Darkness

Observation log, day... day... I don't even know any more. I've lost track of the days. But it's been a long time. Feels like years, probably been a month, maybe something in between.

There are only three of us left. Attempts to contact other stations have all failed. I think we might be alone. It's me, Twilight, and her sole remaining daughter, Gloria. We've been holed up in here in hiding from the darkness outside. We thought maybe it would go away eventually, or that help would arrive, or... something. I honestly am not sure what exactly we thought would happen.

I'm not sure why Dark Matter hasn't taken us yet. Maybe it's been busying itself elsewhere. Maybe it's recuperating from the fight it had with the Kobbers. Our greatest failure. We threw everything we had at it over the course of several days, desperately trying to finish it off, but it was too late. We were fighting something bigger than even the Kobbers, so vast we could barely comprehend it. For every Dark Matter we beat back, more came. It's blanketed the entire planet by now, it had endless resources to throw at us. The Kobbers had achieved many victories in their short reign, but they weren't prepared for this scale of attack. Kobbers fought battles. We weren't ready for an all-out war.

Dark Matter had played smart. It had steadily grown, targeting less populated areas first to quickly overwhelm local resistance and grow larger off of easy meals. It saved the Kobbers for last, and we noticed it much too late. We faced it several times, and at first we seemed to be winning, but the endless reinforcements proved too much, and as Dark Matter noticed we were tiring, it grew more eager to expend resources to defeat us. The breaks it took grew shorter, and our forces thinned gradually as more and more Kobbers were lost to the darkness over the years.

A last stand had been made. Some of the Kobbers made a sacrifice, going down fighting so that the others could flee into space and escape, hopefully to regroup on another planet with reinforcements. In the chaos, Twilight, Gloria, and I ended up unable to reach our rocket in time, and Dark Matter destroyed it. Twilight led us here to her safehouse, and we barricaded ourselves in against the alien menace. Twilight had a plan. She's a brilliant scientist and inventor, and she was close to a breakthrough in "sifter" technology, a handheld device that could warp between dimensions. She'd been working with other Kobber scientists to perfect the invention, but work had slowed as they were picked off by Dark Matter or forced to flee. Now she's trying to finish the work alone. Gloria and I don't know anything about dimensional travel, so we're not much help.

The sifter is nearly complete. Thank goodness, because we don't have much time left. Even if Dark Matter leaves us alone, we only have enough food and water left for about another three weeks before we have no choice but to abandon the shelter. Time's running out, and I can tell Twilight is feeling the strain. Gloria's doing her best to keep us sane, reading aloud to us from her large collection of books. Bless her.

I chose to write today because I've realized I may not get another chance. Instead of always putting it off until we were safe, I wanted to record this just in case something goes wrong. I don't want to be a pessimist, but I'd like to be realistic about our chances with what's outside. It's scary, but




i knew today was a good day to write this entry

its looking right at us

it knows we're here

thousands of eyes

goodbye

-----

Observation log.

Much as I hate to ruin how my last entry finished like it was right out of a horror story, now that things have calmed down I can explain what happened. I looked out my window and saw that Dark Matter had seen us, and I alerted Twilight and Gloria. Gloria set up a defense with her summons while Twilight ran to her sifter and reluctantly prepared it for its' first run. With no time to test or tweak any further, she wasn't eager to use it yet, but Dark Matter forced our hand. The darkness closed in on our little safehouse, the eyes cresting over the hills and surging up from the valleys, a vast ooze of black studded with those horrible staring eyeballs. It pressed right up against the windows and peered in at us.

I locked eyes with one of them. It bored a hole through my heart and stopped my breath cold. Those eyes. There is nothing behind those eyes. No empathy, no compassion, not even evil. This is a being beyond our understanding, a creature from elsewhere with no emotional functions. It consumes and controls and it sees nothing else. The most terrifying thing about that, though, is that the people it takes don't act that way. There's more emotion in them, more life, even though Dark Matter has them enveloped in its' grasp. Maybe there's something more to all this. Maybe Dark Matter is only the beginning.

But enough about that. The important thing is that, of course, the sifter worked, but only two of us made it. Gloria started trying to hold off Dark Matter as they began trying to bash into our home. Twilight tried to stop Gloria, offering to be the sacrifice instead, but Gloria insisted Twilight had to be safe because no one else understood the Sifter. Without her mind, we would all be doomed. It took some doing, but she managed to make her mother understand, and Gloria's summons filled the area outside with firepower as they fought tooth and nail with the darkness. It bought us the time we needed, and Twilight had the sifter ready to activate just as the darkness breached the safehouse. From out of the dark came Gloria, and for one single moment Twilight held out hope that all three of us could leave together. Then Gloria grabbed me and tried to drag me into Dark Matter, and I saw Twilight's face shatter in despair as she realized Gloria was already gone. I managed to free myself, kicking away from Gloria and clinging to Twilight, screaming for her to use the Sifter. Just as Gloria came for us again, arms outstretched and eyes shifting into the blank stare of Dark Matter, she finally flicked the switch and we vanished.

So now here we are, on another Earth not unlike our own, but things are better here. Dark Matter never took over, having apparently been destroyed years ago due to the efforts of a small pink creature and his allies. There's still trouble here, and we seem to have fallen into some more working with this 'InGen' place, but anything's better than Dark Star.

Twilight has changed, on the outside at least. The loss of her last remaining daughter nearly broke her. To protect herself, she's put up emotional walls, but I know there's still a passion burning inside her. She knows her children are not actually dead, and can still be saved... unlike her husband. But there's still that fear gnawing away at her, just as it's eroding my own courage. What if we can't do it? The Kobbers here certainly seem capable, but... so did ours, and look what happened to them.

I hope the ones who fled are doing okay. And were we truly the last ones on that planet?

-----

Observation log, November 13, 2019. Been a while since I've written in here. We'd been in a holding pattern for a while, thanks to InGen not prioritizing our situation. Twilight eventually got fed up and broke away from them, and we went into hiding to observe the war between this world's Kobbers and The Curse. Now it's November, and after months of long, drawn-out conflict - practically a war - The Curse has finally collapsed, taking InGen and CRAY Computing down with it.

Twilight has picked up some valuable information by accessing some CRAY files. Apparently this world and our world were connected already via another dimensional traveler. A Curse member named Masher. He was also an underling of someone we can only find references to as 'Her Highness'. Some sort of queen, and apparently she's ordering Dark Matter around?

Things are coming into focus now. If Dark Matter answers to a higher power, that would explain how it seems so clever in its' approach, yet acts more like a natural disaster than an intelligent being most of the time. It raises a disturbing observation, however: If this queen can control something as powerful as Dark Matter... she must be an order of magnitude stronger.

-----

"My queen. We've made a breakthrough."

Kronoculus the Time Wizard steepled his fingers and angled his head at the silent cocoon of his queen. She rarely used a throne. Instead, the bee-like alien conqueror rested within a hivelike chrysalis. She enjoyed the effect it had on visitors. Slowly she emerged from it, the flesh of the cocoon making quiet popping and splitting sounds as she pushed herself upwards and out from a hole in the top. Her wings spread behind her, reflecting the light of the room, and she looked down upon her top advisor.

"A breakthrough? It had better be. You disturbed my beauty rest."

"I could tell you were not asleep, my queen. If you had been I would have waited."

"Always so thoughtful. So what's this breakthrough of yours?"

"We were successfully able to trace a way through to another universe. The efforts of the scientist girl Dark Matter acquired were invaluable."

"Scientist girl... Which one might that have been?"

"Ah yes, we did have several on the case... It was the one we acquired in the tropics."

"I see... Could you bring her in so she may elaborate?"

"Certainly. She's waiting just outside."

Kronoculus directed that the girl enter the room. At a passing glance, anyone not familiar with her before Dark Matter had come to Earth wouldn't notice anything out of place. She seemed perfectly normal and healthy. But she was one of millions under Dark Matter's thrall, and one of a select group that were currently active. The rest were dormant within the beast, nourishing it and being nourished in return, a cycle of life energy.

The young scientist quickly launched into an explanation, one Queen Sectonia had to interrupt several times to insist that she cut down on the technobabble. But the long and short of it was that she had used a similar technique, unknowingly, to the one Dr. Bulgrave had used many years ago to invent his own Sifter. By analyzing the traces of a previous sift, working with them in isolation from local contamination in her lab, the girl had managed to reverse-engineer Dr. Twilight's invention. Now individuals from this world could follow Dr. Twilight into the world she'd ended up in - the very same world Masher had traveled to, and that Hardcore Prawn had attempted to conquer.

"The same world?" Sectonia had asked, irritated. "Really?"

"The very same. There's no doubt about it, all the energy signatures line up."

"Blast." Sectonia grunted and wiped at her body dismissively, looking irritated. She hadn't wanted to invade that dimension. If the Kobbers there had toppled her partner in crime, they must have been strong. Fiercely so. "I had been hoping for easier prey. I do not feel we are truly ready to attack those particular Kobbers."

"My queen, if I may interject." Kronoculus' fingers interlocked. "I believe this is actually our best path forward. This is a dimension we already have intel on. We should begin the attack as soon as possible."

"That would be suicide. You know what happened to Prawn and Masher."

"It is our only option. We cannot remain here forever. Dark Matter will desire more sacrifices, and we cannot waste time chasing after the planets in this galaxy for lackluster prey. You and I both know it requires Kobbers. It's gotten a taste for them and their power, physical and emotional, is irresistible to it. Give the command and begin the attack."

"Know your place, Kronoculus!" Sectonia bellowed, making the wizard shrink back. Then her antenna twitched and she let out an annoyed groan. "...You speak the truth, much as I hate to hear it. It took our best scientist-"

"Hey, thanks!"

"-over a year to crack the code on making a Sifter. To connect to another universe, we need residual energy from that universe, is that correct?"

"It is!" the scientist nodded.

"Yes, so... that means our options are limited to universes that have previously intersected with this one. And the universe Prawn attempted to conquer is the only one we have available to us. So yes, Kronoculus... the work will go forward."

"I knew you would make the right decision, my queen." Kronoculus bowed.

"However. An all-out assault is not in the cards. The Sifter currently only lets us transport our army one person at a time, yes?" Sectonia again looked at the girl for confirmation, and she nodded. "Mhm... So we currently lack the resources to all spill out in there at once. If only Prawn's device hadn't been destroyed, we could have used that instead..."

"I'm working on making my own version of it, but I'll need more time."

"I understand. Until then, we will make a few probe attacks. Dispatch some Dark Matter thralls that are expendable. They'll be the scouts, and if we're lucky they can bring back prizes for Dark Matter. If we're unlucky, minimal harm done, pull back, regroup until the gate is ready."

"Sounds like a plan to me!" the girl chirped. Kronoculus nodded his assent. "Yes, that seems our best option right now. Thank you, my queen, for your tactical mind."

Sectonia chuckled a little. "Please, don't flatter me. I'm only determining the best path forward for all of us." She looked back at the girl. "And I wish you success in your research... eh, what was your name?"

The scientist flashed Sectonia a winning smile.

"Call me Scramble."