"…Flee."
With those faltering words, the first lunar rover we found, barely clinging to its remaining battery, shut down completely, its faint green indicator light extinguished forever. At the same moment, the surroundings plunged back into pitch-black darkness.
But then, as if a massive circuit breaker had been flipped or a heavy iron door slammed shut, a jarring metallic clang echoed through the void. Simultaneously, a blinding light flooded the area.
Hastily glancing around, I saw what resembled powerful stadium spotlights mounted on sturdy iron pillars, their countless beams like car headlights piercing the darkness. The cold, fluorescent glow, though stark and inorganic, was so intense it felt as if it could illuminate even the veins inside a body. In an instant, it obliterated the blinding blackness that had enveloped us moments before, bathing everything in relentless, almost violent brightness.
Lifting my gaze, I noticed countless vibrant objects floating in the air. They were like cotton candy, painted in every conceivable color within the visible spectrum, drifting like clouds in this vacuum deep sea. Upon closer inspection, I realized they weren't mere decorations—lunar rovers, still conscious, were trapped within them. At the center of each cotton candy-like mass, a thick silver thread, strong as a freshly forged iron rod, pierced through, suspending them in place.
Below, the ground resembled a brutal battlefield from the Sengoku era. Countless lunar rover remnants littered the gray wasteland like tombstones or the discarded rifles of defeated soldiers, forming a desolate, chaotic wilderness. Above this grim landscape, the vibrant cotton candy floated with an almost playful charm, creating a jarring contrast that amplified the surreal strangeness of this vacuum, enough to throw any CPU into a state of bewildered confusion.
Then, the cotton candy-like clouds began to part slowly, as if Moses were dividing the sea. From the center of the cleared space, an enormous object emerged, like a towering cumulonimbus cloud in midsummer. Its overwhelming presence radiated outward, as if drawing all the spotlights to itself, scattering its dominance in every direction like the exhaust of a rocket at launch.
The cloud, like a cocoon, began to split at its center. Its surface hardened, resembling a white egg, before cracking open. As the shell peeled away, the contents gradually revealed themselves.
What emerged was a spider of unimaginable scale, its form so alien it seemed it shouldn't—couldn't—exist in reality. Its size dwarfed even 500 humanoid robots combined. Dozens of long, black, metallic legs moved with a smoothness that was both elegant and nauseating, like a pianist's fingers dancing effortlessly across keys, yet producing a discordant melody that churned the stomach.
At the spider's core, its body, sat a humanoid figure clad in an outdated spacesuit. It was as if they were seated in a cockpit, yet their posture was oddly relaxed, like a billionaire lounging at a summer retreat, casually smoking a cigar. The figure's head was encased in a black, glass-like helmet, reminiscent of a motorcycle visor, its interior completely obscured. Yet, there was no doubt its gaze was fixed on Kana and me, looking down from its lofty perch.
Then, a resonant, surround-sound voice boomed through the vacuum, as if emanating from stadium speakers.
"Surely, delicious."
The voice, calm and mechanical like an old text-to-speech system, carried a chilling clarity, sending a deep shudder through the lifeless lunar rovers, Kana, and me.
In the background, another voice seemed to whisper in my mind, like a weathercaster delivering a dispassionate forecast:
"Forever, cloudy."