The Darkness

by Matt Brennan

  I just didn’t understand how they could have done what he said they did. I threw my hands up in the air, and said, “Okay, I’ll play along. For the moment anyways. What do you want from me?”

  “We need your blood.”

  I snorted to myself. “Is that a joke?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  I looked behind me, in case there were people there ready to jump out and shout, Surprise!

  “You want my blood?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that’s possible. As I’m here, and you’re not.”

  “Very true, which is why we’d need you to come to us in San Francisco.”

  A smile spread across my lips. At that moment it all became clear. I had been thinking that this had to be a prank, but that last bit had just sealed it for me. It had to be Zack messing with me. How he had managed to animate the old dude was beyond me, but I was impressed!

  “Alright, I think we’ve talked enough. Zack, this is a stupid joke by the way and I’m not buying it anymore.”

  Doctor Sanderson looked around a bit confused. “I’m sorry, my name is Doctor Sanderson, I’m not sure who this Zack person is that you’re referring to, but I can assure you that this is no joke.”

  “Now I know it’s you Zack. Look man, I just got over the flu dude. Not cool to play a prank now.”

  Doctor Sanderson got a very serious look on his face, and leaned in closer to his camera. “Perhaps you need a bit more proof we are who we say we are. I’m sorry about this. I’m told it will only be temporary, so try to remain calm.”

  And just as he said that, all the screens went black, as well as all my lights. I was sitting in absolute darkness.

  I had never been in the pitch black dark before and I didn’t like it at all. I started breathing heavy and jumped to my feet. I’d never felt that kind of panic before. I followed along the wall, frantically searching for the vent. I needed more air. I must have passed it twenty times before I found it. I was sure I’d have felt the air blowing on me, but there was absolutely nothing.

  No wind meant no air. No air meant death.

  They must have cut all the power. And I thought I was panicked before.

  I flailed for the door, because I needed to get out, I needed air. I had to get to the airlock to get to a biosuit. But the door wouldn’t open. Because just like the fan it required power. I was trapped. No air. And very soon no food and no water. The biosphere relied on an aquifer a thousand feet below my feet for water, and without the electric pump I was as good as dead.

  Buried alive.

  For the first time since I was a little boy, waking from some diabolical nightmare, pure terror boiled up from my belly and exploded out of my mouth. And once it started, there was no stopping it. The scream that came with it, seemed to come from somewhere outside of my body rather than from within. Like I was connected to it, but not all of it. It was like all the fears I’d been keeping in check for the last fifteen years finally burst past the damn I’d constructed and there was no stopping them.

  In other words, I totally lost it.

  I began blasting my fists against my hermetically sealed door, in a foolish attempt to break through the stainless steel and one inch thick safety glass. I felt the skin on my knuckles shred and my blood began to make the door damp against my constant assault. I felt the pain, but it was nothing compared to my horror. If I thought it would get me out, I would’ve gladly ripped off my own leg and beat the glass with it.

  Then, as suddenly as the lights went out, they came back on.

  A moment later Doctor Sanderson appeared back on the video screen and looked very concerned. “Mr. Whitney! Please, calm down! It’s all right! I begged them not to do that. It must have been horrifying. I’m sorry. It’s over now. They just wanted to show you that they were in control of not only me, but of you as well.”

  I was panting and found myself on my knees, I look up at him and stare him in the eye. “Doc—goodbye.”

  I hit the switch on the power strip, which immediately not only cuts their access to my system but shuts the automated system down, too. My biosphere’s controls were designed to operate at the last settings until the end of time or until I brought my server and operating system back up, whichever came first. I crawled over to my bed and curled into a ball and started to sob. My tears didn’t last, as I thankfully drifted off to sleep.

  That was the day I died. I bet you thought coming back to life would have been a bit lighter and happier, but that is how it happened.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I woke up dying of thirst.

  I got up and stumbled into the bathroom. I wasted no time and just stuck my head under the faucet and began to take in as much water as I could. In the back of my mind, I realized I might have been falling into the trap of the drinking, but the thirst was so intense and my throat was so dry, I didn’t care. I had to get water.

  I got as much in me as I could, which didn’t turn out to be that much, as it felt like a knife in my stomach. I forgot I hadn’t any water for a few days and needed to go a lot slower.

  My head was throbbing, not from sickness, but dehydration. My eyelids felt like I had sand under them. Since I couldn’t drink, I splashed water on my face and it felt good. Some of the water found its way into my eyes and the stinging was both torturous and a relief. I splashed more water on my face, focusing mostly on my eyes. The pain was intense, but it felt so therapeutic, I couldn’t bring myself to stop.

  I ripped off my surgical greens and jumped in the shower. I turned on the water and stuck my head under the streaming ice that was pretending to be water. It may have been cold, but it was exactly what I craved. It was like the freezing water was waking up nerves that had been turned off for days.

  When the water finally warmed up, the steam gratefully found its way up into my sinuses, which I hadn’t even realized were cracked and bleeding. So much so, that the water coming from my face was pink with blood. I tilted my head back and allowed the water to splash up my nose, it burned a bit, like smelling strong ammonia, but I could feel the water racing through desiccated tissue in my sinuses and the pleasure far outweighed the pain.

  I grabbed the bar of soap and I started to lather up. In a few minutes I was so clean, that it was almost as if the last several days never even happened.

  I stepped out of the shower and walked into the bedroom naked. I grabbed a towel and dried myself off and put on some clean clothes. Even though I felt refreshed, I was exhausted from the effort it took to do all that and I dropped into my chair with a thump.

  If it had been a normal day, I would’ve checked the signal strength after I drank my morning coffee. But this day was anything but normal. There was half a week of overdue maintenance to the biosphere to deal with, not to mention that I had to re-image my server and CPU. And true to form, the grand sum total of the work I was facing, overwhelmed me.

  So like the true procrastinator I was, I went to the kitchen and made breakfast.

  However, my stomach was still gurgling from the water. So I only grabbed a banana; my father used to say that it was the one food that tasted the same coming back up as it did going down. It made me feel a little better, but it was sitting in my stomach like a lead weight. So I didn’t push my luck with anything else. I did, however, make myself a cup of instant coffee.

  I went back to my bedroom and sat in my chair at my desk. My coffee was steaming on the desktop, as I stared at the screens.

  How had they done that?

  Got past the firewall and took total control of my whole system like that. My macro was very specific about what powers outside parties would have and not have. Those guys had to be good.

  I mean, very good.

  Way better than me, because I couldn’t even begin to understand how they did it. Maybe it was a good thing it happened, in a way. It opened my eyes to just how lazy it was having the biosphere’s controls and gaming software running on the same system. I
had to isolate the biosphere controls completely from the main server. It still needed to be automated, which meant I’d need a new CPU for it.

  I sighed.

  I knew exactly where a perfectly good CPU was. One that was currently set up for the exact automation I needed. In fact, I knew where two were.

  One was in my mom’s biosphere and the other was in my dad’s.

  * * *

  It took me four hours to setup the airlock outside my parent’s biospheres. It was always a pain rigging up the decontamination shower and filters. When I was a kid, the door was always up, since we never knew when we’d need to get out. But my dad used to make me take it down and put it back up all the time. He’d say he needed a part, so he could fix it, but I knew better. He just wanted me to know how to set it up.

  You know, for when he was gone.

  Actually, the hard part wasn’t the work. That was mindless. It was thinking about what I was going to do when I finished that got me. I may be a moron compared to my parents, but I’m not a total idiot. Even I know you aren’t supposed to disturb your dead father’s eternal rest, no matter how good the reason.

  Before I started assembling the shower and filters, I had to go up to the airlock to grab a biosuit and helmet. I needed one but really I was just looking for a way to take my mind off of everything.

  Needless to say, with all the work and barely any food for three days I was pooped.

  I remember chuckling at how Zack must feel like that all the time.

  I plopped down on my bed and shut my eyes. I figured a little nap was definitely in order. After all, I was practically dead for three days and rest seemed like the smart thing to do.

  But as soon as my eyes closed, I saw Ellie’s tear ridden face staring back at me.

  There was no way I could sleep knowing she was suffering. So I opened my eyes and got out of bed and put on the biosuit.

  At first, I headed for the kitchen to get something to eat. I was going into my father’s tomb, so I was going to be shaky. No reason to add a healthy dose of malnutrition to the ever-growing list of concerns. But, since that banana hadn’t sat so well, I decided to pass. I didn’t care what it tasted like coming back up, puking with my helmet on was not an option.

  My hands were trembling as I fastened my helmet securely into place.

  I had always hoped the need to do this would never come. That my father’s biosphere would remain sealed forever. I used to wonder what alien archeologists in the future would think when they found all of us, each safely tucked away in our own private tombs. Would they think we were royalty? Like the pharaohs? Or just deranged lunatics?

  A chill washed over me as I stepped into the temporary airlock and closed the door behind me and lowered the locking mechanism into place. I moved to the front of my father’s biosphere and froze.

  I kicked myself for not taking the CPU when I sealed him up in there five years ago. I remembered that day like it had just happened.

  My mother was totally catatonic.

  She had stopped responding to me after Dad died. She did her best to take care of him, but it all happened so fast and there wasn’t much she could do. I think the shock forced her to work mostly on instinct. He forbade us from going into his biosphere but she didn’t listen. When he finally slipped into the coma we both knew it for the end that it was. When she left him, she shut herself off from the rest of the world—including me.

  He died a couple of hours later.

  Like I said, I sealed his biosphere myself. My mother was—just gone.

  She sort of hung in there for a while, though I’m not sure why or how. Maybe she felt obligated to me, or something. But whatever kept her going just ran out of steam.

  Sealing up her biosphere was the loneliest thing I’ve ever done.

  I had to make myself stop thinking about that day. After all, there was no way to wipe tears away with the biosuit helmet on, so I needed to get a grip. Without thinking I punched in the security code and I heard the distinctive whoosh of the internal airlock depressurize. A few seconds later the door to my father’s biosphere opened a few inches and I felt a rush of air ripple across my suit.

  My heart was racing so fast that I was afraid if I moved I might have blacked out. But somehow I reached out my trembling hand and grasped the icy cold handle, as much to steady myself as anything else.

  I stood at the door for what felt like an hour, but it was probably just a few seconds.

  I closed my eyes and issued a quiet apology to my father for disturbing his rest, then in one motion I opened the door, took a step inside and closed it behind me. I wanted to try to minimize any accidental contamination possibilities as much as I could.

  I tried to convince myself my father would want me to do this. That he would want me to take everything I needed to survive. But it was a lie and I knew it. I was trespassing and he would have killed me for even trying something that idiotic, especially just so I could play a stupid game.

  But the damage was done and I had a job to do.

  Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Which I tried not to think about it, because being a scientist’s kid, I knew the dust was the remnants of my father. His dead skin cells anyway. It was one of the first things he taught me in my biology lessons. Most dust was just dead skin cells that flaked off our bodies everyday.

  I was really starting to panic and almost left. Not for good, but just for a minute so I could clear my head. But I knew that getting to that point took everything I had and I didn’t know if I could go through it again.

  I needed to try to calm down.

  I knew exactly where my dad kept his CPU and thankfully it wasn’t in his bedroom. Because he’s in there and I just couldn’t bring myself to see that.

  No child should ever have to see that.

  My mother told me before she died where she left him. She knew she’d never see him alive again, even if she couldn’t admit it to herself at that time. After all she told herself she was only going to get some more water and maybe something to eat. But in her heart she knew. He was about to leave our lives and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. And the tears streaming down her face told me everything I needed to know. The last thing she wanted to do was watch it happen.

  So she left.

  But before she did, she brushed his hair away from his face, tucked in his blanket and laid his arms across his chest. After he died she told me she had never wanted to take her helmet off as much as she did at that moment. She said it was like his forehead and lips were just screaming to be kissed. One last time before all the life was cruelly sucked from of them.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she turned and walked out of his room and closed the door. It wasn’t even a full hour before we heard the alarm sound on his monitor.

  She didn’t speak a word to me for three months.

  As far as I knew, he was still lying in the exact same position that she so carefully left him in, resting peacefully. But there was no way to be sure. The blanket could have rotted off by now or he might have gone into convulsions and been thrown off the bed or worse. Like my mother, I don’t want to know what happened after she left.

  Not ever.

  I read this article once about the incorruptibles when I was just a kid. According to the Catholic Church, for some reason no one quite understood, certain folks just never rotted. Saint Bernadette is said to have been one, one of the incorruptibles, I mean. The Catholics believed that they were so revered in the eyes of God, that he couldn’t bring himself to allow them to rot. I don’t know if I buy that, but if it was true, then as far as I’m concerned, both my parents are incorruptibles.

  I don’t care what anyone says.

  After what felt like an eternity, I forced myself to move. I crossed the room to my dad’s workstation. Behind a curtain under his desk was the stainless steel wheeled cart he built which held all his technology. He designed it to be hermetically sealed, that way its intern
al structures would never be exposed to germs or contaminants and thereby reusable by my mom and me.

  Like I said before, my dad was a genius and thought of everything.

  Once I wheeled the cart to the airlock, all I had to do was hose it down with the decontamination fluid and everything it contained would be free of disease carrying life forms and viruses.

  Now, it had been four years since my dad died, so the idea that a virus would still be lurking anywhere inside it was remote to say the least. But fungi have been known to thrive for a long, long time in hermetically-sealed vessels. In fact, a harmful fungus had long ago been discovered in the tombs of the pharaohs.

  So since anything was possible I took no chances.

  It took several tries before I got my dad’s CPU out of his biosphere and into the airlock. Once there, I quickly closed the door and through a quiet tear said, “Bye Dad. I love you. And thanks.”

  I punched the code into the door panel and I heard the airlock whirr and hiss. Then came the first blast of cold water. I turned and watched as my dad’s dust got washed off the CPU cart. I wish I had thought to clean it off inside his biosphere. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it all off, but I felt bad that his dust was being washed down the drain.

  Once the shower shut off, the room was blasted by a disinfectant spray. I raised my arms and spun slowly in a circle, letting the disinfectant liquid cover me entirely. The liquid was so thick, that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then the second bath began and I’m thoroughly doused with freezing ice-cold water again.

  When the water stopped, the air lock door opened and I pushed the cart down the hall and into my room. I took off the biosuit and hung it from a hook on the wall and sat with a thud into my chair. My mind was reeling, because at that moment I was now closer to something my father touched then I have been in a long, long time. I reached out and traced the smooth metal that was still wet from its bath with my fingers.