CUBE: Part One

I was so sure I died.

But I wake, my body curled into itself, strands of hair falling over my face. My cheek’s resting on my arm and my arm has an ache in it from lying on a hard surface. These are the things I notice before remembering I’d died.

Then the rest of my consciousness barrels into me and I come fully awake with a jerk.

Blinking. My breath making my hair move. I’m lying on a floor, which isn’t right. The floor is a light grey. I must be in a hospital.

Of course. There had been fire, burning embers. A wind that blasted my skin as I searched for my family . . .

But if I’m in a hospital, that means I’ve been saved. Relief and confusion are trying to work in tandem as I lift my head. The walls around me are the same grey as the floor. The corners are rounded and there are recesses along one wall. It doesn’t look like a hospital. It doesn’t look like any room I’ve been in before.

The only sound I can hear is a white-noise hum in the background.

I sit up, slowly and carefully, expecting to feel pain. To smell my own burning skin. I’m aware I’m trying very hard not to look at my body. But it glides upright, my muscles so smooth it’s like they’ve been rubbed in olive oil. Then my hair falls over my shoulder in a long veil and for a moment I stop breathing.

Okay, don’t think about that right now.

I stand on shaking legs, and everything begins to spin. I shut my eyes, sweat beading my forehead. I breathe, in and out. Press my hand to my breastbone

Maybe I should be overcome with gratitude for my not-dead status, but I’m still playing catch-up, and when I open my eyes again I’m looking for a door, a sign, a person. I need to know what’s happening. I need someone to tell me what to do.

I can’t see any doors. There are no doors. I turn, fear already rising in me when I see it.

I won’t talk about that right now. I can’t. I’ll tell you about the end of the world instead.

#

It was the second day of spring when we learned that an asteroid named 2023QF5 had a significant chance of hitting Earth within the year.

It’s a strange word, significant. Slot it into place and suddenly everything becomes so much more . . . significant.

Apparently no-one had noticed the asteroid until late August, despite the fact it was thought to be between 6 and 10 kilometres wide and there’s a bunch of people and organisations whose sole job is to monitor such things. I hope someone got sacked.

I’m not sure of the exact time the news broke around the world, but I found out in the middle of the day, at work.

I was doing a stint in a small accounting firm owned by a husband-and-wife team. Pam and David. Both tall and thin and somewhat morose. I was filling in for their assistant, Hannah. Hannah was on maternity leave. She’d left a family photo and a vase of flowers on her desk. She was warm and friendly with the clients and sometimes brought in homemade banana bread and made coffee for everyone on a regular basis and was always smiling apparently.

‘So different from you, Rachel!’ Pam would laugh.

Sitting at my desk that day, listening to my bosses whispering about something in the little tearoom, I looked to Hannah for guidance. She was laughing at the camera while hubby lifted a small and grubby boy onto his shoulder. Her hand was resting on her little football-sized belly. She did look like someone who would bring homemade banana bread to work.

‘We can’t just leave! And she’s here!’ I heard Pam say.

I looked at Hannah again, browed raised, wondering if they were having a personal crisis. They had young kids. People with young kids were always on the edge of some emergency.

Hannah suggested I offer to close the office, and perhaps smile more.

I cleared my throat.

‘If something’s come up, I can close the office,’ I called out.

There was a moment of heavy silence in which I imagined glances being exchanged, silent agreements made.

Pam stepped out of the tearoom, and I remembered later how she briefly searched my face. She was so pale my dislike of her wavered. I wanted to ask what had happened. I thought one of their kids had been hurt or something.

I’m not sure how much they knew at that point, but you’d think they would have told me. (They would have told Hannah.) But no, that bitch grabbed her coat and bag and practically flung the keys onto my desk, instructing me to cancel the day’s appointments while David strode out without a backwards glance.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Rach,’ said Pam, as she followed. The door banged shut behind her, and they were gone.

#

So, back to the thing. The thing I don’t want to talk about. I don’t even want to look at it, but I can’t seem to stop.

It’s a window. Or rather, it’s what’s on the other side of the window. Which is nothing.

A black nothing.

The window takes up most of the wall. I think the glass must be very thick - it gives that impression - but I can see though it clearly. For one relatively stress-free moment I thought it was the night sky. Because that’s a normal thing to do, isn’t it? Wake up after dying in an empty room with no doors and a large picture window looking out into the darkness of night.

But the sky is never black like this. Not the cold, final black of space - a black that contains absolutely no other colour. Its horrifying.

There’s a scattering of stars that shine in hard points of light, but my sluggish brain is skipping over those and homing in on the upper right corner, where a perfect blue and white marble hovers in all that darkness.

It takes my mind awhile to put the puzzle together, and when it does I sink to the floor, still staring at a planet I’m never supposed to see like this.

I can’t look anymore. I can’t breathe. I curl up tight, my arms over my head as I start to shake. I can hear someone crying, making sounds like a wounded animal, but there’s no one here besides me.

#

I discovered the announcement of our impending doom the same way most people did that day. Bloody Twitter.

I thought it was a joke. I scrolled and scrolled, looking for the hook, the catch. #2023QF5, #EndOfTheWorld and #Exinction were trending. I started to get angry, because it wasn’t funny, scaring people like that. I had a brief reprieve when I saw #ExtinctionHoax also trending, until I read the tweets.

I went into our small meeting room and switched on the telly.

And heard the word significant.

I felt a moment of pure horror as it sunk in. Oh my god, it’s happening. It’s actually happening I’m going to die I don’t want to die what if I BURN TO DEATH what if it HURTS? I was on my knees because my legs had stopped working, feeling the scratchy carpet under my palms as I crouched there, wondering what I was supposed to do. I wanted to call someone. I had no-one to call.

My vision was speckling. Bloody Pam. Bloody David. I was going to kill them.

#

I don’t know how long I’ve been curled up on the floor like this.

The worst of the shaking has stopped. I thought someone would come, but they didn’t, and now I’m forced to my feet.

Because I have to pee.

I walk towards the recesses that are set into the opposite wall; three shallow rectangles. One holds a bed, which is a thin mattress on a base that looks like its moulded right out of the wall. There’s a folded blanket on one end, and something about that makes me uneasy.

The second recess is narrow and only contains shelves, and the third one is a bathroom.

It looks surreal. I mean, I still rush in, sit down and pee, but even as I’m doing it the experience is so strange I feel like I’m having an out of body experience.

I’m peeing in space.

I wonder where it goes.

Mostly I’m just relieved about being able to pee.

We’re a basic species, aren’t we?

There’s a basin opposite me, and along the third wall is what I think is a shower. There’s a slight rise in the floor, a square panel in the ceiling over it.

When I finish I pace around the small space I’ve found myself in, searching desperately for a door I know isn’t there. Two of the walls are smooth and blank and press my hands to the surface. The walls are warm, and have a strange smell.

‘Hello?’ my voice is so thin it’s like I’ve never spoken before, and I try again. ‘Hello? Can you hear me? Is someone there?’

When there’s no answer I thump my fist against the nearest wall. ‘You can’t keep me locked up like this! Hello!’ My fists are pounding now, my voice a scream. ‘I’m fucking in here!’

When I stop I press my ear to the wall, listening for the sounds of voices or footsteps or . . . anything. All I can hear is the constant, background hum that seems to be all around me.

But if I’m here, others must be as well. Amy and Dorothy, they’re here too they must be why is no one coming for me?

I push myself away from the wall as I feel tears of frustration and fear pricking at my lids and walk over to the bed. Why is there a bed? How long will I be here?

Who left that blanket, folded up so precisely?

I pick it up and wrap it around me, grateful because - and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet - I’m naked.

#

When I finally picked myself up from the meeting room floor I made myself a coffee I wouldn’t drink, sat down at my desk and stared at the opposite wall for a bit.

Part of me waited to wake up.

The phone rang a few times. There didn’t seem to be any point in answering, so I didn’t. I glanced up at the clock, because I very much wanted to go home right then, to close the door on the world and let myself process what I’d just learned. Then I realised how ridiculous I was, sitting there and dumbly waiting for the little hand to reach the five. I jumped up and grabbed my bag.

The traffic was chaotic. Some people were screaming out of their car windows at one another, some people were just screaming. Others looked bewildered because they obviously hadn’t heard the news. I could see the questions on their faces; Why are all these people yelling what’s going on why does my phone keep ringing? We were all in flux. Was it a joke? Was it real? It was as if the whole city was caught in some crazy tableau, frozen in the moment between an old world and the new one.

A large sedan ran a red light and almost careened into me as sirens wailed over the noise. I was screaming as the car swerved away at the last moment.

It was a relief, to scream.

I got back to my flat in one piece and raced up the stairs. My neighbour’s door was open, her bag lying in the doorway, one strap falling outwards. I could hear her pleading; ‘Please call me back, please, please call me back . . .’

My door opened into the living room. I dropped my bag onto the couch, ran to the bathroom and made it in time to throw up.

#

The blanket’s thin, but warm. I tighten it around me as I study the shelves that are set into the wall.

The first three are lined with glass flasks, filled with water. I assume its water. The second three are stacked with rectangle packages that immediately remind me of Kraft cheese.

I hate Kraft cheese.

There’s nothing else. No towels, no clothes . . . no notes of explanation.

I’m thirsty, but I don’t want to drink the water in those flasks, not until someone comes in here and explains what’s going on. But looking at them, lined up so neatly, so pointedly, I start to feel very, very scared.

I’m shivering. I sit on the mattress that sinks slightly under my weight and hug my knees to my chest. I try to ignore the empty, black void outside, but it’s impossible.

#

I couldn’t eat anything that night. I curled up in a corner of my couch and watched the news coverage. I listened to all the scientists who were being interviewed; some blinking and messy-haired, some dismissive and patronising. Most of them looked shell-shocked and spoke haltingly. Some stuttered. They didn’t want to be saying the words they had to.

While they talked, I googled how to survive an asteroid strike. I researched cave networks in my area. I imagined living in the dark with my supplies while the world burned. I went on Twitter to find people to talk to, to react with, and found a multitude. By midnight a group of us were swapping phone numbers. I asked if anyone wanted to share my cave with me and an argument broke out about whether being in a cave would help in any way. Then I spent hours talking to a very sweet man called Liam. We cried and told each other we loved one another. We were quite drunk.

At one point I could hear my neighbour, crying. I guess no-one called her back. I turned the volume up when she began to wail, and fell asleep around six in the morning. When I woke a few hours later it was to a humanity in the throes of panic.

#

I’m thirsty.

But I’m going to hold out until I get some sort of explanation, or even an acknowledgment. I’d settle for that. Because someone has put me in here. Someone has built this little room. So I scream and bang my fists against the wall. I swear and beg for clothes, or a pillow.

‘Please, just tell me what’s going on!’ I shout, and then my voice becomes raspy and faint. I keep shouting anyway, until I sink down to the floor. My ears are pressed against the wall, desperate to hear anything but that constant hum.

I think I’m going to have to drink the water. I stare out the window-thing, at the Earth. I’m supposed to be down there with my family, doing our best to survive the approaching apocalypse. My last images of them are hazy. In fact, everything is hazy, as though my memory is an atrophied muscle. It’s an effort, to remember. But the more I do the easier it becomes. It’s like trying to recall a book you read when you were a child. Perhaps you can see the illustrations in your mind’s eye, how the book felt in your hand, but the words are less clear.

If I’ve survived, they must have as well. We were together when it happened. I need to get out of here. I need to find them.

I’ve stopped shaking, and now the blanket is too warm. I stand and step out of it. My throat feels raw, my stubbornness fast being overtaken by need.

Fuck it.

When I reach the shelves my hand hovers. What if it’s some kind of trap? It’s hard not to feel paranoid, to feel anything but fear. The flasks are round and ordinary looking. Clear glass and flat lids. Bottles of water lined up like soldiers. I pick the first one.

Drink me, I think, and take a nervous sip.

It tastes like water, and nothing terrible happens.

I swallow a mouthful, then put the flask back. I take one of the blocks, turning it over in my hands. It almost looks like it’s wrapped in the same kind of material the rest of the cubicle is made from, but paper thin. It peels away from the block like banana skin. I blanche at the brown, grainy-looking square inside, but shrug to myself and bit off a tiny corner.

It tastes like . . . like . . .

Okay, imagine you have something that tastes completely and utterly like nothing, and then you add just a drop of something. I tell myself it tastes like a plain biscuit. Arrowroot biscuits, perhaps. Its texture reminds me of the bottom layer of cheesecake. Perhaps my brain is trying to fill in the blank space where taste is supposed to be.

My hands begin to shake as I nibble at it, one tiny piece at a time. What if I’m eating space-soap? Space-deodorant? I can’t eat more than a few mouthfuls. I throw the rest across the floor, go back to my blanket and wrap myself up again. I stare at the tiny blue ball that is my planet.

Maybe I haven’t been saved after all.

Maybe I’m a prisoner.