My Grandmother Worked for NASA for forty years

## There are terrors beyond our world.

Man has been on this Earth millions of years, exploring the planet, building civilizations, killing and creating in an endless cycle. Man first went into space starting almost eighty years ago. Think about it, we spend all this time getting around our own planet, arguing over the smallest bits of land, but when we finally set our mind to space travel it only took us a few decades to get where we wanted to go.

I'm proud to say my grandmother was one of those that helped us to get there. She started out back in 1959, fresh out of college, as an intern for NASA. The space race was already going strong, the US vs. the Soviets, and she managed to get in right in the middle. Gram stayed there for forty more years, only retiring right before Y2K.

She's up there in years now, and I wanted to try to do something to preserve the memories she had of that time, so I began to collect her stories. We started out with the basics, talking about how she joined, what she did, the history surrounding everything when she was there... all the things you learn in a high school history class.

When we started discussing the missions she worked on though, that's when I realized that there was a lot of history missing. Locked up, never to be heard or read by anyone, nor should it. There's a reason space exploration has slowed down. There are missions that were made off the books and off record, launched from secret blacksites around the world. Gram both saw and heard terrors beyond our comprehension from the dark void of space.

She shared these stories with me, these secrets kept from us by those in power. The human price of our curiosity is much higher than we're led to believe, and these people deserve to have their stories known.

I'm enclosing one of her stories here. She can get a bit long winded, as some do in their old age, so I've tried to edit down anything that isn't relevant. I'm still going through everything with her as well. With her age she can't stay focused for very long, so we're doing these little interviews in hour sessions every day. I'll transcribe and upload what I can when I can.

*What follows is the transcript of what Gram told me on April 4, 2020. Any interjections of my own will be formatted with brackets around them.*

My name is Evalyn Lara Smart. I was a mission control contact with NASA from 1959 to 1999. I was the one that any astronauts or crew would speak to, the voice on the ground. I relayed this information back to whoever needed it in flight control, navigation, engineering and such.

I didn't set out to work there, it sort of just fell into my lap. I had worked as a switchboard operator, mostly taking emergency calls for the local departments. NASA was doing some recruiting and one of my supervisors recommended me. Then before I knew it, there I was, sitting in the big mission control room, watching the big screen with the video feed, and talking to our very own spacemen.

[Here she goes into a tangent about how lovely Armstrong and Aldrin are, with many mentions about Christmas cards from the latter.]

So, one of the first missions I was there for was the first picture of Earth from orbit. Obviously being in communication I wasn't really necessary, but we all crowded into the control room to see the picture as soon as it was transmitted. Granted, it was the late fifties so we were waiting for quite a while.

We expected cheers when it came through finally. It started that way, at least, then everything quickly died down. There was the Earth, the huge curve with a beautiful crown of light from the sun shining around it. We captured something else too, though. Something that I fear I'll see again one day.

Behind the Earth, off in the distance, was something... giant. It wasn't completely clear, but what you could make out was a clearly defined torso, arms outstretched with wicked spines jutting from the outside. Large red eyes blazed against the dark void behind the figure, with a gaping maw underneath opened in a terrifying roar.

The scale of this thing was huge. No way it couldn't be seen from a normal telescope here on Earth. We aimed our most powerful scope at the coordinates we estimated it to be at and swept the sky, but couldn't see it anywhere. Took another picture from the satellite and it was gone. As if it had never been there.

To this day we don't know what the hell it was. We check for it in every photo we take, every sweep of the sky, and it's only shown up two more times since then. Once in 1979, and once in 1999. I don't know many people in the agency now, so god knows if it's been there again. Every time it showed up though, it appeared larger.

[Here she goes on about a few other notable advances in tech. Most irrelevant to what we are discussing now.]

What a lot of people don't realize is that there were manned space flights before the ones on the history books. Sure, there's always been the theories about "lost cosmonauts" and such from the Soviets, and there are definitely true cases of that, but we had our share as well.

There was an initial manned space flight in 1960, the *Daedalus*.

[She noticed the look of shock on my face, apparently, and laughed}

Never read about that one, eh? It was kept tightly under wraps. We didn't want anyone to know about it until we had them back on the ground successfully, otherwise it may kill morale around the office. No, we kept a small crew, launched the rocket off from an isolated area of Alaska. We did a lot of launches from there, kept the Reds on their toes back in the day.

Anyway, this was a three man crew. There was Bill Zask, James Hanlon, and Terry Duncan. Those three were a tight crew. They were supposed to go up, orbit for twelve hours, then come back down. We would pass it off as a comet if anyone saw, but never got that chance.

Things went south fast. They took off, all was fine until they hit the upper atmosphere. They tried to ease back on the jets, make sure they made it into orbit and didn’t overshoot. Everything went to hell. Jets wouldn’t cut off. We don’t know what caused the malfunction. I heard them, shouting... trying to fix the issue. It didn’t happen. They flew straight through, getting just enough adjustment from the orbital pull to be shot off course and toward the direction of the sun.

[She lets out a sigh here, shaking her head.]

Jets continued firing, taking them even further out. We maintained radio contact with them for twenty hours after takeoff. I spoke with them as fuel ran out, they began drifting into the void, no hope of turning. Never to feel solid ground again.

To this day I don’t know if it was something they really saw or the insanity getting to them as they died and faced their mortality. James was the first to begin raving. Telling us about the bodies floating by the cockpit windows. I tried to clarify what he meant, assuming celestial bodies. I’ll never forget the response from Bill.

“No, Evalyn.” He said to me, “Human bodies. Dozens of them.”

They described the field of bodies. Male and female, old and young. All naked as the day they were born. Bill swore that one smiled at him as he went by. We didn’t have live feed cameras at the time, unfortunately, so we weren’t able to confirm. The way they described it though... I have no doubt they were seeing all of this.

A lot of the transmissions got lost in static. Limits of the tech at the time. The last broadcast we received was Bill. He was raving, still talking about the bodies. Said they were talking to him now. Telling him he could live forever with them. He said he was going to open the emergency hatch. Maybe it was my emotions getting the better of me. Right before he opened it and the static took over, I swear there was another voice.

[She drifts off and stares out of the window next to her. The sun went down an hour ago. Stars were plainly visible, shining in the inky darkness. I asked what the voice said.]

It’s ingrained in my head. I can hear it clear as that moment sixty years ago.

“Come. Be with us. Become as stars and drift immortal.”

[[Gram is tired, says she’s going to bed.]]

## There are monsters on the moon.

Gram is in one hell of a mood today. Not sure if she's just feeling better than usual or something has got her riled up. Either way, she's letting her feelings be known. That's just a forewarning before we get into this transcription. There are things about her in here that I personally NEVER wanted to hear.

No, really. She can tell me how she saw eldritch beings in the vastness of space and none of that is as terrifying as her talking about hooking up with astronauts in the training areas. Ugh. Here's the transcription. I'm going to go chug bleach.

[Conversation from April 5, 2020. Again, this is being told by Gram and translated by me. My own interjections are in these brackets.]

Ah, you want to hear more? Alright, guess it's time to turn this bullshit off. Live through the damn missile crisis and I'm going to get taken out because nobody is competent enough to stay in their damn houses.

[Gram has been cursing like a sailor all day. She only does this when she's either very happy or very anxious.]

So... let's see. I told you we had some crews up there already, yeah? Just couldn't get any successful returns down. Damn Reds beat us to that. Joke was on them though, they just tossed Gagarin up there in a metal tube and waited for him to come back down on his own. We actually had our own man pilot themself back down to earth. How's that for you? Russians don't have shit on American determination.

So we did a few other missions once we finally got the hang of putting people up there and bringing them back down. It was all smooth sailing for the most part. So now what did we decide to do? Put a man on the goddamn moon.

[She gets up and goes to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of red wine and a comically large glass. I mention to her that it's only around two in the afternoon.]

I worked with astronauts, darling. Days don't matter when you're orbiting the planet. Anyway, it was '62 that we crashed a vessel on the far side of the moon. That was something of a test run I suppose, seeing just how bad we could crash and burn something before we tried it again with people inside.

We had the Ranger 4 vessel that we sent up there. Had do a fly by of the moon for a bit and take some photos before dive bombing it to the surface and taking some pictures for us there. We never released those to the public. Scared the hell out of all of us in the command center when they transmitted back. Keep in mind all the pictures we had at the time were black and white still, no color photography on that scale yet.

So Ranger 4 lands there and immediately begins snapping pictures. All of us are standing around, expecting to see just a barren expanse of grey rock, nothing all too special. Lo and behold the first picture comes back and there's someone just... *standing* there. Right in front of the crashed capsule. We couldn't tell gender or race or anything, they were in a spacesuit that looked remarkably like the ones we were developing.

So naturally we think "Oh no. They beat us to the moon." because who else could it be at this point? The Russians were the only other country keeping any kind of pace with us. Then we realized it couldn't be them. They would have already been rubbing it in our faces if they had landed a man on the moon. There's no fucking way this is from anyone on our planet. That's when the rest of the pictures started coming in.

The suit kept getting closer and closer to the capsule. maintaining the same stance the whole time. It just kind of floated over to it. Then you could see into the visor on the helmet. Where there should have been someone's face visible there was just... fire. Pure, bright flame. Then the pictures stopped. Nothing else came from Ranger 4.

[She finishes off her first glass of wine. Or half-gallon, it's hard to tell from the size of the glass. She immediately empties the rest of the bottle into it.]

I'll give the higher-ups at NASA credit though. Crazy bastards didn't let seeing a flaming cosmonaut stop them from going ahead with their plans. We plugged away at it, sending up more and more missions to orbit the Earth, do fly-by's of the moon, Mars, Jupiter... anything we could get near. We saw a few oddities here and there as we went, but things stayed mostly silent for those few years. Maybe we just didn't notice it because we were so focused on the mission at hand.

Then it finally happened in '69, as you well know. We got to the moon, beat the Russians there after all. There was that big televised bit with Neil and Buzz taking the steps onto the surface and everything. I really hated those suits they had them in. Didn't get to accentuate Buzz's best features for sure. That man had the best ass in this entire galaxy...

[This was one of five tangents about Buzz Aldrin's physical features throughout the day. I've edited these out for the sake of mine and your sanity.]

You ever consider that we landed someone on the moon and sent up missions to land again and again for the next three years, then just quit cold turkey and never went back? Why do you think that is? Huh? Hey, I thought you wanted to hear all this!

[At this point in time she threw the remote for the television at me.I had retreated to my mental safe space during the Buzz Aldrin diatribe.]

Well we DID go back! A few times. This wasn't for the scientific research we did the last three years. No, this was for anthropological purposes. We found things on the moon. We weren't the first beings there.

No, we started finding small signs with the Apollo 14 mission. There were some little remnants of previous visitors. The first thing they found were some symbols carved into crater walls. Nothing that we could translate of course, nobody knew what the hell they meant. But we knew they weren't naturally occurring, that much was obvious.

So they took pictures of all the ones they found. Pretty sure they're still working on it to this day. They'll probably crack the Zodiac cipher before that damned thing.

Apollo 17 was when they knew they needed to carry this one on privately. That's the "last" manned moon mission that happened back in '72. For all the world knows, we ain't been back since. That's the way they want to keep it.

Apollo 17 found way more than anyone previously had. They found full on structures. Altars of worship is what it looked like. I can't even describe the images transmitted back. The way these things were built... it wasn't natural. There's no way that structures built that way should be allowed to stand. It was like the ghost of Lovecraft possessed Escher and made him design some fucked up church.

We advised them not to go inside. We would send another mission up there with some better training and equipment to document all of this. That's where Apollo 18-22 came in. Before they left though they photographed the structure from every angle. We didn't notice until the end that it appeared absolutely identical no matter what angle it was viewed from. One hundred percent symmetry. Everything aligned perfectly, no matter how insane it was built up.

[Gram finishes the second glass of wine. Leaning back in her chair.]

Well, I believe that's enough wine for one hour. Time for a good nap. All that talk of Buzz got me thinking about the old days...

[I turned off the recorder and ran from the room. I can still hear Gram cackling from downstairs]

## We Went Back to the Moon.

[April 6, 2020. I'm going stir crazy. Gram seems to get stronger every day somehow. It's like she's stealing my youth and thriving in isolation. This may end up being a record of me going insane with her stories mixed in.]

Let's go sit out on the porch. It's a nice day out, I'm tired of being cooped up in here.

[I concede that I could use some fresh air, but make her promise not to go near the neighbors or anybody walking by on the street. She gives me an entirely too sarcastic scout salute and swears she won't.]

Alright, that's better. Feel my battery recharging already. Now... ah. The Moon Church was what I was telling you about yesterday, right? That was some crazy shit.

So, Apollo 17 found this crazy structure that was just perfectly built. Strangest architecture I've ever seen. Made no goddamn sense to anyone how it remained standing after all this time. So we trained some other crews to go up after and look into it further. Specifically we got a few people trained that had degrees in anthropology and ancient cultures. Maybe we could find some links here between this and things that had been found on Earth.

Well naturally, nothing is ever that easy. They head up there in 1973, land smack next to the structure found by the previous mission, and get to it. By this point technology has thankfully improved so we have cameras in their helmets that allow us to see everything they see. They were in color too! Thank god.

[I asked her how they had this kind of tech in '73 when a lot of things were still incredibly basic with video, especially transmitted over that vast of a distance.]

Pffft. You really think the stuff you saw from that time was the most advanced technology being used by the government? Don't underestimate the amount of money American government will throw at something if they feel it's a threat. The cameras and equipment we had on those missions was on par with that little video camera your momma gave me for Christmas a few years back.

[She's talking about the GoPro she got four years ago. That records in 4k. What the fuck. Now she's laughing at me again.]

Like I said. Don't underestimate government spending. So anyway, Apollo 18 was a three man crew. Jason Voss, Ben Codd, and Arthur Wayne. Wasn't too happy about Arthur going up there. We had spent a few months together while he was training down at Cape Canaveral. God, if he could do half the things he could do in our gravity up there...

[If only I could edit my memory the same way I do this transcription.]

So, they got to work. Jason stayed in orbit around the moon, making sure everything on the main ship was fine. Arthur and Ben went down to the surface and set up base camp. There was the structure, and not even one hundred feet away was their little landing pod setup with everything in it. They were equipped for three days on the moon.

First day goes off fine, just walking around the thing, taking measurements and samples. They determine that most of the structure is made from an unknown element. To this day I don't think they've found out what it is.

So, end of day one and they go back to their basecamp. Now, we have a couple of cameras set up in the pod so we can see everything going on, just in case there's any issues technically or god-forbid something happens between them. Arthur and Ben are both fast asleep, we've got the feed playing in command just to monitor and keep an eye on everything, and suddenly it glitches. Not a drawn out one though. Just a quick scramble then it's back. Arthur and Ben are still there asleep. Now there's a figure standing there in the airlock though.

Like nothing I've ever seen. Long limbs, big hands that almost look like bulldozers, and just a rounded off nub right at the shoulders. I hit the intercom speaker for the capsule as fast as I could move. Screaming at them to wake up. Poor Ben fell straight out of his bunk and onto Arthur underneath him, belly to belly. Now that's something I normally would have paid to see, but right now my heart was racing for the wrong reasons.

So they both scramble up and look towards the airlock. That damn thing is still just standing there, I think it was looking at them. Arthur shouts at it, asking what the hell it wants. There's this... low garble of noise that happens. Nothing discernible. It could have been interference for all we know. But by god I saw Ben's face drain of all color when it happened. Arthur went a bit slack, looking from Ben to the creature. Then as fast as it showed up it was gone. Poof, right into... well, guess you can't say thin air being where it was.

Ben sat down on Arthur's bunk and just cried. It took him a good hour to actually calm down, in the meantime we had no idea what was happening. FInally he chilled out enough for us to ask him what had happened. He said that thing had looked at him, no eyes or anything but he *knew* it was looking at him. It said "She was never meant to live."

Now this shook all of us. Almost a month before the mission Ben and his wife suffered a miscarriage. She had been six months along, they were expecting a little baby girl. Then one day the baby was just gone, no heartbeat, no activity. They didn't know what had happened. It tore Ben and his wife apart though. They had a huge fight a week before liftoff because she didn't want him to go. Didn't want to lose another person she loved. I can't imagine what he felt when he heard that damned thing talk.

They cut the mission short after that. Everyone was afraid of what may happen to Ben's mental state if anything else happened. They packed up quick and got the hell out of there. Ben drank himself stupid afterwards, ended up driving his car off the interstate going 150 at around three in the morning. They barely got anything to bury.

{Gram wipes a stray tear from her eye. A man is jogging down the street with his dog, coming closer to our house. Gram calls out a greeting to him. He walks up and begins talking, much to my displeasure. Gram is speaking animatedly and leans down to pet the dog. I remind her we're supposed to be distancing just to be safe.]

Sorry, Jerry, my grandson here is a hardass. I'll see you some other time.

Anyway, that was the end of Apollo 18. Not a whole lot found out but we were ready to try again. I was just grateful that Arthur made it back in one piece. We were actually engaged you know. Way back in the day before he went back up on the 19 mission in '74.

[I was a bit surprised at this. As far as I was told Gram had never been married, and my grandfather had been killed in a car accident not long after she found out she was pregnant with my mother.]

We spent a lot of time together during that time. It was lovely. I miss that man...

So, Arthur and Jason volunteered to go back on the 19 mission. I think Arthur was determined to get into that structure and see exactly what was going on with it. They had a new recruit along with them as well. Paul Orson. He was a former Green Beret during the Vietnam war. Tough son of a bitch, and not one for conversation. They didn't know what they would find though so they wanted someone with combat training to go up.

Everything goes as normal, it's old hat at this point. They land in the same spot for base camp, Arthur and Paul this time. They got there on day one and set everything up, then decided to just rest up for a few hours and go straight in.

Well, they didn't realize that they needed to find a way in first. Apparently in all this time researching the structure everyone just *assumed* there would be a door somewhere. No such luck. Every wall on the outside was smooth, no cracks or seams signaling a door. They searched every damn inch of that thing, nothing to be found.

Lo and behold, I'm watching in on Arthur's camera while he's walking around the structure. Even in low gravity he had two left feet, he tripped and fell straight through the wall. We thought we had lost him for a minute. It looked like the camera had hit something and shorted out. Then he asked us if we were seeing it too.

The interior of the structure was larger than the exterior. Way more room to move about. Lights hung in the air like stars, bathing everything around him in a soft glow. It was like it's own miniature galaxy contained in that one building. Probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Arthur backed out then, wanting to make sure he could travel freely in and out of the structure before he got trapped there, and it seemed to work fine. It was like there was a portal, a thin veil where it looked like a wall but wasn't. He grabbed Paul showed him what he had found. Don't think he was too impressed, more like he was ready to shoot it if he could have found a gun.

Exploring it further they found a small spiral slope, almost like a ramp that went downward from the main chamber. They followed it for probably an hour before it got anywhere, seeing more of those strange symbols all over the walls on the way down. When they got to the bottom... it was like some kind of church. No idea what they worshiped or who, but there was an alter right there against the far wall. A statue rose up in a recess behind it.

Looked to me like an elongated pyramid of sorts. Not really sure how to describe the geometry of it. There were angles that merged with smaller angles, curves where lines were... it was like my brain was trying to comprehend it through the camera feed but just jumbled everything instead. That was about the time we noticed the spots on the altar.

We're not a hundred percent sure to this day what it was, but we had a good enough guess. It was dried, had obviously been there for quite a long time. But it still had that rusty red color that only comes from dried blood. It was splashed all over the place up there, like someone had slit the jugular and waved all about up there. Had to have been gallons spilled.

That was enough for the two men for that day. They headed back up to base camp to make record of what they found and go back to sleep. They were out for maybe two or three hours when it happened again.

The camera glitched just like last time and that thing appeared. It wasn't in the airlock this time though. It appeared right next to their damn bunks. We tried warning them but it didn't seem to work. It's like out speakers were jammed.

We were only able to watch in terror. That thing leaned over Paul and said something to him in that garbled noise we heard last time. God knows what it was. Then it was gone again. Nothing there. Paul got up and started putting on his suit to go outside then. I kept hitting the button trying to ask what the hell he was doing, got no response. Our line into the main capsule was dead.

When he had the whole suit on I tried the line going directly to his helmet. I said, "Paul, what the hell did that thing say to you?" You know what he told me?

[I shook my head in response.]

He looked straight up into the capsule camera before stepping out, and said "Finishing what they began."

I still get chills thinking about that. It was one of the coldest thing I've ever heard. By that time Arthur had woken up and was getting his suit on as fast as he could. God, I begged him not to go after Paul. Not to go into that damned church. Whatever was done in there before was bad, and there wasn't going to be anything good coming of it now.

He was too good of a man though. He got everything on and chased Paul in there. No idea how he had moved so fast but Paul was waiting down there for him already. Standing right on the altar and holding an old combat knife. Arthur shouted at him, asking what the hell he thought he was doing. He didn't say a damned word. Just started lunging towards Arthur, brandishing that knife.

I... I watched it. All of it. Each of their helmet cameras was on a different side of the big command screen. Our coordinator was shouting at me to tell them to stop, to get their shit together. It wouldn't have done anything. That wasn't Paul in that suit anymore. There was a blind rage in his eyes, his breathing in the mic was like an animal that had been cornered. No, he wanted to kill and he didn't care who saw.

They went back and forth for a while, throwing each other all around that unholy place. Finally Arthur managed to wrestle the knife away from Paul. He stood up, holding it out in front of him... there were tears in his voice when he was talking. Telling Paul to stay away. Telling him they could go back home and have a drink. Act like all of this never happened. It didn't matter. Paul rushed and Arthur had no choice, he ducked down and thrust the knife upward. The camera in Pauls suit was splattered with red as he depressurized in seconds.

Arthur screamed, looking at that Alter and throwing the knife at it. He just lay there for a while, sobbing and shouting curses. He was alone up there.

[Gram's voice cracked. I've tried to transcribe the next part as best as I can, but some parts were difficult to make out.]

Arthur started pulling Paul's body back up towards the exit with him. Even if he had tried to kill him, he wasn't just gonna leave him up there, all alone on a rock. He got to the top and tried to go through the wall back outside but it was suddenly solid. No give. He tried the other walls, trying to make sure that he wasn't using the wrong one in his emotional state. Nothing. Still no way out.

He collapsed against the wall, taking in deep, shallow breaths. His oxygen tank only had about ten minutes left by his count. The suits weren't designed for long outings back then. I hit the button to talk to him and tried to soothe him. He was almost hysterical, but I like to think hearing me helped him go quietly.

I still remember seeing his face in that helmet camera. My last words to him. The little smile that he got right before he passed. He got to know that even though he was dying up here, on a mission completely off the books, there would be part of him still living on right here on earth.

{Gram wiped tears away from her eyes. She had been openly sobbing, obviously reliving something painful. I put my hand out for her to take.]

The last three missions they sent up there served two purposes. They were recovery missions, to get those bodies back home and give them a proper burial, and demolition missions.

They couldn't get back through the wall into the chamber the normal way, so they tried drilling through. There was no chamber though. Just solid rock no matter how far they drilled into it. So, they gave up after that. The next two missions brought explosives and detonated them around the structure, destroying it.

We haven't gone back to the moon since then. Not after that loss. Even if we had I wouldn't have worked the mission. I would have absolutely refused. I told them I wasn't taking on any more crewed landing missions after that. They would have to find another communications head.

[She stared at me for a moment before looking back out toward the sky. The moon was already hanging there, right at the cusp of night. She let out a long sigh.]

Some nights I look out at the moon and like to think he's still out there watching over me. Watching over us. He would e so proud that I'm finally telling someone this. He had always talked about having a family and grandchildren one day... I think he's up there right now, giving that sly grin he always had. I'm sure he's proud of you, wherever he is.

[Gram looked for a moment more as I sat there, stunned. Then she got up, gave me a hug, and went back inside to get ready for bed.]

## Something terrible is waiting beyond our solar system.

[April 7, 2020 I'm going to try to give Gram some space today. She still seems a bit out of it after last night.]

[She stayed up to watch the Pink Moon. Said she felt better after seeing it, like Arthur was at peace up there.]

[April 8, 2020. She's back to her normal self.]

Well look who's finally up. Thought I was going to have to draw a pentagram on the floor and summon you down here. Grab me that loaf of bread off the table. I've never wanted a grilled cheese this bad before in my life.

Alright now... let's see. Did I tell you about Skylab yet? God, that was a clusterfuck if I ever saw one. They want you to think it just decayed out of orbit but they knew what they were doing. They made sure that son of a bitch went down in flames.

[She settles in with her sandwich and another glass of wine. I don't know where they come from. I only saw one bottle on the counter when I got here and I don't recall getting any with the grocery delivery. I swear, she's some sort of witch.]

So, we had about four crews up there that did different experiments and such. We had your normal run of the mill stuff, working on plants and small animals, zero gravity, blah blah blah. Then the final crew came in. I about marched my ass down to the science department and smacked the shit out of every one of them when I saw what they brought with them up there.

It was a goddamn block. Not just a block though, it was a piece of debris from the temple on the moon. They were still trying to figure out what the hell it was made out of after all this fucking time.

So they're up there poking and prodding at it, trying to heat it and see how it reacts. These idiots don't have a damn clue what they're doing. They leave it in the lab one day after they're done and next thing you know it starts growing right in front of us.

It's just... expanding. Growing outward and inward, taking over the entire compartment in Skylab. We don't understand how it's been in storage for so long and it just now starts to do this. Maybe it was the proximity to the moon or something. Maybe whatever they were doing to it. I don't know. That thing took over half of the station by the time twenty four hours had passed though.

[Gram gesticulates wildly, stretching her arms out to show some measure of what had happened.]

So this thing is turning the station into a new version of the moon temple. There's protrusions coming from it, odd angles sloping off here and there. It looks demented. They thankfully hightailed it out of there on the main shuttle right after it happened. The structure just kept taking more and more of it as it went.

The cameras inside were still giving off a feed. That’s the weird part. No matter how much this thing took over and reshaped all the metal and tubing of the station, the cameras kept going. We saw the small galaxy form right there in the lab. The crew quarters ebbed and changed, stretching until they resembled a hall of worship. That damned altar appeared at the end. The very same one.

That was what sealed the deal for the superior officers. Skylab was obviously a lost cause. We didn’t know how long this thing would keep growing up there, or where it would latch onto next. So they started working on sending a probe up there carrying a payload. They were going to knock it straight out of orbit, either let it drift off into deep space or burn in the atmosphere.

The whole time they were doing this we were watching the cameras. I saw things on there, things that weren’t meant for the human eye to see. On occasion the feed would blink and the altar hall would be filled with a writhing mass, creatures that looked like that same one that appeared on the moon. They would be feeling, swirling around one another in a throng. It was some worship ritual or something, I don’t know. Just as soon as it started it would blink right back out.

There were other creatures. Masses of darkness, tendrils of light stretching from them. They didn’t seem right for the space they were in, like they were somehow larger than the station yet microscopic. They devoured one another with no care. It was its own contained environment up there.

Finally the payload was read and sent up. We watched the feed as it hit, blowing a hole in the lab before knocking it into a decaying orbit. The worship started again, more frenzied this time. They were excited to be going to earth.

A crew was dispatched to clean up any wreckage that could be found. Not entirely sure what they did with it, but I hope it’s buried as far as it can be.

[She finishes the glass of wine she had, getting up and hobbling towards the sink. She started the water and began to wash dishes.]

From then on I think we made it a point to make sure all the testing and such was done in a more controlled environment. They started sending out more probes too. Voyager was launched a few years later. We wanted to see what was beyond our little space in the galaxy.

There’s a lot. That’s for sure. I remember when they told us Voyager had reached the edge of our solar system. We couldn’t believe something had gotten that far. We looked in at some of the pictures it had taken along the way. There were the usual things that inspired awe, the stars, planets up close, far off comets and asteroids. Then there was the follower.

[She shuts off the sink and comes to sit back down.]

Creepy little shit, that thing was. Looked like a human male, honestly. Kind of tall, scrawny. He was naked head to toe, not wearing a goddamn thing.

[She notices my look.]

Before you ask, no it didn’t have a dick.

It just followed the Voyager like a lost little puppy for a while. Poking and prodding at it occasionally. We got plenty of close up pictures of it, saw right into its eyes. The close ups were what made us realise it didn’t have eyes like a human. Instead it had stars. They burned hot, almost causing a flair on the pictures. There was one where it opened its mouth and you could see a void like a black hole, singularity and all.

[She shakes her head, letting out a little shudder.]

The weirdest thing was the message it transmitted. Perfect English. Sent it through the Voyagers onboard microphone as a microwave signal. When it came through and translated it said “So nice to meet you. I’m a bit early, but I’ll be seeing your planet soon enough.”

That wasn’t even the scariest thing Voyager pocked up though. Right before I retired in ‘99 it started sending back a message. Took forever to decode it because everything was so scrambled. After all that time it was still a mess, some language we didn’t understand and a cypher to go along with it. It was like someone had done a rush job translating.

[What did it say?]

“Turn back before it notices you too.”

[Gram said she wants to go get some air. I notice she’s taking more time than usual to move, like it’s hurting her. I ask if she’s okay.]

These old bones are better than you’ll ever be. Now, I’m going for a walk, we’ll finish this up tomorrow.

## Space Should Remain Unexplored.

[Evening of April 9, 2020. Gram asked to sit on the porch and watch the moon tonight. Says this is the last of her stories.]

Can’t believe I’ve been retired for twenty years now. Seems crazy at this point, leaving the job, helping raise you kids. It was worth it though. You turned out okay.

[She gives a little chuckle here.]

So, there’s two more things that happened right before I quit. One is a direct result of the other. Care to hear?

[I nodded.]

So in ‘97 we put the very first rover up on Mars. We started it looking to see if it could support life up there, you know, trying to expand out beyond our own planet. Hell, it’s already too crowded here. Has been since man first walked. Best thing about all this social distancing is I have an excuse to tell people to fuck off.

Pathfinder was something though. Ugly little contraption, you wouldn’t think it could get ten feet much less across a barren planet full of dust and rocks. But damn that little thing moved. It was zipping here and there across the land taking pictures and videos, scooping up samples and analysing them right then and there. Wonder of science.

So we’re looking at all these pictures being sent back, amazed at everything we’re seeing. There’s huge sand dunes, cliffs, this place is like a giant desert but it’s *beautiful*. That was when the first storm moved in.

Storms up there aren’t like ours. There’s no rain. Just wind and lightning. The wind stirs up the sand and makes it hard to see, blocks out most of the light. So Pathfinder is up there, sand and dust swirling around, then in a flash of lightning you see this towering figure. It was thin, incredibly tall. Everything about it was disproportionate though. It wasn’t until the next flash of lightning that we connected it.

It was another of those damned things from the moon. The ones that appeared when Skylab turned. This one was so much bigger though, at least ten times the size of the first one we saw.

When this one spoke we all heard it. It wasn't some garbled mess of noise this time, it was plain as day. After it happened we all realized that we hadn't heard it out loud though, but in our own minds, each one hearing the same thing.

"The temple will live on. We ruled and shall rule again. Worshiping amongst the stars."

Then it was gone along with the storm. Never saw one as large as that again, haven't seen any of them since then actually. Pathfinder didn't have any other encounters up there the entire time, and as far as I've heard from the folks that are still working they haven't found anything else out of the ordinary.

NASA made it a point to contact the other countries and tell them about the temple at that point. Naturally the Russians already knew about it, the bastards. Turned out they had gone up to the moon at some point and found the ruins of the temple up there, took some of it back with them and ended up having it lose all kinds of control back in '86.

Lotta lives got lost up there because they didn't know what they were fucking around with. They were experimenting with it in some underground lab when it went out of control. But of course what's their first reaction when a fucking space temple and those damned things show up in their backyard? They nuke the thing straight to hell, killing a ton of their own citizens and covering up as some reactor meltdown. The footage they showed us... I'll never forget it.

These bastards didn't even nuke it right away, that's why there was so much fallout. They let it go on for at least a week, absorbing everything and recording what happened. There were people inside that altar room when their worship session broke out. Those poor souls deserved so much more mercy than anyone could give them.

After that we all agreed that our first priority was protecting the earth from whatever this was, not allowing any of that back down here. That was the time they started on the space station. Now I don't know much of what they've been up to recently with it since it was just being launched when I retired. They built it to keep a better eye on things out there in orbit though, where they could conduct experiments and run some countermeasures right there, without anyone here on Earth being any wiser. Smart move, I think.

I know now long before I left they had a satellite that found that chain of bodies again. The same one that took the first manned crew up there. We could hear the whispers being transmitted back. I still wake up some nights hearing those whispers.

[What did they say?]

"Come to us. Be sacrifices. Float eternal as a living altar to them."

[Them?]

Beats the hell out of me. Maybe it was that big thing they saw on the photos. Maybe that's what the temple was built to worship. Or whatever we were warned about by the Follower. There's so many things we still don't know about what's out there. Probably things we never will know. It's all just lost in the vastness of space, never meant to be understood.

We're still here though. That's something, so they've been keeping us safe until now. Maybe it's something else though, watching over us.

[The moon was out in full on the horizon now, shining bright as it rose further. Gram got up and walked out into the moonlight, looking upward.]

I know you're there, Arthur. I know you're watching over all of us. You stayed up there because you were a stubborn old bastard, thinking you had to do everything to keep people from seeing what you saw. I felt you the other night though. That full moon, you were there.

We're going to dance in the moonlight together again, real soon. I love you.

[Gram tells me she's going to stay out here for a while. I'm going to go up and start transcribing all of this, maybe get some actual relaxation in. I'm tired of being stuck in this damn house. Gram was dancing around in the moonlight as I walked back inside, humming *Fly Me to the Moon* to herself as she did.]

[April 10, 2020. Gram passed away early this morning. I had walked into the kitchen for a drink and noticed the front door was still cracked open. This wasn't normal for two in the morning so I walked out to check. Gram was sitting in her rocking chair on the porch, drenched in bright moonlight. She had a smile on her face. She died peacefully in her sleep, carried off into the moonlight by the one she loved.]