Ark

Entry 2

I feel that I must write this account. I have to remember where I came from, to understand this peculiar world to which I have come, to exercise my mind — in short, to hold onto those things that keep me sane.

The people here write with etchings on tablets, which they make with a kind of cream-coloured waxy substance from a microbe interacting with the surrounding trees. They then inject a black pigment into the indentations as the wax sets. For less important material, sketches, rough drafts, disposable records, they use a hard charcoal on sheets of flat back — or occasionally reeds or paper. I confess that I was surprised to find that they had the technology for making paper, but it appears that the people have found a way to reduce existing material to pulp, then recycle it as needed. It is on some of these recycled sheets, tucked into a crate, that I recount the story of what has happened to me. At a later time, I may yet figure out a way to bind them.

Three weeks have passed. I should have mentioned this before, but I will say that I find it easier to count the days according to the rhythm of the rising and setting sun. Each day lasts a little longer than 26 hours in this place — possibly even close to 27. But even though it is difficult to keep track with any certainty, I believe it has been around three weeks. Trying to calculate the time precisely is far too taxing on my brain. I have never been much good at mathematics. My talent is for words and patterns, much more than it has ever been for numbers. Still, that is largely irrelevant, I think — at least to this account. It assumes that an hour in this place is the same as an hour back home, and that I lost no time in the journey. My watch says 8:15, but it is increasingly difficult to recall whether that is supposed to be on a Monday, Tuesday, or even Thursday. It is warmer here than it was at home. That, in addition to the length of shadows near midday, leads me to believe that I am somewhere close to the equator of this planet. (I can only assume that this is another planet.)

But in any case, it is time for me to pick up where I left off. How best to describe what I saw when I emerged from the metal shell? It was a narrow rise, with some sort of unfamiliar plant reaching to the height of my shins. It curved around in such an even arc that part of me still wonders how such topography is even possible. I am first to admit that I have no expertise in geology, but the nearest I can come to an explanation is that I must have been at the edge of an ancient impact crater. I could not see the other side, and the ridge itself was covered in plant life, leading down to what looked like a thick forest. All along the edge was a series of egg-shaped containers similar to the one from which I had only just emerged. Some were leaking fluid through cracks in their surface. Others were cracked open, and covered with creepers.

I staggered over to the nearest unopened pod, but could see no seam or mechanism that could open it up or yield to my touch. Stepping back again, I was startled by the sound of something cracking beneath my foot. I thought at first that it must have been a twig — but no. At that point, I noticed that there were bones, some half buried, almost all of them hidden by the twisting plants that I have already noted above. I turned around, and looked, and saw that these remains were scattered all around me, that some even spilled from the broken pods, and that scraps of what looked very much like clothing were snagged between some of these remains. All at once, I felt sick and dizzy. The contents of my stomach forced their way upwards until I threw up on the ground. I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about what I had seen, and still with the taste of vomit in my mouth. Thoughts of what I would have found in the unbroken cases came unwelcomely to my mind, and emptying my stomach had done very little to calm it.

My vision remained fuzzy once I opened my eyes, but not so much that I could not see into the distance. At the bottom of the slope was a forest, extending all the way up to a much steeper cliff, and it was there that I saw the first signs of human habitation. To me at that point, it looked like a gigantic wire cage around a barely structured collection of buildings, many of which were carved into the cliff itself. My first intuition was to wonder if the same creatures that had captured me were keeping these other humans as captive pets. But if so, why dump me here in the open? I quickly made up my mind to make for the city. The alternative would have been to add my own body to the collection of abandoned remains.