The Undying Star

The man’s eyes fluttered open. Bright light flooded his caked eyelids, brilliant purple cascading down his lashes. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he wouldn’t have been able to move; the sight before him was too magical. The man slightly raised his head to regard the world before him. A dull pain flared quietly in his neck, and he moaned hoarsely. Shocking lilac streaks peaked from thick foliage, filtered from large leaves. Stabbing light drew shapes into the man’s eyes, as he disorientedly gazed around. He was lying on the bank of a small inlay of raisin coloured water, eddies swirling around contentedly. Tall dark trees circled the small pond, casting a shadowy pattern of purple and magenta. It was all too bright and too dark at the same time. Splintered rocks; prickly edges all over its surface jutted out from the alien water, glistening with pastel pink. Enigmatic blue lined these flavours, a line of sky bordering the purple reflection. It was all too much.


The man tried to sit up. He moved gently, his eyes a burst of brilliance, even with them closed. Agony ripped the right side of his torso. He felt his nylon suit tightening against his legs, pressing against sore flesh. He looked around again. Where was he? Only the water rippled, throwing more colour into his face. The place seemed frozen at its most energetic, lightning blooming from everywhere. There was no one place where it seemed to emerge from; the concept of a sun seemed amiss here. The air whistled past his ears. His gold visor had broken! How long ago? His white suit bunched up against him, and he finally sat upright. Blood broiled from his exertion, booming in his ear buds.


He was an astronaut. The thought anchored him; he had a purpose here. The radiant blaze of purples threatened to distract him again. He felt the spongy dirt beneath his astronaut suit. His hands were not exposed to the air yet; but his face had been kissing the ground when he was asleep. A shaded purple, the dirt was the darkest colour yet. He had to struggle to break apart the soil; it clumped just like a sponge. Air bubbles peeked from tiny fractures as his hands pressed down. It gently cupped his body. The man truly began to fear for his life now. Where was he? As tiny ridges and bumps snagged against his gloves, nearly red hills haphazardly rising from the ground, the man’s heart beat faster.


What was he doing, lying unconsciousness in a world with physics he has no explanation for, with trees he has no name for, with colours he has no capacity to comprehend? He didn’t have any recollection of even getting there. With a silent horror, the man couldn’t even remember his name. But he refused to dwell on that. Behind the clearing he sat on sprung yet more trees; ferns and bushes lithely sprouting from thin trees. Even the colourful trees were foreign; the trunk of each tree split into three or four vertical stems, that ended with pointed tips. Tiny twigs grew like hairs from these stems, various shades of indigo leaves dotting the rays of light like shadows. They burned into the man’s eyes. Where were all the animals? The man couldn’t decide if he even wanted the answers to that question.


His throat buzzed and festered. Chapped lips cracked hurtfully, and the man winced, as it begged him for water. He didn’t trust the water enough to put his face to it. It came to him again that his face was bared to the air in the sky. He was breathing the air!


“The-”, he coughed, and spasmed. The man wanted to claw his traitorous throat out. Forcing trickles of saliva back onto his tongue, he tried again, “There is oxygen in the air. I am alive.” There was hope for him. Even though the words came laboriously, mouth reloading like a shotgun between each word.


The man wanted to say more words, but it wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t want to draw the attention of living beings here. Wheezing, the man began to stand up. Hands spread on the sponge dirt, he unwillingly shifted his weight forward. The pain that assaulted him was a punctured balloon this time. It blossomed along his torso, something wet trickling down the length of his body. The man fell back to the floor, eyesight fading so strongly, that the blazing purple almost died. Gritting his teeth, he got back up, hands squeezing the sponge hard, legs compensating for the loss of his stomach muscle, and inching towards the sky, he got up. He stumbled dazedly. His mind wandered.


The purple light was annoying. As the man’s head swayed it hit his eyes in flash attacks; a leaf would move to the left as his head moved right, and the small pinpricks of violet it concealed becomes visible to leap at his innocent gaze. He turned to look away, behind him, where trees covered up the light more tolerably. A leaf-


-The propulsion was failing. Lights were blinking madly. The panel burned in a virtual fire of data seizure, as the spaceship dipped down and picked speed. His teammates didn’t speak anymore; there was no need to. Their first glimpse of the undead star was inspiring, light bursting from the planet’s cracked crust; flung face first into black space. The spaceship violently shuddered; one of his teammate, a girl called S-


-swayed in the chilling breeze. It was a weird sensation for the man: his body covered by the suit itched and pained in heat; his face cooling and peaceful in a blanketed cold. He thought about stripping away his astronaut suit; the gravity was only slightly lesser than Earth. Right, he was from Earth. Another rope that focused his thought. His 14 layers and 20 pouches of metal rubber and artificial plastic was cumbersome, and the man knew at some point he had to face his wound. He had to stop the bleeding.


The man’s plan was simple. As the earth below him curved and sprung like a mattress, he slowly took one step after the other. The soft earth well complimented the lighter gravity, and despite the snarling pain curling in his right hips his movement was calm and comfortable. A floating breeze seemed to help him forward, as he made his way deeper into the foliage. He had fallen from above. That much he could assume. The ferns were unbroken; his suit was not wet. But there were branches around his body, possibly souvenirs he brought with him as his body hurtled and smashed into trees.


A long caw trailed in the near distance. It was a morose sound; friendless and soulless. A pitched voice: wavered in the air then died down. It repeated itself twice more. There was life on this planet. Maybe some animal found something interesting. Maybe it found the remains of how he came to be here. Or maybe not. But the man realised he was a bit too exhausted to care.


Shuffling, inching, the man walked forward. Musty drops of pale dew hung fro-


-oyja fell with a despairing howl, her jaw slamming into the floor. The ship had entered into orbit. They had no way of escape anymore. His mission leader slammed the buttons, and the co leader desperately tried to contact their base. More jolts. He could see Soyja on the floor motionless her chin rolling here and there as the ship shook around in the sky. They plunged into clouds and shot out of clouds; purple light from the star teasingly disturbed them. Soyja’s pale hands shivered slightly, dim blood freckling her face, and her beautiful face boiled and melted and pooled into a liquid of white and yellow, as the collar of her navy blue simmered at the edges. Molten skin oozed and dripped onto the floor, blood and organs seeping through the cracks-


-m each leaf, artfully glazed with white shades. The man’s silhouette glimmered in each dewdrop.


As soon as he began walking away from the pond, the scene dimmed. Lazy drifts of mist wafted around the thick three trunks. The clearing behind him dropped away, and all he could see was purple mist shifting silently. The floating mist gave an ethereal quality to the light, a veil of shade placed over the shining colours. But it also frightened the man, as the shadows grew longer, and the ground under him deepened.


He knew he was getting closer. Closer to where? The man didn’t know. The lone woods smelled earthy, but yet foreign, like sour urine. The man didn’t mind it, but the wild scent seemed to coalesce around his feet as he stepped on the earth, rising in pockets of hot vapour. The land rose and fell in gentle bumps, deep bluish rocks jutting out in awkward intervals. The trees were unnaturally formed; nothing like Earth’s bark: it was wiry but bunched together, curling upwards like knotted ropes. The purple rose all around the horizon uncertainly now, blurred behind the ferns and trees and mist.


A wave of nausea rolled in the man’s mind. Vapid pain flamed red in his waist. Gasping he stopped. He couldn't understand how he was injured there. His suit was not ruptured, and anyways, it cushioned his body well enough so that injuries were as minimal as possible. His friend.. A friend named.. She had laughingly told him how they would die in space before getting an injury. As soon as the memory came, the man suddenly recalled her eyes, crinkling in the edges, green irises blazing with mirth. So much life in her.


There! Something else blocked the light more firmly there. There was smoke! Life? His ship? The question leaped out unbidden. Of course he came here on a ship. The man walked on with more vigor. He muted his pain as much as he could, forgetting the warm seeping of blood down his sides, the agony as the skin tore further with each step, the daze it brought to his head. The cushioned steps were harder to make now, as the soil robbed energy from his footsteps.


The purple receded and dimmed in the direction he walked; something was definitely obscuring it. A hazy outline formed-


-. He could not bear the nausea her smoking eyes brought him, the ones that were so hopeful before. Another shivering. The last one was wretched. His teammate could not sit still; he hollered something desperately and unbuckled his seat and went to the back of the pit, and left through the door. He never saw him again. The co leader was adamant on calling someone reaching something. Sparkles of purple reflected from her eyes into mine. Suddenly the glass behind her burst into ghostly flames. It didn’t break; the glass doesn’t break easy, but blue and orange tails lashed and flickered across the screen. A scream, far out, but it echoed throughout his body, louder than the panicked computers, then the ship jolted to the side. It fell faster. And the engines sto-


-on the fringes of his vision, he could not make out what was lying on the ground. Another step closer, a deep whining resonated through the forest; a mechanical droning. Wait. Wait. That was his suit. He realised his arm was glowing white. No, a panel in his suit, told him his suit was rebooting. A second, and his vitals started appearing line by line for him. A clear sky blue border of his image. The bull and bird sigil of the company that launched him into space. His name. In blocked letters.


Edward Liason looked shocked at his own name. Stolen moments, memories of grandeur, of purpose, treasured seconds of his life slammed into him. He was a human being. He had a life before this. Apparently, his unit called themselves the As-Iem. But he recalled; that was the official term, not their true one. His teammates. What were their names?


Edward shook his head. The haze in his head threatened to overwhelm him. His heart was still beating strong, and the suit recognised his injury on his waist. Edward continued to walk forward. With every step the trees began thinning. Their trunks were thinner, and new species of trees interspersed that had curving stems and flowers for leaves. And then abruptly, the trees stopped altogether.


He stepped out from the thick foliage of a jungle, into a wide plain, a large sweeping plain where short stubs of grasses pointed upwards. The colour of the ground changed, from deep purple to a shocking navy blue. The grass were stocky sticks of glowing green, which ruffled in swathes whenever the breeze blew past. A gentle quiet rested all across the plains, as far as Edward could see.


With a start, he also realised that the purple light had faded. The lights in the sky had dimmed, to a clear vision of the night sky. Edward spent a few seconds staring at its brilliance. Little stars twinkled perfectly in the black roof of the planet. One of them the sun, beside which his home existed in blissful ignorance.


Edward then turned back to the crash site amidst the glowing grassy worms, and bounded towards it in a pained struggle. It lay smoking in a nest of grass, the land curved and forced downwards where it pressed down. He could see the path it had taken when falling, burning tracks like graphite on paper. It was a woeful sight; trees in the distance were splintered in half, their tips meant to be facing the sky, but thrown face first into the soil. The tiny grass unfortunate enough to grow on the path of the ship was burned and ripped out of their perches, fluttering like torn ashes.


The ship itself was a menaced wreck. The ship was bleeping to itself, trying to right all that was wrong with itself. Metal shells were peeled back and bent wrongly, revealing melted parts beneath. Tubes and oddly shaped plastic were thrown around its impromptu landing site, never to be used the same way again. It was all heart wrenching. The hopeful bird that flew with one wing, finally crashed to the floor.


That’s when h-


-pped. A wave of vertigo, and they were dropping, dropping like rubbish from the tallest window. The co leader was freaking. He could see it dancing in her eyes. She wanted it to end however it must; just like he did. She muttered, no, screamed, battered something to the leader. He pressed a button, and two things happened at once: the ship was sharply pulled upwards, the seat belt biting into Edward’s chest, the co leader’s head banged against the glass; she wailed. Then the astronaut rack opened. Their leader gestured to the other two of them to suit themselves. The co leader walked forward, then the ship was blown into some air current probably, she tripped, fell her hair heating, melting alongside Soyja’s dried flesh, a stench of burning rubbe-


-e realised why he even walked in this direction. Where was that animal that made the noise? Was it a bird, or another human? So far all Edward saw was plants, shrubs and trees. He cursed to himself. He didn’t even think, about looking at the pond he was lying beside to search for fish! Edward tried not to feel too lonely. What happened to his crew mates? The.. the five of them. Two women and three men.


He finally reached the ship, caressing its bumpy surface with his gloved fingertips. Flaky paint of brown and blue embellished the sides of the craft, its oval shape battered and burnt. As Edward limped forward, sorely needing to sit down as thoughts zipped past his addled brain, he realised that the ship was shorter now, its back tail ripped and torn off. He wondered idly where the tail of the ship would have fallen. Long back from there perhaps.


The darkened sky was a calm respite for the tired astronaut, quiet winds whistling into his helmet. He entered the monstrous machinery from its back, stepping into what used to be the engine room of his ship. The exposed room had held large canisters of fuel and machinery. Tears pooled from his eyes, cooling his skin. These were places he remembered. Places he explored with his mates; his friends. Oh, where were they now?


Ripped shards of metal, mangled pieces of dull grey equipment slept around the door, dead to the world. The door itself wasn’t spared from damage: it was bent at its middle, a crease formed along its body. Edward pushed inward. The door wasn’t locked, but it painfully scraped across the metal ground. He frowned. The door was normally locked, and could withstand great damage. Its lock was not destroyed or tampered with at all. Maybe someone opened it from inside? Oh the hope that flared within him!


He walked into a dark room, a great hallway that was the fuselage of his ship. A work table with shelves ran from one end to the other, segmented with borders, one for each member. Each table was cluttered with possessions and other items. Edward spotted his friend’s mobile phone - it was a dare, to take a photo of the world they were going to land on. There were more things, the photos they took together, the activities they worked on while living on the ship. Living together for days. The toy robot they worked on together, the duty roster they planned together. It was the small things that so twisted in Edward’s mind. How was it possible that he still lives while they..


Me-


-r combing the air. Edward realised the metal beneath their feet had turned orange, burning with fiery heat. The ship shuddered from behind and suddenly levelled out slightly. The leader gasped in silent success, and looked behind, horror replacing his short lived joy. The co leader wasn’t moving. Soyja was recognisable only because her uniform has not burned out yet. The other member was missing, Hogan. His leader looked at him, and they both ran out of the cockpit, eyes closed, hanging on to their astronaut suit, the heavy things, and frantically pull-


-tal grids below his boots revealed the section of the ship below. Their sleeping quarters. The stench of unused blankets and uncleaned rooms assaulted him for a moment. On his right was the common kitchen. Soyja would be their ‘lead cook’, teaching the rest on how to cook the best astronaut meal. He’d never laugh beside her, learn her cooking ever again. The loss that battered at him was a heavy, guilty, tangible thing, and he choked. His feet let out below him, and he sagged down.


Slowly, threads of memories swam into him. As he sat there, he revisited as he had run out of the room right behind his leader. He knew now what lay behind the door connecting to the cockpit. He knew now why he wasn’t on the ship too. His leader told him to jump, jump before the ship crashed. With great reluctance he had, flung his unwilling body out through the entrance hatch. Suddenly he thought, how lucky he must have been to survive. But despair rolled through him. It was a being, that ravaged his thoughts, that trampled through his mind. Why did they not land properly, like how the company promised they would? Why did they not land perfectly, as perfect a picture that the company painted for them?


Edward didn’t want to think, move, but his body subconsciously removed his helmet, left it rocking on the jabbing surface. His gloves and boots came off, and he slithered off his torso. No. No, don’t look at it now. Blood trailed down, as his injury finally came into view. A slew of bubbling pain needled him. It was hot as fever. Hot as his grief was.


Long tendrils of exhaustion reached for Edward. He let them take him. Maybe. Maybe his leader jumped too. Maybe he wasn’t so alone on this planet. Or maybe his leader crashed into rocks and was dead somewhere long ago. Edward slept.


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Unfinished Story