Black Static

            “You sure you want to come?” Harlan gave Carter an inquisitive look as he took back the case file, the aluminum sheet bending and reflecting off the single ceiling light above them.
            “Yes. If you’ll let me, of course, sir.”
            Harlan sighed and got up from his chair, walking over to Carter and then sitting down again, his legs crossed as he leaned on the front of his desk. Around them were boxes piled high with archived case files and invoices. It was a small office, but it sufficed for just the two of them. A rollerlift was charging in the corner, which made a faint buzzing noise that now filled the silence in the room. Harlan made a mental note to go check that out once he had the time.
            “All I’m saying is that it’s a risk. An anonymous client and a suspiciously big payout usually mean that there’s something fishy going on—not to mention having to go off-stellar to some oddly specific set of coordinates in Aridus. Anyhow, you’re still young, alright? I heard Catherine Bellefort is opening a new restaurant in our district this weekend, so why don’t you take a break and invite a girl out for dinner or lunch?”
            The buzzing noise continued on in the background as Carter stood silently for a brief moment.
            “I understand the risks, sir, and um, I don’t exactly have anyone to invite out over the weekend anyway.”
            Harlan shrugged and got off the desk. “Fine, suit yourself then.”
            “Thanks, sir.”
            “When you get back, though, take some time off for yourself. Everyone needs a life outside their work, you know?”
            “Right, will do. So, when do we leave for Aridus?”
            “In three hours. Go home, get anything you need, and meet me back here at quarter to five.”
            Carter gave another nod and started to head out the door. When he was gone, Harlan walked back to the area behind his desk and knelt down to open his safe drawer. As he entered the combination and pulled it open, he gently reached his hand in to hold the small wooden sculpture that lay among other keepsakes: Julie’s gift to him on their tenth anniversary. That much wood was worth a small fortune, but he would sooner starve than ever sell it off. As he knelt holding it, Harlan thought of how this could be his chance to get more answers, to find out what happened to her. This case—another missing person who also disappeared in the restricted zone of Aridus, and a client who didn’t believe it was a suicide. There had to be something in there for him.
            Suddenly, Carter reappeared in the doorway, and Harlan hastily put the wooden sculpture back down.
            “Wait, sir, the next Aridus shuttle doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning.”
            Harlan stood back up behind his desk.
            “We’re not taking the shuttle. Those coordinates in the case? They’re in the restricted zone of Aridus.”
            “So how are we getting the clearance to go there?”

            “We can’t. But instead, we’ll hitch a ride on a mining ship heading towards the zone border. It’s crewed by two guys who go by the names Symon and Brian. Usually, they smuggle people looking to commit suicide out in the Aridian desert, but they’ll fly anybody out there so long as they get paid.”
            “Isn’t that very illegal?”
            Harlan chuckled. “Well, why do you think this case ended up with us and not the police?”

            A loud clang suddenly startled Harlan, which turned into relief as it repeated two more times; it was the code that the ship was now clear of any surveillance. He opened the hatch above the small maintenance chute that he and Carter were hiding in and slowly stepped out. He took a step and stretched his back, which had been killing him for the past two hours. He glanced to his right and saw Symon putting back the wrench that he used to signal them, receiving a brief nod from him. Carter then stepped out and immediately centred his gaze on the aft porthole in front of them.
            “Whoa.”
            Harlan turned his head and looked out the porthole too. Framed perfectly in the centre of the window was Nova Caelum in its entirety: A series of metal habitats, interconnected and all orbiting the star Eos. Humanity’s last home, as far as anyone knew. It was all anyone had known for thousands of years.
            “You ever been to Aridus, kid?” asked Harlan.
            “No, sir. Never even seen Nova Caelum from the outside before.”
            A moment of silence passed between the two of them as they both continued gazing out the porthole at Nova Caelum. A refuge clinging to the heat of a dying star, feeding off the minerals from a dead planet. It seemed almost too bleak. Legends of a vast human empire, a species stretched across the stars, now reduced to this outpost of life.
            Harlan started to reminisce about the laughs he had with Julie, sharing outlandish conspiracy theories of hidden worlds and secret civilizations when they were young. They were jokes then, but he knew now that whatever she discovered, whatever led to her disappearance, it was something ancient. A secret buried for millennia. She told him as much in her last note.
            The ship suddenly shuddered as they began a brief acceleration burn.
            “Do you ever wonder if we’re actually not alone? If there are other humans out there somewhere?” asked Carter, breaking the silence.
            “Of course not. It’s nonsense.”

            The bright white light of Eos began to fade as it dipped below the horizon, turning the sky into a wash of silvery-blue. Harlan and Carter sat in a mining transport truck that had taken a hefty bribe to procure. It had been three hours since they departed from the Salvos outpost, and they now crossed into the Aridian desert, past the invisible border that marked the restricted zone.
            Ahead of them lay endless jet black dunes of sand that stood in stark contrast to the chalky white outcroppings of ancient cliffs scattered throughout the landscape. As the wind gently sifted through the desert, the sand twinkled in the dusk, flashing with momentary sparkles of blue that danced along the pale rocks. Carter stared out the window at the view.
            “The desert really is beautiful.”
            “It’s dangerous too. We’ll need to watch out for small vortices of wind—storms can converge at rapid speeds here.”
            They continued to drive through the desert. The loud electrical whirring of the drive motors and the rattling of the metal frame surrounding them filled the silence. After another hour, Carter signalled to Harlan that they had reached their destination. They both opened the door and hopped out into the deep black sand.
            “So what should we be looking for?” asked Carter.
            “Anything that sticks out from the sand. Use your optics' low-light vision to scan around. Although there haven’t been any big storms for things to completely disappear, they could still be partially buried.”
             “But I don’t have my optics installed yet.”
            Harlan turned and raised an eyebrow at Carter.
            “I thought you wanted to be a police detective.”
            “Well, I was going to get them installed as soon as I saved up enough.”
            Harlan sighed. “When we get back, remind me to up your pay.”
            Carter held his mouth open, but then just nodded.
            “Thanks, sir.”
            After a couple of minutes, Harlan spotted a small silver object in the distance.
            “There. Let’s go see what that is.”
            They trudged through the sand towards the object, a small silver twinkle highlighted by the vast black dune. As they approached it, Harlan took a mental image of the site using his optics, then stooped down to pick up the object. It was a silver, old-fashioned ham radio, with antennae that looked like they had been forcibly snapped. The whole thing had been smashed as well, the display cracked and clearly dead. Harlan looked at the back side and spotted a very faint symbol he’d never seen before: A triangle with a concave curved bottom and a large V-shape going through the centre of it. He passed the radio to Carter.
            “Does that symbol on the back mean anything to you?”
            Carter twisted the radio around in his hands with a confused look.
            “I don’t see any symbol, sir.”
            Harlan took the radio as Carter passed it back to him.
            “Never mind, must be hard to see in the dark.”
            Harlan gave the symbol another look and then started to feel a dull headache appear. He shook his head and flipped the radio back around.
            “Mark the coordinates of where we found this radio, and let’s go back to the truck to get a closer look. Seems like whoever used this was trying to communicate in private and destroy the evidence.”
            As they started to walk back to the truck, Harlan began to churn through details in his mind. The subject they were pursuing had gone missing in the Aridian desert, with a last known location where Harlan and Carter currently had their truck parked. They found a smashed ham radio nearby, which signified that the subject was trying to communicate with someone, then tried to destroy the evidence. Although why didn’t they just bury the radio? What was that symbol on the back? Who could they be talking to, and why go all the way out into the desert to send the message? It would work just the same if it were sent from one of the mining outposts—if the subject had supposedly set a secret frequency on the radio, no one would pay attention to it, no matter where it was sent.
            Then, an eerie realization hit him. If their mysterious anonymous client somehow knew their subject was last known to be in the middle of the Aridian desert, how else would they find a precise location other than the origin of a radio signal?

            My dear love, Harlan, if you’re reading this, then I’m likely gone. This little rabbit hole I’ve been going down, it may be deeper than I could’ve ever imagined…

            “Uh, sir, you said that small sand vortices meant a storm was coming right?” Carter said, suddenly interrupting Harlan’s thoughts.
            Harlan looked around and felt a sense of dread creep up as he saw swirling circles of sand around them.
            “Start running.”
            As they started to sprint back to the truck, the swirling sand around them started to grow more intense. Harlan felt his face sting as the razor-sharp grains of obsidian started to whip by him. They managed to reach the truck and get inside as the howling of the storm kept growing. As the sand collided against the metal skin of the truck, the cabin was filled with an intensely loud scraping noise.
            “Check the topology map for any caves!”
            “There’s one 900 metres out! In the same direction as where we found the radio!”
            Harlan floored the accelerator of the truck, and it took off in the desert sand. The wind started to intensify even more, and the trailer holding excess power and supplies started to sway uncontrollably, causing Harlan to start to lose control.
            “Disengage the trailer, Carter!”
            “But we need the extra batteries to—”
            “If you don’t disengage that trailer, we’re both dead!”
            Harlan felt himself regain control over the truck as the trailer detached and started tumbling over itself in the storm. The intense scraping noise inside the cabin started to grow unbearable as he began to see small cracks forming in the windshield. He knew that the steel body of the truck could withstand a sandstorm—the glass, however, could not. Harlan focused on the navigation display and rammed the truck right into the mouth of the cave. They were thrown forward as the cave opening started to crumble in places, dropping rocks onto the roof above them.
            “You okay?”
            Carter nodded, looking shaken.
            They unstrapped and jumped out of the truck, covering their faces as the wind screamed around the cave entrance. Harlan kept his lowlight vision on and found a tunnel that he led Carter into. As they both walked further into the cave, the loud howling of the storm slowly started to die down. They sat along the wall for a moment, both catching their breath.
            “The map says there should be a larger chamber that opens up from the end of this tunnel,” said Carter, looking at his wrist console.
            Harlan nodded and was suddenly thankful that Carter had the foresight to take his wrist console—in the rush, he had left his plugged into the truck’s dashboard.
            As they reached the large chamber, the opposing wall suddenly lit up in a massive display. Outlined in bright blue was the same symbol that Harlan saw on the smashed radio, accompanied by some illegible text. Within moments, it started to flicker, and an excruciating pain flooded Harlan’s head. He collapsed to the ground, writhing in agony as he felt his head was about to split open. The pain was concentrated around his right eye, and out of desperation and instinct, he started to claw at it to make the pain stop. He dug his fingers deep into the socket and without hesitation ripped the implant clean off his face. Suddenly, the pain subsided and he lay gasping for breath. He then noticed Carter knelt beside him as his voice became clearer.
            “Sir!”
            “What the hell just happened? Are you okay?”
            Harlan slowly sat up and blinked with his one eye, still breathing heavily. “I think so. There was that symbol on the wall, the same as on the radio, and my head just started to feel like it was splitting open and—”
            As he looked at the cave wall again, the symbol was gone.
            “You didn’t see it?” he asked Carter
            “No, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
            Harlan gazed at the empty cave wall. The symbol was also on the smashed radio, but Carter didn’t see it then either. Perhaps it was too dark, but now why did the symbol on the wall disappear? Then he realized that he had clawed out his only implant; his other eye was biological, and Carter didn’t have any optics installed.
            “Carter, does your wrist console have a camera?”
            “Uh, yes. Yes it does.”
            “Try recording a video feed of the cave wall across from us.”
            Carter turned on his camera, and the console screen flipped to the video feed. Suddenly, the same large symbol flickered into view on the cave wall, and beneath it was the same text that Harlan saw.
            “Holy shit.”
            Then, the video feed started to glitch. Carter shut the console off and yanked it off his wrist, shaking his hand in pain.
            “Ow!”
            “What happened?” asked Harlan
            “It started to overheat for some reason. Almost burned my hand off. Did you understand what that text was?”
            Harlan shook his head. “It looks ancient, almost like Standard C1.”
            “What could this be then? Some forgotten ruin? Wasn’t Aridus only settled on in the last couple of hundred years?”

            …All I know now is that it may be ancient. A secret organization or society or something…

            “I don’t know. But whatever this is, it’s sending us a warning.”
            “What do we do?”
            “You wait out this storm and get out of here. Just tell the police that I forced you here and that I was lost to the winds. Investigate what you can, but stay safe while doing it.”
            “I’m staying with you, sir.”
            “I dragged us into this mess. I know you agreed to it but you don’t have to—”
            “I mean, this was always about your wife, wasn’t it?”
            Harlan held his mouth open.
            “How did you know?”
            “I heard about what happened to her. A disappearance and suicide on Aridus. I could tell you didn’t get closure from the official investigation. When you were committed to this strange case, it wasn’t hard to put the two together. I wanted to help, sir.”

            …I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about any of this, and I want you to stay safe. I don’t know how many people are involved in this, and I want you to keep this note a secret just in case…

            “Harlan.”
            “What?”
            “If we’re going to go down this rabbit hole together, just call me Harlan, alright?”
            Carter nodded. “Okay, Harlan.”
            “And you don’t have to say it at the end of every sentence.”
            “Right.”
            Harlan stood up and started to walk into the large chamber that housed the mysterious cave wall.
            “Does your wrist console still work?” he asked.
            Carter tried turning it on. “Yep, looks like it’s able to boot up.”
            “We should try scanning other parts of this cave, but make sure to only keep the feed on for a couple of seconds at a time.”
            “Got it.”
            Carter strapped the console back on and started walking towards Harlan.
            “Hey, if this weird symbol thing seems to only show up on implants and cameras before messing them up, how come your other eye is fine right now?”
            “I only got a partial set of optics. Couldn’t afford a full one back in the day, and got used to having only one anyway.”
            He had split the cost of the implant with Julie, and they only pooled enough money together to get one each. It reassured him that if she had come across something like this, she would survive too. As he and Carter walked into the large chamber ahead of them, Harlan began to feel a rush of excitement and hope. Whatever this was, this strange, dangerous ancient secret, it had to be it.

            …I want to tell you to let me go, but how could I? Just whatever you do, please be careful. Because no matter the cost, we both can’t resist the truth, can we?…