Print Page
Send to FriendAnd so, within twenty years, the taraforming process had been complete and a group of seventy families were sent to live on the planet, along with some crops and livestock. They lived a simple life, with some technology, albeit not as advanced and luxurious as that here on Earth. It could be considered a rather primitive village, with people living as they had lived in the United States during the twentieth century. But it was a peaceful and happy community, built upon a solid foundation of compassion and camaraderie. While Earth from time to time sent supplies, the community mostly relied on themselves, breeding their live stocks and growing their crops. Like earth, XF-529 had its own indigenous life, both in the present as well as in the distant past, and so they were able to build oil refineries for fueling purposes, as humanity had done during the twentieth and early twenty-first century. The people of XF-529 lived prosperously, and for a while, all was well.
Thirty years passed, and while drilling for oil one day, a crystal was discovered about a kilometer below the planet’s surface. Even covered in dirt and mud and stained in oil, it was recognized as a thing of beauty and an item of great value. Once cleaned off, its luster shone with even greater splendor. It was an emerald green orb, about a half-meter in diameter; it still required a forklift to carry it around. In the darkness, it cast its own ray of light, glowing as it soothed the hearts of men, so that even the most distraught souls were now in a state of blissful euphoria. It was a smooth sphere, warm to the touch. Those who had discovered it knew they had a thing of great value, and so it was placed securely within a great temple, while what were known as Holy Guardians vigilantly watched over it, worshipping its great power.
Over time, the crystal became the colony’s new religion, and each member came by once a week to pay worship to the grand divinity, and the town thrived in even greater prosperity because of its holiness. The Elites, particularly the Guardians as well as those who sponsored them, lived in the greatest of luxury. Even those who lived simpler lives, struggling to make ends meet were touched by the divine crystal, filled both with pride for where they lived as well as peace and security, knowing that the crystal would always be there to protect them from harm and give their lives meaning. And for a while, all was well.
But gradually, over the course of ten years, the people of XF-529 grew hostile and greedy. In time, they became selfish to the point where each was willing to foist the greatest harm against his own brother for even the most insignificant of rewards. Where once the people were polite and full of compassion, they were now cold, bitter, and rude. There had always been those with sick and perhaps violent fantasies, but now their inhibitions slowly melted away, thereby allowing them without remorse or shame to live out those fantasies, leaving three out of four women, and one out of four men to become victims of rape and violence. Still filled with a great euphoria when even within a few kilometers radius of the crystal, each person viewed themselves as better than the rest, seeing his or her fellow human being as little more than a mindless drone that didn’t deserve happiness or even life.
The Grand Arena was eventually built to quell the thirst for blood that filled the hearts of humanity. Those with the strongest bloodlust became the Combatants, those volunteering for the honor of killing or being killed upon the Arena while nearly everyone watched in morbid fascination, shouting, cheering for each drop of spilled blood and rejoicing each time one of the Combatants fell dead.
At first, the battles were simple: hand-to-hand combat between two or more people, every person for themselves. The arena wasn’t discriminatory in the least, and women, just as men, were able to do battle, and some were even as successful as or more so than many of the toughest men. The masses quickly grew bored with simple hand-to-hand combat and more complex and dangerous matches were introduced. Melee weapons were preferred, such as those from medieval times, like swords, clubs, ball-and-chains, and battle axes, and sometimes even projectile weapons such as crossbows. Each combatant wore knight’s armor and faceplates, equipped with shields for defense, and while these offered some protection, it didn’t render them invulnerable, and as before, the battles ended when one side was killed, lying in a pool of blood while the other side stood victorious amid piles of corpses. Sometimes it was a one-on-one battle, while other times a half-dozen or more fought, every Combatant for him or herself, and from time to time, they were divided into sides, using teamwork to crush the opposing forces and win the approval of the shouting crowds. As time went on, the battles grew even more elaborate. In some, the combatants rode horses and chariots, as was done often in the Roman Coliseums thousands of years before. Death traps surrounded the ring: Tortures that would immolate any Combatant should they be unfortunate enough to collide into one. Barbed wire surrounded the ring. Propellers at the edge of the ring, threatening to hack a Combatant to bits should they be foolish enough to get near it.
To sign up for the Arena was to sentence oneself to death, for even if you were triumphant in the ring, there would come a time when you, too, would be butchered, much to the jubilation of the fickle masses. Once apart of the Arena, one was required to serve for life. This did not dissuade all from joining in the glory, however, for many basked in the prospect of honor and glory it would bring, to have the crowd love you, for even a short time. And others still signed up because despite their own inevitable demise, it was a chance to murder someone without fear of legal repercussions. And thus the arena was rarely short of Combatants.
Not all were seduced by violence and crushing their fellow human, however, for a few saw with great despair the downfall of their once great colony. It was these same people that seemed unable to gain any pleasure from the crystal’s charms, and in time, began to see a correlation between the unearthing of the green crystal with the spiral into chaos that had followed. There seemed to be nothing linking these people together, for they were of all ages, all races, and both genders, with the one common trait of being able to see the Crystal for what it truly was; a pathway into hell through an alluring façade of pleasure and security. Many chose to keep these subversive thoughts to themselves, but a few were more outspoken in their disgust with where society was headed, and it was those outspoken few that eventually enabled a gathering of like-minded town-folk to discuss what was happening and to come up with a feasible solution. The secret meeting housed about twenty town-folk and lasted two hours of heated debate and observation, until finally it was decided that upon that night the green crystal must be destroyed.
On the night that the crystal was to be destroyed, the two holy and elite Guardians saw what the town would have thought of as Heretics coming. Each could hear the voice of the crystal, urgent and firm, yet somehow soothingly calm, warning them of the Heretics’ intentions. The Guardians fought valiantly, and despite being gigantic, standing at over six and a half feet tall, they were still only a few men against twenty heretics.
One of the Guardians swung his club, batting away one of the Heretics and crushing his skull against the stone wall of the temple, feeling the warm blood, gray matter, and splinters of bone splash against him. He looked immediately to the side, but was too late, for another Heretic brought his ax down upon the Guardian’s collar bone. He roared in pain as blood spurt profusely from the wound, soaking his shirt, and his arm dangled stiffly to his side, seemingly held up only by a few breaking bones and stretching, splitting tendons. Another ax from behind was buried into the back of the Guardian’s skull, along the base of his spine, and he fell to his knees as the world danced before his eyes. Even in death, the presence of the crystal soothed and comforted him, and so his final moments before passing were filled with bliss as the pain was washed from his body along with the hot blood and for that brief time he was in paradise.
The rest of the Guardians perished in much the same manner, taking with them a few of the Heretics, but ultimately falling to their doom as well.
One Guardian lay with his legs chopped off as well as an ax firmly implanted into his belly. Blood rose to his throat as he lifted his head and he choked on that blood while even more blood spurted profusely from the stubs where his legs had once been. In fact the Guardian was now completely drenched in his own blood, which seemed to leak from the gallons from the wound in his stomach, as his severed and badly mauled intestines slithered out as well, appearing almost like dead snakes whose wriggling was merely the reflexive motions of dying nerves. He should have writhed in great agony as horror and panic twisted his mind, yet like his comrade, this Guardian, too, died in a state of blessed paradise.
With the Guardians dead, their massacred carcasses sprawled in pieces, and blood splattered against the stone walls of the temple from both sides, the town-folk wasted little time in completing their quest. They now surrounded the Green Crystal, which lay on a stone cylinder that had almost the same diameter as that of the Crystal, with their axes raised in the air. Those still alive now seemed to be possessed by a hive-like mentality. Their movements were almost synchronized as they lifted the axes and brought them down against the crystal, denting and cracking the orb on all sides. The crystal fell to the floor from the force of impact and still the people mercilessly attacked the wretched unholy artifact, bringing their axes down again and again, their movements no longer simultaneous, yet their minds still seemed the same, the urgency of their goal still equally pressing. Their righteous fury focused solely on the Crystal itself. Some cried out in triumph as the crystal split in half, then in fours, and green dust rose into the air. When it was over, the Crystal was nothing more than a thinning green mist scattered into the air. The people were now breathing hard, covered in perspiration, as their hearts raced and their shoulders throbbed sorely, yet they felt satisfied, hoping that once more all would be well with the colony.
But while the corruption had slowly died away, all was not well with XF-529, for with the Crystal’s demise, their prosperity slowly dwindled as well. Each now noticed a red mist covering the land, one that brought not euphoria, but depression and a great fatigue. XF-529 slowly became a radioactive wasteland. Cancer, as well as suicide rates skyrocketed. Almost all babies now born were hideously deformed, their sallow flesh raw, bloated, and curded like cottage cheese, breaking open with suppurations at the slightest of sudden movements. Their eyes were little more than two black orbs in their sunken eye sockets. These poor children let out hoarse cries of agonies that sounded almost like the shriek of a tortured feline. From the moment of their births, these poor children’s lungs slowly filled with mucous until they mercifully drowned in their own fluids. Cattle were simply dropping dead in every direction on the farms and those that did not die were too sickly to feed upon. Crops no longer thrived, but instead withered away, sometimes almost liquefying into a gray mud that soaked deep into the soil. Because of this, a great famine overtook the colony of XF-529 and many out of desperation resorted to cannibalism, feeding on the dead and dying.
The unlucky few that did not die from starvation, cancer, or suicide perished from a new disease that filled the air. This disease first started with bouts of intense nausea, migraine headaches, irritability, and an inability to control one’s bowel movements. Within a day after infection, a thick, crusty nasal discharge secreted from both nostrils. The nausea and headaches worsened, until finally they were drowned out by the sea of fiery pain that boiled in their lungs, making the infected feel as though their entire body were set ablaze. Two days after infection their blood thinned and oozed like a faucet out of every orifice in their body. By that time, dementia had taken over and everything beyond the chaos and suffering that had now overtaken them was forgotten. Within four weeks after this disease was introduced into the general population, it had decimated the entire colony, and those few who seemed immune to the epidemic had chosen to take their own lives, gathering together in the temple that once housed the Green Crystal. These ten remnants of the colony--ranging from all age groups, ethnicities, and genders--drank tea laced in cyanide, and holding hands with one another in a great circle. Even in death, they still held hands, perhaps now transcending the next world together as well.
Now, about a hundred years after the discovery of XF-529, the planet, once teeming with life is now a barren wasteland, while the colony is a ghost town, with the bones of the dead still strewn about the streets, their skulls still leering into the purple sky as the strange insects of this world feast upon their carcasses while the fetid stench of decomposition lingers in the air to this day. The colony still gets visitors, though mostly from a space cruiser wandering by, perhaps lost in the galaxy. Whether alien or human, these visitors are quickly sickened by the scarlet mist that even now still lingers in the air, poisoning everything in its path. Those wise enough to leave quickly are spared any lasting effects. Those foolish enough to remain, however, even with their advanced technology, space suits, and air filters, quickly succumb to the same fate that befell the doomed colonists within this punishing environment.
The End
December 02, 2005