Stooping for salvage amongst the wreckage the stocky beach comber wonders: What happened? A diary is lying by his feet, half buried in the sand. Its final page, scrawled hurriedly, is just barely readable through the water damage:
I must write quickly
Our ship, Moonsong, is eighty days from home. Ours is a mission to find new mountains, see new wonders, contact new peoples.
This...phenomenon ....began moments ago. The day was calm, the sun setting, and I had retired to my cabin, when the air above the sea filled with flickering movement.
Through the windows I saw the spray of atop the waves forming neat patterns, ordered squares that stretched as far as I could see.
A new natural wonder, so soon!
I noticed that the flickers were now in the corridor outside my door.
Subliminally fast movements. They grew more numerous as the seconds ticked by.
Then I heard screams.
Out in the corridor people were vanishing.
For long moments I doubted my senses. The flickers thickened. Thoughts shaking, I cried out through Moonsongs deck; only a few distant voices answered.
I cried out again and none replied. Pieces of Moonsong itself began to disappear.
Someone shrieked in pain!
Now I see boxy shapes floating out on the water. As the sun and moon flash by overhead I see the squat cubes are made of mutilated flesh! Our flesh, the ships flesh, dead flesh, yet still changing and growing.
Flickers almost a fog. Tingles racing over me, abysmally fast things touching me, unknowable runes are cutting themselves into my flesh, write themselves onto the walls.
Have mercy, NO MORE!
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