Chapter Text
Dr. Kel has never felt more lonely yet paranoid in his life.
When Ena first extended the offer to work for the ASO, it felt too good to be true. Not even a month out of college and he had his dream job being offered to him on a silver platter. Included room and board, high tech computers and radar technology at his disposal, working with his best friend and other space freaks like himself. It sounded perfect.
That should have been his first clue that something was wrong.
Maybe he just got sent to one of the shitty arrays under the ASO umbrella because the facility he was sent to wasn’t what he had in mind. Maybe Ena’s living it up in some other facility in France, but this place was a dump.
With his admission into the company, he was given a plane ticket to Switzerland and the papers necessary to grant him entry to the Dunkeltaler Array under the Alpine Signal Observatorium. He wasn’t greeted by anyone when he landed, nor was there anyone at the front gate when he arrived at the array. Ducking under the bar, he let himself in and started work.
He met all his coworkers through email, though for whatever reason, he was not allowed to reply to any of the mail he received. It was something they only explained after he had arrived through one of said emails that he was to have no contact with people outside of the ASO for security reasons. Ena could still message him and does occasionally send him mail to comment on his reports and check in, but with no way to reply or even let her know he read it frustrated him to no end.
The main base where he was to work and live for the next two months looked more like a landfill than a place of science. Kel isn’t sure who all worked here before he did, but they had to be the biggest slobs on the planet. He wasn’t really one to talk, he was a mess too, but the literal mountain of garbage dumped in the parking lot and waste dumped in all the drains was ridiculous. The whole place reeked and he couldn’t take one step without trudging through something that was either rotting, moldy, or harboring roaches.
That, and the fucking mannequins.
Maybe the last guy who worked here just hated everyone in the company and wanted to make his life hell. They were in every single god damn room, hiding around corners, propped up against the doors, perched up on some of the unopened crates in the garage. He wants to think he’s used to them by now, but they still catch him by surprise sometimes and he’s sure he’s aged at least a year with the stress they’ve put him through.
None of that mattered though. Sure the base is a dump, he has no internet access, and the only food he’s given are old MREs which he’s pretty sure aren’t supposed to expire but definitely have, but this was his dream job.
He alone had access to the massive computer terminal in the center of the base that controlled every dish in the array. He had no coworkers here and while that meant that he had to do everything himself, he preferred it that way. No one to distract him, no one to bother him with small talk or notice that he hasn’t showered in almost a week. It was just him, the radar dishes, and the stars, searching for the next WOW! signal to get his name in the history books.
He thought he was alone, anyways…
With each passing day, he started to feel a little bit more paranoid. He liked his privacy and had no issue working alone, but out here in the woods, he was truly cut off from everyone. That isolation must be doing something to his brain because he’s scrutinizing every little thing now. The stupid mannequins all over the base have him second guessing himself, questioning if they’ve moved slightly or if they were always facing that direction. There are all sorts of strange noises and bumps in the night, but that was to be expected. He was in the middle of the woods, there were probably deer or wolves sniffing around the base and the garbage piles looking for scraps.
It was probably nothing, but Kel still finds himself jumping at every little noise and struggling to fall asleep at night. He can’t help but feel he’s being watched out here, his senses screaming that he isn’t alone.
With how quiet and isolated he was out here, he honestly hopes he isn’t.
Waking up in his room and dragging himself off his thin mattress, Dr. Kel stumbles towards the restroom in the dark, fumbling for the light switch once the door is open and bracing himself before the lights kick in. Adjusting to the harshness of the light, Kel stumbles towards the toilet to do his business, glancing over at the mannequin standing in the shower next to it. He really should get rid of these things, but it wasn’t like he was going to be using the shower anytime soon anyways. With how much mold and mildew there was, he’d probably get dirtier trying to clean himself off.
There was no mirror in the restroom, but he didn’t need one to know he must look like a mess. His long, greasy black hair is stuffed underneath a black beanie to try and keep it under control. A chilly breeze blows through the barred window above his head and he pulls the smelly old jacket he found in one of the lockers downstairs tighter around himself. Emblazoned on its back is the logo for the STOLAS corporation, the guys that the ASO bought all their tech from. Despite being unwashed and weathered, it kept the chill off and kept him comfortable.
With his business finished, he makes his way across the hall and down the stairs, ready to plan out his route and wake himself up before setting out to run his tasks at sunrise. Opening up the doors to the main observatory, he takes a deep breath and cracks his knuckles. It was time to get to work.
This was the heart of the facility; the computer room he spent most of his time in. A few terminals and computers line the walls but at the center of the room, facing the three wall sized windows that look out into the woods outside, sits a massive cubicle desk with four built in computers that run the entire array. From this one spot, he controls every single dish on the property and manages all the data they gather. The tech was ancient, several decades out of date, but it got the job done.
Carefully navigating the beaten path he’s kicked clean through the garbage littering the floor, Dr. Kel sits himself down at the computer terminal. He really should try and clean the place up, there was a LOT of downtime while using machines that were three times older than he was, but the task was so daunting that he struggled to find the motivation to even start. Besides, the only real entertainment he had out here was seeing the cockroaches fight over everything and seeing just how big they could get. He saw one which was almost as big as his hand crawling around in the server room yesterday.
Booting up the old pc, Kel kicks his feet up onto the desk as it warms up before checking his emails for his daily report from Dr. Bao. Bao seems to be the boss of the whole operation and it didn’t take long for Kel to get sick of him. The head doctor seems to be at least partially informed about how bad the conditions are here and the few times that Kel tried to write complaints to him along with his daily reports, he refused to acknowledge what they said and instead scolded him over email for writing unimportant data. A few of his other colleagues get a hold of the data and drives he sends off, but no one else acknowledges his personal notes. If he had to guess, Bao wasn’t sharing his complaints to anyone else and only sharing the important stuff.
Seeing the requested report for the day, Kel’s hatred for Bao only grows. X-ray, Romeo, Tango. He was going to have to drive back and forth all goddamn day today. Whatever. Getting out of this base would probably be good for him. He was probably huffing black mold and asbestos every second he stayed inside.
Writing out the beginning of his report, Kel swivels around in his chair to start work for the day. Searching for potential signals, locking in coordinates, calibrating the dishes once they’re positioned, checking server health. It’s all very slow going, the ancient hardware struggling to perform its tasks as Kel plans out his route.
His stomach grumbles as the first rays of sunlight start to peek over the horizon and illuminates the woods outside the filthy windows. He really should eat something before he goes, but… He swears, if he has to eat one more unidentifiable meat puck from the MREs, he’s going to barf. He’s just going to try and ignore it. Maybe if he gets hungry enough, he’ll be able to keep it down until he can get something actually edible shipped in. Hell, with how trashed this place is and with how little Bao and ASO cares about this place, he could probably get away with breaking into the vending machine without getting in trouble. He’s been all alone here for a week, it’s not like anyone’s actually collecting the change in the machines.
With a growling stomach and a signal downloading in the observatory, Kel makes his way to the garage to do what was probably the only thing this job offered him that didn’t come with any baggage. Flicking the lights on, Dr. Kel admires the ATV sitting in the center of the room, fully gassed and ready to roll. Opening up the shutter door, Kel sits himself down and revs the engine, peeling out of the garage and speeding down the gravel road southwest to X-ray.
The company ATV was easily the best part of the job so far. Working with old tech and listening to staticy radar signals was cool, but being paid to go off-roading in the alps was the only actually exciting thing there was to do out here. The fresh unpolluted air, the sound of birdsong beneath the roaring engine, his hair blowing in the wind. If he didn’t have to pay for gas and keep an eye on seven different things back at the base, he’d be driving around all day.
The sun rises fully into the sky as he makes his way to each of the designated dishes. Arriving at Xray first, he makes quick work of gathering the hash code for the site's terminal and maintaining the local server before driving north up to Romeo. The terrain is a lot more treacherous the further northwest he goes, but he takes his time to find inclines that aren’t too steep to safely roll down.
He makes quick work of Romeo site as well, working with an extra bit of urgency while he’s there. He doesn’t know what it is, but this specific dish freaks him out a bit. Something about the local area just feels off. He’s pretty sure there’s a bear den not too far from the dish. He finishes his work as fast as he can and starts riding out east for his last destination, eager to finish off his report for the day. Carefully navigating a suddenly steep hill, Kel searches for more level ground to drive on when he spots something in the distance which contrasts against the usual greenery of the woods.
He sees something bright red lying on the grass not far from where he’s riding.
Dr. Kel changes course without a second thought. He’s been doing this for a week straight and even traveled this stretch of the woods once before. This was something new, something out of place, something worth investigating. Rolling down the hill with less care than he should, he comes to a stop and hits the parking brake before killing the engine and stepping off to get a closer look at what he’s found.
Lying out in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometers away from civilization and on private property, was a neatly laid out picnic spread on a red and white checkered blanket.
Dr. Kel stares down at it, completely dumbfounded before looking around and scanning the woods nearby. He’s searched high and low and checked every inch of the property. No one else was out here, even if there should have been. Kel seriously doubts that the ASO actually sent a maintenance guy out here or another employee to assist him, and even if they did, why the hell would they pack a picnic basket and set it up in the middle of nowhere? The property was fenced off and there were plenty of signs warning of the deadly consequences for trespassers, so the chances of some random hikers marching all the way out here was unlikely too.
Was he going crazy? Was the basket even real? Maybe he should have eaten something before he left to do his reports if he’s seeing things like this.
Cautiously approaching the blanket as if disturbing it would somehow hurt him, Kel leans in close to examine some of the spread. Cookies, bottled water, a… pumpkin? Dr. Kel’s never seen a purple gourd before, maybe it’s a local thing? There’s an empty package resting next to one of the baskets and carefully leaning down to touch it, he’s able to grab hold of the shrink-wrap still clinging to it to read the sticker. Precooked shrimp. Not exactly something he’d bring to a picnic, but man, he’d kill for some shrimp right about now.
He gives the woods around him another scan. Most of this stuff was half eaten and there’s more than one person’s worth of food here. There were at least two trespassers on ASO property and while Dr. Kel doesn’t actually care about enforcing the no trespassing rule, knowing that there are people here gets him paranoid again. What if someone was moving stuff around in the base? What if the noises he heard at night were people and not the local wildlife?
What if they knew about him and have steered clear from him because he hasn’t showered in a week and lives in a trash heap along with giant roaches?
A loud growl from his stomach draws him out of his thoughts as he looks at the scraps of the picnic. Whoever brought this out here, they weren’t supposed to be here. This was private property that he was in charge of maintaining and protecting and if this stuff is here in his woods, that makes it his now, right?
Eh, why bother trying to moralize it to himself. This was fresh food. If it meant not having to eat MREs today, he’ll gladly eat some stranger’s leftovers.
Sitting himself down on the blanket, Kel digs through the baskets, stuffing his face with cookies as searches. There’s another package of shrimps still inside one of them and he wastes no time tearing into it. Popping one into his mouth, he bites down on it and shudders as he loses himself in the taste of actual, non super processed food. He doesn’t even care that it’s cold. He takes his time relishing the shrimps, scrounging around the rest of the spread to see if there was anything else of value.
Most of the good stuff looks like it’s already been eaten, but something resting at the corner of the blanket draws his attention. Shoving another cookie into his mouth, Kel shimmies over and picks up a… thing which was being used to hold down the blanket. He isn’t sure what it is, but it’s surprisingly heavy in his hand. It’s some sort of elongated, pyramid shaped model, it’s glossy white exterior slightly reflecting his greasy, disheveled face back at him. Looking at the base of the model, it looks like it has some sort of thruster. Is it a model spaceship of some kind? It doesn’t look like a design from any sci-fi show he recognizes.
If these trespassers packed a model spaceship here, they had to know that this was an observatory array, right? Maybe these were some very brave and adventurous nerds who wanted to get a close look at the radar dishes, but skulking around private property wasn’t how to go about it. He wasn’t about to hunt them down and force them off the property, hell he’d love some company after spending an entire week with only the roaches and the mannequins as company.
Looking down at the picnic spread he’s eaten through, he figures out what he’s going to do. Gathering everything up into the two baskets, he starts to fold up the picnic blanket and gathers everything up into one big bindle before tying it off. If these trespassers wanted their stuff back, they were gonna have to come get it. As long as they didn’t actually touch any of the equipment, he couldn’t care less about people hiking through here, but he wanted to at least get a look at whoever was creeping around his base.
Returning to his ATV and balancing the bindle he tied up on his lap, Dr. Kel revs up the engine and returns to his original route with a full stomach and feeling at least a little bit justified for his paranoia. Someone was out here, someone he hopes to meet before the end of the night.
It takes him another half an hour before he finishes his task for the day. Crossing the river and carefully navigating towards Tango, he gathers the last of his required hash codes and starts his drive home, sticking to the gravel roads to keep the bindle balanced on his lap. Arriving back at base, he rolls the ATV up the ramp and into the garage, killing the engine and hitting the parking brake. Looking over at the clock sitting on the nearby workbench, he finds he’s made it back home a little later than he’d like, but he still made good time.
With the bindle in hand, Dr. Kel closes the garage door before pondering where he’ll put his contraband. It probably shouldn’t go into the computer room with him. He’s got this thing tied up tight, but the roaches will probably find a way in. That, and if he’s going to actually meet someone, he should probably steer them away from the roach infested trash heap he lives in.
Shit, he should probably try and clean himself up too. Who knew that all it took was the possibility of someone coming over for him to stop living like a fucking trash mammal.
He’ll leave it in the garage. This place wasn’t exactly clean either, but the strewn about tools and oil stains are far easier to explain away than the roach infestation in the computer room. If someone does actually come up to his front door looking for their stuff, he can lead them through the comparatively clean halls and avoid the landfill he’s been living in for the past week. Marching over to the workbench, he drops off the picnic bindle before leaving the garage and locking the door behind him.
Returning to the computer room and kicking his way through the garbage, Kel sits himself down at the terminal and is happy to see that the signal he locked onto before he left has downloaded. Loading a portable drive into the neighboring terminal, he transfers the downloaded signal onto the drive before removing it and spinning around in his chair to begin processing.
For as much as he complained, the job really wasn’t that bad. Whoever worked here last must have hated him or gone batshit insane from the isolation, but if he puts in the effort to clean the place up and he gets something to keep him entertained, this would be perfect. The tech he was using was ancient and decades older than what he was used to while he was in college, but there was something so satisfying about pushing the big clicky buttons and turning the analogue dials. They could certainly go faster, but what he had was fine.
As the fresh signal processes, Kel begins searching the stars for his next signal, pinging and struggling to find anything of potential value as he swivels back and forth in his chair. Once he gets one and the dishes outside start to slowly realign themselves, Kel looks over his report one last time before getting up to pack it and send it off.
Gathering one of the delivery boxes he’s got stockpiled in the corner of the room, he gathers a few of the drives he processed the night before, neatly tucking them into the foam slots within the box to ensure they don’t get jostled around in shipment. Dr. Kel is about to slip his report into the box and seal it off, but pauses for a moment. Should he include a notice that there are trespassers on the grounds?
Dr. Kel shakes his head and slips the report in. He wasn’t looking to get anyone in trouble and he didn’t want to risk another email from Dr. Bao yelling at him for writing anything other than what is necessary on his reports. Sealing the box tight, Kel marches through the base and lets himself back into the garage, opening up the door to the ramp so he can place the box at the drop off point.
The drone that flies in long after he returns to the computer room was his only connection to the outside world apart from the emails he received. It was an impressive machine, one capable of safely delivering heavy and fragile objects to the base within an hour of sending an order. The ASO must have spared no expense on such a high tech drone, which makes him question why he’s stuck using decades old computers to do his job. He watches through the grime smudged window as the drone flies off into the distance, delivering his hard work to his superiors. An hour or two later, his report will arrive and be processed and he’ll get paid.
Not with cash of course, he had no way to spend real money due to his lack of internet connection or access to anyone to spend it with. He will be granted credits which he can turn in for essential tools and amenities at the company store to be delivered by the drone. He was promised plenty of real money at the end of his contract, but for now, company credits were all he was compensated with. He’s been stockpiling them for a while, unsure of what to get other than the drives and boxes necessary to do his job, but after tasting real food for the first time in a week, maybe it was time he made a grocery list.
Hours pass, the afternoon sun cresting at the top of the sky before slowly sinking down towards the horizon, the golden rays of dusklight filtering in through the girmey windows. Dr. Kel does his best to keep himself busy between long downloading and processing sessions, each hour of patience rewarding him with a cleared up signal to listen to. They’re not all bangers, most are just recordings of space radiation or intercepted signals sent from earth, but every once in a while he gets something neat. The sound of wind blowing on uninhabited planets, electromagnetic flares from distant stars.
Dr. Ena sends him encouraging messages once she gets a hold of his work, but this was nothing. There was one thing he was hoping to find through this work, something all astronomers are probably hoping to find whenever they try to get into this line of work.
Dr. Kel wants to find proof of life outside Earth.
Ancient aliens, the Roswell incident, the Phoenix lights. He’s been digging into alien stuff since he was ten, no doubt spurred on by his obsession with Invader Zim around that age. Sure, nothing has been definitively proven, he certainly wasn’t going to find anything with the ancient junk he was working with if NASA couldn’t find any aliens with state of the art tech, but maybe he’ll be lucky. Everyone else was being silenced, the government censoring people to keep their unexplainable findings a secret.
If he finds something, he’d have his proof. Maybe the ASO will scrub his findings off the face of the earth and try to keep him quiet, but he could live with that. If he gets his proof, he’ll have his confirmation that all the other stories he’s dug into were true as well. Air Forces all over the world nearly colliding with impossible crafts, leaked classified documents proving the governments of the world working with extraterrestrials…
He’s got seven more weeks. He’s sure he’ll find something out there.
As the sun starts to slowly set in the distance and Kel’s eyelids start to grow heavy, Dr. Kel starts to question if anyone would come looking for their stolen picnic. The base was impossible to miss. Every road on the property led here, the loud ass drone always arrived here, and the massive flashing radio tower outside dwarfed even the radar dishes. Maybe whoever snuck on the property was cutting their losses and getting out while they could now that they knew someone was aware of their intrusion.
Dr. Kel really hopes that they reconsider. He’d gladly give them their stuff back if it meant seeing another human being again for the first time in a week. It would also put his mind at ease and explain away the noises he heard outside at night. With how late it was getting and with sunlight waning, he doubts anyone’s still out there anymore. They probably came back to the picnic site, saw their stuff was gone, and booked it off the property to avoid the consequences of getting caught.
He guesses he has a cool model spaceship to futz around with while waiting for stuff to process now.
With daylight fading fast, Kel finally decides to spend his well earned credits to buy himself some actual food. He cannot eat another MRE again, he’d rather starve. Spending a hefty sum of his accumulated points, he purchases several canned goods, a can opener, and some fresh produce as well. Scrolling through the available options, he spots something that gives him pause.
Precooked shrimp.
The same brand and packaging as the stuff he found at the picnic.
That meant one of two things. One: this brand was popular in the area and ASO simply purchases the stuff from local stores. Two: maybe whoever was on the property was associated with ASO.
No, it’s definitely the first thing. He’s just acting paranoid again.
Kel adds a package to his cart before finalizing the order. It was spendy, but damn they were good. He certainly wouldn’t mind having some more and he deserved to treat himself after a week of hard work.
With the order placed, he performs some last minute tasks before the night wraps up. All servers in the server room appear to be in working order, dishes are properly calibrated, all of his drives are properly put away to keep them safe. Hearing the drone in the distance, Kel trudges through the trash of the computer room and kills the lights, sealing the place up for the night.
Opening up the garage door, he drags in the shipping crate the drone drops off in front of it inside. Using the crowbar lying on the floor, he pops the top off and starts digging through the contents. He’ll be eating well for a while now. Closing the doors and locking them up behind him, Kel carries his armload of groceries with him up the stairs to his room.
Stashing everything in the fridges and cupboards, Kel does his business in the restroom and settles in for bed after a somewhat eventful day. He kills the lights and carefully follows the red glow of his alarm clock to find his way to bed, kicking off his boots and crawling under the thin covers. He’s going to have to be a little bit more vigilant during his morning drives from now on. He’s probably scared off whoever came here for a picnic, but if some random guys could sneak onto the property, who knows how lax the security is here. Hell, who knows if there even is security here.
Maybe if he finds out where these guys got in, he could sneak out to the nearest town for a couple of hours before sneaking back in, maybe try some chocolate the Swiss are supposedly world famous for.
Setting his glasses on the table next to the clock, Dr. Kel closes his eyes and tries to get some sleep
—
Dr. Kel blearily opens his eyes, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight. Something wasn’t right. He squints his eyes, trying to focus them enough to read what the clock beside his bed said. 3:12. He still has a couple of hours before he’d usually wake, but he remains motionless and alert, straining his ears and listening out into the dark.
Something’s moving outside.
Kel tries to ignore it. It was a deer sniffing around, the wind blowing leaves in the air, some rodent digging in the trash littering the base. He was just being paranoid, he had nothing to worry about.
He tries to close his eyes again, but he feels his heart stutter in his chest when he hears the unmistakable beep of the keypad controlling the locks of a door.
He lies petrified, unbreathing, eyes wide open as he listens for that sound again. Did he imagine it? Was he so sleep deprived and paranoid that he was hearing things? Was this a dream, maybe?
No. He hears it again, the soft click of keys being pressed followed by the sharp beep of the keypad for the code being wrong. Someone was trying to guess the code!
Dr. Kel breaks into a cold sweat, the panic seizing in his chest keeping him pinned to the bed. What does he do?! He made sure all of the doors were locked and he’s reasonably sure that was the front door being fiddled with. It was passcode protected, but he had no idea how to reprogram it and the last guy who worked here wasn’t very creative. If this was a person and not some wild animal mashing its face into the buttons, it wouldn’t take long for them to try the stupidest code posi-
Kel hears a ding and a click as the correct code is guessed and the locks are disengaged. A second later, he hears the front door open.
Fight or flight kicks in and Dr. Kel reaches for his glasses, throwing himself out of bed and sprinting to the other end of the room to turn on the lights. His flurry of activity seems to startle whoever just intruded into the base and he hears heavy footsteps run through the hall downstairs. Whoever was down there knew he was up here now and if they were pressing forward instead of running, who knows what the hell they’ll do if they try and hurry up the stairs after him.
His eyes scan the room he's in, desperate for something to try and defend himself with if the worst happens. Rushing towards the foldable metal chair pressed against the nearby desk, he collapses it and holds it over his head, positioning himself beside the door to his room and bracing himself for the worst. He hears no footsteps stomping up the stairs or down the hall after him though. Straining his ears to try and hear through the pounding of his heart, he tries to get a read on the intruder’s location.
He hears more beeping. They were trying to get into another locked room. The only other keypad downstairs led to the garage.
Were these the picnic goers?!
Several thoughts and emotions flood Dr. Kel’s mind. For one, there’s relief knowing that the people who broke in are probably after their stuff and not him, but that relief is quickly replaced with anger and fear. These people just broke into his home in the dead of night, scaring the absolute shit out of him and trespassing into his place of safety. Had they come to him and asked, he would have let them wander freely, but seeing as they were willing to break in and steal their stuff back along with potentially whatever else they could grab, they could no longer coexist peacefully.
Chair still in hand, Dr. Kel opens the door and rushes down the hallway. If they were willing to wait till dark and break in while he’s asleep, who knows what else they might pull. These people were dangerous. Hopefully being screamed at by a filthy opossum of a man wielding a metal chair will scare them off the property for good.
He practically throws himself down the stairs and as he opens up the door leading into the main hall, he hears a commotion in the garage. Something just got knocked over and if he had to guess, whoever was inside was panicking to try and get out, stumbling over the garbage in their attempt to escape. He’s halfway down the hall when he hears the shutter door open up.
He tries to force the garage door open, but he watches as the light on the keypad goes from green to red seconds before he can open it. He tries to get it open again, the adrenaline flooding through him causing him to fumble the buttons, but he manages to get it right on his second try. Opening the doors, he raises his chair, ready to swing down if anyone tries to rush him.
The garage is dark, the shutter door is still opening. He can hear hurried footsteps absconding from the scene of the crime.
He tries to chase after them, hurrying out into the dark, but by the time he’s outside, he’s completely lost them. He can’t see anyone running, he can’t hear their feet hitting the gravel, whoever was out there was gone.
“And don’t come back!” Dr. Kel shouts, his voice cracking from both stress and lack of use. He stands on the drop off point, scanning the darkness and peering at the distant lamp posts to see if he can catch a glimpse of the intruders as they flee, but he sees absolutely nothing. He stands vigilant for about one more minute before everything comes crashing down.
Unfolding the chair in his hands, he sets it down right in front of the garage and collapses into it, taking off his beanie to run his shaking, sweaty hands through his hair. He trembles with fatigue and lingering panic. He isn’t sure if he’s ever felt so scared in his life. Fuck, he isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to sleep soundly again knowing that he was 100% justified in his paranoia now.
He’s gotta find out how to change the passcodes on the keypad. He’s gotta get the camera by the front door fixed or replaced. He’s gotta send word to Dr. Bao that there were trespassers who broke into the observatory.
He wasn’t going to be able to sleep again tonight, he was too jittery and on edge to even try. Slowly pushing himself off his seat, he stumbles back inside and confirms his suspicions. The tied up picnic bindle was gone. Thankfully, he doesn’t see anything else missing from the garage, but it isn’t that much of a relief. Simply knowing these people could break into the base at any moment is going to have him checking over his shoulder every single day.
Closing the shutter doors and re-engaging the locks to everything, Kel drags himself back into the main computer room. Turning on the lights and making sure nothing slipped in there while he was rushing for the garage, Kel brings his chair back up the stairs with him so he can try and have a somewhat normal morning routine.
He empties his bladder which was threatening to burst during the whole invasion, he opens up a can of peaches to have an actual breakfast, and for once he tries to clean himself up by splashing some cold water from the sink into his face. He wishes he had some coffee to try and pick him up a little bit more. Something to look into buying after he gets the necessary security upgrades.
He’s still jittery by the time he makes it back downstairs. Kicking through the garbage, he collapses into his seat at the main terminal, turning on the pc resting on his desk to get his daily task. He swears to god, if Dr. Bao complains after sending a note insisting that people are breaking into the observatory, he’s leaving this dump for good. He doesn’t know who the hell he pissed off, but he doubts this is what Ena had planned for him when she extended the job offer.
Glancing at the clock on the desk, it was 3:33 in the morning. Here he was checking his work emails on the witching hour, still high off adrenaline and anxiously peering out the dirty window for signs of the trespassers.
He moves the mouse to open his emails once the pc is finished booting up, but before he can click on Dr. Bao’s latest message, a new one takes its place.
And then another one.
And another one.
Dr. Kel watches in stunned silence as his inbox is suddenly flooded with email after email. None of them have subjects or titles and appear blank on the inbox. Was this a virus of some kind? With no connection to the internet, he doesn’t see how that’s possible. This was supposed to be a closed network to the company. Were the ASO’s servers being hacked?
Not really caring about his job anymore, he risks clicking one of the emails and finds that the attached messages are just complete garbage. He clicks another and gets a slightly different message of jumbled text. All the while, more and more emails keep flooding his inbox.
Whatever.
Dr. Kel leans back in his chair, watching as the surge of emails slows down his computer. Maybe he’ll get a real email to read in a couple of hours once other people see what’s going on, but for now, all he can do is watch in numb bewilderment. He glances out the window again, figuring that he isn’t going to be able to do much on the computer with it craping out on him like this, but something catches his eye the moment he looks away from the screen.
Just above the trees, bright enough to be clearly visible through the grime on the windows, is a bright blue light.
Dr. Kel stares at it for several seconds, his computer crying out in anguish as its processor is overwhelmed, but he pays it no mind as he stares in disbelief at the light. He gets up out of his seat, crawling up and over the desk so he doesn’t have to take his eyes off the thing before pressing his face against the glass.
It’s hard to make out through the grime, but he can just barely make out the silhouette of the object against the dark sky. An elongated tetrahedron, its base ending in three points housing a thruster which glowed a bright blue.
That model he found at the picnic…
Dr. Kel pushes himself off the window and sprints for the door, tripping himself up and breaking his fall against the garbage littering the floor. Adrenaline floods his system once more as he tries to make his way outside as fast as possible to confirm what he’s seeing. Scrambling out of the computer room and frantically punching in the code to get outside, he stumbles out onto the front steps and stares up into the sky.
He can see it clear as day now, hovering in the sky over the radar dishes. A flying tetrahedron floating horizontally in the air, its thrusters illuminating the trees with a soft blue glow. Dr. Kel feels his body go numb as he stares up at the impossible sight, struggling to believe what he was seeing.
He blinks, and the night sky is clear once more.
Dr. Kel stares blankly into the night sky, his body numb and unmoving. This was technically what he was always looking for, what he’s dreamed of since he was a kid. An actual first-hand UFO sighting! That was a god damn alien spaceship! This alone made living in this shitheap worth it, but seeing that design and knowing that the trespassers had a miniature sized model of it packed with their picnic…
Who…
What broke into the base?!