For the last few weeks, I have been on this sandy recently discovered unnamed planet. I came here with my deep space exploration team to find out what and who was here… Personally I just wanted to see if there was other intelligent life in the universe, like several rumors had claimed. I wanted to know that we were not alone… I just want to know that we are not all that’s out there.


Carlo is a tall pale skinned man with red hair and green eyes, who has always been loud and boisterous, while Jennifer, a short woman with dark brown eyes, chocolate skin, and hair as black as night, is so shy that she can’t even look at her own shadow. These are my companions on this mission. They are here to fill the void of self-imposed loneness that I have suffered, after nine years of this pointless, empty job of looking past the stars for other beings that harbor a fondness for knowledge, just like we do.


Carlo and Jennifer were chosen for this mission due to their unique qualifications that no one else in the selection pool had… They were my friends… To say that implies that we are close, but that is not the case because we haven’t spoken in nearly a decade.


Why?


I’ve been buried under a pile of work and endless questions. I don’t have time for friendships because of my thirst to learn that there are in fact others out there that are like us… Okay well more intelligent than the thought of them looking like us, but you get the point.


We met in the Academy for Intergalactic Inquiry’s. It was there that we made a pact to be like the three stars of the Summer Triangle, Vega, Deben, and Altair, meaning we’d always stick together, but that didn’t really work out as practical…


We were only support to stay on the planet for three days, but I still reside on its dusty surface, which had several high mesas scattered about, in a way that made me think there had once been thousands of tons of water that filled the spaces between them.


We haven’t left yet because the ship was struck by a small bullet like comet. I’ll never forget the rush of pure unadulterated terror I felt, as my life nearly came to an end, with only my laboratory flashing before my eyes…


I looked at Carlo and was telling him off because he had told a vulgar joke, when the ship was thrust off balance. I soared out of my chair, as a snapping sound, followed by the sound of something tearing, made itself addable. I couldn’t compute what was happening because everything was happening all at once, in a big flurry of action.


It wasn’t until a flash of bright red oozed through the air, gravity now completely shot, that I knew what had happened.
Jennifer, one of my former friends, had just died… Sadly, only moments later I heard a loud cracking sound, as I saw Carlo’s head smash itself into pieces against the side of the ship.

That is the last thing I remember, before I woke up and all was quite.

I didn’t want to spend any more time with my dead comrades than I had to, so I bailed and climbed my way through the debris to get out of the wreckage that once was my ship.

From there I began to walk, moving my feet one at a time, to put as much distance between me and those two cold, dead corpses. I looked onward towards the nearly flat horizon, and I decided to make my way towards the large mound of green that stuck out against the dull burning tan of the sand that encompassed the whole planet. Surely there was water and food there because without those I would share the same fate as those I left behind on the ship.

Several hours later, I heard something shuffling around behind me. I glanced back and went cold.

It was a male humanoid with long black hair that framed its ashen face. He seemed to be wearing a long cloak of what appeared to be some sort of sandy fabric. On his face sat a pair of large galaxy like eyes stared at me with a look I fearfully couldn’t identify.

I looked forward again and shot off just like a rocket, but I only made it several miserable feet, before an odd cold force lifted me off from the ground and everything went black. I woke up inside of an empty odorless room, where I spent the next few weeks…

What happened after I grew close to the creature, Ibanep was his name, I’ll never forget…

He, the stage creature, held up a slivery mirror like object, and I saw my reflection staring back at me with shock.

I had ash gray skin, long black midnight hair, and my eyes were two holes of the universe looking back at me…

I never left their planet, and I never wanted to.

The End