Construction team worked for the rest of the evening and into the night. We stopped for dinner, a meal of scavenged canned food, fried up with whatever hadn't already gone bad.

Our little settlement was growing rapidly, but there were only about ten of us on construction, and there were really only four engineers, myself included. The rest were from a more construction heavy background, but one was a materials scientist who worked for a recycling plant. Her input proved the most important. Her name was Lee, and she was beautiful, although I hated thinking about it. My girlfriend was still out there, somewhere, although I didn't know where. At least I hoped she was. I had a grim thought - she probably thought I was dead. She was probably in some other guy's arms, crying, being consoled -

"Peter," Lee said. Her voice was light. Airy.

"What?" I said, snapping back into the small conference room. Brigg, the dark-skinned guy with glasses and the pop punk t-shirt, had poured us all glasses of wine and we were slowly getting drunk. He was an engineer too, but of the mechanical variety. We had different skill sets, which helped with designing the “bridge” we were supposedly creating. The last in our little group was quiet Viraj, who was a computer engineer that had formerly worked for IBM in the Loop.

"We want to hear your thoughts. On where we are?" Lee said. She tucked a black lock of hair behind her ear.

"I don't know. Is it important? I'm just happy we're alive - or we probably are."

"Oh come on. You have to give us your best guess,” Lee said.

"I think it's aliens," Brigg said. "What else could it be?"

"Literally anything else," Lee said. "I think it's more likely that we're dead. This is some kind of afterlife."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Brigg threw his hands up. "Ridiculous. Ridiculous! I thought you were a scientist."

"I am! I'm a scientist who thinks a nuclear bomb turned us all into ghosts." Lee said.

"Well that's good news at least," I said, "if you're right, then the Russians can't kill us twice."

"Fine. If you're going to make fun of me, you need to put some skin in the game. What's your theory?" Lee said, cocking her head to the side.

"I don't know," I said. "I think that's the point. There's some connection with nuclear bombs. Nuclear energy. I think humans overestimate how much we know about the world, about our own technology. We like to think we know what happens when a nuclear bomb goes off, but do we really? We’re dealing with fundamental forces of nature. Splitting atoms."

Lee considered, sipping her wine. "I think we do. Everything goes boom. Then there's destruction for miles around the blast zone, right? And radiation?"

I nodded. "Yes, but what about the very core? Energy levels at the center of a nuclear blast must reach cosmic proportions. These islands - cities, whatever they are - aren't very big. If I had to guess, I'd say that what came here - the Void - are just the parts that were completely vaporized back on Earth. Leaving nothing behind for anyone to suspect otherwise."

"So what," Brigg said, "you're saying that somehow we got bombed into another dimension?"

"Maybe," I said, "there's probably more to it than that. But nuclear physics seems complicated to me. Who knows what all that energy is capable of?"

Brigg shrugged. "Nah. That seems like bullshit. I'll bet it's aliens."

Lee and Brigg started arguing again. "You might as well say it's the biblical rapture!" Brigg moaned. But on the whole we were having fun; it felt good, after my days of wandering alone, to have some semblance of normalcy. To drink with new friends.

Around midnight, Moira barged in on us playing drinking games, her expression grim. She was flanked by her personal guard.

"Get off your asses. While you were acting like college students, our Technology Squad built a two way radio. We've got London on the line. And you're not going to like what they have to say."