No Man’s Sky

It’s raining outside. 

Every once in a while, a plane from the Chicago Air Show whooshes by. I can hear the pitter patter of raindrops tapping on the ivy covering my tiny backyard. Or is that sound coming from the giant banana leaves catching the toxic acid rain? The wide leaves bend out of heavy, hairy tree stumps and crowd the sky of this lush moon. I can't be sure where each sound is coming from anymore. It's like a lavish symphony.

Now a whizzing engine sound appears and disappears high above, as I slowly sneak among overgrown mushrooms and iridium deposits, to get a better look at the massive lizardlike creature on that barren sand patch. What was that sound? A spaceship on a fast, low orbit? We are in a crater, gargantuan rock formations rise up around us, and this overgrown lizard is the only animal I can see in here, the first example of its species I encountered.

The caustic thunderstorm is eating away at my suit. I should find a cave and take shelter. I have a vague recollection of a city, with tall skyscrapers, but fragments of this distant memory are fading. Half shadow of a word is trying to cling to its weakening existence, cheeg, chakagoo, something like that, but it's too late, it disappears completely.

I step on a thorny flower, which crumples loudly under my boot. The sound startles the lizard. It suddenly looks in my direction for a second; then immediately disappears into the thick underbrush. The acid is slowly finding its way through the layers of my suit. Warning, toxicity levels rising, its computer declares, in a soothing, almost maternal voice. I think I'm lost.