Veran audio records

This document has strong wording (insults), mentions of death, suicide mention (at the very end), and a lot of despair. Veran's story is not a pretty one, it is filled from the start to the end with despair, it is him working against an invisible deadline and losing it. It does not come with a happy ending. You have been warned, read at your own precaution.

I...

[A sigh. Someone walks away from the microphone, takes a deep breath.]

What the fuck am I supposed to say? Why am I doing this? Okay, okay, calm down.

[Steps back to the microphone, a loud noise from someone dropping in a chair.]

I am Veran Ethalar, a biologist, possibly the last person alive in the Vessel InTerra 23. Fucking glad we ain't the only vessel going to other planets cuz this shit is doomed.

No. Hold up. Positivity. Hope is the last thing to lose.

I have decided to do an audio recording explaining the fucking mess that happened in the past weeks. It explains why I'm the last person alive. Bear with me, my mind is a clusterfuck. Yours would be too if the lives of about 5 thousand people were on your shoulders and you know you've failed already.

...

[Someone has a nervous laugh that quickly turns into an ugly crying and sobbing. This goes for a few minutes. There's an angry scream.]

Three weeks ago, the ship's AI detected a sudden death in a few cryo pods. Detecting no reasoning for it and seeing that other pods had people sickening for no apparent reason, it woke up the emergency team. That was me and a few more.

Fuck, I miss them.

Kiran Ledenim, AI expert. Ilana Petroska, EVA expert. Nayea Ottowana, engineer. Emerton Kirk, doctor. And me, Veran Ethalar, biologist.

After a couple days of the most annoying amount of tests I've had to do, the AI let us in on what the hell was going on once it decided we were healthy enough and our brains unarmed from the prolongated stasis. We had been asleep for almost a century, still two more of those of travel. The news drop was horribly, but we had been trained to start working as soon as possible, and thus we did.

We spent a week looking at the reports made by the AI of the deaths and doing tests ourselves. The reports were useless, of course, but Emerton wanted to give some work to Ilana and Kiran. Have you ever done tests to someone through a cryo pod? I wouldn't recommend it. The AI wouldn't let us "wake up" and do an autopsy, so we did whatever we could with Nayea's help. She managed to override some rules the AI had so we were able to do some unexpected tests.

Two more people died while we did all of this. Morale wasn't good, we knew we had a deadline and we didn't know how far away that deadline was...

[Silent. Then a long gasp followed by a longer exhale. Sounds of a chair moving, something falling off, the AI in the background is unintelligible, the person answers it with screams and insults. The audio recorder stopped recording out of inactivity after half an hour of silent.]

---

[The audio recorder is activated a few hours later.]

The AI is claiming I'm mentally unstable and I should return to my cryo pod and let the secondary emergency team deal with it. I've checked. The second team is all dead, even the third is partially dead. The fourth is all sick but alive. I think there's up to 10 emergency team, but I couldn't bring myself to check on the others.

The AI is right tho, I'm a mess.

We discovered that there was a damaging pathogen in the liquid keeping the people in stasis. We were unable to discover which liquid held it, but since all liquids are needed for stasis and they are mixed before reaching the pods, we decided it was a waste of time trying to find the origin.

I had a theory that it was a cell that mutated into a dangerous pathogen because the solar radiation. Emerton's theory was that someone non-sterile was put in the pods. We argued way too much about it...

Regardless of where it came from, between Kiran and Nayea we were able to ignore the AI blasting warnings in our ears and opened up the pod of who we assumed was patient 0. All my cells were screaming that this was wrong but we were equipped with the best protections we could find in the ship. We autopsied the person. We discovered it wasn't airborne, just moved with the stasis liquids.

[Steps going away from the microphone. A drowned scream.]

I know the person's name. I know their story. Why is my brain refusing to name them? To even gender them?

[Steps back to the microphone. A sigh.]

The person suffered from a heavy case of MODS. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Their lungs and heart failed. Sepsis all over their chest cavity. The AI had detected the fever, the odd heart and respiratory rate, the lower urine amounts and the low white blood cells. But being unaware of this pathogen it was unable to do anything. Not that I think it has the ability to do anything. We call it AI, but it's a quite limited model, that's why there's so many emergency teams that it can wake up in case anything happens.

The next issue was that we didn't know how long this pathogen took to cause MODS. Or what the fuck to do with it.

We tried putting our autopsied person back into its pod, but the AI refused, which, in retrospective, might have been for the better. We...

...

We airlocked the person out the ship. Even as someone who doesn't believe in afterlife or gods or whatever the fuck, it felt horribly wrong doing that, but the ship will be travelling for a couple more centuries and we cannot let that corpse rot.

[Heavy breathing, covered. Person probably covering their face with their hands. Silent for some minutes.]

Ilana and Nayea started showing signs. Emerton guessed they might have a couple days left and set up the infirmary to try treat them as soon as possible while I kept researching this stupid pathogen. Kiran and me found a way to teach the AI to search for the marks of this pathogen. That would tell us more accurately who's infected. I also figured out how to test us all.

We...

We were all infected... different stages, unknown time until...

[Crying.]

Sorry, I'm... I'm just now fully processing my emotions and situation. I didn't let me feel anything while I was searching for a cure.

The AI was still testing for the people in stasis, but numbers were already devastating.

Emerton and I spent approx. a week trying to find a cure. Kiran was taking care of Ilana and Nayea after Emerton gave him a crash course on nursery or whatever.

Emerton was specially interested in my body's results. It seemed that my body was resistant to that pathogen. I spent most of the time comparing tests from people who were in earlier and later stages, as much as the AI and the stupid pods allowed me.

We were close to a cure, we believed, when Nayea died and Kiran fell quite sick. He had been hiding his symptoms to help us as much as possible. Silly m---

[Sudden movement of a chair. Something slamming against the table followed by a scream.

HOW THE FUCK CAN I BE INSULTING THESE PEOPLE NOW? WHY AM I SO CALM EXPLAINING ALL OF THIS? I AM ON A DEAD SHIP, TRAVELING TOWARDS A PLANET THAT WAS MEANT TO BE OUR LEGACY. I FAILED FAILED TO SAVE THEM AND NOW IM THE ONLY ONE SEEMINGLY UNAFFECTED. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?

[The AI sounded in the background, the person started shouting and insulting it while walking around the room. A few minutes later a door slammed and everything went silent.]

---

[The audio recorder is activated a day later.]

The AI has given me a few extra hours. After that, I must go back into my cryo pod as it will shut down most of unneeded systems for travel. I can either decide to die of dehydration, contaminating this whole ship with the rotting process of my body, and stay out my pod or go into my pod and wake up all alone in two centuries. I need to finish my report, this audio, now. The ship is not prepared to keep someone alive outside the pods until we reach land, and I don't know how to surpass the AI's limits and walls and whatever to let me live. If only Kiran and Nayea were alive...

Anyway. Nayea. Right... While Emerton was taking care of Kiran, I airlocked her. Not proud of that. Not proud of anything that has happened since I woke up.

Forgive me for the less precise report I'm about to dictate it but the AI warned me it will knock me out if I have another breakdown. I don't know what happens if it knocks me down and I rather be the one to decide what to do in a few hours.

Kiran followed Nayea, and Ilana after. Emerton and me had tried a couple cures on them after they demanded us to use them. A few days later, as Emerton was also in his deathbed and the AI kept warning us of the infection spreading further and further, I managed to find a cure. A possible one. I tested it on Emerton and seemed to work, but the MODS had already destroyed his body too much to survive.

Meanwhile, I was mostly fine. Exhausted, sickly thin out of stress and skipping meals, but the pathogen didn't seem to have affected me that much. My theory is that I woke up in the most early stages and my body managed to fight it off. I don't know why. It doesn't matter. I cannot wake people up to give them a chance to fight. I can only force the AI to produce more of the cure and inject it to the pods. I don't know how to code but I think I managed to force it to inject us with the cure once every 15 years? Should be enough to keep the pathogen to develop resistance to it if it survives the first injection. And it seems to work slow enough that it should be enough time to let people fight it off. After all, it took a hundred years for the first person to die. I don't know. I'm too tired. I haven't slept in a few days.

I'm alone in a ship with approx.. five thousand people. I've lost the 4 people who've kept me company for the past 3 weeks, and if I have to follow the AI's orders much longer I might shoot myself. I don't know if there's a gun... Don't think so. Might just break my neck.

I have attached all our investigation, our procedures, and whatever the fuck more I could think off to this digital folder.

I've decided to go back to my cryo pod. If I survive the travel, maybe there will be some more survivors and we can proceed to terraform planet Eraida and populate it. Don't want to even consider that I might wake up all alone.

Hope is the last thing to lose, right?

If I don't wake up but someone else does and finds this. I am so sorry. There's no way I can express how sorry and devastated I am. I promise I tried my best. Not that it matters. I hope you are not alone. I hope you wake up health. Burn me at a stake if it makes you feel better. The rest of my team is floating in the cold space.

I'm sorry...

I'm so so sorry...

[The person starts quietly sobbing and after a few minutes, it turns off the microphone.]