Signs of Life

Initiating reality excursion

Incoming transmission

Relative time: 09:15 270710

Subject: RE: Erebus mission status update

Sender: Artemis Jones

Esteemed Colleague,

Extraction has been completed on schedule and without complication. Captive is in isolation under heavy tranquilisers. Losses are within acceptable margins. The Erebus remains in high orbit around Jupiter.

END TRANSMISSION

Log 1 [journal]

God lived on a mountain, once upon a time. Then we went to the mountains and saw that he was not there. So God lived in the sky. Then we went to the sky in our aeroplanes and saw that he was not there. So God lived in space. Then we went into outer space in our shuttles and saw that he was not there. So where did God live then? Was he just another step beyond our reach?

Log 2

“Opening fissure,” Jones called out, fiddling with his console. “Drawing matter into containment booth.”

“Steady,” I cautioned. “We get one shot at this before he packs his bags and moves house     again.” If we screwed this up, it could be another two hundred years before we could pin him down again.

“Matter is reforming on our side. Looks like a positive match,” Jones said, hiding his excitement well.

“Good,” I replied. “Keep it coming.”

Most people only come face to face with their maker when they die. We were setting precedents.

Log 4 [journal]

The existence of God shocked the scientific community. Shortly before the confirmation of the Creator’s existence, he had been dismissed as “God of the Gaps”; an unlikely-to-exist figment of the wishful imagination not found anywhere in reality. But when we started to close those gaps, God started to come into focus, frighteningly real.

He was not what we had expected. He was not magnificent, or all-powerful, or omniscient, or even particularly impressive. He was made of flesh, a living being like us, but he also had an immense shadow, rooted in dark matter. He had eyes, numerous eyes, and even a mouth, though his form was both gelatinous and insectoid, like a mantis made of jellyfish. Size beyond scale, proportions we could only hazard guesses at. But he wasn’t beyond our reach; we could punch pinholes through our galaxy, through reality itself, into what we now refer to as the Garden of Eden.

Using these miniscule fissures we were able to draw an infinitesimally minute portion of God through into our galaxy, and contain him. We were snapping bits off God one at a time, and keeping him in jars. We had just claimed our second piece.

Log 5 [unknown]

CORRUPTED. LOCATING NEXT READABLE DATA SLATE…

Log 34 [journal]

Contact with the Creator’s molecules – what we’re now calling “God particles” – seems to have dramatic and often violent results with living tissue. We have yet to secure the green light for human testing, as death is practically certain.

The two pieces of God we have assembled – the recent mantis (apparently a smaller likeness of the whole) and the original flesh cone – seem to have different effects. The cone, which we call God’s Little Finger, seems to dissassemble living matter at the sub-atomic level, causing subjects to collapse into dust instantaneously. Interlinked subjects are not affected, however: God particles from God’s Little Finger only neutralise the first life form they come into contact with before becoming inert. They can be reactivated by returning them to the flesh cone.

This has obvious military applications.

The mantis, however, is a truly fascinating procurement. It mutates living matter, usually to the point of total deformity, hardly recognisable from whatever it began life as. We added a mantis God particle t-##-##-##-##-##-##-

CORRUPTED. LOCATING NEXT READABLE DATA SLATE…

Log 74 [journal]

-##34##35##36##73##74##-rious implications. What we have drawn through may be the origin of life but it wants us to die. Death is coded into every cell in our bodies. We live, we procreate, we die. It’s happy to sit back and leave us to it, perhaps feasting on the banquet of our souls upon death, but now that we have interfered, it looks as though it has flipped the reset switch on our entire species.

We’re a self-sustaining food source gone rogue. A crop turned sour. He’s culling us. Reproductive rates among the human population have plummetted to 0%, the entire species rendered infertile overnight. I wonder if he has other food sources in other galaxies; other crops to sate his appetite. He afforded us one transgression when we took the cone of flesh, but the mantis seemed to be the last straw. Now we’re damned.

But this is only first blood. He must know we have cloning technology. To truly wipe us out, he’d need to directly intervene. Is he even still capable of that?

Log 75

“Foreign matter detected in the labs!” Jones shouted over the intercom, just before the shrill ring of the alarm system kicked in, waking the crew. I flew to my quarters’ terminal and pulled up surveillence in the labs, just in time to see the mantis-like appendage fly at the containment booth housing the cone. The booth shattered on impact. Reinforced, bullet-proof glass isn’t even supposed to shatter. The cone and the mantis fused in a blur of light that melted the surveillence camera lens.

Log 76 [journal]

We have a new life form on board the Erebus. The… result… of the fusion between the mantis-thing and the cone of flesh is, if you can believe this, a young boy. Calls himself Jesus. Jesus. I need a drink.

Log 77

CORRUPTED. LOCATING NEXT READABLE DATA SLATE…

Log 78 [journal]

If it’s the same Jesus, as our newcomer claims, who walked the earth two and a half thousand years ago, I’m surprised they didn’t nail him to a cross sooner. I’ve never thought to imagine something so alien and yet completely human. All our tests show he is 100% human. All of them. And yet just to look at him, you can sense something else, like the human body is a puppet dancing to the tune of some cold alien intellect in the shadows. I hate it.

Log 79

BEGIN AUDIO

[muffled]

“-an’t be serious. We are not taking this seriously enough.”

[inaudible]

“No I will not fucking sit down and relax, we’ve got an actual physical avatar of God on our ship, why isn’t anyone else slightly alarmed?”

[inaudible]

“What? What? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean? Is everyone on this god damn ship losing their fucking marbles? Where’s the captain?”

[inaudible]

“I don’t care, I want to see him.”

[inaudible]

“No. Fuck you.”

[inaudible]

“Wai- no, wait. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ve seen the rest of the crew. I’m not going near that motherfucker. Hey! HEY! Get your hands off me, you can’t DO this! STOP!”

[commotion, inaudible]

[commotion, inaudible]

AUDIO ENDS

Log 80 [journal]

Our Father, who art in heaven
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

LOGS END.

Subject: FW: Erebus mission status update

Sender: Artemis Jones

Control,

The mission has failed. Captive has now assumed control of the ship. Crew are under his command. Captain has been compromised, first officer murdered. Some form of mental domination at work. Erebus has become a missionary vessel, destination: Earth.

Hyperdrive has been set to overload on re-entry. The second-coming of Christ will be ushered in under the glow of our destruction. He promises rapture, but he wields a scythe.

Control, Erebus must be destroyed before re-entry.

I repeat: Destroy us before we reach Earth.

Artemis.

END TRANSMISSION