All Hope Abandon

Pain. Great pain. The journey was long and terribly, terribly bitter. I remember when we left our home planet, the excitement that quivered through the Great Elders. This was to be the greatest accomplishment our race had ever made, to actually send a craft to another inhabited planet, to establish contact and open mutually-beneficial relations.

I remember the accident. We were approaching earth, our hopes high when suddenly sparks poured from the control boards and the ship lurched violently. We were falling through the atmosphere before we could stop the fires, our heat shields working with the remnants of our force-field to just barely prevent our ship from burning up.

Then the crash. Darkness and silence. I awoke to the greatest pain I have ever know. The rest of the crew was dead. I left the broken pieces of our spaceship and entered the alien environment. I found that some strange qualities of the air slowed our movements and dulled our senses. I had survived, though soon I would wish I had died with the rest of the crew.

Then they found me. The humans who came upon the remains of our starcraft and the bodies of the crew. They looked at me, and I could see the evil in their eyes. I knew then that the hearts of these humans were as black as the depths of space.

They took me into one of their confining buildings, locking me away while they probed and poked, trying to discover all our secrets. Their methods were cruel and efficient. Oh, so terrible efficient. I remained uncooperative, daring to maintain my own self worth against all their efforts to force me into their mold.

They took the remains of our spaceship and hid them so I had no way to leave this accursed planet. Then came that black day when they stood before me and told me they had discovered the location of our home planet. They told me how they would place a great bomb aboard our own ship, which they had now rebuilt, and would sent hat instrument of death against our home world unless I cooperated with them.

Fully.

I could not tell if they were lying or not, yet the very possibility that our beloved planet could be ravaged by these creatures of evil was enough to force me to cooperation with their orders. They would have me carry out their evil designs on their own fellow humans.

If I live forever I will never understand why some humans must force their wills upon others. Their dwelling place here is, to them, present with all their physical requirements amply fulfilled. Yet one part of the humans holds the others in complete subjugation, their victims almost always cringing with fear, outwardly adapting to this place of evil, this place where minds are torn apart and identities destroyed, to be replaced by the ones their masters desire.

I am now no better than these pitiful mockeries of intelligent beings for I, too, must obey those who control this place. I do their bidding so that those I love so dearly will not suffer on our home planet.

Now I, who was once so proud and independent, must move again on another mission. I must watch over the human individual known as Number Six, so that the Village may continue in peace. I followed him yesterday, I will do the same today. he calls me Rover, although that is not my name. At least, though, I have a name. Number Six and I, both voyagers in hell.


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