The Alpha Centauri Outpost, a Planet Possessed

After returning from my visit to the human's destroyed and decayed Alpha Centauri outpost, I was intrigued to learn more. I came across these photos in the archives. Shot during the planet's decline, you can already see the ever-present clouds of industrial waste that had been churned into the sky. The clouds had not yet reached the final stage of the murky, gurgling brown they were to become but one can feel the ominous doom they portend.

The discarded plant pictured here was typical of what would one day cover the entire landscape. Once the resources had been used up in a particular area, the parasitic humans moved on to another and then another until finally nothing was left. In their wake they left a trail of rust and rot, the polluters never looking back. Once deemed useless, the machinery was abandoned as testament to their disdain of a place no longer valued. Little did they realize they too would share the same fate.


I tried to imagine myself in there during the days of its operations, walking through dusty hallways and vapor filled rooms. I can see the metal frame desks coated in industrial ash, encased in surroundings with only the bare minimum of creature comforts. The mentality was one of disposability and expediency. What a feeling it must have been for these vampires of nature. Declaring themselves gods and riding the wave of a delusional claim of divinity. They must have thought they had triumphed over Nature itself.

In papers found among the corpses, it is recorded they were covered with rows and rows of numbers. Strangely, there were “good” numbers and “bad” numbers, things they labeled “profits” and “losses” respectively. But these were not profits and losses of the minerals they mined, but of this imaginary concept called “money”. I myself have studied this greatly but I’m still not sure I fully grasp the idea. I’ll see if I can explain.


Apparently, money was some sort of rating system of the items on the planet. It was like some inscrutable game to gain the most items with the highest ratings. The ratings would fluctuate according to desirability and scarcity. So real was this game to them they would murder one another to achieve the highest rating and even passed laws stating no one could live without a money rating. Sheer insanity. None of this imaginary money ever gave them one more bite to eat or one more gasp of air.

I’m not sure we will ever know what possessed the humans to go off on such a tangent – other than the fact they themselves must have been possessed. What drove them to invent the money game and so cruelly enforce its worship, enslaving themselves to an illusion they called savior? What source of unhappiness had caused such a self-destructive streak conflagrating into total annihilation? I shudder to imagine the final days of madness in the ever-increasing agony of serving their money god. Truly, a planet possessed.




Read the diary written during the outpost's final days