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9:59 Moons: Spore evacuation 80% effective / Spores are discharging externally / Levels contaminated: 1-30 / Levels uncontaminated: 31
Never in my life had I been happier that I’d been sweating my balls off for good reason. Level thirty-one’s air came from deep inside the volcano, pumped in to improve growing temperatures for all the biodomes housed on this level.
10:00 Moons: Survivors 1 / Deceased 204
I closed my eyes and took a couple of shaky breaths. Acid crept up my throat, and I grasped the display to remain upright.That can’t be right. But when I forced my eyes open again, the message hadn’t changed.
It flashed like a beacon—Survivors 1 / Deceased 204—blurring in front of my unblinking eyes.
What the ever-loving fuck?!
I mashed the heels of my hands into my stinging eyes as warm tears trailed down my cheeks and landed on the monitor’s display. I swiped the notification with the pad of my finger, and it came back the same. Then I did it again. One more unhelpful line appeared.
1:00 Sun: Emergency message sent to Tern’s capital city. The Intergalactic Federation Responsible for Catastrophic Events requests immediate evacuation.
Even though the research station was fucked, that meant the people in the nearby city and the rest of the planet might have a fighting chance.
It made no sense, but I ran to the locked door. The thirty floors above me were harboring toxic spores that 204 other oxygen-breathing beings had succumbed to, and I thought I might…what? Run the gauntlet and take my chances? The small metal wheel felt cold in my sweaty grip when it spun as usual, but the mechanism would not disengage, no matter how hard I cranked it.
“Get me out of this death trap,” I whispered to the pipes and ductwork crisscrossing the ceiling, as if they would grant some sort of divine wish. My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor, pressing my forehead against the round portal-style door that had sealed my fate.
Please let the message have gotten to the city before the spores reached them. Taking out the research station was one thing, but an entire planet… My brain started shutting down just thinking about it.
One Month Later
“Greens are at desiccation level three. Immediate attention required.” The AI system’s cheery voice warned through my headset.
“Goddamn it! Not again.” The water hose unwound behind me as I took off running. I’d been recruited to install and maintain a heat-proof collection system for studying life-saving enzymes in a bacterium found in the magma that ran deep beneath Tern. I knew nothing about stupid plants. “I’m an engineer, not a horticulturist,” I muttered.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” Sweat beaded on my brow as I ran to water the crop. The auto-waterers were malfunctioning in the biodomes again. The research station had shaken so badly during what I now referred to as the ‘don’t fuck with nature and you won’t have to die alone with only an AI system’s never-ending alerts whispering in your ears, in the bowels of a research station on another effing planet.’ But that was a mouthful, so I mostly called it ‘Sporemageddon.’
Every other system seemed to be fucked in some capacity, and I spent my days running around, madly prioritizing which alerts to attend to based on what would keep me alive the longest.
I’ll just water the greens, then get right back to the air filtration alert.I needed to eat, after all.
As fortune had it, the biodomes responsible for growing all the produce for the research station happened to be housed on level thirty-one. I had more vegetables and fruit than any one person could eat, most of it rotting away, because I had no damn idea what was safe to eat. I craved protein worse than my childhood dog, Rex. He could knock you out with one whiff of his bad breath, but I’d trade a whole biodome to have him here with me now. Which reminded me—I needed to have a look at the waste collection system. The biodome smelled more like death by compost than life these days.
Hours later, I called it a day and slumped into an old pod with a broken door I’d found in the maintenance area. The corrugated metal ridges offered no comfort, digging into my ass through the thin mattress as I gulped down my meal. Another graneth grass smoothie. It was so healthy it made me want to puke.
“Thermal Station C,” I said to the AI. “Please hold off all alerts until 7:00 suns unless dire.” I wanted to say ‘unless all hell broke loose,’ but Thermal Station C had no sense of humor.
“Alert system switched to holding pattern until 7:00 suns.”
“Thank you, C. Good night.”
“Good night, Sterling Peoples,”she said in her cheerful voice.
I rolled my eyes at the full formal name C insisted on calling me. She preferred the pronouns she/her, and who was I to argue with my only companion? As had become habit over the last month, I stared at the external camera display above my crappy mattress, wondering how long I could go on like this. Wondering whether the citizens of Tern had been evacuated before the spores reached them. Wondering if I’d ever be evacuated.
Wondering if my mom was thinking of me.
As usual, the aboveground camera showed endless fields of graneth grass, white in the moonlight and iced with winter frost, with the odd cow-like mantu grazing. I drifted off to sleep.
My sixth sense woke me before the AI, and I jolted upright on the flimsy mattress. The external camera flashed green, flickered an electric blue that turned to icy white, then flashed green again. Outside, the sky lit up with solar flares so bright that I had to squint until my eyes adjusted in my dim pod. Half-asleep, I smiled at the kaleidoscope of swirling colors. Then the cycle repeated itself, like an endless lightning storm.
As much as I wanted to lie down and watch the show like I used to watch the northern lights back on Earth, a heavy sense of foreboding told me this was not a good thing. My sleepy smile dropped away when Thermal Station C’s voice came through the speaker system.
“TheFires That Cleansehave been deployed Sterling Peoples, you will need to remain on level thirty-one for a minimum of six months.”
