Future Lovecraft

TRAJECTORY OF A CURSED SPIRIT By Meddy Ligner

THEY WOULD FINALLY land. Expected and feared at the same time, the end of the voyage was very close. Surrounded by his companions in misfortune, who, like him, were backed to the metal wall, Maxim Brahms scratched at length his salt-and-pepper beard and reflected on the past.

He remembered the war that he had led in the course of these last few years. A war implacable, without mercy. A crusade against those who were called “the enemies of the people”. A devoted servant of the regime, he had fought the plotters, spies, saboteurs, and other counterrevolutionaries of every kind. In the course of this ferocious battle, Brahms had jailed them with a vengeance, separating whole families, deporting innocents, and obeying orders with zeal. For nothing. Or rather, to end up here, as one of the damned. He nearly retched.

Like so many others before him, he had ended up engulfed by yet another purge. His Party card, his advantageous position in the apparatus of the State, had done him no good. When they came to find him in his apartment, cozy in the middle of the night, Maxim had understood. The swine. He had barely time to kiss his wife and his son. Natasha and Alex, what are you doing right now? By the time he was brought to an unknown prison, he realised that he had seen them for the last time.

They accused him of deviation. Confessions obtained under torture. His trial was even more expeditious. He didn’t know why, but he’d escaped summary execution and was condemned to deportation in perpetuity. On Mars. But is that better than death? For a long time now, Siberia had gone out of fashion. That region, which had become a zone for the privileged population, had given way to another hell: the Marslag. The final step for those who disrupted. The asshole from which one never returned. Mars the Pitiless.

To reach this charming corner, the prisoners had to pass two months in the interior of a rotten cabin in the vessel October: a ruined engine that, for three decades, had watered insatiable Mars with new detainees. These miserable ones were stuck there, penned like cattle, packed like sardines, for the long and punishing voyage across the cosmos. They had become damned souls, errant spirits, empty of their human substance. In coming here, we have won a one-way ticket to the abyss.

With a terrible din, the October finally landed on the Martian soil.

Their chains were connected at the feet, as in the time of the tsars. The prison guards barked, violently pushing the slower prisoners. The aggressiveness oozed from every pore of their skins. Cudgels rained down. The guards drove the procession of phantoms to the exit of the spacecraft. With each step, his irons cut his foot, but Maxim said nothing. He knew that it was useless to complain. They were brought along an immense corridor with immaculate walls, connecting the October to the Martian base. Their metal chains rattling, the convicts trudged along the vast corridor. At the mid-point, they passed under a huge, red banner, on which stood out letters of gold:

“ДOБPO ПOЖAЛOBATЬ HA MAPC. 3ДECЬ MЫ CTPOИM COЦИЯЛИCM.”

“Welcome to Mars. Here, we build the new socialism.” Such bullshit….

They arrived, finally, under a vast dome whose walls were totally transparent. There, for the first time, their haggard eyes could contemplate a Martian landscape. Shacks were planted in the middle of a crimson valley on the cracked surface. They noticed immediately that there was no line of barbed wire, no watchtower. The Martian environment was the antidote to any attempt to flee. An unbreathable atmosphere, a sterile world situated millions of kilometers from Earth. This was explained to them, shouted out, by the head of the base, under the guise of a welcoming speech.

A little farther to the left, in the region of one hundred metres, the prisoners could see the cyclopean profiles of the Fathers of the Revolution, which had been carved in the rock of a cliff. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin stared down at the pestiferous unfortunates, which included Maxim. The scene immediately evoked for him an old, dog-eared postcard given to him by his father when he had been only a child. The image, which had risen from his memories like a bubble of air to the surface of the water, represented the American presidents sculpted onto a mountain.

The filthy mass of men was then pushed toward the decontamination rooms. They were washed, dressed, then directed to the refectory.

There, while they ate, slogans to the glory of the empire echoed. Obviously, brainwashing was part of the treatment inflicted in the Marslag….

Then, once they had hed, they were sent to the boarding area. Now, their lives as pariahs could begin.

It remained to exploit the riches that abounded on Mars, and of which the Motherland was fond. As no volunteer was crazy enough to come here, the authorities had decided to create a new paradise from forced labour. The Marslag. The prisoners represented a mass of free and exploitable labour, even if their life expectancy was not very high. Between the beatings by prison guards, the lack of food, and work to the limits of human capacity, the existence of a convict did not weigh very heavily with the authorities.

They brought the prisoners into a locker room with cracked walls, filled with outdated and dirty lockers. There, they put on their spacesuits and then, under the watchful eye of supervisors, they boarded the craft that would lead them to the mine.

Once inside, Maxim stuck to the glass porthole. The desolate land of Mars marched under his wide eyes: stony hills, speckled with brown stones and cutting the horizon out of sight, fields of somber rocks in jagged shapes, a sky reddish and sad. A little farther, cliffs plunged toward an immense, scarlet plain. Immobile and silent.

“Look over there, at the bottom.”

These words emanated from a stony voice. That of an old man, sitting next to Maxim. Dirty-looking, the Ancestor…His face, cracked and weary, reflected the many years abandoned here, but in his grey-green eyes still danced the flame of intelligence. Max did not blink, leaving the stranger to continue:

“That’s Mount Olympus. An altitude of 27 km. The highest summit on Mars. And in the Solar System.”

Max did not know how to respond to the stranger. They always said to remain on guard and say nothing of import to anyone…The Marslag had a reputation as a nest of crabs, each one ready to eat the others. Finally, it was the grandfather who decided to continue:

“We’re braking. We’re arriving at our destination.”

Max opened his eyes wide and what he saw unmanned him:

“Jesus Christ!”

Faced with the immense, open-pit mine, he believed he found himself at the mouth of Hell. The spectacle was enough to shake the strongest of souls. There, resembling an army of insects, worked thousands of men, turning the soil over a surface, and at a depth, that was staggering. Their effort was colossal.

The prisoners were hustled outside. My first steps on Mars….

“You risk having some difficulties in adapting, but you should master your movements pretty rapidly. Here, it’s necessary to move in small steps that are facilitated by the weak gravity. On the Red Planet, you weigh three times less than on Earth.”

Always the same old man. This time, Maxim decided to respond to him.

“Okay, thanks, Comrade.”

“Spare me the ceremony. In Marslag, we are all pariahs. The only goal that drives us is summed up in one word: ‘Survive’. My name is ‘Fyodor’. Welcome to Hell.”

“Mine is Maxim Brahms. Everyone calls me Max.”

The guards gave their orders. As he did not know what to do, Maxim imitated his new companion. There ran, some steps away from the condemned, a four-wheel-drive, diesel robot. Its steel legs methodically searched the red soil and mined ore. The mission for Brahms and his comrades was simple: to transport the ore to cargo containers. They then had to push carts weighing several tons over hundreds of meters. Despite the feeble gravity, it was exhausting work. A grueling task that shriveled the brain and reduced those executing it to the state of a machine. Turning back and forth like hungry wasps, the warders perched on their quads, which functioned on solar energy, keeping a constant eye on their charges and ensuring that the cadences of labour did not decrease.

“Your spacesuit is your best protection. It allows you to deal with the radiation and dust. Ensure that your water supply and air ventilation systems remain in perfect condition in your backpack. The equipment is often obsolete and mortal accidents are legion. So, take good care of….”

Old Fyodor had definitely wanted to talk….

“You seem to know a thing or two. How long have you been here?” Maxim asked.

The exhausted face of the convict stared so hard at him that Maxim was embarrassed.

“I’ve been in this shithole for almost seventeen years…accused, without proof, of counterespionage. And you? Why are you here?”

“Shut up, Old Man! Concentrate on your work!”

One of the guards came over to strike him with a rifle butt. The old man sank to his knees. He began to implore this cerberus for mercy. The other insulted him. Max believed the guard might execute the old man, but finally, he was called away to other tasks.

“Those guards are garbage, scum, dogs that have the taste of blood, said Fyodor. Always ready to fuck you over. Watch out for them like the plague.”

In the evening, when they returned to their Spartan dormitories, the convicts ate and were directed immediately to their bunks, exhausted as they were by their life of slavery. Maxim Brahms was no exception. This first day in the Marslag had exhausted his strength. I will never last several years….Here, no Sunday, no weekend, let alone any vacation. The Marslag worked round the clock, with no stops.

Some men already slept, but Max joined the group around an old samovar that smoked in the corner. Tortured by curiosity, he started the discussion.

“Hasn’t anyone ever succeeded in escaping the Marslag?”

The other prisoners stared at him, flabbergasted as if Max had suggested they take their vacations on a sandy beach.

“It’s impossible to get out of here,” said one of them, whose face was streaked with a huge scar. “It’s said that two or three convicts managed to stow away in a compartment and get off this cursed planet. They left and were never caught. But how did they do it? The rest is a mystery….”

The other detainees regarded him in exhaustion. Fyodor took the opportunity to speak.

“In every prison, and since their birth in the dawn of Man, there have existed such tales, touched perhaps by myth. These legendary escapes have a base in reality; I’m sure of it.”

The man with the scar could not repress a grin. In contrast, Maxim became curious.

“What have you heard about that, Fyodor?”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just a crazy old man.”

Scarface does not appear to agree with my friend. Fyodor was uncowed. His face radiated calm. He replied:

“I believe in less-rational explanations. In times immemorial, Mars was a world as joyous as Earth, with forests, prairies, seas, and oceans. It possessed a fauna and flora both rich and diverse…In this antediluvian epoch, some kind of Gods ruled on the surface of Mars. One called them the Great Old Ones.”

“You’re completely cracked, Fyodor! You’ve said all that before. It’s just bullshit!” the scarred man insisted.

“But where did you hear all this, Fyodor?” Maxim asked, curious to know more.

“I’m just repeating what someone told me. It was a long time ago.”

“But how do you explain that, today, there is nothing left of that time?”

“I don’t know. It was a very long time ago. That time has been forgotten by us.”

“And where did these Great Old Ones go?”

“They live hidden in the entrails of the Red Planet….”

“I’ve heard enough for tonight! I leave you now. Until tomorrow.”

The man with the scar stood up. He persuaded a goodly part of the audience to imitate him.

“Same for me. All this nonsense has exhausted me. Good night, everyone!” said another man.

Finally, only Max remained with the old man, who went on, murmuring:

“Watch yourself. Here, you can be betrayed by the most unimportant thing, especially if you speak of escape. Be on your guard….”

“All right…and these histories of the Great Old Ones…do you truly believe them?”

Without responding, Fyodor stood up slowly and headed toward his bed. He lifted his dusty mattress and pulled out a piece of rock.

“Look. I found this one day, not far from the mine.”

With curiosity, Max inspected the object. It was a red rock, typical of the Martian surface. On one side, it was cut in a chaotic fashion, but on the other, it was smooth, flat, almost…polished. And on the surface, there was painted a design representing a sort of mouth. Or rather, the mouth of an animal, almost reptilian, with teeth pointed and large.

“What is it?”

“The proof of the existence of the Gods.”

Stunned, Maxim didn’t know what to say. It seemed that reality was collapsing under his feet. It was too feeble to face the rantings of this old mujik. He decided to flee.

“I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

Maxim retired and went to bed, yet Fyodor, himself, remained sitting near the samovar and candle with its flickering flame. Alone, he calmly drank his tea, while the plumes of smoke drifted through the obscurity of the dormitory. Under the rough sheets, Maxim watched him for a long time without attracting his attention. I like you a lot, Fyodor. That doesn’t prevent you from being an old fool. He turned over in his bed and abandoned himself to sleep.

Maxim admired his dacha, planted on the edge of a birch forest. The sun shone down from heaven in long, golden firmaments. In the sky without snow, he noticed a blue planet…Could that be Terra? Where am I? On Mars? In Paradise?

He pushed the door open and entered the house. The interior was not particularly rich, but was decorated with taste. Slowly, he advanced across the floor, which creaked as he passed. On the wall, he found photographs of his family. Photos in black-and-white of his parents, of his brothers, of beautiful Natasha and of little Alex.

“Papa…Papa, is it you?”

The call came from the foyer. Max turned on the carpet. The door opened and Alex appeared, running. He threw himself into the arms of his father.

“My little boy! Oh, I’m so happy!”

“Papa! I love our dacha a lot, but without you, it’s not the same. Why did you abandon us?”

Maxim knelt in such a way as to hold his offspring in his arms.

“But I didn’t abandon you!”

“Why did you leave us, Mama and me?”

“But I told you…ALEX! What is happening to you?”

The face of his gamin child engaged in a monstrous mutation. It swelled visibly, transforming into a creature most disquieting: His skin was covered in scales, his traits taking the form of a snake. In his mouth, there quivered a tongue, pink and forked.

“WHY, PAPA?”

Max recoiled, horrified by the terrifying spectacle. Then a feminine voice came from upstairs.

“MAXIM! MAXIM!”

Terrorised, Maxim ran and mounted the stairs to the second story, from where she continued to call.

He recognised the voice of the woman.

“MAXIM! MAXIM!”

In a rage, he ran and opened the door from which came the incessant cries.

Inside, he saw Natasha, his spouse, tied to a bed. She struggled while, around her, stood monsters from the abyss of time. Dinosaurs with the feet of goats, birds with brown fur, hydras issued from the worst nightmares of Humanity. Their yellow eyes nailed him with terror.

“MAXIM! WHY DID YOU ABANDON US?” cried his wife.

While the beasts growled, a sort of hideous mouth appeared from the shadows, just above the head of his wife. Four hooked mandibles chattered with ferocity.

“NO! There’s nothing I can do, Natasha! NOTHING!”

“Max! Max, wake up!” A voice from beyond the grave hailed him. And dragged his limbs from sleep.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the weathered face of Fyodor looming over him.

“What is…What happened to me?”

“You were screaming in your sleep. You woke up everyone!”

Maxim sat up on the edge of the bed, his face still marked by his dream.

“I had a horrible nightmare.”

“Everyone has them here, you know.”

“There were these unclean monsters….”

“The Great Old Ones have visited you.”

“What? Stop it with all your legends….”

“So, you, too, you take me for an old fool?”

“No, Fyodor. I have always listened to you with great attention, but….”

“Know that, for all of these years, I was not simply relating stories from a long oral tradition.”

“I just find it difficult to swallow all these stories…It’s not based on any concrete proof.”

“We are mystical creatures. We need to believe in something. Of what material do you make yours?”

Fyodor paused, as if to catch his breath from panting. This gave Max a chance to describe his nightmare.

“I saw my…my wife and my son…It was disgusting….”

“I had the same kind of dream in the beginning. And then, little by little, it faded. Time effaced all memories.”

“You know, Fyodor, that makes four years, to the day, that I haven’t seen them again…four years that I’ve been in this hell.”

Fyodor fixed him with his empty stare. Any speech was unnecessary.

“Registration number 25B43!”

A guard had just entered the dormitory with a crash. He was shouting, spit flying from his mouth.

“Yes, that’s me, said Maxim,” who got up and mechanically followed the guard. Here, he was only a number.

Max was simply designated. The fruit of hazard. The whim of a bureaucracy. Should he rejoice or worry? He hesitated. But he quickly accepted his part because, in any case, he had little choice.

He must accompany a geological expedition into the zones as yet unexploited. The guy in question had need of a flunky and they had assigned Brahms to this utterly thankless task, but it would change his monotonous routine. And that was priceless.

‘Leon Kelonen’. That was his name, inscribed on his suit. With a gruff air, blond hair, and skin like milk, his name indicated that he was certainly of Finnish origin, but Maxim couldn’t verify it.

The two men practically didn’t communicate and when the other spoke to him, he used a sort of rumbling, tinged hatred that Maxim only understood half the time. No species of consideration transpired in his words and in his scientific spirit, devoted body and soul to the regime. The convict must be reduced to a simple beast of burden.

The two of them left on an exploration trip, far from camp. The prison guards were very confident of them: They could leave the prisoner alone with this stranger. He would make no attempt to escape, even though, of course, this possibility passed through his head. But go where? Escape to where? In any case, his reserves of air were not inexhaustible, and in less time than it takes to say, he would have eventually suffocated after a few hours, if by chance he had wanted to run. Escape from this hole would be impossible.

They took a six-wheel-drive jeep, setting a course straight toward a region situated farther to the west. They attained their objective after three hours’ journey. The place they had to explore was streaked by large canyons that wound through the middle of a vast, reddish plain. Deep ravines with vertiginous slopes. Kelonen stopped the engine near one of them and ordered Maxim to help him get out all of the paraphernalia that would permit them to use the levels and measures. There were a lot of electronic devices of which the convict was ignorant about their true value. Although fascinated by science, he had never been very gifted in this domain….

He obeyed promptly each order from his new master because he savoured with delectation this little moment of liberty that was offered to him. He was happy. Happy to be out of the camp, happy to see something else. If I behave myself, who knows? Perhaps I could gain the right to be called again for another mission. Better to be here than in the mine, slaving away like a donkey!

Gusts of wind raised the reddish dust, which evaporated in elegant swirls. Encumbered by all their material, the two men roamed the border of the principal canyon, which was run through by ravines, giving the impression of ripples on the surface of a sea. Souvenirs of an epoch when water streamed across the surface of Mars.

Max then lifted his head toward the sky to try to find Phobos, one of the two natural satellites of the Red Planet. It was Fyodor who had taught him to spot the moon. The old man knew a lot about this desolate world.

Kelonen ordered his acolyte to quit daydreaming and pick up the pace. It was at this moment that a detail drew his attention to the geology. On a sort of natural platform, in a slight depression, stood an opening in the rock. The convict immediately thought of the entrance to a cave.

“We’ll go take a look in there. It could be interesting,” said the other man into his microphone.

Maxim obeyed and followed the scientist, who had already descended into the cavity.

It was necessary to take care not to slip on the stones, at the risk of falling down the hill to the bottom. The two men advanced with the greatest of prudence, then reached the edge of the hole.

“Go in first and tell me what you see,” said Kelonen, holding the flashlight.

Max wanted to protest, but a hateful glance from his interlocutor through the plexiglass of his helmet, and the severe air of the geologist, showed to what extent he was serious. The prisoner knew it was useless to argue. With the help of a rope, he entered the crevasse and was immediately engulfed.

A few silent seconds passed before that silence was broken.

“So, what do you see? Describe to me what you’re observing,” demanded Kelonen.

“Ah…it’s necessary that you come see, Comrade…it’s…it’s incredible…I believe…I am not sure…It could be that I’m delirious….”

“Wait. I’m coming. But I warn you, buddy. If you’re playing me a turn, I’ll freeze you, here and now.”

And, removing the safety on his weapon, Kelonen descended for his turn in the grotto. Flooded with light by the grace of the torch that he had just unhooked, the cavern revealed was vaster than he could imagine. It made him think of a sort of natural cathedral. He went down the slope, four by four, and joined Maxim, who was standing there, some steps away from him.

Before them stood a colossal door, carved into the Martian rock. They remained silent for a long time, mouths agape, totally absorbed by this thing that they found before them and which, normally, would not have been there.

Max thought of the city of Petra in Jordan. Though less monumental, perhaps. Of course, he had never visited that architectural jewel—only some of the privileged could go abroad and, most of the time, only to neighbouring countries—but he remembered the photos of the site that he had seen in the pages of his geographical manual, laminated onto the school benches. All he had before his eyes was measured within the environ of fifteen meters high and inevitably evoked the antique style. Two pairs of enormous, crenelated columns guarded the entryway on each side. At their summits, the pyramidal heads bore a tablet decorated with a carved frieze. The convict remembered the fantastic animals that had haunted his dream, the monsters of his nightmare. It seemed to him that these creatures moved on the infinite steppes or on the grey ranges. He also noticed the suites of signs and of designs, recalling Egyptian hieroglyphs. Who? Who could do such a thing? If he had been on Earth, he might have thought of some Greek or Roman œuvre. But something didn’t work, a detail wrong, giving the impression of an edifice all askew. The top of this entrance constitutes a sort of circular crown, from which flowed, at regular intervals, a dozen pinnacles with roofs of scales. This gave a strange impression and resembled nothing that Maxim knew.

It evoked a species of artistic melting pot, an architectural catchall where were mixed different styles and many epochs. Finally, there was no door, proper, to speak of. Nothing obstructed the entrance, but long, iridescent ribbons, constructed of an unknown material, floated in front of the opening. They undulated slightly, carried by mysterious currents of air, sometimes out of the eyesight of those who regarded them, to intrude on the other side.

Max tried to see what was happening out there, while Kelonen prudently held back. The convict approached with small steps, overwhelmed by such majesty. As far as he advanced, he could perceive some of the colours as he traversed the forest of ribbons. Some green. Some blue. But all remained unclear.

“Do you have any ideas concerning this stuff?” Kelonen asked him.

This phrase, which resonated through the headphones of the prisoner, had the same effect as that of pulling him from a dream. Since the two men had discovered this strange building, no word had been pronounced. Too medusaed to be able to discuss what they saw. Once his stupor had passed, Max realised that his guard had spoken to him as if he were a normal being. No aggressiveness, no hate. This unexpected spectacle devastated all codes.

“I don’t know a fucking thing!” he said. “We have put a finger on something that will revolutionise our knowledge of Mars.”

The two men remained silent for several seconds. In their capsised spirits clashed curiosity and fear of the unknown. All their bearings on which they could draw seemed to crumble and fall into an unknown abyss.

“The solution resides in here,” said Max, indicating a passage where the glittering curtain moved in arabesques.

“It could well be. But I don’t want to take any risks. We’ll return to base and I’ll make a report to the captain. They’ll advise us what to do next. Hey, come back here! Let’s go!”

“Wait. Look,” Maxim said, showing him the opening where the silver filaments fluttered. I see something on the other side.

And he was not lying.

“Stop! Stop, or I’ll shoot you down!” the other man cried, pointing his weapon at Max.

Maxim hesitated and looked again toward that other place which he had at his fingertips. Through the shimmering stripes, he glimpsed green landscapes. He could not believe his eyes…On the other side, a savage nature, almost original, held out its arms.

He temporised, clenching his fist before making an about face and turning back to the scientist. In a few seconds, he was level with the man who menaced him with his sidearm. He faced him down without flinching and it all went very quickly. In a flash, animated by a mad rage that increased his strength tenfold, the prisoner succeeded in disarming his attacker. In an ultimate gesture of despair, the other man tried to protect himself, but Max had already torn his hose that connected to his oxygen supply. The other man panicked and tried to replace it. It was already too late. His flushed face twisted in agony. He succumbed in only a few seconds, asphyxiated by the impure air of Mars.

Abandoning the corpse, Maxim then turned his steps and walked cautiously to the door. Where are you going to take me? Toward the past? The future? Or another world? All these questions of course remained unanswered, but the convict had already made his decision. For him, there was no way to return to Marslag. In any case, his crime would send him right to the gallows.

He thought back to the mine, to his family, to his comrades, to Fyodor and his legends. At last, you were right, old friend...Then he passed his gloved hands through the filaments of silver. He sensed a delicate flux, as if a liquid cotton surrounded him. Something warm and padded. On the other side, he thought he could see a prairie, which undulated in gusts under an unknown wind. He smiled as would a child.

And then, in an instant, everything tilted. In a fraction of a second, a tentacle haloed in suckers wrapped around him, crushing his arms against his abdomen. The cyclopean limb almost immediately threw him into an enormous mouth that emerged from the shadows. Maxim did not have time to wonder from which monster this foul mouth had appeared because, already, ferocious teeth slashed him; implacable mandibles crushed him. His ordeal lasted no more than a brief moment.

Natiusha, Alex, where are you?