The blackness engulfs me like a blanket. There’s no sound, no thought, and no pain. Just nothingness and cold.
An image of my mother pops into my brain from the ether.
It strikes me as odd, because I kind of hate my mother, but there she is. Young and beautiful. She is smiling at me and gently raking her fingers through my hair. I’m lying with my head in her lap and she’s looking down at me. And I feel safe. Safer than I have felt in a very long time. Not since I was four or five and I felt like my mother could protect me from anything. She is so beautiful I almost forget that I hate her.
Suddenly my brain is flooded with images of her doing things like wiping my face/hands free of chocolate cake and frosting. And other images of her smiling at me because I’d just drawn a picture and was showing it to her. I had forgotten how beautiful her smile was. It emanated from every cell in her body. And her laugh! Oh god, did she have a great laugh. It sort of took hold her whole body and she would do this bouncing, shaking thing till she finally had to collapse at the waist in a desperate attempt to get oxygenated blood up to her brain. But the best part about making her laugh was that she would always pull me into a hug and kiss me on top of my head, then lean my head back and tell me she never loved anyone or anything as much as she loved me.
I almost forgot about that.
It’s funny what you forget about when someone abandons you to absolute solitude and loneliness for the rest of your life. Because no matter how you look at it, that’s what her suicide did. She left me on this miserable rock and doomed me to a life where the nearest human being was 3,000 miles away. Actually, to be completely honest, the biospheres weren’t that bad. Mine used to feel more like a security blanket than it did anything else. It gave me three square meals a day and I didn’t even have to smell my own farts for more than just a few seconds. Dad and I used to call the biosphere a womb away from home.
He was a genius, did I mention that? (My head is kind of fuzzy so I hope I’m not rambling or repeating myself.)
This isn’t your typical “kid idolizing his father” kind of genius. My dad was legit. He graduated from MIT with a dual Masters in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering when he was only seventeen years old. Then, instead of getting rich in the high-tech world of the 21st century, he went back to college to become a doctor.
You know, so he could really make the rest of the planet feel like chimps.
He told me once that the medical degree was much harder for him and so it took a bit longer. Well, longer for him. He started his residency when he was twenty-one. Yeah, you heard me right, twenty-one.
Did you do the math yet?
Genius.
You know, time is crazy. I have zero idea how long I’ve been knocked out. Could be ten minutes, could be ten hours. But it’s weird, even when I’m out cold my mind still occupies itself by thinking about my parents.
They met during his residency at the Vancouver General Hospital. My mom was a virologist and was a bit paranoid about her work. She began to see the steady increase of drug resistant strains of lethal bugs and got a little bit panicky. She convinced my father to build the biospheres as a safety net. Originally, the idea was to seal themselves up inside, as a worst case scenario solution kind of thing. That way they could live out the remainder of their years safely tucked away from harm. Though that was long before we ever heard of The Darkness or The Melding. It just never occurred to them that surviving the plague meant that they would end up being completely shut off from everything and everyone they ever loved—including each other. My mother used to tell me it felt like she was living in a snow globe.
I lost my dad first.
Did I already tell you that? I’m sorry, I just I can’t seem to concentrate while I’m unconscious. I guess that’s normal, I don’t know.
But what I meant was, I lost him before my mom. It was inevitable I guess; I mean we all die, but for him it was destined to be sooner rather than later. You see, he insisted on being the only one who went outside to make repairs. He caught his biosuit on the metal door latch to the airlock. He lasted three whole days. Back in those days, the strain was still in its infancy, evolutionarily speaking that is. Now, it’s evolved to the point where it is lethal in just six hours. The UNN (United Nations Network) claims in its online news bulletins that according to its data the strain is becoming more deadly by the day. It’s too bad Dad couldn’t have waited till when Mom got sick.
She was gone in just twelve hours.
She claimed there was a malfunction in her biosphere’s filtration system, but I checked the logs. There was no malfunction. She opened the air divertors manually. I guess she just couldn’t handle the isolation, at least not after we lost Dad. Some days I feel sorry for her. Others I wish she was still here so I could kill her myself.
It was tough watching her go though. I felt so powerless. If I’d had a gun or something, maybe I could have ended her suffering. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have done anything. She was my mom and all. But Tylenol was the strongest thing we had for God's sake and she was in so much pain. It wouldn’t have mattered though, because when the end came I couldn’t risk getting close enough to do anything. I had to seal them both up in their biospheres. Mom was just too broken up to do it for Dad.
They’re still in them right now. Their refuge became their tomb.
I feel a wave of nausea hit me. My eyes flutter open but the light is too strong and hurts my brain, so I close them again and slip back into the blessed darkness of sleep.
My mind drifts back to the day I died.
I remember I woke plastered to my sheets and jumped out of bed swinging, like I always do. I’ve had that same dream for as long as I can remember. The location changes and so do some of the characters, but it always ends with that little girl biting me. It’s all so vivid, I can even smell that little girl’s strawberry scented shampoo. Well, that’s a little carry over from my mother I guess, she had this strawberry scented shampoo and conditioner. I always liked that smell.
Anyway, that morning I woke to find I had lost my signal to the Nexus. That’s the game zone the survivors of the plague had created. It was this huge multi-user online universe and it took the place of our daily human interactions. Some of us Skyped and stuff, but we all just mostly met up on the Nexus. But that day I had no signal. After checking the external cameras I saw what looked to be a tree branch lying on top of the dish. Which was by far the worst news I could possibly have gotten—nobody died till they went outside.
By the time I had finally got outside, most of that day had gone and I only had a few hours of daylight left. But even in the evening light, I could see that the branch was actually an entire tree. I had no tools to deal with a tree. No saws or anything. I knew I’d have to go back and climb all the way up to the storage closet to see if I had anything that could help me. And I knew at that stage it meant I wouldn’t get it fixed that day.
Then I’d remembered Ellie.
I knew I had to let Ellie know I was fine or she’d freak out. I was pissed. It was a nightmare. So like an idiot, I started breaking branches with my wrench, the only tool I had. The branches came off easy enough, but it had taken too long and I was getting real mad at this stage. So I ended up just forcing my way under the tree, loosening the bolts holding my dish in place, and yanking it free from the trees vice-like grip. Then I mounted it against a shed nearby.
Walking back to the biosphere, I remember I was still so mad I couldn’t see straight. I kept throwing my wrench and running up to it and either picking it up and throwing it again or kicking it.
Anyway, when I finally got back to the airlock, I slammed the door release back into the locked position so hard that I almost broke it off. Which would have been tragic since I didn’t have a replacement for it. The disinfectant shower had activated automatically once the lock engaged, just like it was programmed to do. But instead of the cool waters drumming against my biosuit, calming my nerves, I feel wetness. It starts on my shoulder blade and then begins