Tin Foil Shells

As I think about today’s events, I’m reminded of when a rumor early on was spread that tin foil would repel the ‘nites. After the idea hit the mainstream, the conspiracy theorists, in their ephemeral vindication, strutted around in their hot glue-sealed foil suits. Later, the streets were littered with human shaped tin shells, complete with cake at the bottom. They were using carbon air filters, of course. Useless. You need silicone micro-mesh, if you can find it. Most of the factory chimney filters have been chopped up by now, the microscopic machines they had imprisoned having escaped long ago. Which is how we got to this point in the first place.

My dim overhead light reflects dully off the battered gold heart-shaped locket sitting on my nightstand. It was Phil’s and I feel like I have some sort of responsibility over it, having bunked with him for as long as I have. He didn’t really get along with anyone else. It is difficult in any case to make friends, times being what they are. The ongoing trauma that’s in all of this. Nobody wants to get close to anyone anymore.

“I want to see the sun, Nan.” Phil told me yesterday evening.

“We do see the sun,” I said, “when we surface for cake and air.” I still don’t like calling it ‘cake’, like most people have gotten used to. There’s a sacrilegious note to it, a desecration. Not that those words those mean anything anymore. But ‘cake’ is the word people use, and I don’t have anything better to call it.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he snapped back at me. “I want to feel it, you know, on my skin. I miss the touch of sunlight almost as much as I miss Rita’s.” To illustrate his point, he shook the locket at me violently. I grabbed at it, like always, and he yanked it back with a wild look.

“When are you going to show her to me anyway?” I asked, trying to take his mind off the sun, “We’ve been down here together for how long? Seven months? Eight? I still don’t know what she looked like.” But he had already fallen back onto his bunk, facing away from me. He was mumbling to himself, with the locket pressed to his lips. I squatted down next to him. I placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Look,” I said, “You know why that’s not possible.” He jerked his shoulder away from my hand, turning his head to face me. There was a feral set to his features and a tautness, like his skin had been pulled across his facial bones like a drum.

“Why not,” he hissed, “We’re in the middle of the Pacific, a thousand miles offshore. Do you think they travel this far out? Why? There’s nothing for them to eat out here! I’m telling you Nancy, I can’t do this for much longer.” Rolling back to face away from me, he put the locket back to his lips and started mumbling again.

I didn’t have anything to say to that. He might’ve been right. Part of the reason we brought the submarine out to the middle of the ocean was that there was a chance they couldn’t exist so far out to sea.

“I’ll talk to the captain in the morning after breakfast.” Phil didn’t respond, his incoherent mumbling continuing unabated.

#

The dozen of us that were still around on the submarine gathered this morning for breakfast. It was cake, of course. I’d read somewhere once that the only thing a person could solely consume and not eventually starve to death was human breast milk. Apparently it contains all the nutrients a human being needs to stay alive. I’m guessing that cake is another thing because it’s the only thing available to consume anymore, other than the rare times where we can pull a fish in, and nobody seems to suffer the worse for it. Well, physically. It also seems to be universally palatable, delicious even. Those scientists certainly knew what they were doing when they created it; nobody seems to get tired of the flavor at least.

Our Captain usually didn’t eat with the rest of us. He preferred to sit alone in his captain quarters, which I’ve always looked at covetously. Having moments to oneself can be precious on a ship as compact as a submarine can be, and the Captain took full advantage of that. Not to say he didn’t interact with the rest of us, but those times were limited, and usually at our behest.

After finishing my cake, I went to knock on the Captain’s door. It was difficult to hear if there was any sort of activity inside over the noises of the ship, so I knocked again. After a moment, the door cracked open, and I turned my head from the overhead cabin light blazing into my eyes.

“What do you want, Nan?” His silhouette was impatient, like a cloud ready to strike lightning onto a picnic.

“Ned, It’s Phil,” I replied, “He won’t move from his bunk, he won’t eat, and he says he…” I paused, taking a breath, “…wants to feel the sun on his skin again.” Captain Ryerson snorted. I thought I saw his head shake, almost imperceptibly as his shoulders deflated.

“Alright, I see. Thanks Nan.” he said softly. He pulled his figure from the cabin; I didn’t remember him looking so gaunt before. It had been a while since I had taken a good look at him, as reclusive as he had become. I glanced quickly into the cabin before he shut the door, and saw books lining shelf after shelf neatly. He started down the hallway before turning back slightly.

“Why don’t you stay here for a moment while I talk with him?” He didn’t wait for my nod as he disappeared down the hall.

#

So, we traveled to the surface today, for Phil’s benefit. I asked Captain Ryerson why as we were heading up. He told me there wasn’t anything we could do to improve Phil’s state of mind, and that attitude would spread throughout the ship like ‘nites replicating. Admittedly, I was feeling less myself the more I interacted with him recently.

I was accompanying him on his surfacing, to which I had mixed feelings. I typically avoid most surface missions, out of what I consider to be a healthy self-preservation instinct. But the Captain insisted that it would do me some good as well. “Stretch your legs,” is how he put it.

Phil had a jaunty spring to his step as we went to suit up for the surface. The suits covered every surface of our bodies, were hermetically sealed, and made of a thick pliable plastic. I find it bizarre to have to suit up like we’re going to be on the surface of the moon just to be in the ocean air. But so it goes.

As he pulled the helmet over his head, Phil’s cheerful whistling was cut short, to me at least. I quickly turned the speakers in my helmet off; I wasn’t in the mood to hear him whistling at that particular moment. When we were all suited up, we made our way through the airlock. Phil hurriedly spun the door to the outside open, leaping up the ladder as much as his suit would let him. I plodded up after him, closing my eyes to how painfully bright the sunshine was.

I had to hang on to the hand railing while my eyes adjusted to the brightness of being outside during the daytime. We typically came up and out during the night. An endless gray of sea came into focus after a while, and I stood for a moment transfixed on the waves lapping up gently against the curved side of the ship. There wasn’t a bird in the sky; there wasn’t bird left on the planet. Or a tree. I turned to look at Phil, who had stripped off his suit and stood with the bright sun reflecting off his skin, staring at the open locket he had removed from his neck.

By the time it registered what I was seeing, it was too late to do anything. I reached out to him; noticing the movement, he looked back at me, smiling slightly. He said something, but I couldn’t tell what it was, and then snapped the locket shut, holding it out to me expectantly. A breeze tousled his hair slightly, and for a moment he seemed frozen in time.

I’m certain there have been a thousand descriptions of what it looks like when the nanites do what they were designed to do by those Nobel Prize winners to address climate change, but to me it’s always looked like those time lapse videos of fungi growing. First there’s nothing going on, just stillness, and then it explodes into a spongy mass. It was my first time seeing this type of conversion in person; I’d of course seen the videos of the people who broke the filters in moments of hubris and curiosity get consumed this way. If it wasn’t so horrifying up close, I would’ve been as amazed as I was when factories started putting them on their chimneys, or people attaching the filters to their tailpipes.

I snatched up the locket and held it tightly in my fist as the nanites converted all of Phil’s carbon- like it did with any carbon it encountered- into cake.

#

They brought me back in through the airlock. Nanites don’t survive in water, so they fill it with water before allowing me in. They didn’t make me bring in the cake, thankfully; they sent Larry out for that task. They’ll place the container into a deep freeze for a month or so; nanites don’t survive that either.

I have this room to myself now, it seems oddly spacious for as cramped as it was before. I guess that shows how much space a person can take up. I sit here, and I keep on wondering who I’m writing this to; maybe instead of our posterity, I’m writing for the nanites above the surface, and the fish below. It helps as I wait for that thing in me to take over, that thing that I think is in everyone left, that finally broke in Phil, that allows us to keep going while we eat cake.

I notice the locket again next on the nightstand; picking it up, it seems heavier than I would have guessed. It must have been worth a fortune before everything happened. Suddenly I need to open it, as if opening it I could see something about Phil I had missed before. Why he cracked like he did.

I undo the snap holding the halves together- it takes some work to pry them apart nonetheless. I’m not sure entirely what I am expecting. Phil had always told me about how beautiful Rita was, and I didn’t have any reason to doubt him. I’d always thought he was probably biased and he didn’t want my opinions coloring his memories. After a few moments, the locket finally pops apart. I look inside, and gasp at the cake inside, drawing the nanites into my lungs. I realize that the nanites had converted photograph inside the locket, its inner compartment keeping them functional through the airlock. I am already feeling them multiplying; I have seconds left to shut the cabin door and hit the alarm before they rip through my lungs and then the rest of me.