The halls of the Last Stand were well-lit now. Each of the modules of the station lit up and empowered by Two’s haphazard power tampering. But aside from the soft hum of electricity through each inch of the ship, the station remained relatively quiet. Lights turned on, terminal lights blinked as computers returned to function, but nothing new moved. It was as if the power had never been cut in the first place when everything was already in stasis.
Three was stomping down the hall, anger on her face as she approached the rest of the crew, loitering in the halls, looking despondent. “What did you three do!?” she shouted the moment she laid eyes on them.
“We turned on the power.” Five said quietly, still trying to process their newest revelation. None of them seemed to react at all to Three’s obvious anger.
“No one’s coming to help us.” Seven looked to be on the verge of tears as she sat against the hallway wall.
“Three… I know we took a risk. But we’re in trouble.” Two walked up to her first, holding the slate out in front of her “I connected to the database. We’re… yell at us later, this is too important. The station, it’s been offline for… a long time.”
Three looked over the slate, confused at what all the numbers she was looking at were “What’s all this?” she asked, still sounding stern.
“It’s time. Time since the system last booted.” Two explained through a cracking voice, having trouble keeping her emotions together as she spoke “This place has been waiting for us to wake up for… eons.”
“Some kind of cataclysm hit Earth.” Five continued “All that time ago, something really bad happened. Hundreds of MILLIONS of years pass, and now we wake up.”
Three stared at the numbers, her eyes growing wide as she heard their discoveries. She took in several deep breaths as she tried to comprehend it all “So… the four of us… are we…?”
“The last humans.” Seven sniffled, letting out a sob as she started to tear up.
“Probably, yeah.” Five muttered, taking a deep breath and trying to remain calm as she sat down next to Seven and held onto her.
Three looked back and forth between the others and the slate a few times before she held a hand to her head and stepped back into the wall as well. “Millions…” she murmured in disbelief. “That… can’t be right, can it? How is this place still operational?” she asked.
“Whoever was here before us must have somehow engineered it to last this long.” Two spoke quietly “But why? What do they expect us to accomplish? We’re just kids.”
“Maybe we’re just supposed to live.” Five suggested, still holding tight to Seven, who was quietly bawling into her shoulder now.
“For one last generation?” Three asked, beginning to clench her teeth, her body shaking as anger began to seethe in her expression “But why now? It’s not like we’ll be able to rebuild. There’s… just us. And we’re up here, in a floating coffin!”
“Maybe they weren’t thinking that far ahead.” Two sighed “Maybe they wanted us to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?!” Three cried out loudly, drawing everone’s eyes to her “What are we supposed to do?”
Two was taken aback at her outburst. Three had been the most collected among them until now, and this was even breaking her. She looked down and put the slate away at her side again. She rested against the wall as well, despondent. She was tired. They were all tired. This was all too much for them. The more they learned of their situation, the more hopeless it seemed. They were truly alone.
They each stared up out of one of the windows in the ceiling, the stars mesmerizingly far away. What was the point? They were lost. No one was coming to help. No one was going to tell them what they needed to do. No one was going to miss them when they inevitably died in the hazardous station, just like One and Four. It was hopeless.
Surprisingly, Seven was the first to break the silence with an almost silent “I’m hungry,” which finally broke the other girls from their stupor.
“Yeah.” Five nodded, starting to shift herself to get up “Me too. We gotta find food.”
“What’s the point?” Three muttered darkly “We might as well just end this now. We’re just going to suffer and die anyway.”
Five grimaced at the medic and clicked her tongue “Screw that.” she pushed herself to her feet, helping Seven get up with her. “Someone went through a lot of trouble for us to wake up now. I’m not just gonna throw it away. I’m not scared.”
“I’m scared.” Two looked away from the others and stepped away from the wall as well “But I’m not giving up either. Five’s right. We should at least try.”
Three looked at the others with an expression of disbelief, then looked down at the floor and turned away from them “I’ll be in my room.” she muttered, walking back away from the group toward the dormitories.
“We’ll bring you something to eat when we find it.” Five said adamantly.
“Good luck.” Three groaned as she disappeared into the living quarters.
—
The three remaining girls started to walk the other way, looking among the newly lit chambers for the cafeteria “She’s crying, isn’t she?” Seven asked.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It’s too much for her. It’s too much for any of us. I think she’s given up.” Two said quietly “I don’t blame her.”
“I do.” Five muttered “We gotta do something, right? We can’t just roll over and die. We can’t let humanity die.”
“We’re all girls, Five, we’re the last ones. Not like we can make more.” Two explained “The best we can do is live out our lives however long this station can sustain us.”
“We could make more.” Five argued “They did.”
“… More clones.” Seven said quietly.
“I… guess? If we can figure out how those chambers work and somehow get supplies for them.” Two didn’t sound convinced at the idea though “Doesn’t sound like a good long term plan though.”
“It’s something.” Five shrugged “For now, let’s just focus on keeping ourselves alive.”
Two nodded as they turned in toward the cafeteria “Right. First thing’s first. Food.”
—
Two, Five, and Seven looked over the kitchen, but all they found was dust. What was once the fresh food that remained was not even desiccated at this point, it had disintegrated with the passage of time and was little more than powdered carbon now. But none of the girls expected anything that wasn’t preserved to be of any use anyway now that they knew the timespan since it was in use. They needed sustenance that was made to last.
“Don’t suppose anyone might know what space food looks like?” Five asked.
“I’m imagining tubes.” Two answered “Like… some kind of gross sludge in a tube.”
“Great, let’s go eat One.” Five smirked. Her grim sense of humor was lost on the others though.
Two opened cabinet after cabinet, looking for something that wasn’t just dust by now, and finding nothing of use.
“I found something.” Seven called for the others, holding open what looked like a machine of some sort. Inside the chamber, it was cold. Beyond cold, it was frigid. Like the emptiness of space itself had been opened without depressurizing the interior. Inside were a small pile of thin plastic squeeze tubes, the labels blank like everything else on the station. “Like this?”
“That’s… basically what I imagined, yeah.” Two wasn’t sure how she had such specific knowledge, but she figured it must have been something she was programmed with in her creation.
“That’s supposed to be food?” Five grabbed one out of the container and had to toss it around a couple times before dropping it on a counter “It’s so cold!” she shouted, breathing into her cupped hands to try to warm them up again.
“Probably preserved with vacuum.” Two gave an amused chuckle “That’s clever. Can’t rot if it’s in stasis too. Just keep that thing closed till we need more.” she said as she shut the container once more.
“Are you sure it’ll still be good?” Seven asked as she looked up at the steaming cold tube on the counter.
“I don’t even know if it’s actually food. I’m just guessing.” Two admitted “I mean I doubt they’re keeping tubes of adhesive in a cold box in the kitchen, but still.” The three girls stared at the tube as it warmed up, frost gathering on the metal countertop as the cold dispersed into the room “You wanna try it, miss fearless?” Two asked Five.
Five was silent for a little longer “Uhh… I’m not sure if I’m THAT hungry.” she admitted.
“I am.” Seven poked at the tube with her finger, recoiling at the temperature “Not yet.”
“I’m not letting you take that risk, Seven.” Five sighed “I dunno what exactly ‘breeder’ entails in this situation, but it makes me think we should probably keep you from getting hurt more than you have to. Gross as it makes me feel to think about, you might be the most important one of us if it means you can continue the human race.”
Seven looked down at the floor “I don’t think I’m that special.” she whispered.
Two shuffled through drawers of utensils and cooking implements, searching for something to pick it up with before brandishing tongs and picking up the tube carefully “We need to warm it up.” she declared “Which of these boxes is a microwave?” she asked, having only a vague understanding of the concept of cooking and the machines used for it.
—
Having given up on heating the tube up themselves after a few minutes of haphazardly turning things on to no immediate avail, the three found themselves sitting at a table and waiting for it to warm itself up.
“We’re really the last humans, aren’t we?” Two said slowly, slumped over the table.
“Maybe.” Five sighed, turning to look out the window again, trying to change the subject “You know, now that I’ve just been looking into space for so long, it’s less scary. Kinda pretty actually.”
“I know what you mean. Everything just glows.” Two nodded, looking out alongside her “It’s scary that space is just right there on the other side of some glass, but at the same time…” she stared wistfully into space.
“I’m bored.” Seven declared. She apparently didn’t have the same appreciation for the vastness of space as the other two, standing up from her seat and wandering the cafeteria, deciding that exploring more was better than just waiting for what might be food to become an edible temperature.
“… We don’t have any way to make food, Five. We just have whatever’s left on this station. That means we can only last so long.” Two said to her companion once Seven was out of earshot.
Five nodded “We’ll have to figure something else out eventually.”
“We don’t have seeds to make a garden. No livestock. No renewable food source at all.”
“Yeah, it’s… a problem.” Five sighed “It’s not like space is full of stuff to eat.” she poked at the tube again.
Two grimaced at the table. She had something dark on her mind, but it was something actionable, so she couldn’t ignore it. “Hey… uhh… there is… one thing I know is edible.” she swallowed her saliva, taking a deep breath, but then couldn’t find the words.
“Hmm? What you thinking?” Five asked curiously, eager to hear anything that might save them from eventual starvation
“Four.” was all she replied with.
“You… You’re joking, right?” Five muttered quietly, looking to see that Seven didn’t hear that.
“I don’t know if I am yet. What if we actually become that desperate?” Two muttered, trying to avoid looking into Five’s eyes. She was ashamed that she’d even made the suggestion, but still, their situation felt that grave. “And her… body… is only going to last so long.” She continued despite her own moral revulsion at her own words.
Five opened her mouth, wanting to object, but… it sounded reasonable. She hated that it sounded reasonable. She just went quiet and stared out the window again. She didn’t want to think about it. It was disgusting. Even the suggestion was disgusting. But given their dire situation, it called for desperate measures. “I don’t… it’s just…” she didn’t even know what to say. She didn’t want to agree. “We… can’t. That’s…”
“We should preserve her.” Two interrupted, not wanting her to jump to any kind of conclusion that she wanted to do this immediately “Like in that container that these tubes are in. Just… just as a last resort.” she said grimly “A very last resort.”
Five nodded “Yeah. A last resort.” she breathed a sigh of relief. Resorting to cannibalism was a horrifying possibility, but she couldn’t deny that there was a grim logic to it. “Only if we don’t figure something else out.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Two gulped “I don’t want to do it either.” she looked away into space again. “It makes me sick even talking about it, but it’s… this is survival, I guess. I bet this is what she’d suggest if she were here.”
“Maybe.” Five muttered “This is… a lot. All of it. I kinda get why Three shut down.” she admitted.
As they looked away, Seven made her way back to the table. She quietly lifted the tube up herself. It had cooled enough to touch at least.
The two older girls turned just in time to see Seven licking a bit of the greyish matter off her fingertip “Mm… it’s sweet.” she smiled.