Page 4

There was abnormal turbulence as she brought the lander to its purpose. Terraformation wasn't even at 50%... there shouldn't have been enough atmosphere to cause turbulence. Her screen flickered more drastically as she neared that foreboding dark violet surface. Her on-board computer was going haywire. The date, for instance, kept running backward.

The lander's padded feet plunked into the gravel. The shocks coiled, and Jane didn't feel a thing. She popped the hatch, pulled down the night-vision visor on her helmet, and stepped down the ramp to the dead alien planet.

Looking at her portable screen, she memorized the coordinates. It too was flickering. Her device didn't detect any odd radiation, but she wondered how much she could trust it after all the strange malfunctions she'd been experiencing. 

That made her more than a little uneasy.

She took a deep breath, grazing a mental hand over all her information for this project. The planet had been scanned thoroughly. -2G pull. No new elements. No radioactivity. No volcanic activity. No atmosphere. No detectable organic life. No sign that there had ever been organic life. No anomalies. That was the important part. The only explanation had to be a small wave of cosmic radiation. F**ked with the sensors. That’s all.

"DICC, do you read?" she spoke into her helmet's mic.
"LOUD AND CLEAR, JANE."
"Do a quick regional scan for any cosmic radiation storms."
"ALREADY DONE. NO COSMIC RADIATION DETECTED."
"Of course you already checked." she sighed to herself. "One foot in front of the other, Janie. You can do this."
Thus, she started walking across brittle purple gravel to find the unknown.

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Page 5

She stood over the corpse, trying to convince herself it was there. She had tried to run a general diagnostic again and again. No such luck. SOMETHING was causing all her dependable instruments to go to FUBAR funland.
There was no logical explanation for the corpse. None whatsoever.

It was a boy. It used to be a boy. A human boy. About six. Perfectly preserved. No logical explanation for THAT, either. He should have been frozen or burnt to ashes by the extreme temperatures of space. His little shirt still had chocolate stains on it, for the love of Christ. Chocolate or blood. She wasn't sure which was more disturbing.

"Are you able to record this, DICC?"
"YES JANE. REMOTE VISUAL IS FUNCTIONAL." 
"Good. Get that sucker rolling."
She saw a tiny red light flash in her peripheral vision.

"This is Jane Strida, employee T-gamma917-A4-189436. I am reporting from the surface of Altair 4. Instrumental malfunction and DICC reported errors. Anomaly detected, anomaly found. Are you getting a good look at this?"
She stepped around the boy. Her visor screen flickered minutely. Her stomach turned.

"What appears to be a human minor, estimating five or six years of age. Death by asphyxiation. Can't get a definite reading on date of death. Sensor is telling me this corpse is... get this." here she held her handheld screen up to the visual.
"Over ten billion earth years old. Explain that one to me."
She pursed her lips and bit the tip of her tongue, a nervous habit.

"Visually scanning surrounding area." she turned around in a slow circle. "Coordinates are on file. Placement and position of body..." Here, she walked slowly around the corpse.
"I am going to transport this... specimen... evidence... I'm going to take it back to station and put it in cold storage. Can't think of what else to do with it. Pending further investigation, terraformation is postponed. End recording."
"RECORDING RECEIVED."