> “There it goes, the rocket of God. We felt a heat pulse, a very bright light. A fireball, it is bright red, the sky looks black about it. It is boiling above us there.”
> Genie Missile Test, 1957, 19/07
Jane was drowning yet again. Unable to move inside the claustrophobic vat, she waited. Finally, the liquid level started dropping. As soon as the surface lowered an inch below her nostrils, she attempted to grasp for air. Instead, she coughed until her lungs cleared, throat ached, and skull turned into a vessel of pain. Steel doors opened slowly with a squelch. In front of her was a dark, cold void that chilled her right to the bone.
“Is it my watch now? Is there anybody out there?”
A hush echo was the only response. She stood there blind, letting her senses sharpen, listening. Silence slowly gave way to a muted buzzing sound from somewhere out there that drilled into her brain. Please, please, please, someone be out there. Unsure what would await her, she carefully stepped outside. Her feet landed on a cold metal surface. With a force of a thousand suns, a light went on, blinding her. But when Jane opened her eyes again, the flickering white light wasn’t enough to reveal the entirety of the place.
Like veins or neurons, swathes of cables and tubes were lying on the walls and ceiling, some connecting to the machinery, some running deeper into the unknown of the compound. Through the wires were travelling electrical thoughts of the station. Through the tubes that twitched and contracted with unsettling irregularity of a muscle spasm, flowed a milky white liquid. The nourishment for the sleeping inhabitants.
Half conscious and dizzy, she rushed towards the intercom, still coughing. As she made her way, rows and rows of metal coffins loomed over her. Her’s was the only one open.
“This is Jane Eden. Is there anyone awake this cycle?” Her own rough voice cascaded along the corridors, fading with each bounce. Down there, ninety-four meters below the ground, in a tomb of concrete, rock and steel, Jane was the only person awake.
The veins of the station covered the entire surface of its body. Amass of tubes obstructed the actual stuff that made the compound. Jane walked down the main artery of this unhealthy organism. Lights would turn on in front of her and switch off behind her. She would sometimes stop to look behind her back. There was nothing. Jane wished she was not alone.
She stopped by the empty living quarters, thinking of the people she knew through the text logs or briefly met that very first day. They weren’t her friends from before, many of them she hadn’t actually seen. And yet, when she gazed at the empty bunk beds, photographs plastered around them, a dried oak leaf, a wedding ring, a doll, a single bird feather, for a brief moment, she felt a wave of connection, unity even. They were all grieving for the same reason. Alone, but together. A split of an atom laid waste to the surface of the entire planet, turning aeons of evolution into vaporised toxic ash. If they had done more. If only some of them acted! But they haven’t. They’ve done nothing. We could have prevented it, but we haven’t. All is gone...
Five crude swivel chairs stood crammed next to one another, filling the entire width of the Central Control. Each seat was taken only by dust. Walls were covered from floor to ceiling by large computer units. A low humming chorus of internal mechanical elements was reassuring and welcoming. As if a group of friends were whispering to her. She sat at the end of the room, keeping an eye on the entrance. She felt less intimidated facing that dark hole in the wall. Then, with great effort, she turned away from the darkness and flipped a sizeable green switch bringing a small cathode-ray tube monitor to life.
“Batteries degradation at a nominal rate. No recent accidents, deaths, and suicides. Radiation levels dropped. We only need some two hundred eleven years more. Radio coax of station 4 replaced…”
As she always did during her watch, Jane read the obligatory status checks first, then switched the radio into scanning mode. A small light started blinking, and a speaker began sputtering a crackling noise.
Could it be that there are people somewhere out there? Survivors like we, or someone on the surface, perhaps? There where the ceiling hung so low, such an idea seemed too large.
“…these findings lead me to a disturbing conclusion. In the wrong conditions, DNA falls apart, killing the entire organism. We all have seen it. The skin turns black, comes off in layers. The subject dies. The dissolving of the DNA affects the organism on the level directly observable by us. This is a well-established science of radiobiology.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Jane read the report for the millionth time, as she always did during her shift.
“What I find unsettling is what happens in the right conditions. First, DNA breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, as expected. Then, fragments start connecting, reforming. Whereas the DNA structure typically is represented by a double helix, this new mutated form takes shape so complex I find it hard to explain. In essence, a new life is born. Unlike ours but reforged out of ours….”
She desperately clung to the little hope this report gave her. Something out there might still be alive. Alien perhaps, but well and thriving. If they are the last surviving humans, at least life on the planet will continue.
Jane checked radio transmission logs. There were none. ‘Ears of the enemy are sharp. Silence is safety’ read a large sign above her head. There were no transmissions that year, last decade and the decade before. For the past ninety years, there’s only been that quiet noise and radioactive interference. Is there anybody out there? There must be. She wondered, gazing at the ever-changing frequency gauge. Silence is safety.
She sat there staring at the tiny blinking light of the radio, holding hope for the survival of humankind. Alone, surrounded by machinery, all she could do was wait. An hour passed, and she was hoping. Her hope has not weakened on the second and the third hour. Please, please, please, someone, please be out there.
She waited, listened to the white noise, and checked and re-checked the radio equipment. Every passing minute moved walls closer to her until there was no air left to breathe, nowhere to go.
The small blinking light gave her little hope. Hours have passed, maybe days. All the time she had, she spent by the radio. Please, please, please, someone, please be out there. She repeated her mantra over and over, word for word. Please, please! Someone!
The white noise has stopped. A stretched-out distorted whizzing came out of the speaker - like a missile ever cutting through the sky, never reaching its destination. It went on and on. Jane suddenly felt misplaced, somewhere else. The sound was eerie, a chorus of squelch deformed by a magnetic field. In disbelief, Jane switched off the scan and locked into the frequency. She had no idea what she had just heard.
The sound stopped, replaced by silent whispers or a cloth brushing against the microphone? Jane wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was just an interference.
“TWO. NULL. FOUR. ZWEI. SECHS! TWO. NULL. FOUR. ZWEI. SECHS!” a mechanical-sounding woman stuttered out. Her voice was deformed as if her vocal cords were stretched out and sagging.
Something inside Jane turned upside down. She went hot and cold all over. The voice terrified her.
“TWO. NULL. FOUR. ZWEI. SECHS!”
With her trembling hands, Jane grabbed the microphone. What is that? She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. The procedures advised against any communication, but it’s been so long. She must answer.
“Can you hear me? I am sorry, I don’t understand any of it. Hello? Are you still there?”
“THERE”
“There? I don’t understand.”
“THERE. THERE. THERE”
“I don’t understand.”
“ME”
“Me? I’m Jane. I’m in… I’m sorry, I can’t tell you where I am. Are you from the Reich or the Union?”
“Are you still there?”
No, no, no… I shouldn’t have answered. What have I done! They must know our location by now. Then, Jane heard an eerie gasp. As if someone’s soul escaped the body, giving its last breath.
“BEINE SIND MIT DEM BODEN VERWACHSEN”
Computer sputtered out the translation: legs are misshapen/fused to the floor.
“What happened with your legs? Are you hurt?”
“AUFSTEHEN. GEHEN”, Stand up. Go.
Vibrating howling pealed out of the speaker. At first, it was one voice, then two, three, a whole chorus of twisted beings was screaming at Jane. She suddenly saw it. She was outside, but the horrible voices stayed with her. Jane was no longer in the bunker. It felt real; it was real.
She was there in the ruins of Berlin. It was so bright. Through her eyes split into a million shards, she saw it all. A mass of tubular muscles stretching across the horizon, a foul throbbing excrescence. She was it, and her was body as vast as the planet’s surface. Humans and animals screamed inside her, and she screamed with them. They had no mouth, and neither did she. She had no legs to run away. Unable to die, forever in despair. Forced to exist in this disgusting form, this boil on the skin of the Earth. They burned, oh the anguish and pain! Above it all, was a bright red fireball. Frozen up there, shining its radioactive light, reforming.
Jane fell down, voices still resonating from the speaker. She was back in the station. Slowed by exhaustion, she stood up and turned the radio off. Down there, ninety-four meters below the ground, in a tomb of concrete, rock and steel, the only person awake realised she was not alone. For the first time in her life, she wished she was.