Interstellar Transmission From [CLASSIFIED]

I can feel your eyes seeking, looking up, straining as you gaze hungrily at the stars, the planets, the voids between.

I share your passion. To fall into the infinite galaxies and the darkness. I feel its pull, the same delicious shiver as it makes you feel oh so small.

The possibilities are endless. What lurks on those unknown planets, what hides in the dead light of stars now burned to dust?

Are you like me? Wishing to drown in interstellar terror, yearn to behold things larger than yourself, of things beyond belief and imagination?

Space, where beyond the thin walls of your spaceship, of your space suit, lies death. Where every planet could hold pain.

What could thrill more than to discover life elsewhere, even if hostile? It may be plant or animal or spectral being, or perhaps something else.

Something incomprehensible.

What of the dangers of travelling through the stars, of complications or sickness, of isolation or betrayal of friends?

The horrors are bountiful, they are beautiful and terrible in turn, and they will sate your desperate hunger for that next discovery.

For the darkness beyond the stars is decadent in its brutality.

Strive for the darkness. Scream for the stars. They are gone and only echoes remain. The planets you will discover will fight you, lay you low. Your companions cannot be trusted.

Perhaps worst of all will be your own mind, your paranoia, your failing strength.

You won’t be able to resist the pull. I know you’re as curious as I am. Nothing will stop you from reaching out and searching.

Take this, my offering to you. A gift, let’s say. A promise.

A declaration of war, even, on your sense of well-being and safety in your place in this cold, unfeeling universe.

I hope you enjoy each story, I hope in them you hear those cosmic whispers and galaxial cries. Feel each author’s howl of fear in the inked words, feast your eyes on the ominous visions. May every page pull you deeper, towards a literary event horizon.

Be seeing you soon.

Until then, look to the stars.

x P.L. McMillan