Col’s pulse pounded in his ears as the small ship rocketed through the air, the crimson landscape stretching away into a blur beneath them. His brow furrowed as he bit his lip, trying to process what had just happened. Moments ago, he’d been standing outside a hotel, staring at an impossibly tall wall, and now he was in a sleek spacecraft, piloted by a stranger named Naomi, racing away from something she’d called “erasure.”
He cast a sidelong glance at Naomi, who remained laser-focused on the ship's controls. Her hands moved swiftly and confidently over the holographic display, her expression sharp and determined. Col had worked with enough tough people to recognize when someone knew what they were doing under pressure, and Naomi wasn’t panicking—she was surviving.
“What the hell just happened?” he demanded, his voice shaking from a mix of adrenaline and confusion. “What do you mean by ‘erased’? What’s going on? I have a meeting to get to.” Even with everything happening around him, his duty to save his company still nagged at the back of his mind.
Naomi didn’t respond immediately. She gripped the controls as the ship veered between narrow white structures that now boxed them in, slicing through the horizon like blades. Her focus was absolute, as if she were calculating every second, every move.
“I told you,” she finally said, her tone clipped, “this place—it’s not what you think. It’s not real, at least not in the way you know. You and I? We’re in the Deletion Chamber. I’d forget about any meeting you think you have. How does the saying go? You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Col’s temper flared again, a small afterburn from his earlier rage at the hotel staff igniting inside him. He sucked his breath in between his teeth and tried to focus. Not in Kansas anymore, he thought, and he couldn’t argue with that. He needed to focus on the most pressing issue first. Just like in business: prioritize. What was the most critical item on the list?
“Deletion Chamber? What does that even mean?”
Naomi let out a sharp breath, clearly debating how much to reveal. “It means everything here is on the verge of being wiped out of existence. Places, objects, people. This isn’t the world you know. We’re trapped inside this chamber, whole city blocks, buildings, roads, and people. And if we don’t keep moving, we’ll be gone—erased, deleted.”
Col shook his head, closing his eyes briefly to focus on her words. His mind floundered for an explanation. “You’re not making any sense. What do you mean, ‘deleted’?”
Naomi sighed, nodding toward the controls. “Listen, this isn’t the time to get into the finer details, but for your immediate survival, take what I’m saying as gospel. Don’t worry about the why and how. Just know it’s happening. This ship? I found it... well, let’s just say a while back—time is weird here. This ship is how I’ve managed to survive. Parts of our world—buildings, roads, schools, hospitals, people, even entire states—appear here, in the Deletion Chamber. When or how they show up, I have no idea, but they do. This chamber is big—very big—but sooner or later, everything here gets erased by something I call the oblivion ray. It comes from the sky and wipes everything out. I’m trying to get us far enough away from it so we aren’t caught in the beam. It only runs for a short time before resetting. They must need to recharge it, or it has a limit to its use.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Col asked, as if that last detail would explain everything.
“I have no idea,” Naomi replied bluntly. “But I’ve been here long enough to know I don’t want to meet them. Entire cities, entire landscapes, people just like you—gone, like they never existed.”
The ship spun violently, the back end colliding with something. Alerts blared, and lights flashed around them. Col’s fingers dug into his chair as if he could steady the ship with sheer force. Naomi pushed back in her seat, struggling to control the ship. She quickly worked the holographic display, selecting what looked like a schematic of a booster located under the ship. With a jolt, the ship rocketed forward, breaking free from the spin, then suddenly dipped down, making Col’s stomach lurch.
Naomi gave Col a small, apologetic smile as the ship steadied into a smoother glide.
Releasing his grip on his chair, Col straightened his sleeves and adjusted his tie. “How long have you been here, Naomi?”
“Years,” she said without hesitation, her eyes still on the horizon. “I don’t even know how many anymore. Long enough to meet others who didn’t last long... long enough to see everything I ever knew erased. Including Biodeen.”
Col frowned. “Biodeen?”
Naomi glanced at him, her gaze dark and intense. “Yeah. My home state. Cedar waxwing’s the state bird. Thistle’s the flower. We called it the Winter State. And now it’s gone—wiped off the map.”
“I’ve never heard of Biodeen,” Col muttered, shaking his head. “There’s no such state.”
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Naomi’s gaze turned icy. “Of course you haven’t. It’s gone, Col. They erased it. My whole life, my family—everything I ever knew. Don’t tell me it never existed.”
The pit in Col’s stomach deepened. He could see the raw pain on Naomi’s face—the kind that came from deep loss. What she was saying was impossible. Entire places, entire lives, just... erased? Col’s mouth went dry.
“From what I gather, they take us—our lives, our history, whatever we are—and bring us here. The world goes on without us, as if we never existed. And now that we’re no longer needed, we’re sent here for deletion.”
“They’ve erased you too. To everyone else, you never existed,” Naomi said, her voice quieter now, almost sympathetic.
Col stared at her, unsure how to respond. Could it be true? Had he been erased from existence?
Suddenly, the ship jolted violently, throwing Col hard against his harness. He glanced out the viewport, noticing the white walls pulsing and shifting, the light intensifying.
The air in the ship grew static, warm, as if an oven door had been flung open into the cockpit. A crackle of energy surged through both Col and Naomi, making their hair stand on end.
“That’s it!” Naomi barked, gripping the controls tighter. “The oblivion ray. It’s coming. Hang on!”
Col’s heart leapt into his throat. High above, a shimmering, crackling beam of light began sweeping across the sky like a massive scythe, cutting through the air. Everything the ray touched—buildings, streets, even the towering walls—vanished into nothing. No dust, no debris. Just... gone.
“Can we outrun that?” Col shouted, his voice barely audible over the hum of the ship and the growing roar of the ray.
“We have to,” Naomi replied, her voice strained but composed. “It lasts for three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. I’ve timed it. If we keep ahead of it, we’ll have at least a week before it recharges.”
“A week?” Col repeated, the disbelief thick in his voice.
Naomi nodded, her eyes fixed on the ray closing in behind them. “It’s like clockwork. The only problem is, we never know where it’s going to start—and this time, we’re directly underneath it.”
The ship pitched forward as Naomi pushed it to the edge of its capabilities, hurtling through the maze of white structures with razor-sharp precision. The void created by the ray loomed closer, the ship’s engines whining under the strain.
Col gripped the armrests of his seat, feeling utterly helpless as Naomi worked furiously to stay ahead of the beam. His eyes flicked to the rearview display, and what he saw made his blood run cold. The oblivion ray, a searing white-hot torrent of energy, fringed with a strange blue, swept across the landscape with terrifying finality. Everything it touched—whether solid or air—simply ceased to exist, leaving behind nothing.
Col swallowed hard. The "nothingness" behind them sent a primal wave of dread coursing through him. His mind tried to make sense of it, to understand what he was seeing, but there was no frame of reference, no logic. The absence wasn’t just emptiness, not even darkness—it was the absence of existence itself, an incomprehensible void.
His hands twitched, unused to relinquishing control. For someone like Col, always in charge, always directing his own fate, it was torture to sit here, powerless, his survival dependent on someone else. But now, for the first time in his life, he had no choice but to trust another person—Naomi.
Naomi, who moved with speed and purpose, her fingers flying across the controls. Col studied her, noting the sharp determination on her face. She looked to be about his age, in her early forties, with straight blonde hair and sharp features. Her outfit—a red dress with white spots, heavy boots, and a brown leather jacket—was a strange combination, yet it seemed to fit her perfectly.
The ship shuddered again, and a loud grinding of metal echoed through the cabin as the oblivion ray finally powered down. The intense machine hum faded, and Naomi eased off the throttle, guiding the ship a few more miles forward before setting it down behind a large grey building with a gentle hiss.
Col exhaled deeply, his body still buzzing with tension. “Now what?” he asked, unbuckling his harness.
Naomi stood, her expression unreadable. “Now we survive. If you want to make it here, you’ll need to get resourceful. Find whatever you can—anything that might help.”
Col slumped from his chair, drained of energy—not from the exhilaration of the flight, but from the vision, the finality of nonexistence. It felt so hopeless, so full of despair, as if it defied the very laws of reality. Col had never feared anything this much in his entire life.
“Is there a way out?” he asked, his voice laced with urgency. He couldn’t fathom staying in this twisted nightmare a moment longer. He couldn’t let the nothingness reach him.
Naomi hesitated, her fingers flexing nervously on the ship’s control panel. She avoided his gaze, as if reluctant to dash whatever hope he clung to. “Maybe,” she said, after a pause. “There’s a gap in the oblivion ray. A gap to... I don’t know where. It looks big enough to fly the ship through, but getting there—flying straight into it—that’s a whole different thing.”
The weight of her words lingered between them, heavy and ominous. They both felt the overwhelming dread of the nothingness. It was more than fear—it was like instinct, screaming at them to stay away, far away from the void. Naomi shifted uncomfortably in her seat, grimacing at the mere thought of the risk. “It’s too dangerous,” she added firmly. “I’ve seen people try. None of them made it.”
Col clenched his jaw, swallowing the fear creeping up his spine. “And you’re okay with that? Just staying here, waiting for the inevitable?” His heart pounded. “If what you say is true, we’re trapped, Naomi. We can’t just sit around hoping we won’t be erased next.”
Naomi shot him a sharp look. “You think I don’t know that?” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve been here longer than you can imagine. Every second is a risk. But trying to escape? That’s almost guaranteed death.”
Col wanted to argue, to push her further, but something in her voice stopped him. This wasn’t just fear—it was hard-earned experience. Naomi had survived in this place longer than anyone else, and she knew its dangers better than he ever could. Still, deep down, Col knew it was only a matter of time before they would have no choice but to risk everything—to face the void head-on.