The Apollo Inventus

I hope to God, that this is the right thing to do. This is what he told us to do. This is the precaution he told us to take. That’s what I’ll tell myself to help me sleep at night.

***

The following is the main body of the transcription of the Apollo Inventus flightcrew personal communications as recorded on the Personal Data Storage Device (PDSD). Collected tapes containing voice recorded ground elapsed time (GET) were forwarded to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas after retrieval. Transcription of these tapes was managed by my peers at Test Division, New Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.

The Apollo Inventus mission was flown December 17, 2009 and its status is still currently under evaluation [June 17, 2014].

Communicators in the text are identified as follows:

CDR Commander Padraig F. Dennison

00 00 00 24

“You lied to me. You’ve been lying to us all. You sent me up here thinking you knew what it was. You sent me here as your goddamned guinea pig. You knew I’d die up here, but I won’t; I can’t. It’ll never let me die. It told me that. It told me everything. It told me what you know about it, and what you think it is. You were so wrong. You’ve sent me to hell without realizing, and it’ll keep me here forever; for eternity. I’m a prisoner, like you. This is happening because we broke the rules; the ancient rules set out by its ancestors. The rules are just for us, and we’re not supposed to understand them. We’re meant to obey them; we’re meant to die by them. It wants to contain our cancer, before we spread it. It knows what happens. It wants me to tell you, so you never try anything like this again. This isn’t what we’re supposed to do. This isn’t for us, it never will be. It’s important you understand that you can never come back here again. It’s important that you understand why that is.”

00 00 01 32

“I first became aware of extreme disorder about 4 hours after touching down at Autumn Base, and it was about 12:50 am on the monitor when the first incident started to occur. I spent the first 3 hours after touching down trying to re-establish communications with Houston, but it is my guess now that I was just being ignored. I was preparing tools and finishing the final calibrations and I had just put my suit and helmet on. I was about to leave the Inventus to conduct the geological tests outlined in my brief when I noticed that outside the craft, through the port hole on the exit latch, there was a dense layer of dust, hovering in a kind of stasis off the ground. This was at about 12:52 am. It was like a sandstorm, except everything was still. Then everything got dark, like a thick fog had rolled in, and then the tremors started. It was like the ground had a pulse and it rattled the shuttle violently, at intervals, maybe 2 seconds in between. There was a noise, too. It was like something was resonating through me from the ground, a kind of low humming noise, and it got louder and louder until it was like it was coming from inside my own skull. And then I saw him.”

00 00 02 15

“I watched his head come into view in the porthole gradually, as he climbed the last few steps on the ladder up to the hatch, and then he just watched me. I watched him back through the window; hoping to God It was some sort of hallucination. I tried to see his face, but I couldn’t see into his helmet through his dark visor and the mist. Then he brought a rock over his head, and began beating the porthole window with it. Between that and the tremors, I didn’t know what to do. What could I have done? They don’t prepare you for that kind of stuff in training. The first thing I did do was try to wake myself up, but obviously I wasn’t dreaming. I was terrified the tremors or the astronaut would cause some sort of irreversible damage to the shuttle, so I tried to take off; I tried to abandon my mission; I tried to get out of there. When I went to set up for lift off I noticed the banging on the window stop. When I turned to see what was happening at that point, there was a sudden, stronger, deeper movement in the ground. And then everything went black.”

00 00 03 12

“I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out for, but my oxygen gauge was telling me I’d used about 70% of my reserve; I don’t remember exactly how much. I woke up outside the shuttle, on the Moon’s surface, about 50 meters away from where I’d landed. That was my first time ever stepping foot on the Moon. I had no idea what was happening. I still didn’t know at that point whether I was hallucinating, or whether I was imagining things, or I don’t know what. The tremors had stopped and it seemed the dust and rocks had settled back on the surface while I was unconscious. The mist was gone too, and that humming noise. It was as if nothing had happened; just dead silence. I spotted the Inventus in the distance and started making my way towards it. Then as I got closer, I noticed a strange rock between myself and it. It was paler than the rest and longer too. Looking at it, it was noticeably distinctive from everything else; lying kind of skew-ways and lumpy. Then I saw it wasn’t a rock at all. It was the man, the astronaut from before. I stopped and watched. I tried to get a grasp on reality. I figured it couldn’t be real; what I was experiencing, but he stayed lying right there, motionless. And then he started to get up. He got up slowly, stopping on all-fours for a while, before getting completely to his feet. Then he started on his way back to the shuttle.”

00 00 04 18

“I kept about a 10 meter distance from him up to the ladder. When he got to it he started doing what I was hoping he wouldn’t do. He climbed it, halfway, and reached to the entrance latch. Then he got back down and lifted another rock. That’s when It happened the second time. The dust and rocks rose off the surface for as far as I could see. The deep pulse in the ground started beating again and that thick, dark fog just kind of materialized. I could barely see 5 meters in front of me. And that sound too, but it wasn’t really a sound. It couldn’t have been a sound. It was as if it was originating inside me; like it was vibrating through me. I could feel the hum in every inch of my body, and it got gradually louder. The astronaut seemed as concerned as I was. He got back up the ladder and started trying to break through the porthole again. My fear of being stranded out here gravely outweighed the fear of the astronaut, so I went after him.”

00 00 04 45

“When I got to the bottom of the Inventus’ ladder I reached up and wrapped my arms around the man’s suit, and with my body weight I dragged him off the and onto the ground. In a kind of desperate attempt, he swung at me with his rock hand. It struck my elbow that I had raised to it and I took that as my opportunity. I managed to prise the rock from his grip – I remember it being pretty weak – and then he stumbled back and took a moment to what looked to me like he was trying to catch his breath. He just stood there silently, kind of leaning forward a bit. That didn’t tell me much at the time. I stood there for a second too, as the adrenaline peaked, just looking at him in confusion, and fear. I was trying to see into his helmet, to see who he was… or what he was. Then he started coming towards me again, slowly, but intently. I put my boot out and planted it into the stomach of his suit, just to keep him back, but his legs folded and he landed face down in the dust. I watched to see if he was going to get back up, but he didn’t. Then my gauge pinged again. I had very little oxygen left in my tank at that point. I had to get inside the shuttle; I knew it was my only hope of getting out of that mess, whatever grossly underestimated mess I thought I was in at the time. I turned and put my boot on the first step of the ladder. I could see the man behind me in the reflection of the Inventus. I turned around to look at him one more time, before I climbed the ladder to the hatch; I don’t know why. He was sitting upright, his arms limp at his sides, staring at me through his dark visor, but there was something different about him that time. Then the ground gave that same, sudden grinding movement… of monumental proportion, and everything went black again.”

00 00 06 01

“I woke again on the ground outside the shuttle. My eyes burned and my ears were ringing. I had to fight with all my strength to not vomit inside my own helmet; I felt like I’d been brought back from the dead. I lay there until I could think straight, and then I noticed my gauge had been pinging while I was unconscious. I saw that my oxygen levels were critical. That was when panic started to really set in. I got up slowly so I wouldn’t pass out and spotted the shuttle about 30 meters away. I was so desperate to get back in there. I was desperate for oxygen… and to get away from this place. It was obvious something unprecedented was happening, even though I didn’t know what exactly. I had to get back before the tremors started again, and the fog, and the blackouts. I knew I was in a terrible situation, but I had no idea how bad it really was; how bad it was for all of us. I got to the shuttle eventually. There were moments I thought I would pass out, but I managed to get there. It was getting harder and harder to draw breaths and my head was getting hot. I climbed the ladder halfway and checked the entrance latch. It was locked. ‘The man’, I thought; ‘The man was using a rock, that’s the only way to get in’. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was desperate. I had my mind on the oxygen reserves inside; I had my mind on my family, on home.”

00 00 07 05

“This was meant to be a textbook mission. I mean… I was meant to come home! When I asked why it wasn’t going to be public, you told me it was for security reasons, and other reasons that weren’t relevant to me. I trusted you; why shouldn’t I have? I put my faith in all of you. I knew it was important, I understood that I was doing something that others couldn’t know about, but you kept so much from me. I put my life in your hands and you threw it away like it was nothing, and for what? You manipulated me. You threw me to the wolves. I wanted a story to tell, but not like this. I want to go home. This can’t happen to me… why did you let this happen to me?” [Sobbing and uncomprehend-able muttering from Captain Padraig F. Dennison until 00 00 14 19]

00 00 14 30

“After remembering the astronaut while standing at the locked hatch, I remember getting dizzy. I got off the ladder and found the easiest rock to carry, like I had seen him do, and then everything lifted off the ground again.”

00 00 14 42

“The rocks and dirt just hung there motionless like before. The fog materialized and everything got dark… and hazy. The hum started vibrating through me, louder and louder, and the surface started to pulse; that same primal series of beating coming from deep inside its core. The thought did cross my mind at the time, that it was as if it was alive. I got back onto the ladder, trying my best to hold on; the tremors were rocking the shuttle intensely now. Then I got to the top. I got to the hatch and looked through the porthole, and I saw myself. Not like a reflection, like a man inside the shuttle, only it was me. He stood there in his suit and helmet and just returned the stare. I saw the oxygen tanks on the racks to his left, and the screen that read 12:53 am to his right. I could see what was happening now; it had happened already before. I was not able to breathe at that point, and the pinging from my gauge was deafening. My tanks were empty. I held my last breath and with the rock I started hitting the window. I was trying to break it; there’s an emergency release on the other side, but then something grabbed hold of me around my waist. It was the same man as before. It was me. He pulled us off the ladder, away from the latch; away from the oxygen, and onto the ground. My chest burned, I couldn’t hold it any longer. I swung at him with the rock but he easily blocked it. Then he took it from me. I felt the blood rush from my head. My eyes leaked tears into the helmet and my vision spun. I stumbled forwards and felt him kick the last breath out of my lungs.”

00 00 15 56

“I lay there flat on my stomach, in agony. My eyes felt like they were going to pop, and my chest was clenching up so hard I thought it would burst. I felt its pulse rattle my helmet at 2 or 3 second intervals. The humming noise got louder and louder until I felt like it was shivering against my soul. My vision faded and I felt my life stutter. I felt it leak out of the cracks in my broken spirit. I felt it with every convulsion, and then it spoke to me.”

00 00 16 22

“It spoke to me without words, but I understood. It was instantaneous, like a flash, but less than that. All at once it told me. It flooded me with its knowledge, its evil, and it was terrifying. It’s not a God, but it is a creator. It’s a creator AND a destroyer; a manipulator. It’s an observer, an instigator. It’s our mother and our father, but it’s not our friend. Its nature is insidious. You lied to me. You’ve been lying to us all. There’s no flag up here. There are no footsteps, or milestones; I was the first. We have no history up here, we have no right to. You had no right to come here at all. It wanted to show me, so I could tell you. It wants to send a message. There are rules that you don’t understand. Rules that are beyond what we will ever be capable of understanding. But you need to know they’re there. The Earth is our prison; a cage. IT is our warden. That’s why it floats up here, watching us. You weren’t meant to leave. You’re never meant to leave! This is our punishment, and has been since germs turned to fish. You knew it was alive. You were trying to contact it. You fools. You sent me here to poke it, to see if it was awake. You thought maybe it could help us; it will help you die alone on your miserable blue sphere, away from the rest of the universe.”

00 00 17 52

“You’ll come back for my tapes, you’ll want them. It wants you to have them. A group of you will go public with them shortly after the investigation, and leak it all. This will trigger a series of events that will lead to the end of man. It will decide to speed up this process when it begins, and then it will take all of you as well, to where I’m going shortly. I hope we do burn together some day. It knows everything from now until the end, and now I do too. You need to destroy these tapes, discredit the transcripts. Do this by any means necessary before they can be leaked to the public. Make it so that nobody will ever believe their authenticity; it’s the only way. Then you need to leave this place alone. It will keep me forever, as a reminder to you. I don’t need food or air anymore; I’ll never die. It did this to me; YOU did this to me. There’s nothing for you here anymore. This place has a deep, dark evil living inside of it. It’s alive; it’s conscious. Please, never come back. Never leave Earth again.”

00 00 18 54

“At this present moment I’m just lying here recording this message, waiting for it to send me away. It brought me back from the edge just as I was about to die. It filled my lungs with air, and I almost choked on it, like I’d forgotten what it was. Soon I won’t need it anymore; I know that it’s only temporary. My eyesight and hearing came back almost immediately. Its pulse deep inside the core still rattled my helmet, and the hum still resonated inside my skull. I sat up slowly, through the floating layer of dust and saw the Inventus and the man on the ladder. I knew exactly how it would happen; it had happened already before. He climbed the last two steps and turned back to look at me through the layer of floating debris. Then the ground tensed and heaved, and they were gone.”

Notes:

Recording stays active after the speaker has finished until 00 00 27 53 before being manually terminated by the speaker. The sound recorded during this period mainly consists of the speakers breathing and sobbing. A snippet of an adult male’s voice can be heard just before the recordings termination. The location of Captain Padraig F. Dennison by his own account during the period of time which he records these messages would have made it impossible for noise outside of his space suit to be picked up by his Personal Data Storage Device (PDSD). The voice heard in that snippet has been confirmed to not belong to Captain Padraig F. Dennison.

It should also be noted that during the retrieval mission conducted by the Apollo Memory, no trace of the Apollo Inventus shuttle was found at Autumn Base in relation to where Captain Padraig F. Dennison’s suit was found and where he claimed to be speaking from in the recordings. Captain Padraig F. Dennison’s space suit was found in close proximity to Autumn Base and the tapes were collected from there. Captain Padraig F. Dennison’s body, however, was missing from the suit and was never located by the flightcrew of Apollo Memory. The crew reported that Captain Padraig F. Dennison’s space suit was completely intact on inspection, but that the lunar surface area where it was found on appeared to have suffered extensive burn damage in a 3 meter radius from an unidentified source.

***

I am still gravely unsure as to whether or not I am leaking this, or discrediting it. What I am certain of however, is that regardless of whether or not it comes for us, I will burn with Padraig F. Dennison someday for what I’ve done to him, along with everyone else directly involved in the Apollo Inventus mission. I feel that I may be joining him a lot sooner than I had previously anticipated.

Forgive me please, if I’ve damned us all. Forgive me, Padraig F. Dennison.

Credit To – Coffeey