Seventeen times I've asked for a transfer back to civilization. Seventeen. Once a month for the past year and a half I have begged out of the Wasteland. Once a month, the base computer comes online, and allows me to transmit a message. Twelve hours later, the lights dim and it goes silent again. I don't know if anyone can hear me, or if my messages are just piling up at mission command. None of this makes sense to me anymore, and I'm not sure it ever did.
All I can say for sure is that I am stuck here, cataloging rocks. Pick up a rock, set it on the pedestal. Capture a 3D scan and thermal image. I am supposed to make sure that the rock in question hasn't already been photographed, but I can't tell anymore. If I'm being honest, and I don't see why I shouldn't be, I stopped being able to tell about eight months ago. Two months after that, I stopped caring. There are only so many rocks here.
I'm not really sure why Sanderson took this position. She told me once, sitting down to our nighttime meal, that after what she did in Crimea she had her pick of assignments. She chose the Wasteland Base, but couldn't tell me why. She said it just felt right, but I could tell from the hollow look in her eyes and her sunken cheeks that she didn't believe that any more than I did. She came here for some other reason. She was drawn here. Drawn by the stories of life in the rocks. They all were. Drawn here to die.
McCarthy did end up sneaking out into the desert to look for O'Day. They'd been friends. Some said lovers, but I believe they just clicked as people. McCarthy had been in charge of the thermal imaging. She'd written the software that controlled the camera and processed the images. She and O'Day worked well together, and to her, losing O'Day was like losing an arm or a leg. It is with a strange sense of symmetry that she returned from the desert short one of each. She crawled all the way to the Wasteland Base's first aid hut, and expired on the doorstep, her remaining hand balled into a fist and pressed against the door, in a desperate attempt to knock.
Sanderson locked down the base, ordered security to bring her all security cam footage, and holed herself up in her office, scanning hours of footage. I retired to my bunk, laid on my back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if any of us would get home again. Some of the others had taped pictures of their loved ones above their bunks, so that their faces would be the last thing they saw at night, and the first thing they saw in the morning. I liked this, though I didn't participate. Their hope was enough for me.
Two days later, Sanderson emerged from her office, clenched jaw poking through her sullen cheeks, her skin waxy, but her eyes cold and hard. She signaled to two guards. The trio marched through the base, straight to my bunk. Sanderson pounded on the door with her fist. Swinging my legs down from the bunk, I stepped to the door and opened it halfway. Sanderson extended her arm, throwing the door wide, and jerked her head at me, telling me to follow her.
She turned and walked back to her office, me behind her, the two guard flanking me, one on either side. My chest ached with hunger;
I had not eaten in the past two days. In her office, she ordered me to stand by the desk while she played a video.
"It was you," she said, showing me a video of a me-shaped figure pulling wires and circuits from the main computer, plugging them in at what seemed like random places. "You were the last to speak to O'Day before he disappeared." The video changes to the me-shaped figure speaking to an O'Day shaped figure. Both shapes gestured wildly with their hands until the O'Day figure's shoulders slumped and quivered, his head shaking. He was crying. I told him to seek the truth in the desert. O'Day looked up at me, his pupils dilated, his face pallid. He nodded, turned, and walked to his own death.
"And then there's McCarthy," she said. This time, as the video switched to show McCarthy sneaking out of the base in the still of the night, and a shadow me following her, the guards moved two steps closer to me, their hands moving to their side arms. By the time the video had jumped forward to show me coming back into the base carrying McCarty's arm and leg, both guards were dead, and Sanderson had collapsed into a heap from fear and shock. For all I know, she's still in her office, quivering in the corner. By now, I'd imagine she's been dead for at least a couple of months. Everyone else is.
There wasn't much commotion. No one knew what was going on. Most ended up in the large walk-in freezer, snacks saved for later, far better than the K-Rations sent along in the once-a-decade supply drops. I am alone here again, waiting to hear from the world, ready to return to it, to the people. To my prey.
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