I woke up dying of thirst.
I got up and stumbled into the bathroom. I wasted no time and just stuck my head under the faucet and began to take in as much water as I could. In the back of my mind, I realized I might have been falling into the trap of the drinking, but the thirst was so intense and my throat was so dry, I didn’t care. I had to get water.
I got as much in me as I could, which didn’t turn out to be that much, as it felt like a knife in my stomach. I forgot I hadn’t any water for a few days and needed to go a lot slower.
My head was throbbing, not from sickness, but dehydration. My eyelids felt like I had sand under them. Since I couldn’t drink, I splashed water on my face and it felt good. Some of the water found its way into my eyes and the stinging was both torturous and a relief. I splashed more water on my face, focusing mostly on my eyes. The pain was intense, but it felt so therapeutic, I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
I ripped off my surgical greens and jumped in the shower. I turned on the water and stuck my head under the streaming ice that was pretending to be water. It may have been cold, but it was exactly what I craved. It was like the freezing water was waking up nerves that had been turned off for days.
When the water finally warmed up, the steam gratefully found its way up into my sinuses, which I hadn’t even realized were cracked and bleeding. So much so, that the water coming from my face was pink with blood. I tilted my head back and allowed the water to splash up my nose, it burned a bit, like smelling strong ammonia, but I could feel the water racing through desiccated tissue in my sinuses and the pleasure far outweighed the pain.
I grabbed the bar of soap and I started to lather up. In a few minutes I was so clean, that it was almost as if the last several days never even happened.
I stepped out of the shower and walked into the bedroom naked. I grabbed a towel and dried myself off and put on some clean clothes. Even though I felt refreshed, I was exhausted from the effort it took to do all that and I dropped into my chair with a thump.
If it had been a normal day, I would’ve checked the signal strength after I drank my morning coffee. But this day was anything but normal. There was half a week of overdue maintenance to the biosphere to deal with, not to mention that I had to re-image my server and CPU. And true to form, the grand sum total of the work I was facing, overwhelmed me.
So like the true procrastinator I was, I went to the kitchen and made breakfast.
However, my stomach was still gurgling from the water. So I only grabbed a banana; my father used to say that it was the one food that tasted the same coming back up as it did going down. It made me feel a little better, but it was sitting in my stomach like a lead weight. So I didn’t push my luck with anything else. I did, however, make myself a cup of instant coffee.
I went back to my bedroom and sat in my chair at my desk. My coffee was steaming on the desktop, as I stared at the screens.
How had they done that?
Got past the firewall and took total control of my whole system like that. My macro was very specific about what powers outside parties would have and not have. Those guys had to be good.
I mean, very good.
Way better than me, because I couldn’t even begin to understand how they did it. Maybe it was a good thing it happened, in a way. It opened my eyes to just how lazy it was having the biosphere’s controls and gaming software running on the same system. I had to isolate the biosphere controls completely from the main server. It still needed to be automated, which meant I’d need a new CPU for it.
I sighed.
I knew exactly where a perfectly good CPU was. One that was currently set up for the exact automation I needed. In fact, I knew where two were.
One was in my mom’s biosphere and the other was in my dad’s.
* * *
It took me four hours to setup the airlock outside my parent’s biospheres. It was always a pain rigging up the decontamination shower and filters. When I was a kid, the door was always up, since we never knew when we’d need to get out. But my dad used to make me take it down and put it back up all the time. He’d say he needed a part, so he could fix it, but I knew better. He just wanted me to know how to set it up.
You know, for when he was gone.
Actually, the hard part wasn’t the work. That was mindless. It was thinking about what I was going to do when I finished that got me. I may be a moron compared to my parents, but I’m not a total idiot. Even I know you aren’t supposed to disturb your dead father’s eternal rest, no matter how good the reason.
Before I started assembling the shower and filters, I had to go up to the airlock to grab a biosuit and helmet. I needed one but really I was just looking for a way to take my mind off of everything.
Needless to say, with all the work and barely any food for three days I was pooped.
I remember chuckling at how Zack must feel like that all the time.
I plopped down on my bed and shut my eyes. I figured a little nap was definitely in order. After all, I was practically dead for three days and rest seemed like the smart thing to do.
But as soon as my eyes closed, I saw Ellie’s tear ridden face staring back at me.
There was no way I could sleep knowing she was suffering. So I opened my eyes and got out of bed and put on the biosuit.
At first, I headed for the kitchen to get something to eat. I was going into my father’s tomb, so I was going to be shaky. No reason to add a healthy dose of malnutrition to the ever-growing list of concerns. But, since that banana hadn’t sat so well, I decided to pass. I didn’t care what it tasted like coming back up, puking with my helmet on was not an option.
My hands were trembling as I fastened my helmet securely into place.
I had always hoped the need to do this would never come. That my father’s biosphere would remain sealed forever. I used to wonder what alien archeologists in the future would think when they found all of us, each safely tucked away in our own private tombs. Would they think we were royalty? Like the pharaohs? Or just deranged lunatics?
A chill washed over me as I stepped into the temporary airlock and closed the door behind me and lowered the locking mechanism into place. I moved to the front of my father’s biosphere and froze.
I kicked myself for not taking the CPU when I sealed him up in there five years ago. I remembered that day like it had just happened.
My mother was totally catatonic.
She had stopped responding to me after Dad died. She did her best to take care of him, but it all happened so fast and there wasn’t much she could do. I think the shock forced her to work mostly on instinct. He forbade us from going into his biosphere but she didn’t listen. When he finally slipped into the coma we both knew it for the end that it was. When she left him, she shut herself off from the rest of the world—including me.
He died a couple of hours later.
Like I said, I sealed his biosphere myself. My mother was—just gone.
She sort of hung in there for a while, though I’m not sure why or how. Maybe she felt obligated to me, or something. But whatever kept her going just ran out of steam.
Sealing up her biosphere was the loneliest thing I’ve ever done.
I had to make myself stop thinking about that day. After all, there was no way to wipe tears away with the biosuit helmet on, so I needed to get a grip. Without thinking I punched in the security code and I heard the distinctive whoosh of the internal airlock depressurize. A few seconds later the door to my father’s biosphere opened a few inches and I felt a rush of air ripple across my suit.
My heart was racing so fast that I was afraid if I moved I might have blacked out. But somehow I reached out my trembling hand and grasped the icy cold handle, as much to steady myself as anything else.
I stood at the door for what felt like an hour, but it was probably just a few seconds.
I closed my eyes and issued a quiet apology to my father for disturbing his rest, then in one motion I opened the door, took a step inside and closed it behind me. I wanted to try to minimize any accidental contamination possibilities as much as I could.
I tried to convince myself my father would want me to do this. That he would want me to take everything I needed to survive. But it was a lie and I knew it. I was trespassing and he would have killed me for even trying something that idiotic, especially just so I could play a stupid game.
But the damage was done and I had a job to do.
Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Which I tried not to think about it, because being a scientist’s kid, I knew the dust was the remnants of my father. His dead skin cells anyway. It was one of the first things he taught me in my biology lessons. Most dust was just dead skin cells that flaked off our bodies everyday.
I was really starting to panic and almost left. Not for good, but just for a minute so I could clear my head. But I knew that getting to that point took everything I had and I didn’t know if I could go through it again.
I needed to try to calm down.
I knew exactly where my dad kept his CPU and thankfully it wasn’t in his bedroom. Because he’s in there and I just couldn’t bring myself to see that.
No child should ever have to see that.
My mother told me before she died where she left him. She knew she’d never see him alive again, even if she couldn’t admit it to herself at that time. After all she told herself she was only going to get some more water and maybe something to eat. But in her heart she knew. He was about to leave our lives and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. And the tears streaming down her face told me everything I needed to know. The last thing she wanted to do was watch it happen.
So she left.
But before she did, she brushed his hair away from his face, tucked in his blanket and laid his arms across his chest. After he died she told me she had never wanted to take her helmet off as much as she did at that moment. She said it was like his forehead and lips were just screaming to be kissed. One last time before all the life was cruelly sucked from of them.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she turned and walked out of his room and closed the door. It wasn’t even a full hour before we heard the alarm sound on his monitor.
She didn’t speak a word to me for three months.
As far as I knew, he was still lying in the exact same position that she so carefully left him in, resting peacefully. But there was no way to be sure. The blanket could have rotted off by now or he might have gone into convulsions and been thrown off the bed or worse. Like my mother, I don’t want to know what happened after she left.
Not ever.
I read this article once about the incorruptibles when I was just a kid. According to the Catholic Church, for some reason no one quite understood, certain folks just never rotted. Saint Bernadette is said to have been one, one of the incorruptibles, I mean. The Catholics believed that they were so revered in the eyes of God, that he couldn’t bring himself to allow them to rot. I don’t know if I buy that, but if it was true, then as far as I’m concerned, both my parents are incorruptibles.
I don’t care what anyone says.
After what felt like an eternity, I forced myself to move. I crossed the room to my dad’s workstation. Behind a curtain under his desk was the stainless steel wheeled cart he built which held all his technology. He designed it to be hermetically sealed, that way its internal structures would never be exposed to germs or contaminants and thereby reusable by my mom and me.
Like I said before, my dad was a genius and thought of everything.
Once I wheeled the cart to the airlock, all I had to do was hose it down with the decontamination fluid and everything it contained would be free of disease carrying life forms and viruses.
Now, it had been four years since my dad died, so the idea that a virus would still be lurking anywhere inside it was remote to say the least. But fungi have been known to thrive for a long, long time in hermetically-sealed vessels. In fact, a harmful fungus had long ago been discovered in the tombs of the pharaohs.
So since anything was possible I took no chances.
It took several tries before I got my dad’s CPU out of his biosphere and into the airlock. Once there, I quickly closed the door and through a quiet tear said, “Bye Dad. I love you. And thanks.”
I punched the code into the door panel and I heard the airlock whirr and hiss. Then came the first blast of cold water. I turned and watched as my dad’s dust got washed off the CPU cart. I wish I had thought to clean it off inside his biosphere. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it all off, but I felt bad that his dust was being washed down the drain.
Once the shower shut off, the room was blasted by a disinfectant spray. I raised my arms and spun slowly in a circle, letting the disinfectant liquid cover me entirely. The liquid was so thick, that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then the second bath began and I’m thoroughly doused with freezing ice-cold water again.
When the water stopped, the air lock door opened and I pushed the cart down the hall and into my room. I took off the biosuit and hung it from a hook on the wall and sat with a thud into my chair. My mind was reeling, because at that moment I was now closer to something my father touched then I have been in a long, long time. I reached out and traced the smooth metal that was still wet from its bath with my fingers.
My father touched that cabinet. With his skin. His hand might have rested right where my hand was at one point.
Suddenly I thought of what that doctor said. That my blood had antibodies to fight off The Darkness. Which meant, maybe, if I could have just contracted it earlier, both my parents might be alive. Which meant that my father’s insistence on being the only one to go outside was the worst and only bad decision he ever made in his life.
But I just didn’t buy it.
It just seemed ridiculous to me that my body evolved a way to defeat the disease that virtually destroyed the entire planet. I’d been locked up in a bubble my whole life. A bad cold could have killed me, well in theory anyway!
Besides, my father always told me that evolution took eons to make its changes. It just didn’t make sense. I wasn’t even convinced I had The Darkness in the first place.
No one comes back from that—no one.
I attached my dad’s computer to one of my screens and I began to reprogram it. I only had to change a few settings and recode a few macros to adapt it to my biosphere. The whole thing took about twenty minutes and I was back in control of my biosphere. It was a bit of a relief, but bittersweet. This CPU belonged to my father—I shouldn’t have had it.
I felt dirty.
I spun around and manually disconnected my CPU from the dish and powered it up. Nothing strange happened, the computer seems to go through a normal startup procedure and I’m left at the desktop. I don’t know what I was expecting, but that definitely wasn’t it. I assumed they’d have changed something so big that I would have noticed, but everything looked fine. I just knew I couldn’t be that lucky. People who could take over your computer so completely shouldn’t be thwarted by the simple act of powering down a CPU. So I started digging. I opened up the startup register and everything looked good at first. But then I discovered my hard drive was now partitioned into two drives. One I had access to, but the other I did not. In fact, I didn’t even know the name of this secret partition. The only reason I knew it was there was because I only had access to half of my memory and the other was hidden from view.
Sadly, there was no other option, I had to re-image. I’d lose some files, but nothing irreplaceable. Besides, I had backups of my backups. So I took my external reimaging hard drive out of the lower drawer of my desk, shut down my CPU, plugged my reimaging hard drive in and powered it back up.
Everything seemed to go as it was supposed to. My reimage drive took control of the startup and halted it. I selected re-image and hit the enter key and then all hell broke loose.
I got a warning message that I did not have the necessary clearance to re-image the machine and a bunch of code started streaming through the screen. I’d never seen anything like it before, it moved so fast, it made me think of The Matrix movie. A message box popped up that said a foreign drive had been detected and the system was attempting purge it. So I killed the power; after all, I didn’t want my re-imaging drive voodooed.
I decided the drive wasn’t worth the hassle, I had hundreds of them. So I stripped my machine and dumped the hard drive in the recycling shoot. Then I pulled a spare from my electronics storage closet. Well, I call it a closet, but it was really just a cheap white particleboard bookshelf with two doors. I hooked up the hard drive, plugged in my re-imaging drive, restarted the computer and hit re-image.
I probably should have done this the first time, but I had no way of knowing what those guys did to my system while I was unconscious. Suddenly, the same code started streaming across my screen again and the same message about a foreign hard drive was detected as well. I pulled the new hard drive and killed the CPU.
What the hell?
That was a brand new hard drive, there was no way those bastards laid a finger on it. Then it hit me: they must have programmed a sentinel into the firmware. But how? I mean, if they rebooted, they would need to be here to reposition the satellite? Then I realized, they didn’t do anything, I did. By restarting the system, I must have launched all their code. That’s when the partition was set up and when the sentinel program was coded into one of the components.
Smart.
Which of course meant that the whole CPU was junk. I had to replace every component, because there’s just no telling where they hid that sentinel, if it even stayed in the same place. Which meant only one thing and it made me want to puke.
I had to get my mom’s CPU if I was going to get back on the network.
I spun around in my chair and leaned back, resting my head on the tall backrest. At least I didn’t have to setup the airlock again. My dad was pretty smart about that. He designed all of our biospheres with a central access point. That way only one airlock door needed to be installed and the filtration and fire suppression system altered. I wish I was half as smart as he was. That way, maybe I could’ve found the sentinel code and wipe it out. My dad taught me a lot about computers and he gave me an extensive library of books on things like systems administration and even software design. But I guess he thought I wouldn’t have any use for firmware programing. Besides, I always thought you needed special equipment to rewrite firmware.
I stood up with my shoulders hunched and my head held low. When I grabbed the biosuit and pull it back on my hands were visibly shaking. I did remember to tuck a towel into my belt before I shuffled out of my biosphere.
My mother’s death was so fast, it scared the hell out of me.
So when she forbade me from going into her biosphere, like the coward I was, I didn’t put up a fight. She died totally alone. I wasn’t there for her at all. Nobody laid her down in bed or combed her hair away from her eyes or folded her arms in place on her chest.
She would have been there for me, I’m sure. In fact, based on the fact that she offed herself, I’m sure she would have taken off her helmet and kissed my forehead.
But as a result, I had absolutely no idea where she was in there. All I knew for sure was that I had killed the cameras and locked her door. Then, just like I did for Dad, I covered the glass up on the airlock door with a black sheet of plastic.
In my defense, she was really convincing. She told me that the strain she had was different, faster, more virulent than any we had seen before. I knew she was just trying to scare me when she told me that but it worked. She died in just twelve hours. In fact, I couldn’t believe I was even considering going in there. But I didn’t see any other option. It would have taken me at least six months or more to build a new CPU from scratch. And in the end, I’m not entirely sure I even had all the parts I needed.
And Ellie couldn’t wait six more hours, nevermind six months. I needed to get to her ASAP.
I closed the airlock door behind me and lowered the locking mechanism into place. Then I punched in her security code. I heard her biosphere pressurize itself to the hall. I clutched the towel I grabbed when I left my room tightly. I needed it to clean the CPU before I wheeled it out. I didn’t want to lose part of my mom to the drain like I did with Dad.
I might not be as smart as my father, but I rarely made the same mistake twice.
The door opened and I felt the whoosh of air rush past me. I took a deep breath and made a solemn promise to be fast and respectful. No long walks down memory lane. After all, I grew up in this biosphere; I knew every nook and cranny.
I grabbed the handle and pulled the door out at me. I stepped out of the way and then dashed inside and there she was, on the floor by the door to the bedroom.
Not comfortably lying in her bed or even on the couch.
I wasn’t that lucky.
She was lying on the floor. Her face was in a dried up crusty puddle of what I can only assume is her own vomit. Her spine looked like it snapped from the convulsions, leaving her in an awkward position. And I might have been wrong, but it looked like she defecated herself before she died.
I couldn’t get enough air.
I was sucking in so hard and getting almost nothing into my lungs. I almost took my helmet off in desperation. I couldn’t think. I tried to look away but my eyes were glued on her, soaking up every horrible detail. You know, that way I would be able to relive it over and over again in my nightmares for the rest of my life.
She was definitely not an incorruptible.
Her skin was almost translucent in some places and black in others. And through her matted hair, I could see that her scalp had turned a bluish-green color that was so disgusting I almost puked on the spot. Fortunately, she was lying on her stomach so I couldn’t see her face. I could only imagine what horror awaited me in those eyeless sockets and shrunken lips. Her skin looked like leather. My only solace was that the suit was protecting me from the smell.
I was absolutely frozen in horror.
I tried to convince myself, that I was in a different room. That the corpse on the floor wasn’t the woman who tucked me into bed every night and kissed me on my forehead. She wasn’t the woman who used to cuddle me when I was scared or who would kiss my bruises when I fell. I told myself that I could still remember her face and so the corpse that was before me just couldn’t have been her. That had to be a different person.
But it didn’t work.
The tears were streaming down my face and were blurring my vision, which was a relief. Through my fogged up visor and soggy vision I could just make out the CPU in the corner. Like my dad’s, it was in a stainless steel cabinet on wheels. So I collected what little courage I had left and slowly made my way over. I took the towel I’ve been clutching in my right hand and started to clear the dust off of the CPU in between sobs. I couldn’t bring myself to clean it as thoroughly as I would have liked, I just didn’t have the strength to stay there long enough to get it done. I had to get out. I summoned whatever willpower I had left, gently laid the towel on her desk and wheeled the unit into the hallway, slamming her door behind me.
I leaned against the door and tried to forget what I just saw. But there was no way. There was just no way. Some things cannot be unseen.
As I slid down the wall, sobbing, I tried to convince myself to go back in there. I wanted to pick her up off the floor, put her in her bed and cross her arms on her chest. At least throw a blanket over her. I know that I should have done that. That a good son would have, but I was just too terrified that I would flip her over and see her face, complete with empty soulless eye sockets—I just couldn’t bring myself to go back.
I’m sorry, Mom. I just couldn’t do it.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I relocked her door and started the decontamination protocol.
I fell back to my knees. The sobs were so overwhelming, that I just couldn’t stay on my feet. I curled into a fetal position as the water pelted my biosuit. I wish I’d had the courage to do what needed to be done. I cursed myself for being so weak. When the disinfectant began coating me, I forced myself up. I had to let it cover my whole body. When the cold water kicked back on, I was a little calmer. I moved the CPU to the door and lifted the locking mechanism.
Why did I listen to her?
I should have gone in there and put her in bed. I should have covered her like she did for Dad. I should have done something. There’s no way he would have just left her lying on the floor.
I sat on the floor and sobbed for over an hour. I would have stayed there for days, but stray thoughts of Ellie brought me to my feet.
I wheeled the CPU into my room and connected my re-imaging hard drive to it, but I stopped short of starting it up. That hard drive was all I had left of my mother. All of her work was there and I hadn’t looked at it. No one had. There could be a journal. I couldn’t bring myself wipe it. For some reason I couldn’t understand, I needed to save what I could. I felt like I owed it to her after failing her when she died. I disconnected my re-imaging drive and started her computer up. I decided to migrate all her files to an external drive and then re-image her machine. As much as I would love to leave her machine exactly as it was, forever, I had to get my communication software on her computer and she wasn’t running the proper OS.
I opened my desk and pulled out a spare external hard drive. Her home screen appeared and I plugged in an external drive. It would take several hours to copy her files. While I waited, I did my laundry, cleaned the dishes and even made my bed.
Anything I could think of to keep my mind occupied.
After the files transferred, I shut down her machine. Then I plugged in my re-imaging hard drive and rebooted. After I hit re-image, I walked into the hallway to break down the temporary airlock. It took about four hours to re-image, which would give me just enough time to tear it all down and take care of some other maintenance issues.
I couldn’t just sit there. Sitting meant being drowned by guilt.
* * *
After my chores, I was amazed that I able to eat somehow. I had an apple, oatmeal with raisins, and a bowl of ramen noodles with an egg dropped in. It felt good to eat. It felt good to cook, too.
After I cleaned up, I walked into my room to check see if the re-imaging was done and it was. I rebooted the CPU and my home screen appeared on the machine, which was the first thing today that had brought a smile to my face.
I changed my admin password and beefed up my firewall. No outside queries would be able to get past my security measures now. Any attempt to break through, would trigger an alert and automatically cut the link.
With a deep sigh, and a shaky hand, I connected my system to the dish and began searching for non-UNN satellites. I wanted to keep a low profile, and a non-UNN connection was just the thing. If I used a non-standard uplink, it might fool them. Even if it didn’t, it should take them a while before they notice my connection to the nexus. Which should have given me the time I needed to talk to Ellie. Or at least get word to her. I couldn’t risk reaching out to her directly; I knew they’d be looking for that.
I’ve got to be smarter than them.
My search found an old weather satellite that used to belong to the old Soviet Union. Most of them weren’t functioning, but I had used this one plenty of times. It had a much higher orbit, so the signal was a bit weaker, but I wouldn’t need much. I was just going to the Nexus, not gaming.
I grabbed my goggles and put them on, but stopped short of pulling them over my eyes. Once I got connected to the satellite, I began to hack into the Nexus. Only UNN satellites are approved to access the Nexus, but when I didn’t want Ellie to know I was gaming (she got really weird about gaming too much) I went in through non-sanctioned satellites. I had a million pseudo accounts, but she had that whole network wired and knew every time I logged in anyway. She had no way to track hackers, not even the UNN could. So, for a bit of privacy, I learned how to do it. My buddy Zack taught me.
It took me about ten minutes get on. Finally, I slid the goggles down and hit "Enter".