Personal Log 01 January 3307
01 Jan 2021Quriosyty
“There’s a queer streak in human natures. Men come back to places for secret reasons, for feelings they cannot resist.”After landing at Dav’s Hope that first time it took me a while before I could leave my ship. For what seemed like forever I just sat there, staring out through the canopy of my cockpit, unwilling to move, unable to stop looking. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed before, but things don’t age on planets without an atmosphere. With no weather systems sweeping across the land, dust isn’t thrown into the air, does not settle again on objects. The lack of oxygen prevents corrosion and decay. Neither plants nor algae, lichen nor moss colonise and cover the exposed surfaces. Things just stay the same; like a moment in time captured for all eternity. A picture which never fades.
Dav’s Hope is a big, spooky place when you’re in it alone. It’s like you can hear all the whispers of all the voices of all the people who have ever been there. Kind of creepy. Like a church can be creepy when it’s empty. You ever been in a church after hours?
I don’t suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more that we can’t. In one aspect, yes, I do believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves. As I stared out at the settlement, remembering the last time I had been there, it suddenly struck me. Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.
By the time I’d plucked up the courage to deploy my SRV and head into the settlement itself the sun had risen to almost noon and the long shadows, which had intensified my feeling of anxiety to something approaching dread, were gone. The sunlight, glinting off polished surfaces and sharp corners, almost made the settlement seem new. But I knew better. This was an old place, full of old ghosts, and even in the daylight, here in the settlement, those ghosts had voices.
It didn’t take me long to find the building which had housed my family’s quarters. I was half tempted to go in but thought better of it: a combination of not wanting to find what I might find and the fact that I had already noticed active data points and com-links; proving that there was still power in many of the systems here. I didn’t want to set off any alarms. I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence. For all I knew they had detected me already. But I saw no point in chancing fate.
In the end it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. Although I must admit it wasn’t what I had wanted to find. It turned out to be just three simple letters stamped onto many of the buildings and pieces of equipment that lay scattered around the place. Yes, Dav’s Hope is littered with useful stuff if you care to go looking. Testament I suppose to how quickly it was evacuated and how little the corporation who ran the place valued what was left behind. No one came to clean up. No one came to investigate. No one cared.
Those three letters? PFM
What do they mean? I didn’t know at the time but I was willing to bet that the ‘M’ stood for ‘mining’. All I had to do was find out what the other two letters stood for and I might then be able to connect them with Sirius Corporation. Oh! If you hadn’t guessed already then know now that I figured Sirius to be the parent company behind this operation. And Baker to be connected with them. It sounds like a long shot I know and at the time I couldn’t really see the connection myself – if I’m honest. But sometimes it takes more courage to believe in what you can’t see. Because anyone can believe in what’s already been proven.
I didn’t spend too long in the settlement. I was thorough in my search of the exteriors but, as I’ve already pointed out, I refrained from breaking in to see what else I could uncover. I figured I could do without a criminal charge, even a mere misdemeanour, following me around. Especially one connected with that place!
Before climbing back into my SRV I took one last, long look at the place. I wasn’t sure when or even if I’d ever be back again. They say that the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive. Ghost’s, you see, don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They are present among us because we won’t let go of them. I had gone to Dav’s Hope to find something but also to leave something behind. I hoped to let go of my parents’ ghosts. But as I stepped up into the cockpit I realised that I could not leave my parents’ ghost behind in this place. Not here. This was a necropolis; a place of the dead, a settlement of lost hopes and dreams.
I could not abandon my parents’ ghosts to this awful place. “You can carry on talking to me,” I thought to myself. “I will continue to keep your secrets.”