Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: There are many things out there in the Cosmos that humanity encounters, this week, two chance encounters. What can be said about this one, apart from its strange nature? Perhaps that, in the end, to the vast majority of living things in the universe humanity simply does not matter. They ignore us, and move on with their vast, strange lives.
The Russians invited us to watch with them. Watch what though? We had issues getting any information from them. Yaroslav, our contact, eventually showed us some pictures. Said that’s the best he can do because they have about as much of an idea as we do. They apparently found it wandering out there, and figured out, somehow, it’s coming this direction. That is to say, to Earth. The moment I laid eyes on those photos, I knew I needed to see it.
They took us a few kilometres north of Mount Narodnaya, to watch it enter our world and, hopefully, leave it soon after.
I think it was around 3AM when it started, It began twisting itself into this plane of existence, coming from some neighbouring version of Earth the Russians were exploring. I can’t really do much to explain its size. I can tell you that it was about a hundred and twenty meters tall. I could also tell you, you’d need to stack five blue whales fins-to-snout to match its height. But believe me, what you are picturing in your mind pales in comparison to the truth. And its height was the least imposing dimension of this creature.
Its arms, or maybe I should call them legs, looked familiarly human, but I could only barely fish out all the distinct element of human anatomy. It was as if the limbs were smashed and reassembled in a way where I could still see the similarity, and at the same time, what I saw made my hair stand on end. Each limb had between eleven and seventeen fingers, tiny and frail-looking compared to the arms they were attached to. That is at least the Mask we were experiencing. I knew the feeling well, there was more to it than my brain was willing to accept. And that was fine, its presence, as it was, already overwhelmed the senses.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing that prepares you to see something so colossal move. Much less move in this unearthly weightless way. We knew that this thing was composed of exotic materials, its density was only several times that of air. And that just added to the morbid elegance of how it moved.
But, one thing at a time. Its front arms appeared first, following by the shoulders (let’s call them that) twisting into view. They continued the distorted human similarity, except they weren’t holding any kind of head there — just a black hole. And believe me, we tried to shine light onto what was inside. And we couldn’t see anything anyway.
After the first pair of leg-arms, came another and another and another. I can’t tell you exactly how many, we couldn’t make heads or tails of our combined notes later on, there was a lot, more than a hundred, I can tell you that much with certainty. Sometimes a whole segment of the thing would fold into its body. Sometimes, elsewhere, another would suddenly sprout between sections. Each of them looked very much like a human torso, though nippleless (and for some reason, I’m really glad it didn’t have nipples) connected together, diaphragm to shoulders.
We spent hours looking at it move, hypnotised by the wave-like motion of its limbs pushing it along the ground. We watched its fingers feel the terrain before it, as it crawled forth, blind and cyclopean. Or at least that’s what we imagined it to be. Blind. It didn’t react to us, extending itself for kilometres before it reached a point where it began to twist and contort its way into the fractal aether.
The last segment didn’t differ much from the previous, though the limbs were directed more backwards, closing up the space where another section should have began. We watched it walk away into the distance, where the rest of its body dissipated back into the air, taking a turn from away from Earth.
Apparently, there wasn’t much to clean up after it. As titanic as it was, it threaded through our world like a ghost, a phantom that barely disturbs the snow it steps on.
I’d give my left arm to know what that thing was, where it was going and why.
Esoteric Musings... 