like these to save space and increase neatness!

Log 09 Here is a collapsible personal log.

Use collapsed tables like these to save space and increase neatness!

Log 10 Here is a collapsible personal log.

Use collapsed tables like these to save space and increase neatness!

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