After an unmarked period which may have lasted days, I have finally scrounged together enough of my gear to begin taking notes. Much to report, none of it good. 

I appear to be the only member of the team to reach the far shore. The others, I suspect, drowned, if they did not perish in the compression. My only source of hope is that their bodies have failed to wash up alongside mine, and so they may be alive somewhere on this godforsaken planet. That hope is hardly even a prayer at this stage. And you know, Maxfield, that I have not prayed in a long time. 

I located the ship’s black box soon after my arrival. I am keeping it on my person. If I perish before I can locate a door, it should accompany my body home.

I have not felt hunger since my arrival. With consideration to Kaminsky’s time dilation theory, I had planned to test my blood sugar periodically. My own body is the only reliable subject to measure here. Or it would be, if not for the fact that I cannot seem to puncture my skin with the testing needle. I do not believe this is psychological on my part. I am not shaken by the sight of blood.

So I am deprived of all measures of keeping time. None are more troubling than the sky overhead. Once the clouds dissipated, I was left with nothing but sunlight. It beats down on the white sand with an effect that is both blinding and burning. (My feet are bare, and I can only stand to walk in the shallows.) It never shifts. I am very tired, but even if it were safe to succumb here, I could not sleep for this light. My only respite will be another storm, if and when another occurs.

I will continue walking and update my notes when possible.




There is still no sign of anybody. I watch the waves and they are so placid that their movement puts me nearly at peace. Each time, I am sure to catch myself. Your platitudes after my last failure have made no impression. I will not allow the Enochians to slip through my fingers again. 

My eyes ache even when I am not looking back at the sand. My feet ache from walking; not to mention that they are waterlogged white. How much time has passed here? How much has passed there? Perhaps Kaminsky was wrong. Perhaps this place is beyond the reach of even gravity, and time, therefore, ceases to exist. Well, I'm hardly a physicist, am I?

Could it be that I am dying, suspended in this moment forever in an illusion of my own mind? That is the one solution I will not entertain. I know my mind well enough to be sure that I could not create something as hateful as this white Enochian sun.




I found it curious that my body's state has remained so determinedly unchanged for what must be a week… except for my feet. A few toenails have fallen off along this endless march and my skin along the soles is beginning to slough. The rest of my body does not even sweat. I do not burn even when I touch that blistering sand bare-handed. I do not cut and I do not bleed. But now I am even more afraid to leave the water, though I have not seen a sign of debris in ages and have no reason to stay. What if I cross that threshold and can no longer return? 

The water I think acts as the medium. It is the realm of life, mortality. It is mankind’s first home. A very soft, philosophical view, I know. Sans equipment, sans specimen, sans clothes, I am left to practice science as Diogenes did.

Am I a lunatic, Maxfield? Were we all lunatics? God, I would give anything for a moon overhead. I cannot remember sleep.




What do you think lies inland of here? 




The rain came again. I don't know what possessed me. Despite the blessed dimness, I did not even try to sleep.

I stared. The sun was hidden, and the interior finally visible.

There is no curve here. There is no atmosphere. The illusions which manage our eyes’ perception of scale are a luxury. I saw for light-years. I saw the end. 

I'm so sorry Maxie. All those boys are dead for nothing because I never had a chance. I will wade into the water while I still have the courage, and I will slit my throat.

I will not beg God to deliver my body home. He has long been reduced to ash, beneath the sun which burns forever at the center of all things.