A team of scientists arrives on a lifeless planet — only to encounter their own doppelgangers, who subject them to cruel experiments that transform the scientists into monsters.

SYNOPSIS:

The Lonely Monster

Tagline: They are not what they seem.

Suitable for the series Love, Death & Robots

A ship carrying scientists and military personnel arrives on an unknown planet for a research mission. However, their objectives shift abruptly when they encounter their own doppelgangers on this lifeless world—clones who are now conducting twisted experiments on them. The crew’s new priority becomes survival and escaping a fate far worse than death.

A scientific station came down to a planet which was beyond the Solar system in order to make a research of it. The scientists worked on this station. This new planet had been discovered recently, it was situated not far from the Solar system. The scientists called it the Dark Planet.

After some time of living on the scientific station, the crew members began to observe the presence of non-organic beings that were everywhere, inside and outside the spaceship. They could go through the walls and human bodies. They looked like translucent shadows. The first person who saw non-organics was a woman scientist. She noticed the moving shadow-like non-organics at the window as she was working at the lab. She saw the shadows flying outside the window and she thought that they were ghosts. But her friend, a scientist said that those were not ghosts for sure, but they were some kind of unknown forms of life, inorganic forms of life, non-organics. The scientists started to call them the non-organics.

A military guard was drinking coffee and looking out of the window at the deserted surface of the Dark Planet when he accidentally noticed strange lights far away. He reported to the crew and they began examining the lights through a telescope. What they saw was a construction that looked very similar to their own station. They couldn’t believe it, that was why they sent a flying drone with a video camera which got closer to the station copy and started to film it. All members of the crew looked at the monitor and saw the station that was an ideal copy of their station to the last detail. Then, they saw themselves through the windows of that station, actually, there were some others that looked exactly like them. No one could believe it, all of them were shocked.

The inorganic creatures that inhabited this planet managed to materialize the whole scientific station and the whole crew. They created the exact copies of everything. After that, the copied crew flew to the Earth on the copied space station instead of the real crew. Not the people came back to the Earth, but their doppelgangers that contained the non-organics inside. The real crew and the station stayed on the Dark Planet.

After the departure of the copied crew to the Earth, the inorganic beings made another copy of the whole crew. The scientists watched as their new precise copies were being materialized right in front of them. They couldn’t believe it and didn’t understand what was happening. When the materialization was finished, the copies of the scientists came up to the actual scientists and began explaining to them what had been happening. They explained their intentions. The non-organics told the scientists that they wanted to get into the human world because there was too much energy in our world, a limitless amount of energy. For the non-organics this energy was the most valuable resource. That was the reason why they needed to enter the human world and get the access to the unlimited sources of energy.

Then, they captured all the crew members and began to study and experiment on them. The original scientists had conducted experiments on white mice on the station, but then the non-organics in human guise experimented on the scientists. A non-organic separated an arm from a military man, the latter screamed in pain, but then the non-organic put its hand to the man’s forehead - the pain disappeared and the arm fell down on the floor. After that, the non-organic materialized a new arm for the military man and everything became as it had been before.

The experiments were very different, the non-organics wished to study human organic bodies as much as possible. They transformed the human bodies, changed them, separated and rejoined them. They took two scientists, dematerialized their clothes and shoes and when the scientists were totally naked the non-organics started to splice their bodies. The splicing continued until a monster was formed. It was yelling in agony and despair. When the military men raised their weapons to kill the doppelgangers, the men stood stiff at once and couldn’t move. The whole crew were totally helpless they didn’t have a single chance to defend themselves.

A woman scientist said:

• Just kill me, I don’t want to suffer this any more.
• I will do what you ask - I will kill you but slowly.

After that, her own doppelganger came up to her and said:

First, the woman’s copy dematerialized all the clothes and shoes that the woman was wearing and she was left naked. Then, all her skin disappeared and the woman was left without skin. She looked at herself in the mirror and became hysterical. She grabbed a dismembered military man’s handgun and shot herself in the head, and then she fell on the cold bloody metal floor.

The non-organics’ long-lasting experiments on the scientists ended up in modifying the rest of the crew into monsters. After that, the doppelgangers abandoned the station leaving only the monsters there. These monsters looked like monsters externally, but there were also human features in them. It was the same from a psychological point of view – these monsters weren’t absolute monsters inside, they had something human in them. They remembered their families, their children and friends.

The monsters were wandering about the dark station trying to talk but instead of words they pronounced growling and ominous sounds. As the time went by the monsters began to attack each other in order to eat. As the monsters gradually ate one another, their number was decreasing until the only one was left. When the last monster was left on the dark cold station surrounded by the other monsters’ bloodstained skeletons, the silence followed.

The last surviving monster stayed alone not only on the space station but on the whole planet. The monster came up to the window and looked into the distance at the deserted dark landscape of the Dark Planet. He saw the reflection of himself in the glass and the shadows were flying silently behind the glass in the open space, these were non-organics. The monster began to cry.

P.S.v1.0

v1.1

The monster scientist who was the only survivor was the most violent of the crew, he was even more violent than the military guards. This scientist conducted such an experiment on a white mouse. He placed it alone in a dark metal box, gave it an injection because of which the mouse began to mutate and eventually turned into a monster. After that the monster mouse was left alone in the dark metal box. The scientist threw live white mice to it, and it ate them. Then, the scientist stopped feeding the mutant mouse, there was no more food. The mutant mouse looked through the transparent window in the box and it could see the scientists’ silhouettes moving behind the transparent frosted glass doors of the laboratory. They looked like ghosts that moved quietly and made the sounds that were unclear to the mutant mouse.

v1.2

Non-organics are looking for inhabited planets like the Earth in order to seize these planets, taking the bodies of people, animals and other creatures. The aim of non-organics is to capture all human bodies by getting inside them and take control over human avatars.

But the point is that nature has defended people from non-organics. The Earth is surrounded by an invisible field that hides the Earth from non-organics. Owing to such protection, the planet becomes invisible to inorganic beings. If non-organics start searching for the Earth on their own, it will take them millions of years. And therefore, the only way for non-organics to find the Earth is if the Earthlings themselves arrive on the Dark Planet which is inhabited by inorganic beings. And thanks to people, they will be able to find the Earth. People are guides for non-organics, just owing to people, inorganic beings managed to find such a valuable planet for them.

v1.3

This scientist looked like a human on the outside, but he was a monster inside, a cruel monster. He conducted inhuman experiments on animals, and got great pleasure from it. The other scientists knew about such hobbies of his, but they didn't say anything against it, they just kept silent and didn't pay any attention to it. Just one young lady scientist once stood up for a little monkey, to which the scientist wanted to amputate legs. The lady took the monkey from the lab and located it in her room. When the non-organics arrived, this girl was the only member of the crew who the inorganic beings did not experiment on. They just put her to sleep, she fell asleep on the bed in her room, and never woke up again. The little monkey lay on her belly and slept too.

P.S.v2.0

This story may have three possible sequels, three branches:

v2.1

A story of the copied crew, that does not consist of people. This story tells what they started doing on the Earth and what plans they began to develop for humanity.

v2.2

A story of the lonely monster who died, but the non-organics revived him in a few minutes and transformed him into a new perfect life form. As a result, the monster got out of the station and started living alone on the planet.

v2.3

A story of the sleeping lady and the monkey who woke up after the bloody hell had ended and it had become quiet at the station. The non-organics helped to materialize the station quickly and restore it completely and also to clear it of the corpses and blood. As a result, the lady scientist and her monkey lived on this station, the station was their home. First of all, the girl began to develop an antidote that could help turn the mutant mouse back into a healthy mouse.

P.S.v3.0

At times, the Caretaker would walk past the station and peer through its windows. In the glass, he glimpsed a girl, though he did not know who she was—and she, too, saw him in the window, equally unaware of his identity.

The faceless Caretaker began to linger near the station, watching over the girl and occasionally aiding her. One day, she tried to leave the station but found herself trapped—her oxygen reserves had run dry. She longed to retrieve strange, glowing crystals scattered in the distance. Then, the following morning, when the girl awoke, she discovered a cluster of those luminous crystals lying by the station’s transparent door. The Caretaker had brought them to her. Overjoyed, she hurried to her laboratory and began to study them at once.

The Inorganics infiltrated the human world, seizing and reshaping it to their will, plunging the Earth into true hell. Meanwhile, a girl living alone on a remote station, unaware of her own actions, had inadvertently crossed into the realm of these inorganic beings. Unbeknownst to herself, she began to alter and humanize their world.

The Inorganics and their Overseer mimicked her, replicating her every move. But unlike her, their resources were boundless. Over time, guided by the Overseer, the Inorganics materialized a full-fledged city on the Dark Planet. They fashioned human-like bodies, becoming almost human themselves. Everything these inorganic beings created was a reflection of the girl’s inner world—her desires, aspirations, emotions, and intentions. Years passed, and gradually, the Dark Planet ceased to be dark. It grew radiant. A single ordinary individual, without even realizing it, had transformed a cold, lifeless wasteland into a flourishing paradise.

Yet this paradise was not on Earth…