letters-from-the-sol

[letters-from-the-sol]

The Sol was born haunted.

A place typically needs a bit of history for true, bones-deep haunting to occur. But just as the layperson wouldn’t account for how difficult it would be for a honeybee to navigate in zero gravity, no one building the Sol thought to account for the revenants that roamed the halls before a human ever set foot on board.

Personally, I think they came in with the soil.

They never scared me, not really. It was almost comforting, even as they unnerved me. That was in the early days— before Katerina.

Katerina was a real person, you know that? Flesh and blood— I saw her, a few times. Touched her hand as she handed me a set of keys. But from the beginning, there was always something wrong with her. Subtle things— doors opened before she got there. Lights turned off and on behind her without her touching a switch. And the whispering— she didn’t think we heard, I suppose. Or maybe that’s what she wanted us to think. But when a revenant whispered, she whispered back.

It would be wrong of me to say that I wanted what came to her. Not just because of what happened after— the betrayal, the cold, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But in a way, I understood. We were desperate and afraid— we wanted something, anything to change.

I think I blame Julia for where we are now. Lovesick or power hungry, she adored Katerina— stuck to her side, night and day. You might see Katerina on her own, but never Julia. She’s the one who got the body. I’ve never seen someone suit up so quickly, and she was out of the airlock before anyone could think to stop her. She brought Katerina back onboard, barely even human-shaped.

Like I said, I think revenants are material— they live in the earth. And that thing cursed us all.

I never went to the meetings before it happened. More out of apathy than anything else— I was busy, and I was never that interested in politics. That might have been the thing that saved my life.

The woman who did it went first— Ari, she was called. I’ll give Katerina credit, she was precise. In those first few weeks, she wanted to spare innocents, I think. She waited, watching, until Ari was alone.

The fire protections comforted me until then. I was told how safe they were, how it was virtually impossible for a fire to spread across the ship. Removing all the air from a space and cooling it to its maximum is an amazingly effective method— and as it turns out, it doesn’t need a detectable fire to trip.

From there, people started walking in pairs. Those like me— the apathetic ones, who were quietly on Ari’s side, paired themselves up with instigators. And it worked, for a while. Katerina was nothing if not fair. But eventually, her hatred got the better of her— Enzo and Rosie were the first to be killed in tandem. And god, Enzo— it was his death that really shook us. Of everyone, he was the closest to being on Katerina’s side. He was naive, sure— always suggesting that maybe we could just talk it out, as if we hadn’t passed that point long ago. If she was willing to kill Enzo, no one was safe.

After that, I’m not sure what happened. I had always been the type to keep to myself, not get involved. A few people tried to appease her— dragging instigators into sealed rooms and locking them in until the fire alarms stopped. A few instigators sacrificed themselves, in hopes that their partners would be spared. Others tried to overload the system— throw a homemade explosive into a room and shut the door. No one is quite sure when it stopped. Most will say that it never did— even today, someone mangled in a machine or crushed by a heavy door will have their picture placed by Katerina’s airlock. But the machine deaths aren’t the ones that get to me. We had those before Katerina, and I’m sure we’ll have them long after her name is forgotten. Every few years, in the dead of night, I’ll hear an airlock alarm— and the next day, there’s a body in the morgue that looks just like Katerina did.

notes: interesting to note that there was a period of time where there was doubt as to the realness of Katerina. Perhaps check with non-Acolytes to see if current perceptions match my assumptions. Some scholars believe that the groups who attempted to overload the system eventually evolved into Society of the Light. As this is part of the Solar dark age, it’s hard to place an exact date on it, but seems likely. Also interesting to note the lack of Sol as a distinct entity— it could perhaps be an unnamed revenant, or it could have evolved later alongside the folkloric development of Katerina.

[letters-from-the-sol]

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