// FILE // PERSONAL RECORD // IONA SURVEY YEAR ONE // SUBJECT: DR. HALWEY, OLIVIA // // ENTRY 0042A // CLASSIFICATION: UNCONFIRMED // They told us to speak aloud when the wind picks up. Doesn’t matter what. Just talk. Recite equations, sing, pray, anything. I asked why. Technician didn’t answer. Just handed me the throat mic and pointed at the haze. So I speak. Mostly to check if the mic still works. Mostly out of spite. --- My station is buried in the soft stone near Rung-4. NEXLINE passes through every 19 minutes, and each time it does, the walls hum like a throat clearing. You start to anticipate it. Then you dread it. Then you forget it’s coming until it’s already there, like a memory walking back into the room. Outside the dome is only silt and warning dye. We painted the rocks orange to mark boundaries, but the dust ate the color in less than a week. Now everything looks bruised. I haven’t seen another person in six days. The ping log says four. That’s fine. I still get uplinks. Voice segments. Directive cues. Redacted traffic from Point Origin. My minibracer says REM sleep is holding. I woke this morning with my boots already on. Didn’t remember the dream. Didn’t remember going to sleep. --- There is no daylight here. There’s radiation and angles. The iodine in the air fractures sunlight before it can become useful. Yesterday i saw my silhouette fall sideways, while i stood still. Pulled all the metrics: shear, density, temperature, spectral break. Nothing accounted for the offset. I’m supposed to be here for energy biology. But all i do is listen. I put sensors into the stone. I check voltage. Sometimes it pulses back. I flagged Vermillion for co-analysis. The reply came four hours late, from tower grey, and it just said: I didn’t reply. --- Storm tracked low through the trench last night. Rode the fracture like it knew the way. Static built in the frame. Lights browned twice. My hair stood on end for 40 minutes. I didn’t sleep. I watched the walls sweat. This morning, one set of impressions in the silt. Half a kilometer long. Not boots. Not animal. Not repeated. Just one. Deep enough to pool. --- I tried sending that log upstream. Got a bounceback. Node marked RETIRED. Tried again. Second return asked me to validate my biometric certificate. Then asked me to confirm the presence of a listener. I did not reply. --- The wind hasn’t stopped. I’ve stopped talking. I just keep the mic on. When the silence falls between gusts, i hear breathing. Might be mine. But it always exhales first. ((Replies considered OOC))
