The last of them

Posted on Sun Mar 23rd, 2025 @ 10:29pm by Lieutenant Darru & Chief Petty Officer Manishie Karalo

Mission: Remnant
Location: Planetside
Timeline: Day 408
2402 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Manishie was glad to be out of the Atlantis and on the surface of an actual planet. Even though it was quite creepy with how decrepit the abandoned structures were. There had been one too many classic movies set in post-apocalyptic visions of Earth for her to be comfortable there. Her penchant for watching horror movies was enough to give her fantasy way too much to work with. "So. If there would've been, say, corpses reanimated by some sort of virus or fungus, we'd be able to tell from scans, right?"

Darru listened carefully to what Manishie said as he indeed scanned around them. He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “I believe that you should stop watching horror movies in your spare time.” He said offering a small quirk of his lips. “But to reassure you yes for something to cause this type of abandonment it would be coming up on my scanner.” He promised.

"That's a relief at least, though I feel I should warn you that the confident people like you are always the first to be bitten." Manishie teased as they approached a large building that they had identified as a potential place that would give them insights into how this society worked before their demise, and hopefully a bit of a clue as to what might have resulted in their demise.

"I believe Chief you remind me every time Zombie movies come up." The Vulcan teased back just a little as he cocked his head to the side daring her to tell him he was wrong when they had watched at least 3 in the last month or so as the woman arranged a few viewing parties. The man held out his arm to stop her for a moment as he glanced up at the structure wanting to scan it properly before they went inside anywhere.

"Almost as if they're a strong metaphor for something." Manishie stood peering into the building he insisted standing outside of, shifting her weight from side to side, like an overeager puppy being held back by a chain. "So? What's the verdict?" She asked immediately when the scanner chirped.

He was not going to carry on psychoanalysing zombie films when he thought there were such better films out there produced from Earth and humans as a whole.

“Safe.” The Vulcan assured as stepping around her and heading inside. He stopped several steps in and took in the shear scale of the building. It was like stepping into an ante chamber but instead of it being closed over the building was open to the elements. The last time he had seen anything on that scale other then Relea since they left Earth was the Caelestis when he had stared down at all the broken statis units.

Like a greyhound released on a racetrack Manishie shot inside the building the moment he confirmed that it was safe to do so. However long it had been since the population of this planet had been wiped out, nature had reclaimed a lot of ground. Being open to the elements the high ceiling had crumbled away and partially collapsed. The entire thing was covered in vines and a large tree was growing in the middle of the chamber. If there was any information to be gleaned it would be under a thick layer of underbrush. "I think we might've chosen a wrong place to start, I didn't bring my machete."

Darru nodded. He had not considered needing a machete himself so it was logical for the woman to not do it either. “We shall look at another building perhaps.” He advised thinking they could walk through the building out the other side to see what was in the otherside.

Manishie nodded and continued her way through the building, looking around and taking in as much of the environment as she possibly could. they made their way outside again through the other side of the foyer. It was clear that this was a commercial area with loads of large office buildings close together. It took a couple of tries to find one that was relatively intact. It seemed that whatever had happened, or perhaps time itself, had affected the buildings quite a bit. There was a logo on the floor as they walked into the fourth building they had breached. It was too faded to be legible, besides the language wasn't going to be anything they'd recognise anyway. Slowly she made her way further inside, starting to realise that it was way more creepy to be in a largely intact building as opposed to one of the way more affected ones. "Let's see what they have over at the reception desk."

"This looks like what is outside the Vulcan compound on Earth." The man commented as he took in everything around them. It was like looking at an Earth that had been destroyed if one did not know the planet. "I also believe they are similar to us in that they were humanoid shaped." The Vulcan corrected himself as he looked at the logo and scanned it so that he could look at it properly later on and try to work out what it was. He turned on a torch and shined it around into the darkness of the building. "Lead the way." He instructed.

Manishie made her way over to the reception area, the little booth seemed a little off to her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She circled around it and realised that it was a bit lower than she expected it to be, and the desk matched that lower height as well. "If this is built to match averages, we can hypothesise that on average the species here were slightly shorter than humans." There wasn't any indication of papers or a computer console, although both of those would've deteriorated too much by now to be of use, it was all clues as to how these people lived. The structures seemed to indicate post industrial area. Very reminiscent of 21st century Earth. "Isn't it weird that there's no remains anywhere?" There were no bones or other deteriorating bits of organic matter.

Darru had to agree with the woman’s hypothesis about the sizing of the planets former inhabitants. “You hypothesis is most likely correct. We could most likely make a science out of you chief with theories like that.” He glanced around and nodded. “Weird would not be the word that I use but it does suitably cover it.” He had to admit to himself that he had not noticed it until now but it was a good question.

"There's a lot of overlap between detectives and scientists, Lieutenant. Did I ever bore you with how I solved my first case?" Manishie ducked behind the counter to see if there was anything in there. "Do you know of any scientific phenomena that could simply wipe out an entire planet's population but leave the structures intact?" She realised that what would help was to get an indication for how long the planet had been empty. But there was nothing behind the counter, it was an oddity. She could get out a hand scanner, but she liked relying on her own six senses to do the initial search. So much got missed nowadays by people simply too focused on screens.

“Do not believe I get bored over hearing people’s stories many times. There is always a different version or vocabulary used.” Darru commented before he shook his head looking around. “I know nothing that would leave the buildings intact and not the remains. The remains would either have to be taken or there are no remains.” It was a conundrum that Darru had no answer for.

"I'm not sure which of those two options I like the least." Manishie knew that bodies would decompose and if left to the elements very little trace would be found of them in due time. The question was, how much of time had passed. Clearly some structures were still sound, and anything that could affect bones could surely affect mortar or concrete. "We should ask one of the scientists to cut down an old tree out there and count rings, see if we can clean anything from them." She knew that some of the oldest trees told stories of famines, heat waves, cold snaps. Perhaps some of the trees here had similar stories to shine a light on what had happened here. At the very least an industrialised civilization would have left traces in vegetation.

The man could not help but agree with that notion but there would be some type of sign of bodies. Skeletons did not just disappear without a trace there was nothing inside the building that suggested bodies had been there at any point since whatever had made the planet almost silent. Darru stopped and looked at the woman. “I am a scientist.” He pointed out quietly or was he not seen as the type of person to cut down trees.

"I figured you'd have the good sense to delegate." Manishie remarked. Then another thought occurred to her, "have your scans picked up any wildlife? This is basically a forest now. It should be teeming with critters, but she hadn't consciously spotted any. Perhaps the ones that were there were so skittish their approach would've sent any of them scurrying away. "Any birds in the sky?"

“It seems foolish to delegate that task when I am more than capable with superior strength.” The Vulcan commented as he stopped waking and looked around. “No birds. I have not seen any on our approach either nor on my scanner.” Nothing had scattered when they had approached any building nor had he observed any signs of anything visually or on his scanner.

"In my experience managers dislike physical labour." Manishie looked around to find a new place to scrounge through. "There's an ecosystem here, if Earth is any indication the trees out there couldn't exist without critters." She made her way over to a door tucked away behind the counter.

“Well I hope that I can continue to prove you wrong or at least that my style of management is I would not expect my officers to do something that I am unprepared to do.” He followed her at a slightly more subdued pace as he glanced back at the trees and strange pink vines that were clawing up the side of the buildings. “Very much could not exist but I have seen nothing yet through my eyes or on my scanners but I am looking.”

The two of them continued their investigations of the building, slowly and carefully making their way through overgrown corridors and what Manishie could only reasonably think of as offices. For the longest time they couldn't really find anything of note. That was until they came across a small out of the way room, it had taken some effort to open up. It had no windows and even with their pocket lights the darkness seem to encircle them. Rows upon rows of metal casings. At first Manishie had thought they had come across a bank's private vaults. But as they were able to open the first container it was clear it was more specific than that. An Archive of sorts. She pulled out small casettes, data carriers of some kind.

"What do you make of this?" She handed one of them to Darru. There were markings on them that neither of them had any idea what they could possibly mean. The locked box had held about a dozen of them, at first glance, and they were no larger than a personal padd, but at least three times as thick. She took out another two and compared them to each other. There weren't any buttons or screens. There didn't even seem to be any way to connect them that she could tell. but the casings weren't completely smooth and one of the nicks on the short side of the rectangle was easily peeled away revealing the receiving end of a connector.

"This looks like an archive room." He decided taking it all in. "I have never seen a format like this." The older man looked at the items that were pulled out and held them up to the thin light that they had from the torches. It was not exactly much to go on there. "Lets bring them outside so we can look at it all properly." He commented taking the box from her to look better at them. "Lead the way and we can try and work out if there is a way to read them."

Manishie stuffed them into her messenger bag until it was full. Then took another couple in her hands. Depending on how long they'd be there, and what these records turned out to be, she was sure they'd come back. "Probably best to take them to the ship and try and crack them in an isolated network." Then again it would be good to have an idea of what type of connection was used, and if the data was here the methods of reading that data would surely be there as well.

"I can help carry." The Vulcan stated as he took several of them and swung off his rucksack to carry more. He held out his hands to take the ones in her hands. They both needed free hands for anything that they faced. "We will need to find a way to connect with them first." He said thoughtfully looking around for a way to read them. Logically there would have to be one close by.

Stuffing the bag absolutely full of the devices Manishie made sure to not get all of them from the same cabinet, hoping for a bit of diversity in data that they were gathering. She even got a bit excited at the prospect of finding out more about the people in this place. "Let's also take some images of the environment, perhaps there's direction indicators. Anything that can help us piece together the language these people used."

Darru simply nodded and pulled out his scanner to start taking the images. It was nice to see the other officer getting excited about something when it seemed there was very little sometimes to get excited about in the mundane of the Atlantis.