Static clears from the screen, and the image reappears, scrolling down quickly at first but slowing to become stationary. “Adam? Are you still there?” she says, the fear in her voice easy to appreciate despite the atrocious quality of the link, that fear writ large in her eyes, wide and unblinking, staring at you from the monitor.

“Yes, yes I’m still here. It’s this line, I don’t know how much longer it’ll hold.” As if on cue, the picture shifts to the right, the image stretching and blurring before returning to normal.

“I don’t know how much time we have,” she says, “it won’t be long before they’re in here...” A loud crash from behind – audible even across the rapidly deteriorating link – makes her spin round to check behind her. Still facing away from you she shouts something in answer to someone out of sight of the camera. A burst of static obliterates her words.

“Kate..!” You cry out, reach your hand towards the monitor, placing your palm against the screen, fingers splayed. Beneath the silhouette of your hand the picture disappears once again, replaced by the swirling motes of white noise. “Kate!”

The picture returns, a ghost emerging from dense fog, becoming flesh. “They’re through the outer door,” she tells you, “it’s only a matter of time now...” She has a stillness about her now, despite all that is happening around her she has found a calmness, a serenity. Her eyes bore into you, their gaze undiminished by the distance between you, the artificial nature of the image presented to you.

“Oh God Kate, you have to get out!”  tears spring to your eyes even as you cry out, reach out once more to the monitor...

She leans forward, her face coming closer to the camera, filling the screen of the monitor. Tears fill her eyes too and, as you watch, one spills over to run down her cheek, the low resolution monitor turning it into a streak of white, scarring the beauty of her face.

“I love you Adam,” she says, shaking her head, the motion not a contradiction, simply an acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. She looks up, directly into your eyes, “I love you so much...”

“I love you too Kate...” your own tears stream down your face, sting your eyes, splash onto the console in front of you.

Then she too is reaching toward the camera, placing her hand against it. Your palm touches hers – or rather the image of it on the screen – and the miles between you disappear in that moment of tenderness.

“Get out Kate, get out now while you still have a chance...” She flinches, drops her hand from the screen, breaking the connection. Turns quickly around, sees something behind her. You hear raised voices in the background. She turns to face you once more, for the last time – you realise. “They’re here...” she says the words so quietly that you do not hear them. She smiles one last time as, behind her, you see those all-too-familiar dark shapes.

“I...” she begins but the image disappears, the monitor blacked out before her words are completed.

“...love you.” You finish for her, as sobs shake your whole body.

Transmission terminated says a soothing computerised voice but your grief is so overwhelming that the words do not register.

*

First the alarm, a high pitched, monotonous tone then the light above you flickers into humming, fluorescent life. Today is September 30^th 2019, the ubiquitous computerised voice tells you, the time is 6:00am.

You lie in your bunk, already awake – for as long as you can remember you have woken two minutes before the alarms have started, a trait developed even before the rigours of military training began to dictate your life. As always, the despair and loneliness overwhelm you, pouncing on you after the brief respite of sleep, grab hold of what remains of your soul and begin to squeeze it tightly. The time is 6:01am. You clap your hands and the insistent tone of the alarm abruptly terminates.

You swing your legs out of bed, sit up, feel the cool tiles beneath your feet. The empty bed on the other side of the room serves as a physical reminder of your loneliness and you rest your head on your hands, unable – for the moment – to look at it, to feed the demons in your head.

*

You gaze at the monitors, looking at them but seeing nothing. In all likelihood, even if something significant were to occur within view of the cameras mounted around the base, you would probably miss it, lost as you are in your own world of depression. The reality is that there is nothing to see, the blanket of thick fog that now encircles the planet, the fog from which they emerged, means that all that is visible on the banks of screens is a greyness, the outside world reflecting your inner feelings.

Rows of constantly changing digital numbers lend a red glow to one corner of your working area, communications equipment constantly scrolling through wavelengths and frequencies, searching in vain to locate a signal to latch onto. Red, you decide, is the colour of futility.

Yet still you watch, watch and listen. This is your job. This is your life.

*

“I wanted chicken soup!” you cry, hammering your fist against the dispenser. “Chicken fucking soup! I pressed the button for chicken soup and you gave me tomato!” You punch the machine this time, feel the skin tear from your knuckles, see the blood well up, red turning to purple, the flesh around the wound becoming white, translucent. The pain feeds your rage and you lash out again, drops of blood spraying the machine, falling into the polystyrene cup, red lost among red. You punch, you kick, you slump to your knees, shoulders shaking with sobs. “I wanted chicken soup...”

*

The gauze wrapped around your hand is already beginning to stain red as you crunch the second pain-killer between your teeth. The light in the bathroom turns off automatically as you leave.

Entering the control centre, you glance at the stairs leading to the exit hatch and the thought crosses your mind, not for the first time, that you should simply climb the stairs, open the hatch and take your chances out there in the mist.

The last time you’d been up there was to dispose of the body. 

You return to your seat in front of the monitors, initiate review programmes that you know will pick up nothing at all. You are all alone in this tiny outpost, for all you know you may be completely alone in the world.

You had to put the body outside. There are no refrigeration facilities here – at least not any large enough to put a man into. You remember dragging his body up the stairs, no easy task given his bulk, and then the fear of opening the hatch, exposing yourself – and the base – to whatever might have been lurking out there.

It had been cold, out there in the fog. You can not recall any odour to the mist, or hearing any sounds from within its dense greyness. The cold you do remember though, the chill of death.

You dragged his corpse out through the hatch and left it there, climbing back inside and locking the hatch as quickly as you could, almost falling down the stairs in your haste and panic.

You miss him, of course, but resent him too. His death has left you alone here, alone to face your demons. Even when he’d been around, when you’d shared the responsibility of running this station, the isolation, the loneliness had been overwhelming.

When that loneliness had gotten too much it had killed him.  It can only be a matter of time, you think, before you succumb to it too.  

*

Night has fallen – or so the clocks tell you. Every hour is the same in this hermetically sealed world of yours, every minute, every second...

You take a sip of water, feel again the pangs of regret that the glass does not contain something stronger, something alcoholic...

“Access recordings,” you bark at the computer monitor in front of you.

Line after line of text, coded combinations of letters and numbers with dates and duration figures fill the screen. Using a mouse you scroll through them, selecting the one you require and double-click on it.

This file is one hundred days old and has been archived. Do you wish to de-archive it?

Shit, you think to yourself, time flies...

“Yes,” you say, clicking once more to confirm your choice.

De-archive requires security clearance. Please look into the camera for retinal scan and clearly state your name.

You lean forward and slightly to the side, stare into the camera.

“Simon Trueman,” you say, as you see the red light of the camera, feel the warmth of its scan on your eyeball.

Access granted. Loading file.

You settle back into your chair, take another sip of water.  Your pulse begins to quicken. Words, green against black, appear on the monitor. Familiar words.

 

FILE QX11/73:    22/06/2019         3:20 TOTAL VIEWS:   57 LAST VIEWED:    29/09/2019 PRESS ANY KEY TO BEGIN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You tap the space bar and the words disappear. The recorded images replace them, a superimposed bar at the bottom of the screen showing their progress.

The fear is all too apparent in her eyes, all poise gone. “Adam?” She asks, “Adam – oh thank God, it’s you!”

Your pulse continues to quicken, the hairs on your arms begin to stand on end.

“It’s okay Kate,” you say, “I’m here...”

And then she smiles, a brief moment when the fear and panic are gone, allowing her true beauty to shine through. The moment is fleeting though, the terror returns almost immediately.

“It’s over Darling, they’re here...” she glances behind her, and when she turns back to the camera tears are in her eyes, “but I wanted to say goodbye...”

“I’m here Kate, I’m here...” Tonight, you decide to whisper the words. 

Static obliterates the image.

The loss of picture will last six seconds. You take another sip of water.