The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 16 - SYDNEY

It was twelve days into her journey, and Sydney was beginning to feel like she was finally getting the hang of the ship's control interface. Large gaps in her knowledge still remained, but she was spending far less time referring to the manual as she navigated the menus.

Some things weren't covered in the manual, however. Her first serendipitous discovery came on her third day. She opened the refrigerator to discover the food she had eaten the previous day had all been replaced. The trash she had tossed in the kitchen garbage can had also miraculously disappeared. With some experimentation, she worked out the system. Every night, exactly at midnight, the contents of her fridge and kitchen cabinets were returned to their original state. All the same items, in exactly the same arrangement. If she left something out on the counter, it remained, allowing her to accumulate multiples of that item. It would have been a great arrangement if the food wasn't completely flavorless.

The trash can was also emptied at midnight. She set up her laptop to record video of it. The contents just disappeared, winking out like it had never existed. She worried about one of the cats playing in the trash when that happened, so she looped a belt through the handles of the kitchen cabinet doors, securing the trash receptacle in the hopefully now cat proof compartment.

She had begun to fall into a comfortable if somewhat monotonous routine. Most of her time was spent reading the user manual and exploring the ship's control interface, stopping only for two painfully bland meals each day. Keeping to her pre-space tradition, she watched one TV episode or movie each night, viewing them on her laptop. The television had unfortunately not survived the transition to the spacecraft. It refused to power on.

Twelve days in, and she was beginning to face the reality that space travel was boring. Then she made another accidental discovery. A universe shaking, terrifying discovery.

It was the microscope that led her to it.

She had bought it on a whim, this pocket sized, hand held microscope. It was advertised as a toy, something a child could take outside to look at leaves or bugs and whatnot, but she was captivated by the idea. On the occasions that she actually felt the need to get away from her apartment, she still liked to avoid the presence of other people. Hikes on secluded nature trails were her favorite escape. While others might take a pair of binoculars on such an outing, she found the mini-microscope more fun. She kept it in an outer pocket of her backpack, and it was still there when she was transported to the ship.

She had been cutting up a gala apple in the kitchen, trying to compensate for the lack of flavor with presentation. She chopped up fruit, arranging the pieces in interesting stacks and patterns. Her mind wandered as she sliced. She felt only the dullest of pain as she sliced into the pointer finger of her left hand.

Looking down, she saw a deep gash exposing red tissue. Reflexively she put her finger to her mouth before blood could drip all over the fruit. She tasted the slight coppery tang of blood, though not as strong as she expected.

But she had tasted it.

She took her finger out of her mouth, staring at it with macabre fascination. The red gash was still there, but no blood was oozing from it. While she watched, the cut grew smaller. The edges pressed themselves together, and it was gone. Not even a scar remained.

"Holy crap!" She ran to her reading chair and turned on the lamp next to it, holding her hand under its brighter light. Her finger looked normal. She sat in the chair, still staring at her hand. Zoe was sitting on the sofa across from her, licking her own paw. The cat stopped, looked briefly at Sydney, then continued grooming. Clearly the human was confused about how to groom her own limbs and simply needed a demonstration.

"What did they do to me?" Sydney looked over at Zoe, but the cat was still engrossed in her grooming. "It must be nano-tech. Or maybe some sort of engineered virus. They rewrote my DNA to give it super healing properties." Zoe thought all these suggestions unworthy of an answer. "Whatever it is, they definitely weren't kidding about their health benefits package."

She sat there, thinking about what sort of technology was running through her veins.

And then she remembered the mini-microscope.

It was right where she remembered, in the outer pocket of her backpack. She took it with her to the kitchen. She found her sharpest paring knife and used it to poke her own thumb then attempted to squeeze some blood onto one of the microscope's tiny slides. Nothing came out. She made a larger cut and was surprised that it hurt less than expected. Still no blood came out. She retrieved nail clippers from the bathroom. Making an even larger slash on her thumb, she then used the clippers to snip off a tiny bit of red tissue. She positioned it onto a slide and slid it into the microscope.

At 20X magnification, it just looked like a chunk of red meat. More detail emerged at 50X, but nothing she could make sense of. It was at 200X that things got really weird. No blood cells. No organic shapes. Not even tiny alien nano-machines. Just a strange red landscape, all hard angles and lines. It was like a shale formation painted the color of blood. Had her blood crystallized? She adjusted the focus, and more detail emerged.

Polygons. Triangles. Flat surfaces connected along straight lines. She had seen this before. She knew what this was.

The universe spun around her. She staggered back to her reading chair, knocking over the lamp in the process. The bulb burst with an electric pop, causing Zoe to jump from the sofa in fright.

"It's OK, baby, it doesn't matter. It's not real. None of this is real."

She dropped into her reading chair and stared at her own hand.

"I'm not real."