Mother’s empty vessel was gaunt with the skin pulled tightly against the bones. Mother was never that skinny and dull looking, but other than how strange mother looked, she could almost be just sleeping. Was she actually empty? There didn’t seem to be any beeping from Mother’s box.

Were all these boxes where people’s vessels ended up when they crossed the boundary? Was she just awake because she was not empty when she crossed the boundary? But would that mean that somehow this vessel storage or something? Would Mother wake up one day here in this echoing room?

With the box closed, she couldn’t tell if Mother was actually empty. She needed to see if Mother was breathing. She searched for some way to open Mother’s box, but there didn’t seem to be any sort of latch. She would have to let her mother’s empty vessel sleep on in peace. She needed to see who else she knew was here.

Her shaking legs were becoming steadier, and she slowly adjusted to stand on them. The prickling sensation seemed mostly gone, but standing felt different from before. It felt much harder and like something she had achieved, not the effortless movement of her Source filled home.

She let go of Mother’s box and carefully moved her foot forward an inch. She didn’t fall. This was progress.

She took another step angling herself at a nearby box. A third and fourth step got her to the box. She let her weight lean on the middle of the box resting her legs. In this box’s window was Father’s peaceful face looking just as gaunt as Mothers’. His box also didn’t seem to be producing any beeping.

She moved stiltedly to another box. This was a neighbor whose empty vessel was sent off down the river. He also looked strange with his skin pulled tight and hollows filling his face. There was no beeping from his box either.

She moved to the next row searching for a box that was beeping. She stopped looking in the boxes that weren’t beeping, not wanting to see the emaciated faces of people she once knew.

Finally, she reached a beeping box. This box had glowing text and a line that seemed to change with the rhythm of the beep coming from the box. Glowing red numbers surrounded the line. Below that in the glowing red test was a line that said “97 days left”. Below that at the near the feet was the same placard her mother had. It read:

Subject Number: 346

Name: William Rochen

Was it her and Evan’s childhood friend? He hadn’t emptied before she left. She took a breath and looked through the window. It was him. His face didn’t yet have the stretched look of the quiet empty vessels. He wouldn’t have crossed the boundary voluntarily, and yet he was here sleeping with everyone else.

She was very close to her own fallen over box, and the box with the irregular beeping. She didn’t want to know who it was, but at the same time she needed to. She made her way around William’s box, past another beeping box, past the space where here had been and to the tangled mess of her box with the irregularly beeping box. It read line matched the irregular beeps. All the numbers on the box were flashing. It had multiple line of text “7 days left”. Below that was “Subject in distress”. The final line said in big flashing letters “WAKE SUBJECT IMMEDIATELY”.

She knew whose name would be on the card at the bottom, but she read it anyway.

Subject Number: 343

Name: Evan Helland

She took a deep breath and moved to look at his face. It was her dear friend and life partner. His breathing looked as troubled as when she left him. She ran her hand over the window showing his face. Her fingers then moved to rub the wrist where the bracelet he gave her had been before crossing the boundary.

The directions said to wake him, so she took a breath and banged on the window. He was such a light sleeper that he should wake up immediately. He continued sleeping with his face pinched in pain. She was useless. Her hands gripped the box and shook it. If he was here, maybe he would know how to follow the flashing instructions. Tears poured down her face, and her legs gave out leaving her clutching at a leg of his box. She couldn’t do this alone! She hated this place! She just wanted him next to her, his warm hand holding hers, making her always feel happy and comfortable. She wanted to lean her head on his chest and hear his heartbeat.

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Heartbeat. The beeps were heartbeats. Why was his heartbeat irregular? It was never irregular. Seven days left. She had seven days till he emptied and his box became silent like the ones near the wall she crawled to!

She picked herself back up using the legs of his box, and leaned her head against the window, “I swear I will figure this out Evan. I will wake you and hopefully save you. I won’t let you empty in this strange room!”

She searched the edges of the box for some way to open the box, but saw nothing. It seemed like one seam, but her own box had opened so she knew this box had to as well. Maybe a latch or mechanism like a doorknob on a house?

She felt along the top, the sides, the feet, and eventually up near the head on the narrow side of the box she found an array of buttons and levers. One seemed bigger than the others.

For a moment she sat with her hand on it. She looked to see if there was any text near it, and there wasn’t. Did she press it and risk hurting Evan? But she had to do something. She couldn’t leave him here without trying. Another deep breath and she pressed the button.

“Awakening procedures beginning,” the disembodied voice just about made her jump out of her skin. “Subject 344 will be brought back to normal levels. Please expect six to twelve hours for the subject to awaken.”

The beeping stabilized to the regular beat everyone else had. On the top under the line and the numbers it had one word now, “Awakening”.

I had done it. He would wake up and be here as well hopefully. Which left the question of what were the other buttons for? It didn’t really matter as long as he successfully woke up.

Her stomach grumbled, and she realized she didn’t know where to get food or water in this strange room of beeping.

She looked at Evan, and remembered the voice's words of “expect six to twelve hours”. He wouldn’t be awake any time soon, and he might be hungry as well.

She hugged his box, and then set off for the far side of the room from the one she’d been at. On that side of the room, she noticed a door. A door meant someway out of this beeping hell and hopefully food.

The door led into a small room with a window to the outside. There was a counter wrapping around the edges of the room with a faucet in front of the sink.

Through the window she could see the tops of trees below her stretching out into the distance. A gap in the trees showed a glass roofed building. As she looked closely out the window she also noticed roofs of some smaller buildings and what looked like a fence.

She took another look around the room and noticed another door to the right and what looked like a note on the counter.

The note read:

“Welcome to the waking world!

I left some non-perishable food under the counters. Hoping not too many died before y’all caught on and went beyond the boundary. I set the food levels so it would be a month between each death. I’m praying y’all survive this craziness and can enjoy your extra years here in our world.

Regards,

John Tanner

P.S. I left two books in the cabinets as well. I hope they help you survive. “

The note seemed quite brief and didn’t explain what was going on here, but it did tell her where to find food. She opened the cabinet and found it filled with round cylinders and bags. The two books mentioned by the note’s writer were there as well. She carefully pulled them out. One had a title that read: “Hunting, trapping, and dressing wild game”. The other title read: “Edible plants”. These two books would probably come in handy to survive in this world without Source.

She pulled out one of the weird cylinders. It had a tab on top that had a symbol that seemed to encourage pulling up. The label read “baked beans”. She did as directed by the can, and the thing it was attached to pulled off the top of the cylinder. It seemed to be filled with something that smelled ok. She touched her tongue to it, and while the taste was strong and different, it didn’t seem terrible.

She poured food in her mouth, and slowly ate it savoring the strange weird bitter and spiky taste it held. It made her thirsty, so she turned to the faucet and turned it on. It worked just like Source created faucets in her old world. Just like those faucets, water poured out of the spigot. She put her mouth in the flow of water and drank from it.

The water felt good against her mouth and made it feel better. She switched back to the food and took another gulp of food. Once the easily available food was out of the object, she used her finger to try and pull more out.

An edge of the can sliced against her finger, and she licked it quickly. When she pulled her finger away from her mouth, she saw blood still welling up. She pushed her hand under the water and let the water clean her hands. The bleeding stopped, and she turned off the water. For now her thirst and hunger were assuaged and she didn’t want to search this building further without Evan.

Evan would probably be thirsty when he woke up. She turned back on the sink, cleaned out the cylinder, and filled it with water. She grabbed the two books, the cup of water, and headed back into the room of beeping. It was easy to find Evan’s box with her own still lying twisted underneath hers. At his box, her legs happily collapsed, and she sat on her ankle length hair pulling it against her head. She would have to do something with this crazy long hair. For now, she pulled it out from under her and over her shoulder piling it on her lap.

She grabbed one of the books, the edible plants book, and started to look at it, but the pictures it showed seemed far too different from what she knew.

Her body tipped forward onto the book, and her eyes closed as she drifted off to sleep.