ATALIS

CHAPTER 4: MEMORY OF THE OBELISK

"We diverted from Proxima toward a planet that wasn't on our star charts. Like I said, we made our diversion because we got a signal coming from it. When we got there, all we found was a giant stone thing on the surface. We sent a search crew down with the captain, and he saw the thing, and he was like, 'we HAVE to have this'. And his first officer was like, 'Well why do we need it?' and the captain was like, 'Because I said so, and I'm the captain! Stick it in the cargo bay!'"

Jin uses different voices for each person he mentions.

"What happened after that?"

He adjusts his position on the ground and leans away from me a little. "No offense, Hayden, but you stink. Must be all that blood." I scoot over to the right half a foot and he continues. I don't know if I should be offended or not. When was the last time he showered? And he's calling me stinky?

"So we took the Obelisk up and into the loading bay. That's when things got weird. See, we tried to take the Obelisk up. It wouldn't move. Nothing we did could budge it and we didn't have the manpower or technology to lift a large portion of the ground up, not without disassembling half the ship to get to the construction equipment. So instead, the Captain came up with a plan to build one."

I raise my eyebrows.

"Yeah." He nods seriously. "He was obsessed. The doctor met with the captain, and nothing really changed. We were worried about space fever, or something like that." He coughs. "Many were worried about his strange behaviors. He started building it himself. He built it in the cargo bay whenever he made spare time. He worked on it for about an hour every day. Then people started to help him."

"They did?"

"I think some started to see it as a fun thing. Something that the whole crew could contribute to. Plus, the Captain was a very characteristic man. He had a big personality, and he was inspiring. It's hard to describe if you haven't met him. He was the type of guy you wanted to be proud of you. When he started doing this, people started coming to help. He thanked them for it and it became almost part of the culture. The thing was huge. It towered over everything else in the docking bay. It had some weird letters on it, the Captain never answered any questions about what they meant. I don't know if he even knew. I never helped, and I never talked to him about it. The doctor kept trying to meet with the Captain, and then the doctor went missing. The Captain made a big deal of it. No one could find him. We finally found him a little over a year ago. Stripped into small pieces of flesh and then fed to a trash compactor. We found..." he trails off, grimacing. "His eye, and his ID badge, in a bag in the Captain's office. When the Obelisk was finished, we were almost to Proxima Centauri b. That's when everything began to snowball."

He rubs his neck and then clears his throat. "The Obelisk activated when the Captain said something to it. The letters began to glow. It was like right out of a sci-fi movie. I know we live on a colony ship and go to literally other planets, but you get what I mean," he clears his throat again. "It glowed. It was bright. And everyone in the room fell asleep."

"Just like that? They fell asleep?"

"Yeah. They dropped to the ground. Then, the Obelisk opened. A big ring like popped out from either side of the Obelisk and began to glow. Same color as the letters, at first. Then it went purple. Deep purple. And the ring opened. It was a gateway of some kind. Things popped out, and that's when I closed my eyes. Something deep inside of me did not want me to see what was inside of that ring. I closed my eyes and then put my hand over my eyes just to be sure. A woman beside me—we were in the mess hall, eating lunch for our rotation—began to scream. Then, she collapsed. She had a seizure and died a few moments later. I looked away, and I went to my room. I took as much canned food from the storage that I could find, and I found Kelsey and brought her along with me. She hadn't helped with the Obelisk either."