The Fall of Man

An advanced quantum computer has outlined a parallel dimension in our universe. A vague, clear outline of this dimension is displayed with quantum data, but it is impossible to tell what lies in it. A team of scientists and space engineers who've successfully tested warp speed in space have found a strong worm hole of sorts within Saturn's orbit that they theorize is a gateway to this dimension. 
Realizing that death is a high risk of traveling through this worm hole, expert spacecraft pilot Youngkin Bradly put his life on the line in the hopes that humanity will finally access a universe beyond our own. Bradly traveled by himself in a small space shuttle toward the worm hole, where he successfully pulled off a warp speed maneuver though it. However, the crew of the S.S. Star Searcher immediately lost contact with him. Several days later, his ship was picked up on radar aimlessly traveling through Saturn's orbit. The crew of the Star Searcher were able to bring Bradly's space vehicle aboard, where his body was found laying unconscious inside.
Douglas D. Roger, head of engineering on the large spacecraft known as the S.S. Star Searcher, is walking down the hall with Dr. Mantine. They're heading to the local emergency room aboard the ship. "It's not looking good, Roger." Mantine says while quickly flipping through some of his notes. Roger can tell the look on Mantine's face is a look of worry. "What are his injuries?" Roger asks. "That's the thing. We were in the room with him for several minutes and we still don't know." Dr. Mantine opens the door where Bradly is placed under intensive care and the two men step in. The room is dark, with small yellow lights hanging from sockets within the walls. A sense of dread hits Roger as he stares down the unconscious body of Bradly, laying flat on his back. Dr. Mantine takes note of this, making himself even more nervous.
The two men approach the operating table. "Where are his eyes?" Roger asks. "They're still there. But we don't know how they got like that." Roger orbits around Bradly. He notices that Bradly's skin has a dark red tint to it and he's sweating profusely. He leans in a bit to get a closer look at his eyes. "Just what the hell happened to this poor man?" Roger wondered aloud. "It seems like he stapled his eyes shut with the metal stapler tool in his ship. This was no accident, it appears very deliberate." Mantine says. Roger leans away and shakes his head. "What would drive a man to do that?" "We're still not sure. Could be the side effects of out bodies literally going through another dimension. It is my hypothesis that the human brain can't handle such a feet, so it drove him to perform an inane act of self harm like that." 
Roger glances at the table and sees a photo of Bradly's red back, which has a scar in the shape of a hexagon on it. He takes a step back and turns his head back at Bradly and really takes in what he's seeing. A man traveling through an unknown dimension and this is the effects of it is a rather unsettling thought for him. "We're about to hook him up to the computer and see what his level of conscious is." Mantine states. But Roger is too deep in thought trying to wrap his head around what happened to Bradly to really listen. "I'm... gonna go grab a water." Roger says before exiting the room.
Roger sits in a small chair in the break room, drinking from a water bottle. "Do they know how he's doing?" Lisa, a scientist on the Star Searcher asks. "They're hooking him to the computer right now. But from what I seen he's not doing great. His skin is red and his eyes... He stapled his eyes shut for some reason. That's what really gets me." The dread and worried aura that surrounds Roger made its way to Lisa as well. She sets down her cup of coffee and heads to the operation room without saying anything. Roger gets up and followed her from behind. 
Upon entering the room they are greeted by Bradly's body violently convulsing. Mantine and another engineer are sitting at a desk monitoring Bradly's brain activity on the monitor screen. "What the hell is he doing?!" Roger asks. "I-I don't know! He just started having these violent convolutions shortly after running the test!" Mantine shouts. Lisa glances at the computer screen. Normally, a slow binary system of numbers should be describing Bradly's brain activity, but the numbers were traveling fast an an alarming rate and displaying as all sixes, with the lines off center and disorganized. "No human brain should be able output such readings!" Mantine exclaimed over the sound of Bradly's convulsions.
Suddenly, the computer crashes and the monitor forms a wide crack across the screen. Dr. Mantine jumps back and away from the desk. He stands right by Roger and Lisa, who are just as horrified as he is. Bradly's violent convulsions have slowed down but he iw still jolting around. "Unhook him! Unhook him!" Mantine demands. The engineer rushes to Bradly and removes the shockers applied to his chest. Bradly starts coughing and making loud groaning sounds. "Bradly! What's wrong Bradly?!" Mantine asks. "Mantine, i-is th-that you?" Bradly chokes out while still coughing. "Yes, it's me! You're back in the Star Searcher. You're safe with us!" Bradly began inhaling and exhaling very loudly. Roger and Lisa look at each other. The look on their faces said it all. 
"They're still here... I can feel them!" Bradly whimpers. "No, no! It's just us, Bradly! Here let us remove the staples from your ey--" "NO! DON'T YOU DARE!" Dr. Mantine quickly moves his hand away from Bradly's face. Roger looks at Lisa then steps up closer toward Bradly. "Brad, it's me Roger. What the hell happened to you? How did you get your eyes stapled?" "I saw them, I had to do it! I... I coul- couldn't bear it!" Roger's throat tensed up and he quickly turned his head to stare at Dr. Mantine, who's mouth was slightly agape. Roger could see the fear. He could see it in his eyes. "Tell us what you saw!" Dr. Mantine demanded. "No, no, cough NO!" Bradly's coughing became more aggressive and he started gagging. "Ge- Get.. it... out of me!" Bradly then proceed to projectile vomit a dark red substance all over himself. Dr. Mantine wiped some of it off from him white jacket. 
Incubate this man!" Dr. Mantine cried. Lisa rushed to the syringe stand and pulled out a syringe filled with anesthesia and handed it to Dr. Mantine. He jabbed Bradly in the shoulder with it and within seconds his coughing fit seized and he slumped over unconscious. The Star Searcher crew rolled Bradly into the neighboring room where an X-ray scan was taken of his body. Roger gritted his teeth and began chewing on his nails waiting for the results. Dr. Mantine stepped out of the X-ray room and stared at Roger for a second before speaking. "You need to come see this." Roger quickly rushed into the room. "Look at this. Look at it." 
Dr. Mantine handed Roger the first X-ray photo. It was of Brain's brain. "What the hell is that? That thing is the size of a pear!" Roger exclaimed. "That's the pineal gland. It seems like whatever environment this dimension is made of caused the gland to swell up dramatically. This could be why he went crazy and stapled his eyes shut. The swelling of the gland pressed on parts of his brain that induced intense hallucinations." Feeling like this was a logical explanation, Roger almost felt a sigh of relief upon hearing this. Until Lisa walked in. "So how's it looking?" "His pineal gland is greatly swollen. This poor man... I would go crazy too with a baseball lodged within my brain." Dr. Mantine said. Lisa's look of curiosity faded and morphed into one of extreme worry. "You're joking, right? His pineal gland is enlarged?" "Yes my dear. We'll try inducing him in a coma and try to get the swelling to slow down." Lisa paused. "You know what they say about the pineal gland... Right?" Roger bit his lip and raised his head up to signal he wants to know more. 
"It's been speculated for centuries that the pineal gland is greatly connected to spirituality. It's said to be capable of transcending our conscious reality to one far greater than ours." "Oh, please!" Dr. Mantine scoffed, "You really believe in that nonsense? The pineal gland is likely where hallucinations like sleep paralysis are produced. It's scientific." "What if they're right, doctor? What if when we suffer from sleep paralysis we're actually seeing beings from another plane of reality? I mean think about it... The pineal gland also plays a role in sleeping. And what if Bradly's enlarged pineal gland caused him to see terrible entities he shouldn't have seen?" "Yes. But they're hallucinations. It's all in his head. Now let's move on from this and look at this second scan, which I haven't seen for myself yet."
Dr. Mantine shuffled the pineal scan to the back of the second scan and raised the second scan up to his face. He blinked several times and brought it even closer to his face. "I... don't... believe this." Dr. Mantine said with his eyes widened. Roger and Lisa stared intently at Mantine. "Well doc, what is it?" Roger asked with his heart pounding. Dr. Mantine turned the scan around to face Roger and Lisa, which caused Lisa to audibly gasp. The scan revealed there were two seeds within Bradly's lungs with several root stems forming out of them. "That's why he said 'get it out of me'..." Roger realized. "That can't be possible! Di-did Bradly bring seeds with him aboard or something?" "Even if he did, this shouldn't be humanly possible." Dr. Mantine stressed. Suddenly, Bradly sprang his upper body up and spoke, "He's coming. Don't Listen to him. Don't eat it. This is your God speaking." before laying back down unconscious. The three crew members' faces turned pale as a ghost. The three of them ran out of the room and shut the door from behind.
"What's wrong?" a technician on the Star Searcher walking down the hall asked. "Don't go in there, Chase!" Dr. Mantine demanded. "What, what's wrong with Bradly?" Chase asked. Dr. Mantine paused. "He's been somewhere no man should ever go." As Roger's mind is racing trying to make sense of what just happened, he gets a call from the commander from his walkie-talkie. "Hey Rog, we're getting some kind of radio interference coming from Bradly's ship. You need to check it out because whatever it is it's causing problems up here in the control room." Roger paused for a moment, his heart still pounding in his chest. 
"Roger that sir." Lisa looked at Roger with her eyebrows raised up like slopes. "Don't do it. There's something terrible happening and I don't feel safe." "I'm sorry Lisa but I got to check it out." Roger said before walking off to the ship containment area. This part of the spacecraft is built like a warehouse and houses several small space shuttle vehicles. It was dark in the room, but the natural light with a blue tint subtly poured into the room from the large dome on top revealing the stary solar system. Roger strapped a small headlamp to his head and slowly approached Bradly's ship. Knowing what Bradly experience in that's hit, Roger's skin crawled with each and every step. He took a sigh of breathe before opening the pod door.
There were only two small windows on the shuttle, so the natural light inside the ship was even darker. Roger scurried his way to the ship's control panel, stepping over wires and other tools laying on the ground. Knowing where this shuttle has been, Roger wants to get this done as fast as possible. He could hear the radio system making a high-pitched buzzing sound the closer he got. Roger sat in the pilot's seat and placed his hand on the knob receiver to adjust the signal frequency. He stared at the medium-sized LCD screen on the panel as he did this, which displayed a crude map of the solar system that showed where outer radio transmissions were located. 
The interference was coming from the coast of Saturn's north pole. The sound was a terrible, high-pitched scream with a long ghostly moan behind it. While unsettling, this is the natural sound that Saturn emits from it's ring. A planet causing a radio interference isn't uncommon, so Roger passed it off as that. But as he kept turning the knob, a strange static interfered. He looked at the map screen and saw the radio transmission signal was jumping across the solar system. "What in the...?" Roger uttered to himself. He had never seen anything like this in all of his years of traveling through outer space.
A voice was coming in through the static. Whoever is sending this transmission is not present in the current state of time within the solar system. Roger kept turning the knob until he could finally make out what the voice was saying. "To the receiver from two.. one.. three.. six.... burn.. the.. tr.. bu... burn.. the... tree.. gen..e.sis.. one.. two,, seven.." After that the transmission turned to static and the map showed sounds from Saturn were being received again. Roger tried turning the knob some more to see if anything else would happen, but map screen became distorted and the monitor above the map screen flashed white. A broadcast of Saturn's north pole, the hexagon, appeared on screen. 
The storm clouds within the hexagon were rotating like a hurricane eye and it's colors were slowing turning from purple and red to an ominous yellow and white. Roger quickly exited Bradly's ship and darted out of the ship room. When he made it back to the main hallway, all the lights were shut off. "Captain, did the ship lose power? Captain, do you read?!" Roger tried asking through his walkie-talkie, but it was no use. No one could receive his transmission. "Hello, is anyone there?!" Roger exclaimed while speed walking down the hall. He peered into the rooms as he walked and saw not a soul in them. He made a sharp left turn to the next hallway... the one had Bradly's room on the sixth door to the right side.
"Lisa? Mantine?" Roger asked in a frantic hurry down the hall, with the only source of light being from his small head lamp. Slouched on the floor with his back pressed against the wall a few doors down on the left side was Dr. Mantine. "Mantine, what happened?!" Roger demanded while lowering down and grabbing Mantine's search. But the doctor didn't respond. He was still breathing, quite heavy too. But he appeared to be in some kind of trance-like state. He didn't blink, even with Roger's light shining directly into his eyes. Roger raised himself up and slowly crept toward the X-ray room. His heart jumped higher in his throat more and more with each step closer he took. "Oh my gosh!" Roger gasped as he saw a red snake slither out of the X-ray room, leaving a trail of blood behind it.
Full of dreadful fear and adrenaline, Roger pushed the door open. He saw Bradly soaked in blood with tree limbs and roots grown out of his mouth and eye sockets. He looked toward the ceiling and saw leaves that were dripping with blood. A dark figure was looming right next to Bradly. Roger turned his head toward the figure. It was Lisa... holding a half-bitten apple.
Roger had just witnessed the next fall of man. 
Category:Space
Category:Apocalyptic
Category:Body Horror