:throne

The memory feels like a fragment from sleep, half-remembered - but it couldn’t have been a dream. I remember driving to Driskill Park and hiking a short path to an opening in the trees, setting up my gear, and gathering tinder for my campsite. The air had a pleasant chill, the lilt of crickets’ song suffuse around me. Leaves rustled in the wind, trees swaying gently with the gusts. I got back to camp and assembled a circle of stones, placing my tinder in its center, quickly lighting and stoking a fire. Its crackle joined the collection of sounds surrounding me as I spread a blanket on the ground and laid on it, face-up, to look at the stars. Half an hour passed, uneventfully - peace, for a short time - lost in thought as I stargazed. As the fire’s crackling began to die, I was pulled from my rumination. I realized the discourse of the woods had faded into silence.

Not just silence - perfect stillness. A chill came across my body, the feeling of indeterminate fear surrounding me, and I looked around for any large shapes in the low light. Bears, mountain lions, anything - something to blame for the silence in the trees. After a few minutes of paranoid searching in the light of my dying fire, I decided I’d pack my gear up, douse the embers, and retreat into my truck for a little while. Hiking back down to where I’d parked, blanket tucked under my arm, I saw the moon peeking from a gap in the trees. And, strangely — a second body, just aside it: somehow, another moon. Again, a chill shook through me, breath hitching in my chest. The second moon was translucent, glowing dim in the light of the true moon. It shifted in the sky, returning my gaze as I stared, and a disembodied voice whispered - rasping, drawling, dripping with hunger - in my ear:

— CREATURE, DO YOU DREAM?

I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life. I flung my gear into my truck bed as I unlocked the doors, then I jammed the key into the ignition and floored it down the dirt path out of Driskill Park, skidding onto the paved road back home.

It’s been months since then, and though the second body disappeared quickly in the days after I noticed it, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that something’s still off. The nocturnal feeling of perfect stillness - of eyes, watching - that never went away. Always the outdoorsman, before; but now, I can’t stand to be outside. I can’t let it see me again.

Dread pools, swirling in my mind. The moon is hungry.

My sleep is dark and dreamless. The moon is hungry.

I’m seeing shapes, darting in the corners of my vision. The moon is hungry.

.—.—.—

I found a record of a public message from the 1950s, while furiously searching the internet for proof of what I saw that night.

BEGIN PUBLIC MESSAGE

All knowledge about the supposed arrival, last week, of an unknown entity is the result of widespread misinformation and media sensationalism. The entity appeared to certain populations as the result of a rare solar phenomenon in which a lunar reflection appears as the emergence of a secondary body. This mirage was not dangerous and has completely disappeared as of last night. No lasting effects are observed.

You are safe. There is no entity. Nothing waits behind the moon.

DISTRIBUTED BY DEIMOS SYSTEMS

AN A-CORP(C) RESEARCH DIVISION

1954

END PUBLIC MESSAGE

This had happened before. After reading the message, I hurriedly contacted DEIMOS. Not long after, I received a letter in the mail, inviting me to join their team - which I would have ignored, if they hadn’t offered to station me off-planet, far from the watchful moon.

An escape, nestled in the Rings.

Once I agreed to join, I started my education and training at an undisclosed campus, a 13-hour flight away from my home. They told me what I’d seen was called “Omen”, and had been studied since its arrival in the early 1900s by the founders of ARGOS. Its reemergence in the 2020s, they told me, was incredibly alarming.

Little is known about its ontology, even after all the years of research, but lesser humanoid entities called “Dusks” had been sighted and studied recently as well, appearing in densely populated areas at first, then retreating to more safe, secluded environments like oceans, forests, and deserts. Researchers worldwide have reported sightings, and nearly everyone agrees that their existence is directly linked to the Omen.

The most documented encounter with a Dusk came from Siberia, where it seemed to have stalked hundreds of DEIMOS researchers in a mine, killing nearly all of them. It was never caught, and no bodies were ever recovered.

.—.—.—

Living in the Rings sounded like a dream when I joined DEIMOS Containment. I hadn’t really processed what I was agreeing to until I was on the shuttle, starting the short trip to Saturn with 20 anesthetized Dusks restrained behind me, 20 new Thrones as cargo. Running from the Omen while surrounded by fragments of it, these lesser forms - even here, in orbit around Saturn, I’m within its grasp.

Shaking my head, I bring myself back to the present - I’ve spent too long lost in thought. I watch the Dusk in the reflector, floating in the Throne, noting its unintentional fetal position as I monitor its containment: Normal motor spasms, stable sedation, minor neural impulses.

Check Throne power levels. Watch the Dusk in the reflector.

Hundreds of injection sites mark its flesh. Watch the Dusk in the reflector.

Flitting eyelids over milky grey-white. No iris. Watch the Dusk in the reflector.

Idle beeps from the terminal break the relative quiet every few seconds. Sedatives and nutrients run idly from the detached umbilical, collecting in the air around the Throne’s architecture. Watch the Dusk in the reflector. Its chest rises and falls as it floats in the sphere.

Gravity level in containment hovering just below 0.2G. Time ticks slow. Watch the Dusk in the reflector.

It is limp. Erratic nervous rhythm. Irregular pulse. Seizures yank at his limbs - invisible, drunken puppeteer.

My breathing is shallow. My eyes hurt. Paranoia and dread claw at my chest.

Ignore it - push it down. Watch the Dusk in the reflector.

A flash of red in the terminal screen.

[ WARNING ] UMBILICAL ATTACHMENT UNSUCCESSFUL.

TWO ( 2 ) ACTIONS AVAILABLE:

1- RETRY ATTACHMENT PROCESS ( 3 RETRIES LEFT )

2- PRIME THRONE EJECTION SEQUENCE

I stab the 1 key. Watch the Dusk in the reflector - its seizures reduce to twitching. The umbilical’s reattachment mechanism fires, sputtering and dying in a second, sending fluid particles spraying through the air.

[ WARNING ] UMBILICAL ATTACHMENT UNSUCCESSFUL.

TWO ( 2 ) ACTIONS AVAILABLE:

1- RETRY ATTACHMENT PROCESS ( 2 RETRIES LEFT )

2- PRIME THRONE EJECTION SEQUENCE

I press the 1 key, again, watching the reattachment mechanism spit sparks and go dark a second time. The monitor beeps - the Dusk’s bioelectric pulses are normalizing.

[ WARNING ] UMBILICAL ATTACHMENT UNSUCCESSFUL.

[ WARNING ] SUBJECT STABILIZING.

TWO ( 2 ) ACTIONS AVAILABLE:

1- RETRY ATTACHMENT PROCESS ( 1 RETRY LEFT )

2- PRIME THRONE EJECTION SEQUENCE

My finger hovers over the 2 key, my eyes not leaving the reflector. Its body is rigid, now. Hundreds of injection sites. Eyes frozen open. The umbilical leaks uselessly.

A new warning, ticking the terminal stream upwards, makes my decision for me.

[ WARNING ] SUBJECT STABILIZED. PROBABILITY OF CONTAINMENT REDUCED BELOW SAFE THRESHOLD.

ONE ( 1 ) ACTION AVAILABLE:

1- RUN

I'm frozen in my chair, heart pounding in my chest. There's a sound behind me, in the otherwise-quiet room, and without thinking I whip my head around to look at it. A disk, somehow detached from its pile, lies on the floor. Before I pick it up, I realize my mistake and return my gaze to the reflector.

Impossible. The Dusk is floating, face-up, outside the Throne.

I bolt to my feet, startled, toppling my chair behind me, not taking my eyes from the reflector a second time. Hundreds of injection sites dot its pale flesh; desaturated eyes roll in their sockets. As I watch, transfixed, it shudders like a mirage, fading into translucency for a moment before reforming itself. I blink, and it is staring directly at me, hovering in front of the Throne in a starfield of umbilical fluids, lit by the glow of the superheated coolant pipes - and it’s wearing my skin. My worried look, my wrinkled uniform, my ID badge - all nearly identical.

I reach for the emergency airlock release lever, flicking the protective cover upwards. Gripping the lever, I watch the Dusk, unblinking. It points at me through the reflector, and opens its mouth - and a disembodied voice speaks into my ear. Rasping, drawling, dripping with hunger.

— CREATURE, I AM HERE

My eyes widen, blood freezing in my veins. I pull the airlock release in a panic, and the Dusk disappears. The now-empty Throne is ripped into space, all loose items in the room with it. Holding the lever down, as if by doing so I would ensure the Dusk’s ejection, I pray to whatever will listen that it’s gone, too.

I throw the lever back upright and flip the cover closed again, allowing myself to release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Turning to pick my chair back up, I notice a shape in the far corner of the room. The terminal screen provides barely enough light to see its silhouette in the shadows of the corner. The light reflects, pale, blinking off of two eyes.

No. I retreat slowly, until my back presses against the desk. My fingers search for the silent alarm, finding purchase just as a voice whispers to me again, nearly inaudible.

Rasping, drawling, dripping with hunger.

— DREAM NO LONGER