Ina's World

One D-lite, keeps your bones and teeth right. The big grey pill slid sluggishly down her throat. Always the worst one, Ina thought. Better to get it over with first.

She traced a finger around the rim of a shallow cut glass bowl that held dozens of tablets and capsules in various colours and sizes. Yesterday she’d felt flat and frumpy, and since she was still waiting on a package of boosters she’d bought in the throes of that desperation, she fished out two – two! – of the small wine-coloured ovals and hastily swallowed them down. These, if she remembered correctly, wrapped a good dose of dopamine in the effects of a standard bottle of shiraz.

Giddy, Ina ran her finger down the small laminated calendar taped next to the bowl. Aha!

She located a tiny red and white capsule and inspected it closely. Partheno-G, a funny little seed. Nine months later you could pop out a little mini-me! She threw it in her mouth, barely registering as the little capsule flew over her tongue and away.

A crisp bell rang out over her shoulder, from the far side of the cabin. She rose unsteadily and tapped a large silver panel on the wall next to her vanity. The speakers crackled to life as she made her way across the room. A computerised voice grew louder and echoed through the cabin.

‘Good morning, Ina! Today is Saturday the fourteenth of June, twenty twenty-five. The current saturation of Xenos-4 in the atmosphere in your area is point-five-eight-three. Projected decay rate is static at negative point-zero-eight percent. As soon as you’ve taken your assistive pharmaceuticals, the day is yours! What will you explore today?’

Ina was barely paying attention. With a hiss, the panel on the far wall of the cabin slid up to reveal a package wrapped in silver foil. She pulled it out eagerly, noting her warped reflection bouncing off the top of the box. She bounded back over to her bed and began to tear at the foil. Perfect! The ginseng amphets glistened in their glass vial. Underneath, the leaflet promised that these amber-coloured pills provided clarity of mind, shiny hair, and up to five time more bliss than their competitors. And hopefully less of a hangover, thought Ina.

The voice from the speakers started up again. ‘There are eight new episodes of ‘Summertime in the Duchy’ available, and you won’t believe what that wily Duchess Ina gets up to this time! The visiting Duke of Monteville is back in town – will he be able to resist Duchess Ina’s charms? Also available today is the season finale of ‘Undercover Superspy’ where you’ll finally find out whether Secret Agent Ina can dismantle the big bad Agency’s ticking time bomb underneath the Embassy! Will she succeed in time to rescue Secret Agent Monty from the Agency’s goons? Will she finally tell him how she feels? Tap red to find out!’

She padded back over to her vanity and emptied the glass vial into the bowl with the rest of her pills. Trailing a finger through the bowl, the pills swirled and chattered in an undulating kaleidoscope. She was mesmerised until the voice broke through her reverie again.

‘You are currently halfway through the ‘Lost Paladin’ quest in ‘Secrets of the Keep’. Mage Druidess Ina is only three hundred experience points away from level one hundred and nine, where she acquires the Stone of Transmutation! Your daily mini-quests have been refreshed and you have forty-seven gifts to open! Tap green to play.’

Alright, alright. She flopped back on her bed and snatched the control panel from underneath a pillow. Sensing movement, the screen blinked to life and rows of coloured buttons appeared. She tapped the small red square and a projector screen descend over her vanity. As the lilting theme music for ‘Summertime in the Duchy’ started playing, Ina examined the control panel and pushed a blue square in the corner, then paused and tapped a brown square in the top left-hand corner. Whirring and clicking from beneath the bed indicated that the cleaning sequence had been initiated successfully, and the mug on her bedside table began to steam and fill with coffee. She turned back to the screen on the wall and cast the control panel aside.

Damn, I look good this season! The scene panned around to show a cast of characters dressed in silks and coiffed wigs seated around a long, ornate dining table. The image cut to Duchess Ina at the head of the table, staring stoically at her simpering retinue.

A rubbery squeaking from the window distracted her from the screen. These new wiper blades are awful, Ina thought. She grabbed the control panel and swiped left on the screen, opening the camera function. No quality control these days, I swear. She swung her legs out of bed and marched over to the window. The mechanical wiper was honking and straining at the bottom corner of her window, unable to retract until the entire glass panel was spotless. Ina readied the control panel camera and stopped. Wedged between the wiper blade, the glass and the window ledge was a tarnished silver necklace with a dangling heart-shaped pendant.

Ina swiped back on the control panel and pushed the blue square until the ‘emergency stop’ option popped up. She bent over and peered at the locket, until her nose was nearly touching the glass. How in the world did that get there? Behind her, she could hear Duchess Ina shrieking in pleasure. That was quick, she thought.

She straightened up and peered around at the small section of the world she could see beyond her cabin. To her immediate left and right there were cabins that she imagined looked much like hers on the inside. Knotted vines crept unhindered up the walls. She could see dense, knee-high shrubbery and grass for a few paces until everything disappeared in a thick, dirty yellow fog. What was beyond that, she had no idea. Exposure to Xenos-4 singed the skin and withered the lungs, and the only things that ensured her safety were the four thick walls of the cabin and the purified air that was piped in from the Corridor.

She stared at the necklace blankly. Explanations tried to weave through her cotton-wool mind but kept colliding with each other. Impossible. Ina blinked and rubbed her eyes, but the delicate chain and smooth pendant remained firmly in existence in front of her. She had to get rid of it. She tried activating the wipers again, but the mechanism groaned in protest and stuttered against the glass. She frantically flicked through the options on the control panel. In ‘Home Maintenance Troubleshooting’ she found a promising link: I have damaged or in some way compromised the integrity of my cabin. She exhaled deeply when the drop-down menu offered Replace window?

The voice from the speakers interrupted Duchess Ina’s romp. ‘Ina, please stand back.’

Ina’s eyes snapped up as a rumbling grew from outside. The wipers retracted and folded away, leaving the necklace draped along the ledge. A glistening pane of glass slowly descended from the eave outside her window, suspended from two enormous hinged claws. As it levered itself into position outside her existing window, a rubber seal extended from the edges and groped at the edges of the frame. The faint yellow mist between the panes of glass began to twirl and ebb as invisible vacuums sucked the Xenos-IV out. The chain of the necklace whipped wildly and the pendant began to float, pulled up into the air currents. As the necklace danced in front of her eyes, Ina realised in horror that the sucking noises of the vacuum were dying, and the interior pane of glass began to retract into her ceiling, pulling the new pane of glass in like a demented skill tester. The necklace clattered to the floor of the cabin.

Shit, thought Ina. She reached out for the necklace, then thought better of it. Does Xenos-IV stick to metal? She doubted there was a section in the Troubleshooting guide for this. Best case scenario, she’d be hauled off for decontamination, not to mention the questions about why she’d thought she would take this on herself. She paced back to the vanity and grabbed a handful of disinfectant wipes from a lidded box. Draping them over her hands for makeshift gloves, she crept back to the window and considered the necklace. She realised the chain was short, like it was fitted for a child. The pendant was bulbous, about the size of an eye, and speckled with browning patches of discolouration. Gingerly, she grasped the pendant between her thumb and forefinger. There was a faint snap, and the pendant split down the middle and catapulted open. Ina nearly dropped it in shock but recovered herself to see that the necklace was in fact a hinged locket. In the left side of the heart, someone had meticulously trimmed and set a small photograph of a family. A man, a woman and a young girl were sitting in a park, autumn leaves littering the foreground. The man had his arms around the middle of the girl, who was wide-mouthed and crinkled-eyed, and the woman’s hand lay resting gently on the man’s shoulder. The right side of the heart was hollow, and inside was a balled-up scrap of paper.

Curiosity overtook her. She shook her hand free and scooped out the paper. Smoothing it between her fingers, she could see a limerick like those she had written at school, scrawled in a hurried, adult hand:

there once was a girl from Nowhere

who breathed in the horrid new air,

but she didn’t die

nor did she cry,

so she gathered the rest to prepare

Shaking, Ina folded the paper back into a tight cube and enclosed it back in the locket. She dumped out the remaining wipes, placed the necklace in the box and snapped the lid shut. It was too much. She scooped out as many of the little wine-coloured pills as she could find and started to swallow them dry, one by one. By the fifth swallow, her vision had narrowed almost completely, and she crawled to her bed before it all went black.

She awoke slowly, her head pounding. Those godawful pills, she lamented. She staggered over to the vanity and searched through the bowl for the ginseng amphets, when she caught sight of the pile of disinfectant wipes and the sealed box, and the events of the previous day punched through her foggy mind. She looked back towards the window and gasped. In the bottom corner of the glass, inches from where she’d found the necklace the day before, was a perfect, child-sized handprint.

No, no, no, no! She clamped her eyes shut and reached up for the silver panel.

‘Good morning, Ina! Today is Sunday the fifteenth of June, twenty twenty-five. The current saturation of Xenos-4 in the atmosphere in your area is point-five-eight-three. Projected decay rate is static at negative point-zero-eight percent. As soon as you’ve taken your assistive pharmaceuticals, the day is yours! What will you explore today?’

She turned back toward the window, and the little fingers leered at her. Knocking aside the stool, she reached under the vanity and ripped out the gas mask stashed there. She turned it over in her hands, a remnant of a time before the cabin and the Corridor and the pills. How hard everything had seemed. How painful.

Ina looked back at her bed, at the control panel screen undulating lazily, at the projector screen paused on Duchess Ina’s self-assured smirk. Come back to me, her narrow eyes teased.

She thought of the little family in the locket. She flipped open the lid and palmed the necklace, feeling its coolness nestled comfortably against her fingers. Armed with the locket and mask, she headed for the door. The hinges creaked wearily as she stepped out into the Corridor.