When you live on Jupiter’s coldest moon, Europa, it takes a lot to make you lose hope. Like if a neighboring moon, Io, were to or by chance began to deteriorate and rain chucks of itself onto Europa causing mass spread destruction. Another piece of Io came crashing down in the distance. People around me fell into a state of anarchy. From the hardest working businessmen to the pettiest thug, everyone despaired. The never-ending cold felt unbearable, more now than ever. Another meteor fell and as if waking from a daze I took off like a bullet. Where I was going, I couldn’t tell you. Away from here was the only place I wanted to be.
I made it out of the city with relative ease as the rest were trying to find a way to escape through means of spacecraft. Only the wealthy would be able to board through. The rich live on as the poor get crushed by the weight of a moon. Poetic, or maybe it just sounds that way with no real meaning. Regardless, I’m now miles away from the once flourishing city of Cryosthesia. I decided to rest. Not out of exhaustion but to internalize the spectacle around me. The city falling to its knees, much like its people in the face of their inevitable destruction. Though there is a way off this frozen wasteland, a mothership known as The Beyond. A space shuttle that is unbiased towards its passengers and through a complex algorithm chooses those who get a seat in its hull completely randomly. My last hope.
It leaves in 10 minutes and is only a few miles away. I can make it. Once again, I fly off towards my destination. The icy lake is no match for my legs. Prosthetic, of course. If they weren’t, I don’t think I could have made it out of the city if I didn’t have them. It’s a shame more people refused to go through with the vessel project. They might have a higher chance of getting through this global cataclysm. My mad dash to the neighboring city is almost complete by the time I finish that thought. This city is in even more chaos than Cryosthesia, people crowding around the ship futilely trying to overpower the heavily armed guards in an attempt to get on the ship after presumably losing their spot on The Beyond by cruel fate.
I go up to one of the guards and ask him for a chance to get on. He smirks, saying, “It’s full, no space for any more civilians.” Using my enhanced vision, thanks again to the vessel project, I spot more than enough seats. When I confront the guard about this, he tells me, “You think us guards would protect this ship for free? Then again, you were dumb enough to give up your humanity for a couple of upgrades.” He laughs. “Our payment is a way off this hell hole,” the guard says before seemingly disappearing into the crowd. I feel my world start to collapse in on itself, my eyes start to blur. There is no escape. The mourning of my own life is interrupted by the thrusters on The Beyond lighting up as, in record time, it blasts off into the atmosphere.
As I watch it leave the ground and fly up into the sky, I turn around in defeat only to hear a deafening sound. Quickly spinning around, I watch The Beyond having a mid-air collision with a colossal piece of the Io, splitting into two before crashing in a fiery end. There is no way out.
As the other people like me fall to the ground in despair, I begin to hear something. It sounds like ringing.
“Return to t-the, the l-l-last failsaaaaafe.” I whip around to no avail. Nothing is there. Others like me begin to look around, as confused as me. The voice sounded strangely familiar for a voice in my head. If hearing a voice in my head wasn’t strange enough, seeing a beacon shoot up from a mountain was the cherry on top. I figure I have nothing left to lose, so I begin to follow the beacon. Others of my kind follow me, bounding across the ice with such speed that the ground shook beneath us. Reaching the source of the beacon, we see what looks to be a man-made cave in the said mountain.
Entering it with caution, a meteor lands behind us sealing us in. The cave is nearly pitch black, though we are still able to see fine. As we travel down, we enter a strangely well-lit room? It looks like a factory. This feels like something out of the dream. Suddenly, a voice comes up over the intercoms.
“Hello, I’m The Architect. And this is the factory where you were all made. I made you. I am the creator of the vessel project.” This is the part where I mention that not just my legs are prosthetic, but my entire body. The vessel project allowed humans to partake in putting their subconscious inside an android. However, the creator of this project died thousands of years ago. “I have truly died, just like yourselves, I transcended to a higher life form The only difference between me and yourselves is that I did not put my subconscious in a mechanical exoskeleton and instead placed it inside the factory itself. The very ground you are walking on is me.”
“That’s great and all, but it doesn’t matter as we are about to be crushed by another planet!” Yells out one of the ways to survive through anything and everything.
“I am the greatest Inventor of all time, do not doubt my creations.” Suddenly, I slowly become almost tired. “You may feel consciousness slipping away. That is because in the end you are still mine and I will keep you dormant until you are needed by the next civilization that comes to Europa. Your memory banks will be wiped as they have been many times before. Sleep well.”
>End of Data Log 0003