Space Zombiesᵀᴹ
[An entry for the October Sci-Fi 5 word competition]
Warning: Potential existential crisis material. Get ready for a fun time :]
They just kept on coming. One by one, corpses rose from the ground, treating death like a bad joke. I clenched my teeth as my phaser delivered a white blast to a rotting chest, making the shambling body stumble backwards. Barely avoiding the slimy bluish tentacles writhing from the eye sockets of another dead body, I aimed at the eyes and activated my phaser with the press of a button.
The effect was dramatic. The tentacles withered like plants under a scorching sun. A low, eerie shriek reverberated through the air.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end. I glanced from side to side, noting the shadowy silhouettes of trees and walking corpses lurking in the background. There was a loud bang as the research shuttle behind me burst into flames, scaring away the stumbling walking dead. I gritted my teeth against the searing pain lashing at my back and coughed at the smell of singed flesh filling the air.
More walking corpses poured from the shadows stopping mere metres from the shuttle. They swayed in unison as if listening to an imaginary tune, waiting for the moment when the fire died down to strike.
My situation did not look good.
I fumbled with the telecommunicator embedded in the side of my skull and pressed it.
"This is Delta-Z to command. Can you hear me?"
Loud static only answered, forcing me to lift my fingers. Curses streamed from my mouth while I waited for the headache to subside.
I pressed the communicator again. "This is Delta-Z to command. I repeat. Can anyone hear me?"
This time, distorted voices replied.
"Are you sure it's the latest model because this shopping for a present day sucks."
"It might just have been a small malfunction. It's a globe, after all."
The static returned along with a high-pitched whine. I quickly lifted my finger off the communicator, frowning as the corpses suddenly stopped.
Pointing at the nearest corpse, I readied my phaser.
The dead lifted their heads, with the tentacles still wriggling in the eye sockets. I instinctively followed their gaze.
The large white, pale moon that seemed so still suddenly blinked. It was as if the space around the sky folded, obscuring it from site for just a single second. At that moment, silence descended, and the warmth of the flaming wreckage behind me disappeared. I turned back, seeing the space shuttle fully intact rather than a flaming mess.
"What the-"
The putrid corpses swarmed. I screamed, firing my phaser again and again, but it barely made a difference. Before I knew it, cold, slimy hands grabbed at my ankles and pulled me down. The last thing I saw before the corpses obscured my vision was that moon, round, still and bright against the night sky.
From an unknown source, the distorted voices returned loud and booming. "We'll see if turning it off and on again helps."
Painless darkness took over my consciousness.
...
I woke up to the sound of cheesy alarm music. In front of me was a screen showing a blue-brown planet slowly getting closer.
"Planetary surface scan complete. No signs of abnormalities in the atmosphere."
I looked from side to side, noting the intact screens on the shuttle's dashboard and the anchored-down crates of gear at the back. I raised my hands to my face and flexed them.
I was alive and well.
My mind went back to the shambling corpses and the sudden descent into unconsciousness. I flexed my fingers once more, feeling the stretch of skin. Was it all just a dream?
Without thinking, my hand reached for the communicator at the side of my head.
"This is Delta-Z to command."
The grumpy voice of the command centre's operator answered. "What is it now?"
My mind froze. Part of me expected to hear only static or perhaps those weird, distorted voices. Everything seemed normal. Everything was normal.
"Well?"
Without thinking, a response came out of my mouth. "The scanner detected abnormalities in the atmosphere."
There was a pause, and I mentally facepalmed myself.
"Well then, I guess you'll be doing your job as the planetary terraforming consultant, won't you? You'll be the first to set foot on that planet, so please be thorough. They said you're the best in your field. The others have high expectations. Good luck."
There was a beep, indicating that the conversation was finished. I lifted my fingers from the communicator and rubbed my arms.
Something was wrong. I vividly remember others setting foot on the planet before me. I recalled the shock as news from the search team revealed that the exploration team suddenly vanished, leaving only their space shuttles behind. I recalled the panicked scramble as my orbital station began descending towards the planet. I recalled the failure of my escape attempt which left me face to face with the walking remains of the exploration team.
And now my memory was false?
"What's going on?"
I turned my attention back to the screen, the planet now much closer. Something on the edge of it grabbed at my mind.
Suddenly, I was thrown back to the past.
The space of the night sky seemed to fold. The positions of stars distorted, and the moon disappeared for just a second like a blink.
My hands grabbed at the visual controls. Pressing buttons, I pulled up the live feed of the moon.
It was round, pitted with craters and deceptively innocuous. Then, it blinked. At that, the screen flickered and lagged, dotting the feed with squares of RGB. I frowned and tapped its side repeatedly. It turned black and then turned back on.
I stared at the image. It was not showing the image of the moon, but rather something that resembled a toy store. Strange, bright contraptions littered the place and shelves were filled with rows and rows of snow globes depicting swirling space nebulae.
The feed seemed to be moving through the aisles. The movement stopped, and I was face to face with a large poster. It depicted dead corpses with tentacles squirming from their eyes and the panicked figure of a person desperately fighting against them. My mouth dropped open.
That panicked figure was me.
Shivers ran down my spine.
Pushing past the shock, I glanced at the title. In bold green, it read Space Zombiesᵀᴹ, Your very own little universe! Buy now and get one free!
My breath caught in my throat as I tried to process the implications. I jumped as the screen emitted a high-pitched whine. The distorted voices returned.
"Again? I already bought it, though. I guess I'll throw this into my brother's toy bucket."
"Hey, don't. It's supposed to change scenarios every time you reset it. So what's a little glitch here and there?"
The screen turned black, and the whine disappeared.
I stared at the walls of the shuttle blankly. Thoughts swirled around and around, bouncing on the walls of my skull.
"You will arrive on planet YZBG-5 in 45 minutes."
I blinked at the announcement and laughed. Suddenly, everything seemed shallow and false. I stopped.
Everything seemed so far away, so trivial. Nothing seemed to matter. Even the sensation of being alive, the sensation of air filling the lungs and the emotional turmoil now felt so pointless.
My laughter burbled up again. It was all I could do to hold off the shock and the implications which threatened to crush my spirit completely.
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