ISLE: Arrival (Act I, Part I)

The beginning of a new Substack serial fiction

1,000 words, ~5 minute read
Recommended listening while you read: Button Eyes by Eva Tiedemann

The instinct to yawn. Polymer capsule. Close around my shoulders.
Wanting to stretch. Hard, curved shell. Light. Heat.
A faint chemical sweetness. Air rushing. A low hiss, then louder, sharper.
Space. Clenched teeth. Something rattling. Metal clasps straining.
Smoke, or vapour; thin gray threads curling upward. Upward?
Turquoise. Bands of ocean, dotted with impossibly lush green islands.
Storm scars. A loud, incessant beep. More rattling. Metal giving out.
Air screaming through a seam. The pod shudders.
Heat bloom. The smell of burning insulation. The lid jerks, then lifts.
Serenity rushing toward me, or me toward it. Deafening. Eyes can’t focus.
A bone-deep thud. Warm sand. Clean air. Sleep a little longer…

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I came to half-buried in wet sand, with the tide trying to finish the job. My first thought was thank god I’m still here. My second was here has changed. I was face down on a beach.

A loud drone sound interrupted the calm. I bolted upright, hacking and spitting saltwater. The drone ended. I was on a remote island. The water was an unbelievably clear azure, like I’ve only ever seen in heavily colour-corrected ads for expensive vacations.

I sat for a long minute, dazed, squinting at the endless stretch of beach. My throat was dry. There was grit stuck between my teeth.

The ocean breathed in and out, lazy and relentless.

I patted myself down: maybe a bruised rib, one boot missing, a torn survival suit that smelled like mildew.

A chipper little melody of da-da-dings sounded. Far down the beach, massive, white, three-dimensional block letters dropped out of the sky and crashed into the sand.

[ S YS T E MO N LI N E ]

I stared, confused about what I was seeing. The letters were a distance away, but big enough to be easily readable. They had to be at least a meter or two tall. What system was online? My instinct was to look up above me for any more massive falling typographic meteorites. Nothing but clear skies.

The ‘system online‘ text dematerialized, turning into a fine white dust and slowly blowing away in the breeze. Solid & heavy one second and then a million tiny particles the next.

“What was that?” I asked out loud. More letters dropped out of the sky, down the beach, but this time closer. They thudded in the sand, just slightly out of sync with one another.

[ W E L C OM E MAR L O WE ]

I looked all around to see if anyone else was seeing this. There was no one else. But, the sky knew my name. Somebody was dropping monumental alphabets. I slapped myself, shook my head. Nothing changed. I spun around, searching for some kind of explanation, then looked to the sky again.

“Hello?!?” I shouted.

This second set of letters crumbled to dust and blew into the forested area lining the edge of the beach.

Then, the last message arrived. This time the monolithic letters landed just a few meters in front of me. I could feel the sand splash up against my one bare leg.

[ OB J E CT IV E : SUR VII V E ]

“Bit of a typo there...” I muttered.

Then I laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh. It was a nervous laugh. It was an “I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m not terribly comfortable right now“ kind of laugh.

“Survive, huh?” I staggered to my feet. The world tilted for a second, then steadied.

Fine. Survive first. Despair later.

I stumbled forward to see if I could touch the letters before they disintegrated. I had an artificial limp as I walked, the sole of my one boot caked in salt and sand. Just as I reached out to touch it, the last message crumbled away. White specks floated past my hand, but I couldn’t tell if they were actually there or not. They floated around my fingers to avoid having to physically interact with my skin. Odd. I watched them scatter into the foliage.

I spotted something in amongst the dune grass: a round, translucent fruit tucked in the shadow of a large driftwood log. A clear jelly exterior with a bright orange pit in its center. I stepped closer. Little brightly coloured purple specks dotted the pit. My stomach grumbled. I stared at the thing. I bent down and picked it up.

“You’re going to poison me, aren’t you?”

I thought about recklessly taking a bite, but my desire to not die still outweighed my hunger.

“Where can I put you until I figure out what’s going on?” I surveyed the beach again. My survival suit had no pockets. Sand & ocean stretched on as far as I could see in either direction, with no particular landmarks along the shoreline. I needed to get my bearings.

I set the fruit down and grabbed a large, flat rock that was straddling the boundary between the beach and the forest behind it. I used the rock to dig out a depression at the roots-end of the large driftwood log. After it was a few inches deep, I moved around to the top-end, and with a heavy grunt, I lifted it upward, standing the log on end. I gave it a good downward shove to lodge it into the sand and stepped back to see if it would balance. It did. With my stone, I re-piled the sand at the logs’ base for extra support.

A landmark.

I stepped back and admired my work. I hid the strange fruit in an elbow of the driftwood. Now I had a point of reference to find my way back here, once I had a better idea of what was happening.

More massive letters fell from the sky and crashed behind the upright driftwood.

[ +1 C AR TOG R A P HY ]

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