Irideus

[Asmodeus]

He had told his wife he was not coming up here to die.

A technicality perhaps. His imagination of the Irideus Mission was a picture that excluded those final, painful chapters that motor neuron disease would grant him. And yet... one intention Matthias could not deny was that he had come up here to live the life climactic... the boldest, brightest moment before the dark. Whatever waited in the heavens would be an answer, however interpreted.

And so... for a questioner to be offered no answers, but only the chance to ask more questions... was something that could not sit easy. For what is one to think when they are nearing the end of a book and preparing themselves for finale, only to find by magic that reams of new pages have appeared? Would the reader be excited? Frustrated? Or would they despair that they have had their emotions brought to apex and then denied closure?

Is that why so many fear an eternal afterlife? Because they knew they will not sleep, but endure themselves anew?

Locked in his thoughts, the doctor had not seen the microcosmic pantheon of emotions that danced across the mission leader's face in the few seconds before Richard restored normality.

Matthias had forgotten to breathe, and now as Richard approached he took a great breath as if to dispel the pipe-dream Nikolai had conjured. "Yes, Richard, you're right." He busied himself, more intently than necessary, in flipping through the papers on his lap. "The mission timeline is paramount. If we divert resources now we may not make the round trip."

He looked up, slowly, at the Doctor, and saw reflected his own struggle to ignore the elephant in the medical bay. "Nikolai... we need to prepare for EVA. We don't know how lunar conditions will affect the team. You need to be..." He searched for the word. "...clear."

His gaze drifted to the glass, to the shadow, to the lab-grown fingertips, to the sculpted face... to the eyes of the synthetic Ann Whittles. "And as for her part in the moon landing..." Matthias murmured. "... I suppose we should ask her..."

The door override gleamed above Nikolai's shoulder.

 

[DotCom]

Most people knew journalists and documentarians were supposed to be unbiased. Fewer people knew, though most could probably guess, they were also supposed to be unflappably honest, unflinchingly fearless, and unfailingly tenacious.

It was only journalists, however, who really understood that journalists also had to have very strong stomachs. Rachaella Consuelo had always considered hers an iron gut. She'd seen and done more than most people, let alone journalists, had done at her age. Disease and dismemberment, war and dizzying heights. Hell, she was the first reporter through the Belt!

And then she watched Ann Whittles die. She saw it, as usual, not as a person, but as a documentarian, the lens of her camera as her eyes. Perfect detail, real time, the synth spoke for the woman Rachel had considered a friend. And Rachel did not have friends.

The young reported was unabashedly sick, then, turning away from the table and the corpse and vomiting until her stomach was empty, then dry heaving a few times for good measure.

And her camera was still on, of course.

Without missing a beat, Rachel stood and turned back to the thing that had been her friend. The Spire was looming ever closer; she ought to send Cho and Biloxi -- who was now watching her with an expression of mingled concern and bemusement -- to report on that. This was the second first of the hour, and someone had to be hear to report it.

The synth's first words...what had they been?

Oh, yes. It's dead.

Rachel had her story.

 

[GeekOut]

She gazed unblinking at her crewmates. The medical bay's glass barrier added another layer to the disconnect she felt from them. Biloxi and Nikolai had guided her into the room, and then sealed her away like some contagion. Why didn't they understand? She had wanted to tell them that this was a miracle. A gift. But after her announcement, she had fallen mute.

Her own words echoed in her head, over and over. "It's dead." Not her head. The synth's. The chaotic swirl of emotions held her paralyzed. Maybe they were right to keep her here.

Gods, but she wanted... to go back to the darkness? To rewind? She let out her breath. It didn't matter. She had a mission, and she would complete it. Come hell or high water, acid or even this, she would finish what they had started.

The med bay's door opened.

"Matthias!" Ann tried to smile. It felt off, but she continued. "Are you going to just sit there and brood? Or are you going to let me do my job?"

 

[lynzy]

"Matthias, you might want to get to the bridge. We are setting up for the landing and I thought you might want to be here for it." Melissa Ardent let go of the tab for the com and went back to her controls. She was standing now, Lissa was too nervous to sit at the moment. Don't mess this up, don't mess this up don't mess... Ardent kept repeating it over and over in her head. The thoughts of her family she kept on a tight leash in the back of her mind right now as she scanned her controls, making sure that everything was in order.

 

[ThE_DeAd]

Eli perused the shuttle manifest one last time before tossing the phone book sized binder aside with a tired sigh. The holographic interface behind him swirled and flashed, bathing the room in blue light. It had been an exhausting evening and there was still much to be done. Essential equipment was loaded, climbing tools, oxygen reserves, medical kits, even food rations in the event that they were unable to return to the ship. The rest of the crew would be responsible for any specialized gear.

The rover was in working order and he had had finally managed to get the scout drones properly calibrated. Damned AIs. In their first hours of activation they behaved like children…Very expensive, fragile, stupid children. He'd spent the greater part of a night chasing the bots around the ship, watching helplessly as they collided with sealed bulk heads and grazed guide rails. Each thump had caused Eli to cringe, waiting for the small spherical bots to start smoking and fall out of the air.

He now sat back in his desk chair with a cup of cold black sludge which had been coffee hours before, confident that he'd done his due diligence. His attention now turned to the monitor. The bottom of his cup clasped in the claw grip of one hand while he manipulated the image before him with the other. They were on final approach now and the scanners had managed to take accurate readings. The lifeless landscape looked like a dried up sea bed, pocked with massive circular valleys, some miles across. And there, like a temple amidst the wastes, at the centre of one of the larger craters stood a massive alien structure. On the map it was no more than an obscure shape. Were there no other evidence it would be easy for astronomers to dismiss this as yet another geographic anomaly.

With a twisting gesture, Eli froze the map and zoomed in on the area surrounding the structure. The ships computer began rattling off all available data about the location, elevation, temperature, even soil content. It was imperative that he have any and all information available. This would be the first time man had ever landed on the moon after all. Any miscalculation could prove disastrous. It was safe to assume that any of the data acquired from previous space agencies could very well be false.


However, there were greater mysteries to be solved, such as the origin of the alien transmission. Who had recorded it, and why had they been so bent on deterring mankind from ascending to the stars?

 

[Spammy]

Clark felt guilty. He hadn't seen Ann yet, his nerve had failed him whenever he thought about it. He'd stayed on the bridge, busying himself with gravitational fields, thrusts, and momentum, barely taking a break and avoiding the sick bay when he did. He was... scared, in the end.

He wasn't blind to that they could die on this mission. But... he felt like it should've come from less out of the blue, from a freak accident like that. And then it turns out that she didn't die... or did she? What was she now? He'd come mentally prepared to look for whatever it was that wanted to keep humanity on Earth, to stare them in the eye and demand to know why and not to let up until he'd gotten an answer that satisfied.

But... now to look at proof that the boundary between life and death wasn't so permanent, to question where humanity began... that was something he was not ready for. And so he had done his best to avoid the issue altogether, to avoid Ann. And still he felt guilty for it, because he knew what was troubling him so much and why he was being troubled to begin with.

He quietly slipped into the hangar, to get ready to set foot on the moon. He should be feeling excited, at the peak of his life. To touch the lunar surface! To see for himself just what it was like away from the Earth! Maybe that was also part of the guilt, that fear of the unknown had consumed him like this and dampened the enthusiasm he'd felt for the mission. This should be a time to push everyone on, but he just wanted to withdraw for now. He let out a grumble as he found a comfortable position, taking the moment with his tablet to make some quick doodles. Maybe if he believed he could transfer his troubles into the brushstrokes and exorcise them from himself.

 

[DotCom]

"Human interest, mija, is justified editorializing. All the beauty of the bias. None of the cardinal sin."

Rachel was playing her grandfather's mantra over and over in her head, a mantra of her own, a litany muttered over the most gruesome kind of rosary.

It's dead...human interest...cardinal sin...it's dead...it's dead...it's dead.

---

Jorge Santillo had been a young reporter in Mexico City growing up. He worked the crime beat, most often covering stories that involved civilian deaths and drug raids. Rachel had called him one day, on the verge of frustrated tears, when, in her first semester writing for her college paper, her editor rejected her cover of a recent campus death. A student had been publicly ousted from her sorority, gotten absurdly drunk, and jumped from the top of the bell tower. Bright-eyed, bushy tailed little Rachaella Consuelo had written the perfect piece: concise. Factual. Dry as bone. Rejected.

"No comprendolo, 'lito!" she'd cried. "I don't understand, the story was flawless, those uptight little bitches in the office just don't like me, because -- "

"Calmate, mija," her grandfather had replied with a quiet, knowing chuckle. "How could anyone not like you? Dry your tears, and read me the story, Ella. Slowly."

When she finished, he laughed. "Ay, mija. You did not tell me you were writing a story on drying paint." Before Rachel could spout more rage at her grandfather, he'd explained: cut-in-dry was fine, even good for politics and press releases. For deaths, though, for deaths, you had to humanize.

Rachel shook her head, hopeless. "No, 'Lito. That's editorializing. They told us -- "

"To say this young woman was a vain little puta, that is editorializing. To say, perhaps, that she slept with her papi's credit card under her pillow, showered until hot water was gone, knew every lacrosse player by name...that, mija, is human interest."

And that was when Rachel had learned: there was no such thing as a true story.

---

Now, she sat her bunk, shaking from cold or fear or just exhaustion, poring over the video she'd gotten from the infirmary. The new moon, of course, loomed in the distance, but that was easy now. That was expected. After this expedition, there would be hundreds, thousands of hours full of dead rock that whispered to the stars.

Now was the time to capitalize on singularity. Every moment from here on out would be interview. Rachel herself would become the synth's shadow. If there was guilt there, nesting cold and dense in her stomach, she dismissed it as latent nausea. The ship was going to dock soon. Changing speeds and altitudes could make you sick. It was only natural.

Rachel stood, camera in hand, notepad in the other, and made for the bridge again, turning her rosary over in her mind.

It's dead, Rachel thought again. And then finally, finally:

Why not she?

 

[CosmicWeinerDog]

"The live of the dead is placed in the memory of the living..."

"...Cicero?"

"Appropriate no? Hurry now, you're going to be late."

"...Late? I don't understand. Late for what?
"The sending of course. Never were good with time were you? Always tends to slip from your fingers..."

*************************************************************************************​

Light peaked into the eyes of the worn doctor with the weight of a cinder block. It hadn't been the first time he had fallen asleep at the edge of his workstation and it likely wouldn't be the last. As Nikolai's eyes slowly came into focus he rubbed the sand from hid lids. Schematics and diagrams of Ann's synth lay scattered in miss matched piles across the desk. Accompanied with it were scribbled notes, a chewed pencil and an ebook reader listing the wiring display of the system. He had been told to disregard the prospect and to focus on the mission at hand but that was easier said than done.

It wasn't that the Irideus project lacked importance in comparison, it was just too personal to ignore. This hadn't happened under a microscope or to a nameless test
subject in an uncontrolled environment. This had happened to a comrade not more than a room away. A freak occasion and a familiar woman escapes the one universal concept of human existence, graduating into the stuff of legend for years to come. The thought of ignoring the why defiled the very core of the doctor at the fiber of his being. As Nikolai picked himself from his desk, he reached for his notebook and eyed the dog eared page where he had left it open the night before.


Radiation Hypothesis to be tested on the effects of perimortem subject with and without shielding control in play.


The doctor stared for a moment before closing the book and tucking it under his arm. It'd have to wait. As the saying went, Rome wasn't built in an afternoon and as it stood other obligations required more recent attention. As Nikolai left his workstation, he flipped off the light and reached for his medical pack hung adjacent to the door.

*****************************************************************************​

It was probably psycosomatic, but for some reason it always felt colder in the Hanger than the rest of the ship. Perhaps it was the open space of the area as opposed to the tight, organized passages of the crew compartments. Who knows. Regardless of the reason, the doctor found a chill up his spine as he made his way into the lit atrium. The yellow glare of lights clashed in a jagged pattern with the fine cut lines that constructed the flooring. Where some of the pieces of the ship gave the slightest touch of a human element, the bay seemed entirely void. Nostalga in his old age maybe, but the thought couldn't be shaken. Glancing across the room, the doctor took hold of the Israeli defense specialist as he fiddled with a map overlay. Approaching the man revealed a look to his face that was all too common among the ship these days. Distant, absorbed in work, and buried beneath the nagging prospect of how much bigger this was compared to everyone involved.

"Well someone looks busy," The doctor called out straightening the medical pack on the outline of his shoulders. As he made his way up behind Eli's terminal, his eyes wandered to the dark gunk that had taken residence in the pit of the man's coffee cup. Nikolai hummed a tone of consideration at the abandoned mug before reaching to the hoze that fed to his hydration reservoir. Unsealing the cap at the end of the tube, the Russian reached for the container and trickled water into the darkened sludge. After swirling the contents for a moment the man turned his attention back to his comrade's display, eyeing the map listed across the screen.


"What's the avenue of approach look like?" The doctor inquired as he pitched back the mug, unceremoniously drinking back the darkened concoction.

 

[Asmodeus]

Like a corkscrew, an uncertain bullet, a ball-bearing in a stress-toy, Matthias wheeled away down the length of the Cradle. His eyes were fixed, arm-strokes rhythmic. He moved in silence.

Perhaps the greatest mistake NASA made - the kink by which the armour, inevitably, cracked - was hiring scientists and not storytellers to spin their fiction of the space missions. For in every televised documentary, in every geek journal and half-interview, was the discrepancy that marred the glory. In these tales it was not humans, but dry and unerring machines, that crossed the fable heavens. Every procedure was stuck to, every safeguard meticulously observed.

Proponents would cite the necessity of this behaviour and how it was drilled into the astronauts, to make them military automatons. But soldiers are killers and men do not follow rules - especially those who dare to fly in darkness. Astronauts are madmen, and procedures are casualty to the roll of history.

Matthias had always known that a rebellion would come - that one of them would break the clinical parameters of this mission. He had just never thought he would be the first... or that it would be as absurd as this.

Behind his shoulder, as he departed, the override button on the medical bay blinked green.

Ann Whittles had been returned to duty.

Six would be going; four would be staying. Arriving on the bridge, Matthias wheeled into a triangle of unusual crewmates. At the helm, Melissa was calibrating for final approach, one hand about the flight protocols while the other interplayed with the navigational monitor. Perhaps 60% of Melissa's training had been for this very purpose - the navigation and calculation of lunar terrain. He wondered if the girl now knew the maps like the back of her hand - if when she closed her eyes her mind went walking through the craters and trenches of that place. Clarke had assisted her in the crossing from one orb to the next, but this... this part was all Melissa. She was their Charon as they passed to the Dark Side.

"Crossing threshold," the girl reported, and with these words the imaginations of all aboard would fire, picturing the sheer line of shadow roll across the Irideus. They were passing the limit of sunlight and circling the unseen half of the Moon - the half that even astrologists with their telescopes could not discern. From bright-lit craters to smoother darkness. The Dark Side of the Moon was, for them, the netherworld, the shadowy inverse of what they knew; the stranger twin.

With this crossing, the voyage into the unknown had truly begun.

To his right, Richard worked at the support console, a preacher amongst a congregation of holo-displays. The engineer was now the teacher marking Melissa's homework, matching her flight commands to the calculations of resource and propulsion. It was a tango long rehearsed, and Richard was a man who left little to chance. From now until moon-departure he would be a part of these machines, an alchemist in constant analysis of what they retained and what they exhausted. Matthias wondered if Richard even cared for what awaited them on the lunar surface, or whether all this was just some mathematical workout. Who cares for gods and rocks, when there are purring machines at work?

"You might want to slow the approach, guys. Trying to match the Pink Floyd song to the footage here."

The joke came from the fourth bridge member. At a chair opposite Richard, the editor Cho Ionis was setting up her monitor. The Asian was as laconic as always, nonchalant in her working. She had kept a low profile throughout the launch and the medical crisis, no doubt prowling the ship and placing her hidden cameras (Matthias had read in her profile that this was a habit of hers). But whatever secrets the former muck-racker guarded, there was no faulting her expertise. She had set a sophisticated uplink with both Rachaella and Biloxi, so that a livestream of audio and video could be relayed straight to the bridge. Her editing software was cutting edge, and the application danced with her fingertips as swiftly as any of Richard's holograms. Cho was the brain to Biloxi's brawn, the ice to Rachaella's fire. The board of directors might never have considered letting a film crew on the Irideus had they not been reassured by Cho's stoic presence.

Matthias looked to the editor as he locked his wheelchair into the command dock. "I hope Rachaella won't spend the entire moon landing interviewing Ann."

Cho did not look up from her interface. "Human story, Matthias." She said it as if it were answer enough. "Though I guess that's a relative term. Still, you shouldn't worry yourself. I'll leave no moon-rock unturned." She began swiping screens back and forth, tabbing images of the Dark Side.

"It's going to be an eventful first report." Matthias smiled with the height of understatement, and at this Cho looked up at him.

"If you don't want me to break the story about Ann, then you can say so." She matched his smile. "I won't listen; but you can still say so."

The billionaire raised one hand in mock surrender. On their first meeting, months ago in the summer house, Matthias and Cho had talked for hours about the nature of disclosure, of how journalistic truth would be sacrosanct on this mission, though God and Corporation might defy. "My concern is purely editorial, Miss Ionis. Transhuman intelligence, a Moon Landing, and history's first xeno-archaeological encounter? That's a lot to fit into a one hour report and leave space for commercials."

"This will just be the highlights. We've got a week before we reach Mars - that's plenty of time for the global networks to saturate the coverage. Viewers will be sick of the sight of our faces by Wednesday."

"Then be sure to retouch my grey hairs."

"The truth will out, Mr Green. Besides, you and the doctor are the main appeal to the over-50 demographic."

"Charming."

"Sir..." Melissa's alarm cut through the banter. She was straightening up from her two consoles, paler than usual. "You need to see this..."

Matthias looked to the pilot, then back to Cho, who was already loading footage from the forward hull cameras. She linked to the main screen and in the next moment they all saw what Melissa saw.

"Elevation dead 90, one hundred feet, ferro-silicon ratio 26:19." Melissa gave the readout quickly, perhaps to contain her excitement, or her fear.

Cho, however, was not looking at the screen but at the Mission Leader. "Is this it, Matthias?" Her words seemed to echo in the void of wonder. "Is this what your satellite saw?"

And so Matthias sat upon the joining of the full circle. The pass of the Raquia Satellite, all those months ago, had begun the seed of a dream - a low quality image that sparked a global wondering. It was an image, just like this one, that Raquia Industries had released to the public in the wake of the NASA scandal, and with that image changed the very conceptions of Mankind.

Now... finally... the image had brought him to the object... the painting to the muse.

His throat was dry as he answered. "Yes..." His hands gripped the arms of his wheelchair. "That's it.... the First Spire of God."

Silence smothered the bridge, broken only when Cho entered a command on her interface and opened a comm to the hangar. In moments the same image would display on the hangar monitor.

"Are you all seeing this?"