Cuinn's Compendium

//Spoilers for Dead Space. //Final warning.

Night Light

An every day miracle to me, is the fact that when I walk the short eight minutes from the train station to my apartment at the end of work, I can usually (in the spring and with clouds permitting) see the Moon. Known by many names, Diana, Marama, Nanna/Sin, my favourite being Luna, it is a deity to many peoples. Throughout our history, few things have been as certain as the rising and setting of Sol, and the phases of Luna.

It pulls on our seas, and reflects light when otherwise the night would be nothing but pitch dark. Perhaps, the scant light coming from our exceedingly distant celestial neighbours could, with time and only once our pupils are dilated to the furthest point, give a chance at navigation. Instead we are given the light of the sun even when it would be impossible. A mirror hangs over us, giving us so much.

So why is the moon, when it appears as a central piece in the stories we craft, SO DAMN SPOOKY?

Post-Pre-Amble

Have you ever thought through the Fermi Paradox? In essence: Enrico Fermi, Italo-American physicist known to physics-nerds for physics things, and known to all other nerds primarily for the paradox we're discussing, had a discussion at lunch with other heavy-hitters in the physicists of the 50's.

They wondered something like this: The universe is very old. So old, in fact, that IF life is a spontaneous occurrence, (which it is don't @me), it would be improbable to the point of impossibility that we are the only ones home in the celestial mansion. And to the same point, that we were first. Other life must exist somewhere else, or it must have existed at some point. So why, with the natural curiosity of our species, and our attempts at reaching out to others... At this point Fermi blurted our “But where is everybody?!“¹ or so the story goes.

If life is likely, if interstellar communication is possible, why haven't we heard from anyone else? There are many proposed theories to 'solve' the Fermi Paradox. I will not go into detail about most of them, except one: The Dark Forest Hypothesis

This hypothesis makes some assumptions about life. Do me a favour and imagine: You're a lil' guy in a dark forest. Living in a secluded bush, you can't see into other bushes. You think there might be others there, but you have no way of knowing. Now you could do what Humans do. You could shout, at the top of your lungs “HEY, I LIVE HERE, WE HAVE RADIOWAVES, WANT TO BE FRIENDS?” and who knows, there might be someone across the grassy patch in the nearby shrubbery, and they might hear you, and yet they don't shout back. Because they know something about this forest. They have lived here longer than you, and they know. Something big hunts in this forest, and if it finds you...

In this scenario, the safest actions are, of course, to stay silent. Do not let the others know that you are here, because you can never know their intentions.

The Brethren

Dead Space is a damn good series of video games. In it, you fight Necromorphs, a form of transformed disfigured humans and animals that have been affected by “The Marker”. An artifact of unknown origin and religious worship. Due to weirdness, The Marker affects dead tissue. Makes it live again, makes it kill, and makes it transform the corpses through an unspecific process. It is all very gross. Once enough dead things are moving again, they go through something called a “Convergence” event. A term coined, I think, by the church of Unitology. An in-universe religious entity that is totally-not-at-all scientology-based bonkersness. What a “Convergence” event does, is not entirely spelled out. Since you stop it not once, but twice.

Playing through Dead Space 1 and 2, it seemed like aliens weren't discovered. I know it didn't feel all that like a universe post-first contact.

In Dead Space 3 protagonist Isaac Clarke and a cast of characters including: your ex, her new boyfriend, a traumatized soldier (whom you can also play as in co-op), and a group of religious fanatics are marooned on an icy planet called Tau Volantis. As you explore above and below the frozen wastes it becomes obvious that something lived here before you. Some alien race had structures, civilisation, language here, and then, in an instant, the entire surface was covered in ice. Since then, humans have landed, and they too succumbed to the harsh conditions, making you the third known occupation of the surface. Through data logs and exposition it eventually becomes clear that when the planet froze, it was undergoing a Convergence event, and the original inhabitants tried to stop it. Finding your ex, escaping the religious freaks, and getting off Tau Volantis are the game's primary objectives, that is, of course, until a moon tries to eat you.

Tau Volantis' moon turns out, is not a regular moon at all. It is a living creature, with far too many terrible beaked tentacles and a colouration that shows it's connection to the Necromorphs in no uncertain terms. The Convergence event is revealed to be the gnarly birth of a space monster called a “Brethren Moon”, made possible by the copious amount of dead meat gathered on the planet.

The moon, or moons as we realise, are some kind of apex predator in the universe's eco-system. Attracted by amassed psychic energy from living creatures, like humans, or the original inhabitants of Tau Volantis. They are born from the convergence events, and, I assume, after space-birth, will proceed to devour the entire planet. A connection betwixt the planet-eating moons and the “Planet-Cracker” spaceship that is the location of the entire first game can definitely be drawn, but I digress.

In the end it is up to Isaac Clarke and his maybe-there co-op companion Carver to finally put a stop to the moon. After the Unitologists restart the convergence process a ticking clock starts, as the moon slowly approaches the planet. Hungry.

Dark Universe Theory

Serious answers to Fermi's Paradox don't really include being eaten by moons. In the context of Dead Space, however, it seems the only solution.

When a planet of beings, such as humans, or the Tau Volantians, gather in sufficient numbers. Two-digit billions or more, perhaps. The psychic energy becomes so strong, that it calls to the Brethren Moon. A Marker did find it's way to earth. It paved the way for Unitology as a religion. And with time, Earth too, would succumb to the maniacal manipulations of these things that hunt planets.

It makes sense why Tau Volantis is unique. Why the humans of Dead Space haven't found alien life before. Only the planet which very very nearly got devoured, and only avoided its fate by the heroic acts of self-sacrificing people, shows signs of previous inhabitants. Perhaps, I think, because no others have survived the convergence, or managed to stop it.

There are many other ways to solve the Fermi Paradox. But for me, the Dark Universe where something big, hungry, and hunting, lurks just outside the scope of human endeavours. That is where the best stories lie.

Thank you for reading, and don't look the Moon in its eyes.

-Ventus

This post is based on my own recollection, using no sources. As an exercise in, and example of, how video games exist in our memory after completion.

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Angry post-amble

EA Games: Cancel Everything

What the Brethren Moon really are is still a mystery. Visceral Games, the studio behind Dead Space, were shut down by their corporate overlords in 2017. I had not needed more reasons to dislike EA, but they sure do make it easy.

We get a small glimpse into what could have been at the end the DLC Dead Space 3: Awakened. In the Epilogue, Clarke and Carver finally head towards earth. As they approach our home, they try to hail the spaceports, or the mining corps, met initially only with static, they finally get through to something. They hear only screams and horror. A trio of Brethren Moons rise behind the pale blue dot. They followed our signals, they have gathered, and they feast.