Novel draft- The Planet Of Death

Narrator:

we are driving in a desert, not just any desert, it's the largest known desert on this gigantic planet in this galaxy. Somehow this planet managed to sustain itself at the just right distance to the sun and it's not burning in the day time or freezing at night that much, well, just bearable, if one more degree higher or lower I'm gonna have to worry about the life span of the computer on my suit, which is essential to our journey.
Julia and I came here for an adventure like some other daredevils did because it is considered to be one of the most challenging environment that human can be in without support of space suit. Not many of them made it out alive.
I didn't want to bring Julia in the first place, for it was an extremely dangerous place and the last thing I wanted to happen to her was getting her trapped on this endless, lifeless piece of desert land. But Julia has been telling me a lot about a story she recently read, it was about a guy named Chris McCandless, a guy died in a lone adventure in the wild some centuries ago, when human were still limited to their home planet earth, I wonder how that felt like, to spend your whole life on one single planet.
I have planned for this trip for a while and I had someone in my mind that I should do this trip with, but all in a sudden I just couldn't remember who that was, so I finally agreed to bring Julia with me because I saw a special light in her eyes when she was telling me the idea.



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we travel through the desert for about a year now, we met sand storm like in cheesy sci-fi movies, only this is very true in front of our eyes, hundreds, maybe thousands of metres tall giant storm is moving towards us like the universe itself wants us swallowed into another space and time. Scary as hell, yet fascinating as hell as well!

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we barely survived after hiding in a hole we dug. Some batteries went missing, the tracking system is broken so we couldn't find any missing items --- must have been buried deep into the dune. This means we must reduce our activities, less games, less video recording and data transmitting, we have to use all the juice we've got to maintain our basic survival: making food and purify water, I started to worry about her, but every time I looked into her eyes I saw determination, no less than mine, plus her short haircut with sand decorated blonde color just made her look extra tough. When the sun was setting on the far horizon, everything turned golden and orange-ish, she was walking ahead of me collecting plants, I turned my head throw a glance at our vehicle afar and turned around seeing her taking one footstep more firmly than the last one, I had no doubt that she can make it, I mean, she seemed more energetic than I am!

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We met some strange creatures that we've never heard before, never had any report mentioned those creatures, we may be the first one to discover them. Unfortunately they are not so friendly and we had to run away and hide from them. We don't know nothing about them and often it's the unknown that scares people the most.

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It's been another 6 months I think I may have started hallucinating about stuff, stuff that are so distant so strange to me. Glad that I have Julia with me, her presence always calms me down.

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Do you think we should go home now? I asked Julia. It seemed strange that it was my idea in the first place, she was just tagging along, but now it seems all turned up side down, my concern started to grow back. "No, we don't go home until we finish our journey, your journey", she looked me in the eyes and I saw the sparks blended tender and courage coming from her dark grey-green eyes.
They were more beautiful than stars.

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We found some wrecks and corpses, they belong to the previous travellers, normally people freak out when they see corpses, but in our cases, well, we got weirdly cheerful because we had lost a lot of supplies, so we looted all the useful stuff we could carry and felt pumped about the trip again.
After the laughter we looked at each other, I guess we thought the same thing at the same time because we stopped laughing at the same time: we will make it. I believe she said the same thing in her mind. Then we kept walking, with quite a lot of sympathy and respect to those who had died here coming up in my heart later on.
The goal is, primarily survive, but also we want to see just how long will it take for us to travel all the way around the planet, life should always be challenging, especially an adventure journey. So far it's always been desert, it could be that we happen to be walking on an complete ring of desert wrapping over the planet from one end to the other, I joke.

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I woke up early in the morning, still in auto pilot mode, so I switched on my gaming program in front of my eyes, played some simulation games. She woke up, not even opening her eyes completely she punched me in the arm and told me "it's silly, simulation is for losers."  Yeah it's true that too many people today live a life of playing simulation games and kind of just abandoned their real world life, it is sad, but it's also fun to play once in a while, it won't harm, she knows that I'm not that type who gets hooked up in silly games. I never had a serious conversation with her about simulation, well, who does today haha, it's regarded as a joke because it's pop culture. However, the underlying idea of simulation is truly fascinating to me, our game is pretty much 99.999% identical to real life(that's why so many people got lost in virtual world), so when you play it, you feel as if you are living a brand new life, which opens up many possibilities for many people. I often contemplate, how can we make sure if we ourselves are living in a simulation or not. There's just NO WAY to find out. This crazy hell of desert may just be some code running on some higher dimensional super computer, but we have to struggle through it, that's the rule of the game.

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2 years, we made it to the end of the desert, finally. Now in front of us is ... ocean, giant ocean that could be 10s of thousands of miles wide.
I miss home, in our little spaceship we had a beautiful garden, some of the best game rooms where you can play tennis with legendary players in history, I like to play with a guy back 2 centuries called Utterson, who won 45 grand slams in his career, not the most, but I just like his style so much.
Our spaceship is parked somewhere in the space, waiting for our one order to pick us up. I saw Julia's determination and I tried to be manly in front of her and refuse to acknowledge the fact that fear grew ever bigger in my head, I think of me dying, I think of her dying, I think of the situation when we struggle to save each other, I think of situation where we both die here, in the middle of nowhere, and decades later some other idiots would stumble upon our tombs.

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There's too much cloud above the ocean, we sent out a drone with solar panel to harvest the solar energy, in the meantime our fusion ball is running on full capacity as well. Despite the cloudy days, I felt refreshed to be in a totally different environment.

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A few weeks later. Now there's storm again, yes, that's why they say this place is dangerous, you cannot have much peaceful time. We lost our drone along with the solar panel, our ship was damaged during the run away. The fusion ball is damaged from overload as well, now we are in real danger.

The storm has been chasing us for days, we haven't seen sunlight for weeks, everything's turned depressing. I did some calculation and I believe that it's time to go home, we cannot hold on any longer, chances are our fusion ball will fail before we make it alive. Julia hesitates, she can't make a decision. I got a bit angry, why is she suddenly so not decisive at this vital moment? She's the most intelligent woman I've ever seen in my life, I admire her for her independence and after this trip also her courage, but she should know better than wasting our lives while we could just call our spaceship and get the hell out of here.

Somehow we stopped talking to each other, it didn't happen all in a sudden, it was just... I couldn't think straight, and I thought about things too much, and everytime before opening my mouth I started thinking and calculating in my mind, but every time in the end I decided it was better not to say anything.

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another day, she seemed very sad, that makes me sad too, I softened and told her we are going to make it, we are going to try our best if that's what she really wants.
She stopped me, trying to tell me something but she didn't say it. It was very strange of her, the storm has made her a little far from me, or maybe it was the cold war between us caused the distance between our hearts right now? When life and death are hanging on one single thread, it is very difficult to talk it through like normal couples do.

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Finally she told me, remember the tracking system failure back in the desert? Well, our communication system also failed along with that, we simply lost contact with our spaceship. So we have to make it on our own.
The picture of our lovely spaceship descending from the sky and blow away the storm just re-enacted in my head and then vanished. It's impossible now, on top of that, even if we make it out alive, we cannot go back home anymore. Desperation overwhelmed me, I couldn't think anything else but doing my best to navigate our ship and calculating the best path to get out of the storm.

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In darkness I saw an extremely white light, it hurts my eyes, I put my hands over my eyes and try to make out what that is. It's Julia, she walked slowly towards me, so softly so sweet, it was such a heavenly scenario that it felt as if we were in eternity. Then there's storm and rain blowing from the side, the light started flicking and dimming, I hold her hand and ask her, what is the purpose of this trip? She doesn't say anything but look at me, I asked again, What is the purpose of this trip, why would you risk your life here?? I was supposed to be here by myself, I don't want you to give up your life here. I seemed have an answer but only now I realized it was always very vague, I was never 100% sure about why she made this trip with me. Again, she didn't say anything but stared at me, she looked strangely sad in her eyes, I panicked. Life is strange, death can be stranger.

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Are you okay? She smiles and asked me, I opened my eyes and looked at her, it was a dream?

I forced myself on my feet and looked around, it's heavily cloudy but seems that we are getting away from the storm, I watched the lightening and thunder roaring afar in the horizon.

Now what, I asked her, should we go back to the land?

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A few weeks later, we are on land. Strangely I've been losing memories and feeling weak during this time, to be accurate, ever since I had that dream, my body just doesn't feel like mine, it's become a struggle to do simple daily tasks.
I am sick. What could be the cause of the sickness? The storm contained viral? Or even the mysterious creatures on the land? I cannot make a conclusion. I'm feeling sicker and sicker every day, Julia looked extremely tired and worried, she took care of me, very well, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm getting very sick and weak.
"I'm so sorry honey, I wish I was a doctor, but I don't know what to do..." .She told me with tears in her eyes.
I can't respond.
I closed my eyes and felt darkness overwhelmed my body again.

(abrupt ending of the log)
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Narrate from Julia:

Earth Year 2478 Day #235 (6 month after came back from my trip)

It's been 6 months and it felt like just 6 days because I did literally nothing but mourning on his death, a double layered sorrow tortures my heart wave after wave. For the confusion, guilty feeling, sadness and my broken body, I couldn't put myself together to sum up my trip until now.

I found the log he wrote, thank God it was synced on galaxy drive so that I had the chance to discover how much affection he had to me and just how REAL he was, which I once thought I firmly believed in yet struggled to convince myself at the same time. My mind and heart have been twisted in this way and even more cruel was the fact that I COULD NOT tell him the truth... well, until his death.

After all system failed on our cruising vehicle, the only way to get contact with our spaceship was to concentrate all our left energy resource to power up our backup communication device, and all the energy left was the mini fusion ball powering him.

He was a robot, with my late husband's brain simulated.

People tried to dissuade me from the idea of making an identical copy of my husband after he tragically died in the planet of death during an adventure with his friend. But I just felt it was what my heart wanted to do: to bring "him" back there and get him complete the adventure, to fulfill his dream.

Ironically his destiny somehow seemed belong to that planet, for he had died "twice" at the same place.

However after the first day he woke up I immediately knew it wasn't just a simulation, it was so real, it was him, I was convinced, in excitement I believed that I had made a right decision. So for most of the time I simply forgot the fact that he was in fact an artificial intelligence and during the trip I only grew more affectionate to him and understood more why he wanted to take that adventure in the first place.

It was a hell of a battle inside me during the last a few days on the planet: should I save myself or should I die together with him? If I died there, would I be dying with my husband or merely a highly customized robot? Many people may have asked that question during these centuries, but I bet few had to go through the struggle and confusion I went through.

In the end my survival instinct triumphed, I tried to divert only a fraction of his power to the communication device but it didn't work... that's when he got "sick", he was running out of battery and I really didn't know what to do to help him... So in the end I finally took the entire fusion ball out of his chest, it was then I realized he wasn't my husband after all: he was powered by a fusion ball after all...

Until I read his log when I came back, I realized that it was him, it has always been him.

-the end-

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this is a draft of an idea for a novel or short story, it's under constant adjustment and refining works.
The details are extremely simplified for the purpose of simply sketching a storyline, hopefully it would become more lively and organic after more works and improvements are added on it.