The Alarm

The blare of the alarm startled her awake.

She’d been lying face-down at her post. The thirty monitors before her read: BIOLER IN ZONE 3, RESET MANDATED. She hit acknowledge and got up from her chair. I fell asleep again.

Her arm bore a pink and white imprint of the keyboard. She stretched reminding her back of its purpose. Then She stepped toward the boiler room. Her leather boots clicked behind her filing up into the inaccessible stories above her.

Arriving at the boiler room she leaned into the retinal scan. The door opened and the red of the problem monitor glared through the steam. Her practiced hand waved over the control panel. the feminine voice of the AI, Celethe informed her “Reset initiated. Regular protocol will resume in 5….4….3…2…”

She left the room before the voice could finish. How long was I out? She pulled a heart-shaped locket from her pocket and opened it. The locket a holographic time stamp. The numbers 3:06, 5/25/2043 glowed over the smiling faces of her wife and daughter. I can’t remember. Back at her station the black sleeping screens showed her reflection. Her face was reddened, her eyes sunken and bloodshot, she was much thinner than she was five years ago. A steady Diet of dehydrated protein squares will do that.

She unfroze the monitors and opened only the external cameras. Nothing had changed. Gray ash still blanketed everything. Reminders of what was once there poked through it, charred lampposts, a half-melted trashcan, the rusted hull of a car. May as well be a painting.

The first year, she would watch actively. Anxiously awaiting signs of life, hopeful someone or something would come tell her it was safe now. That the radiation had been cleaned up. that she could go home now. Now in what she figured was her fifth year there was little point, beyond there being nothing else to do. On those thoughts she found the welcome invitation of sleep.

…..

She was back again in the same empty gray room. she could hear nothing but the faint rumbling of machines. The same constant ambience of the institute. She looked up and stifled a gasp. Above her a body was suspended in thin air. The body was naked, pale and exsanguinated. The only thing holding it was a lime green hand of plexiglass, firmly gripped around the ankle. She recognized the face as her own, only colder and emptier searching for something she could not find.

…..

The blare of the boiler alarm woke her up.

She snapped to attention. She’d been leaning back in the desk chair, her head dangling precariously over the edge. The packaged remnants of a rehydrated protein square perched on the keyboard. All thirty monitors blinked: EXHAUST FAN IN ZONE 5, RESET MANDATED. The roof? She hit acknowledge, and pulled out her locket, the time read 3:00, 5/26/2043. Looking into her wife’s face forced her to shudder involuntarily.

Focus. The roof can’t be safe. The glass dome covering the roof was thick. Nowhere near as thick as the lead that encased the rest of the Institute, but the alarms had to be silenced manually. Still having power is more trouble than its worth. She sighed, getting back up in spite of her body’s protest. She took the elevator up to the tenth floor. Watching as the red numbers changed at each interval.

The elevator doors parted, depositing her into the small airlock before the roof. She scanned her retina, disabling the airlock that would take her from safety and into an unknowable radiation zone. She inhaled and the door flew open.

Instantly she was overwhelmed with the strange gray light streaming through the ash and grime covering the dome. Her eyes welled with tears, forcing her to gasp for air. Dammit! Seal’s broken now. She scanned the twenty odd exhaust vents, finding the one that was demanding a reset. As she stepped forward, she heard the soft wet crunch of a shell. A Snail?

Memory flooded back to her. Rainy days turned the snails from the mud in legions. Slowly they trekked towards the warmth of the boiler rooms. There bodies cluttered the sidewalks around the institute, turning each step to a cacophony of crunching shells. She felt bad for the stupid things.

She picked up her foot, on her sole there was indeed a crushed shell and pulverized gray body. “How are you alive?” she asked it. It was the first time she’d spoken aloud in months the frailty of her voice shocked her. Guess the roof’s safe at least.

She silenced the alarm. Are there more of you? She began to search for tan shells against the shingled walkway of the roof. Even the glimmer of dried snail trail would be a welcome sight. Anything to show that life is possible again. She reached the roof’s fire-exit.

The door was unlocked but refused to budge. She pushed hard, throwing her hips into it. until finally there was give. She took a breath and pushed again. Something was causing the door to stick to its frame. She rammed it harder, and the door swung inward.

A wall of sour air hit her nostrils; her hands flew over her mouth. The entire stairwell was coated in a writhing greenish orange sludge. The air around it was humid, charged by whatever the writhing mass was. Did the Airlock fail without an Alarm? Was this some escaped experiment. Am I going to die from spore exposure of all things!

She slammed the door closed and ran frantically back to the south end of the roof. She glided through the security points and took the elevator to her makeshift sleeping quarters on the 3rd floor. She’d piled discarded lab coats and cushions ripped from the lobby couches. She leapt over it making a beeline for the bathroom.

She ripped the rags of her old uniform off her body, frantically turned on the facet, cupped her hands to let them fill with water, threw it over her body and scrubbed vigorously. She repeated the process until her heartbeat began to return to normal. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and exhausted. Screw it. I’m going to sleep. She exited the bathroom and collapsed onto her bed.

…..

She’d never been in this part of building before. Her ratty uniform and security pass were replaced by strips of gauze. She felt exposed. The corridor was empty, illuminated only by a soft blue glow at the end. Her bare feet balked at the ice-cold linoleum. Must be a Biolock chamber. I’M LOCKED IN THE BIOLOCK! Panic pushed her to run down the hall to the blue light. The light belonged to a monitor where Celethe was occupying the generated body of a sleeping girl, a lamb with a bow resting in her arms.

The monitors light showed a yellow biohazard sign over the airlock: BSL-5, PPE REQUIRED. How did I get in here? She breathed in leveling herself. Celethe can be reasoned with. Tapping the screen caused the graphic of the little girl to pop up expectantly “I am Celethe, The AI for this Unit. How may I be of assistance to you?”

“Release the airlock please.”

“Of course!” Celethe bubbled “Please present your security pass for verification.”

“I don’t have it.” She gestured to her medical attire. “My employee pin is 612579009.”

The computer giggled. The girl continued beaming at her, feigning helpfulness. Her voice wavered “Celethe, I am requesting override this is a safety matter.” The computer giggled at her again.

“Open the door!” she threw her fist against the airlock impotently. The computer giggled louder.

“Celethe. Listen to me, I need you to open this door.”

“A guard will be with you shortly.” Celethe informed her

“I’m the only guard here. EVERYONE’S DEAD!” She screamed, throwing her fist into the monitor. The graphic flinched, dropping its pet lamb. “That wasn’t very smart, was it?” Celethe giggled again. As she began to berate the computer a sharp pain entered her neck. Her hand reached up, feeling the feathered end of a dart.

A black gloved hand reached from the shadows, clasping her arm. She turned as her muscles went numb. The hand belonged to a face obscured by a blue face shield. Somewhere there was demanded to scream. Her tongue stayed put. She stared immobile into the plastic and for a moment her tongue began to form her wife’s name, Alessa.

….

The blare of the alarm woke her.

Her face was red from where her drool had plastered it to the desk. She stared at the monitors before her: BIOLER IN ZONE 3, RESET MANDATED. She clicked acknowledge. How did I end up here again?

Her locket read 3:00, 5/27/2043. She stared past the monitors trying to bring her memory back. The alarm sounded again, insisting she deal with it. Fine. She got up letting her spine fall into place before trudging back to the boiler room. She scanned her card, the door opened to an office space filled with blue-gray cubicles. At the end of the office suite was the boiler room. She repeated the process on autopilot, leaving as Its as Celethe’s voice directed “Reset initiated. Regular protocol will resume in 5….4….3…2…”

The door shut behind her, and she made her way back to her post. As she settled in, the urge to sleep began to rise in her. She looked at her locket, 3:10. She shut it throwing it back into her pocket. I will not go to sleep. Something is happening, or I’m going insane. I have to know.

She opened the internal cameras for the first time in years. She reminded them back three hours. The camera pointed to her station was black, yet no error message flashed over it. She pushed time ahead, ten minutes before she woke up. She stared back at her sleeping body. She was growing frantic, the urge to sleep was turning her eyelids heavy.

She pulled up the 3rd floor camera, where she was certain she had last fallen asleep. The was black. What is this? She picked another camera at random, an external one, and backed it up to the same time. The screen showed a view of an ash covered parking lot, nothing seemed to be moving. Suddenly her neck throbbed.

Her hand flew to it feeling a hard lump. The dart. Her eyes slipped as her stiffening body began to tilt forward. “NO!” she screamed; the No echoed up through the building. “I will not allow this.” She declared getting up from the chair and walking towards the front door. I will not fall asleep. She repeated the mantra as her body insisted otherwise and fell to the floor.

…..

She was in a garden. Its walls were glass, glistening brilliantly in the sunlight turning the plants to something between sweating polyethylene and real things. Alessa was there beside her, smoking a cigarette.

“I hate when you do that.”

“Not today, Em.” Alessa inhaled “I can’t…”

She put her hand over her wife’s. It was colder than she remembered. Alessa looked at her with two green pinpricks. “I’m so sorry baby. I…I didn’t have a choice.” No words came to her as a warm tear fell from Alessa’s eyes.

…..

The blare of the alarm woke her.

She was back in the desk chair. Her head throbbed. She felt a welt was rising throw her overgrown hair. How? The monitors were blinking OXYGEN RECYCLER ZONE 6, RESET MANDATED. She hit acknowledge. The alarm stopped. I’m not doing this again. She got up slowly, her only solution forming like a snails’ ascent. Her thumb ran over the locket as she walked to the front door. She couldn’t bring herself to check it. She took a deep breath as the retinal scan released the airlocked front door. In her next breath she stepped into a green world.