I came around on a temporary bunk, looking around it was obvious I was in a makeshift infirmary room. Definitely not a real hospital. The humming strip lights gave that away. Were we near my home? I didn't even remember getting here. What had happened? My uniform was intact. No visible injuries and nothing feeling wrong. Had I been flying? Was there an accident?
"What was it you saw, brother?", my most trusted friend and advisor Vikim asked. His deep blue eyes lacked their usual friendly glimmer; replaced with a hard, professional look which was never a good sign. Something had happened. On my watch. And I'd missed it or couldn't remember?
"Tell us, brother! Where were you taken? What did you see?"
The rest of the group stirred and I could feel each new set of eyes settling on me with expectation.
Sitting upright I tried to tell them, "I... I'm not sure what happened. Not sure why I'm in an infirmary or how I got here. Not sure of a lot of things right now..."
Vikim spoke up immediately, "The test flight. You did it, Jul, you broke through the atmosphere!" His eyes brightened as he thought of the wonders that lie beyond our world, "You were in a stable orbit for nearly an hour when your ship vanished from all scanners, not even a trace of burned fuel or anything, it was like you had been scooped straight out of existence." Vikim's eyes hardened again, "We need to know what happened to you, Jul. Can you remember anything?"
As I sat there being debriefed on what had taken place I noticed small flickers of memories coming and going of what had happened. An eye? The colours yellow and blue? They felt like long ago childhood memories that you can't quite grasp and fully remember. Like memories locked inside your deep subconscious with little pieces bleeding through, just teasing the idea of a memory you know you have.
"I met someone, I think. Or something at least. I don't know, it's still all so hazy." I told everyone gathered around me while rubbing my eyes and temples to try and think clearer. "Whatever it was, I couldn't even see all of it. It's entire appearance was hidden from my view. This thing was massive. I don't know how I even got there, was it our drive? Or did that entity pull me to it?"
Just hearing myself ask those questions was enough to make me question my own sanity as I slowly started remembering and relaying to my friends and colleagues that yes, an alien life form of some kind had abducted me from our planet's first ever mission beyond the skies, snatched me out of my ship and left me suspended in zero gravity before its enormity.
"All I could see was one of its eyes - if it even had two like us or more, even, I cannot tell you. This thing was huge and enveloping. Part of it looked so like ours, so familiar, yet so alien and unknowable."
I looked each party member in the eye as they looked on and watched, captivated.
"I was floating before it in nothing but my atmosphere suit. I don't know how I exited the ship or where it is or if it's still in one piece. But this thing, its eye. It was like a lake of fire and water in one. I made out an iris made of brilliantly yellow plasma burning in a perfect circle, licking and overflowing into a pupil of such perfect black that words fail to do it justice. This wasn't just the colour black, it was a... void. Have you ever felt the nothingness of black? There was nothing in that void, even the colour black didn't exist, it was an endless void at the centre of a plasma eyeball that has seen things we can't even begin to comprehend the size and scope of."
I stopped briefly so everyone could really drink in what I was telling them. Vikim was spellbound and visibly restless at wanting - nay, needing - to know more.
"It stared endlessly, sometimes directly at me it seemed, but mostly its focus was far away over some cosmic horizon, surveying events that I - and all of you - are too infinitely small to fathom. While I was suspended there watching the waves of fiery plasma spiral out from and around the infinite pupil I knew it could see me, it was looking at me occasionally the same way you might notice some floating specks of dust or old cobweb. It didn't seem to move or do much until it blinked for the first time and as it re-opened the warm, sun-like yellow light had been usurped with a palette of light blues in what I can only describe as water and fire together in perfect coexistence as a single element. It lit the void between us and I could make out more of the eye's behemothic frame, dancing light and shadows marked out a socket housing the massive celestial eyeball but that was still all about that could be seen. Whether the being's skin was flesh or metal, whether it was hunter or prey in the cosmos or some kind of god I don't know."
I took a moment for the G-word to sink into the room. Long ago our world had had its religions, leaders and followers which all gradually became more hardline and more violently fanatical. Rights were stripped away. Wars were fought. Blood was shed. When the pros of religion were vastly outweighed by its drawbacks it was decreed that all and any beliefs of the sort are a deeply personal undertaking and should therefore not include anyone outside of yourself. God is taboo, and they may just have turned up to let us know how they feel about it. Everyone in that room was thinking it.
"Whatever it might be, I sensed it had seen something. In comparison, the yellow eye had been soft, soothing, and warm. The new blue was impersonal, cold and piercing as if the eye had gone from casually looking around at nothing to intensely focusing or intently searching for something."
The looks on my colleagues' faces mirrored my inner wonder and fear as I told them the last part of my encounter, "Before I could observe any more, the great eye blinked and changed colour again; this time throwing both previous colours together into a rippling ocean of green swaying and rolling like flames of grass that swelled up from around the pupil, covering the scattered missed spots of yellow and blue. It reminded me of a broken digital display, the iris acting as a behemothic green-hued screen complete with visual bugs and glitches. That is when I really asked myself is this being natural or mechanical? Maybe some weird mix of both? Like... "Naturally Technological" or something?" I asked, replete with air quotations.
"I'm just the experimental pilot here so please, anyone, feel free to say something? Anything?"
Nobody really offered any explanation so my story went on.
"One of the strangest things once it turned green was I felt like I was.. Here, like I was home. Why did each iris remind me so much of here; the yellow suns, the blue skies and waters, the green hills and grass? What has this entity seen that it can elicit a feeling of home in me floating out in the void of space? How long has it been around and watching us enough to know I could survive in my atmos suit without the ship? How in physics' name did I get back?"
Vikim stood up as my train of raw consciousness spewed out and interrupted me, "It's okay, Jul, we're gonna figure that shit out. You've got to be absolutely exhausted, brother, is there anything else you wanna tell us before we let you get some rest?"
Taking my time on deciding whether to tell them or not I finally built up the courage to relay the same message I received from the being.
"It said one thing to me. I don't know how it communicated. It didn't speak, or write anything. It wasn't quite telepathic as I'd imagine it to be. Just kind of felt like a vibration inside my gut and these words were repeating over and over again:
"You must return home and never leave.
We cannot let them find you.
I am the last guardian of life.
You are the last sentient life left.
We must hide."
