Individually Wrapped Horrors

by Eric Joel Kleinschmidt, Sr.

  “We will take a shuttle down,” the captain said, green eyes blazing with concern. This race of people was very human in appearance. This was one reason their world felt so strongly for this dark world called Earth or Terra. There were subtle differences in their similarities. They had a lower pull of gravity on their world, it gave them an overall taller and more slender appearance. During times of exploration, they wore body suits that gave the appearance of smooth, grey skin with the eyes of the suit being black and reptilian in shape. Hence, the “grey man” theory of extraterrestrials on the dark world. Many films and songs and pieces of art had been rendered depicting them this way. Tall and slender were all, they had not experimented with chemicals and genetic research and so there was no obesity problem on their entire world. They often mused at the fact that 9/10ths of what went on on this world was killing them in the unhealthiest of fashions and they seemed to know it. Still, these people continued to change and alter things from their natural state to a state vaguely recognizable. It also was of concern and a determining factor in not making full contact with these people, that this practice not reach their home world for fear of contaminating their food and even their ways of thinking. To be studied from a great distance away was simply for the best in regards to their way of life. They observed many of the same customs as these humans. Families, monogamy, jobs, class levels, etc. They had no automobiles on their world. What they did have was teleportation to wherever you wanted to go. Teleportation pods were everywhere and gave off no poisonous emissions of exhaust to the atmosphere. It was a general practice on their world to study this dark world and try to learn from its mistakes. Try to make a better world for all who lived there.

  A great debate had been held prior to this voyage as to the definitive mission goals. Had there been a great disaster on the far end of the voyage, what would the next action be? Salvage? Rescue if any were still alive? Would they risk their entire world bringing potentially hazardous salvage or survivors back with them, if they even returned at all? There was a cryogenic freezing chamber aboard, but none would risk using it. It had not been perfected and could be used in an emergency situation, but often left the user feeling drastically altered in his or her mental state. Altered in unhealthy and malicious ways. It was highly regarded as a last-ditch effort at saving a life. Only the youngest crew members aboard were sure to make the return journey alive, but they would be radically aged by the time they returned home. Grandparents in age alone. So, it had been deemed necessary in the debates to just go and observe, reporting back immediately. Take no samples, bring back no salvage, assist no survivors. This grim decision had been handed down from the highest branches of their body of government and was to be carried out by this crew. Up to this point, it had all been talk and mere speculation. Now, they would find out the moral implications of this decision. Having the knowledge of a spectacular disaster, yet not having the authority to act upon it. Each member wondered privately to themselves if—in the actual moment—they could carry out this decree.

  The shuttle was prepared with more than half of their 50 crew members and slowly detached from the side of the main vessel. It appeared at first to fall away to the port side in a downward arc. Then, a safe distance from the side of the main vessel, the small thrust engines came to life and the shuttle blazed a trail through the darkness to the still silent planet beneath. As the shuttle broke through layers of dust and debris, the turbulence increased. The nervous expressions shared by all became the norm on this expedition. Severe lightning began to flash in all directions around them. Hurricanic winds threw them this way and that, tossing the small vessel like a galleon on the high seas of old. The darkness seemed to increase as they neared the inner edge of the atmosphere. The darkness grew to deep and eerie shades of green as they finally punched through to the open skies of this planet. The shuttle leveled off at thirteen hundred feet and they flew through the sky of a planet of eternal midnight.

  The crew members aboard the shuttle craft looked from all windows where they were seated and strapped in at the dead moon they had come to. In all directions, they saw an aerial view of destruction on a global scale. Overflying a once mighty city, they saw the buildings crumbled as though they were made of dry sand. Dust and dirt and poisonous gasses blew in the winds around them. Nothing moved. Nothing lived. Continuing on their southward course, they slowed to a hover over a titanic canyon that split the landscape east to west as far as they could see in either direction. It was lined in both directions with human remains. Most of which were clothed skeletons. Broken and left to the bugs and nature, the bodies were thrown in casually, as though they had died elsewhere and been placed there in mass quantity. The wreckages of cars and trucks—as the computer studies had explained them to be—were tossed in beside and on top of many of the bodies. They continued their course. They found the same thing everywhere they looked. Death, destruction, signs of mass extinction and war, and something else. Something much bigger and much more forbidding. They scoured the area of the course they had laid out and found nothing anywhere to indicate anything other than this horrific scene. They returned to the main vessel.

  Despaired to find any answers to the devastation, the captain made a judgement call to continue the search, day by day, until either an answer presented itself or the non-answer became overwhelmingly clear. If no answer was to be found, they would begin their futile return trip in one week’s time. Until then, they would search.

  The crew that went down to the surface rotated every day so no one had to go down to the planet too many times in a row. The captain was along for every trip down. He was determined that the answers lay in the rubble somewhere. They just had to keep at it. Every day for the next seven days, search parties went down. Frustrated at the lack of understanding, the captain ordered and extra week of studies. Despite the high council’s decision, samples were drawn and studied aboard the main ship. Inconclusive at every step. The entire mission was being transmitted back to the high council, who was needless to say displeased with both the extra stay time and the drawing of samples for studying aboard their ship, but allowed this pursuit nonetheless.

  In a few attempts at answers, they retrieved various artifacts that had survived whatever this was that had happened, boxes of files from the ruins of buildings, fire-proof boxes that had survived mostly intact. None of the files they retrieved gave them any indication as to what had caused all of this. Everywhere they searched, they found more death and more ruin. More clues that lead them up dark alleys to dead ends. During these trips, there were often day trips as well as night trips. Mostly the world was dark and cold, but in certain areas of the planet, the sun would burn blindingly hot for a few hours or more, then settle back in behind nauseous green clouds. The air was always poisonous. They didn’t need the ship’s computers to confirm that either. A pale-yellow toxin hung in the air where all present could see. This, too, was transmitted back to their home world, who sat watching these transmissions with ghastly awe. The ground crew were all suited up with breathing masks and full body suits to protect them against all of these deadly new conditions. Decontamination occurred in great length at re-arrival to the ship each day. Great care was taken to not bring anything unwelcomed back aboard.

  It was on their eleventh trip down that the discovery was made that would change everything. In searching around the outskirts of a major city and the ruination that remained of it, one of the crew members caught a glint from the too-hot rays of the sun off in the distant rocks. She had taken two other crew members to go and check it out. They climbed up a short bluff and stood before what had once been the opening of a cave. It looked to have been at one time very large and according to their portable scanners, it used to go very far into the hill it opened up on and also very deep at one point. The glint that had been caught by the sunlight was a mirror, cracked in many places, but otherwise, still intact. It lay tilted at a 45-degree angle against a rock near the cave’s mouth. It was mostly covered wit
h debris and radioactive dust, according to the crew member’s scanner. A small spot had been clean and clear yet and that was what the sunlight had found. The female crew member knelt down beside the mirror as the other two members watched nervously. She took a gloved hand and wiped a bit of the smudge off of the mirror face. There were letters on the glass beneath the dust. She looked back at the other two who nodded slowly in unison, swallowed dryly, then wiped the entire surface of the mirror clean. The message written in black permanent marker read: “Answers inside.” She slowly stood up, her helmet camera recording the message for the ship and the high council to see. She used her intercom to call the captain and the others over. They responded immediately.

  The captain and the female officer were the first two into the deteriorated mouth of the cave, followed shortly by many of the others. A few stayed behind outside as a precaution. The captain led the way deep into the cave until it reached a dead end. A large cavern lay sprawled out before them. There were signs that it had been used as a temporary dwelling. The charred remains of a blanket and pillow, empty rusted cans that presumably once held food, a circle of rocks that had the remains of burnt wood in the center with a home-made spit over the center. They shone their search lights around the cavern, looking for other signs of the occupant or occupants, when there was a cry from one of the crew members. To the captain’s left came the cry, he and the others hurried to the spot where one member had found a pit dug down about thirty feet. Therein resting two skeletons, one human, one very large and decidedly not human at all. The captain sighed deeply.

  “Well, I guess that makes this another dead end. There are no answers to be found here. Just more death.” The female officer squinted in the downward gloom and said:

  “No, wait, sir, there’s something else down there. Something black, like a box.” All lights were trained on the spot now. There was something down there, half-buried in the dirt about five feet or more from the two intertwined skeletons. The sounds of the cave were mostly still and deathly silently, disturbed only by the footsteps of the crew members and their respirated breathing, also the occasional cough or comment, now the day was ripped apart by the high pitch squealing roar of a monster. They all looked up from the pit and shone their lights around the cavern. Nothing moved. Whatever that had been had come from outside the cavern. Maybe the ultimate answer to all of their questions in and of itself.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” the captain whispered as they began to lower a crew member down into the pit. The crew member, one of the younger men expected to survive the return trip, was lowered down to the pit’s floor. Once his boots touched the ground, the deafening roar came again, shaking loose stones and dust from the cavern walls. A thudding boom hit the ground somewhere far off in the distance like the explosion of a mortar shell. The crew member looked around cautiously, bent and grabbed the black box and stood up again. He was pulled slowly, maddeningly slow up to the top of the pit as the thudding came once more. He handed the black box up to the captain and was pulled free of the pit. They all took one more brief look down into the pit with their lights, partly in brief honor of the dead, mostly looking at the ghastly other skeleton beside the human one. It somewhat resembled what their understanding of a velociraptor was. One startling difference was the number of clawed appendages. This one had eight. Chills ran their way down everyone’s spine as they thought of the roar and the thudding sounds coming from outside just at that very moment. The captain spoke up.

  “OK, everyone, let’s get out of here. While we can.” They hurried back to the mouth of the cave. The blinding sunlight gave them a focal point as they neared the entrance and the way out. Back down the bluff they ran and gave small, hurried looks back over their shoulders. Nothing. Nothing was there. They still heard it, though. It was somewhere. The shuttle came into view as the topped a small hill in the desert of the world. Dry and brittle hardpan cracked beneath their boots as they picked up their pace. As they neared the side of the shuttle, a crew member still aboard began opening the aft ramp to board from the rear. The ground thumped hard, as if an earthquake, and the running ground crew nearly went off balance all at once. They risked another quick glance back over their shoulders to see a mammoth beast of grotesque form burst up from under the ground and claw its way up to a crouching position. It was nearly four stories tall at a quick glance. Horned in many places and scaly, it began running at them on squatted all-fours, as an ape would run. The ground shook hard and broke apart in many places as it came for them. They boarded the shuttle as the officer aboard was already getting it air born. The aft ramp closed when they were nearly six feet above the ground and as the shuttle turned to fly away from the beast, now swinging a very large clawed hand toward them, they saw the second beast of equal or slightly greater size running at them and lunging at them from the opposite direction. The beasts jumped into the air simultaneously to grab at the shuttle, but it had climbed altitude too fast and the beasts came together beneath the shuttle and began to rip and claw and bite each other into pieces as they fell back to the dirt below. The captain, who had been holding a very deep breath, let it out with a sobbing cry of relief as the shuttle continued to climb. He held tightly onto the black box, hoping the answers were inside and praying they wouldn’t have to come back down again, ever.

  Back on board the main ship, the ground crew and black box decontaminated, all nerves had settled back down into a near-calm state. The fifty crew members were all gathered in the science room, the ship had been placed on computer command and its scanners set to warn them of any approaching dangers. They sat in a great room with a large number of tables and chairs positioned in rows and all facing forward, as if in a classroom. 49 of them sat in the seats looking forward as the captain came to the front of the room. There was an immensely large screen on the wall in front of them and they were all eyes front. The captain addressed the crew.

  “I’m very glad to see us all together and unhurt. As many of you know from being there, there was a very close call on the planet’s surface and we don’t intend on repeating that scenario again. There will therefore be no further trips to the surface henceforth. We will be opening up communications with the high council here in just a moment, I just wanted to take a brief moment before doing that in saying thank you to one and all. Not only have you sacrificed your futures for this mission and this seemingly lost race of people, you have risked your lives for me and for one another. Together we will achieve our mission goal and run the duration of our course together, for better or ill. Thank you one and all. Now, without further delay, the high council…” He turned around to the view screen and the large, twenty-foot high screen blinked on with all the faces of the high council. They looked less-than-pleased to be there, but also, they looked hopeful for the possibility of answers. They greeted each other and the crew members also.

  “Captain, what have you been able to learn on your trips down to the surface. I trust you have something new for us?” the grim older man at the head of the council’s table said. The captain was nodding.

  “Yes, Councilman, as you all must have witnessed, we had a very close encounter with a couple of very nasty customers. There’s no knowing for sure what they were, only that upon having missed their chance at us, the two beasts tore each other apart as we departed the surface. Whatever else may have happened, whatever else may be down there, those two are no longer a threat to us or to this mission.” The captain turned toward his science officer. The science officer stood up and picked up the black box from the floor beside him. He set it lightly on the table. “What we found down there, the message of”answers,” the cave, the two skeletons…it all led us to this hopeful discovery.” The science officer opened the lid of the black box and reached in. He pulled out something shiny. To the human eye, it would have looked like a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil meant for a working man’s lunch. It was in fact something wrapped in tinfoil. The science officer slid the black box to the side and set the object down on t
he table. He carefully began to unwrap it as the high council members, the entire crew and captain and millions of people back home leaned in closer to their monitors to watch the unveiling of the answers.

  Tinfoil unwrapped, the next bit of wrapping was a thick coating of paper towels. They had researched both materials prior to this meeting using old transmissions and recorded data. The paper towel was seven layers thick and beneath the final layer, inside all of that wrapping and protection held safely in the cradle of a fire-proof box, was a shiny DVD.

  “This, ladies and gentlemen, is called a d-v-d, or digital video disc. The humans used it to record data on. Anything from songs and music and films to files and photos. We have no such player as to access the files contained upon this disc, so we have set the ship’s computers to the task of analyzing the disk and trying to decode the imprinted data. We managed to access the disc minutes before transmitting. There is one message on this disc, which we have not viewed yet. A historic moment like this, we felt inclined to show to the entire viewing public and the high council itself, of course.”

  “Of course,” the high councilman responded dryly. The captain carefully picked the disc up and took it over to the computer beside the monitor. A clear sheet of glass, lit up by lightning forks of blue neon across its surface, slid out of the side of the computer. The captain laid the DVD on the glass, silver side down, and the blue lights on the glass began to dance and pulse and converge to the center of the disc. Everyone waited with breathless anticipation. All eyes looked to their monitors. The monitor in the science room went to static a moment and then cut to a shaky scene of a man, a human man, battle fatigued and bruised and bloody, sitting down from having set up the camera to record. He appeared to be tired and very sad. He tried to smile, but it faltered and he hung his head down before speaking.