// TW: Nihilism //
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft
I was picking the last crumbs of warm strawberry rhubarb crisp from the metal tray when the buzzer sounded.
“Face the wall,” came a voice from the other side of the door.
I stood, turned and rested my forehead against the cool concrete. The thick cell door swung open. I felt the cold bite of steel cuffs closing around my wrists. I turned to face the CO, and he met my eyes with a guarded expression.
“It’s time,” he said.
Part of me yearned for days passed, when the COs used to bring me books to read and even let me bum the odd smoke. I knew it was because they felt sorry for me, but I didn't care.
Their generosity had come to an abrupt end last month when I volunteered. Since then, the general consensus has been that I'm "getting off" too easily, which, in my opinion, was completely ridiculous. We all had the same opportunity; it wasn’t my fault nobody else had the guts to volunteer.
The price for my freedom would be my participation and full cooperation with some mysterious scientific experiment that was beginning human trials. They didn’t tell me what the experiment would entail, only that I’d likely die in the process... or worse.
Worse? I scoffed at the idea. I thought nothing could be worse than certain death, which was what I would be facing if I didn't volunteer. I had been staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, mere days away from my own execution. Nothing could be worse than that. Although, H.P. Lovecraft did say the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown... I banished the thought from my mind.
Besides, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a twinge of petty satisfaction knowing that those bastards wouldn't get to see the light leave my eyes after all. Both my mother and my hotshot sister had ignored my request to attend the Crown Attorney's bleak victory party, either out of embarrassment or shame. That was fine, I didn't care for either of them. All the same, being a human guinea pig was bound to provide at least a bit more excitement than the alternative.
I was searched and loaded into a transport van. When we arrived at the facility two long hours later, the concrete building had a clinical atmosphere that was reminiscent of the prison I had just left. I was instructed to read and sign a stack of forms. From there I was searched again and ferried into an elevator, which took me to the third floor laboratory.
I tried not to glance around too much, but it felt like I was standing inside the Millennium Falcon. Smart-looking people in lab coats bustled around, fiddling with equipment and taking various readings, completely ignoring my presence. It was obvious they were preparing for something big. Despite my stoic exterior, my heart began thumping in my chest.
Finally, a woman appeared in front of me and, without speaking, pushed me firmly by the shoulders onto a cold steel hospital bed. She began checking my vitals.
“My name is Dr. Priyanka Rana. I’ll be your primary point of contact today,” she said in a clipped tone, scribbling something on her clipboard. “Any allergies?”
I shook my head.
“Anything else I should know about?” she asked. “I need to know if you have any medical anomalies that could influence the results of the experiment.”
I shook my head again. She flipped to the next page on her clipboard and began reading robotically:
“I am also required to reconfirm the terms as agreed between your attorney and the designated State representatives. In exchange for volunteering as the first participant in human trials for Operation Z309P, The State will grant you a full pardon and expunge all existing charges from your criminal record. Any attempt to escape or interfere with the completion of the trials will nullify this agreement, and you will carry out your previously determined sentence. Do you accept these terms?”
“Sure,” I said. “Is this the part when you tell me what Operation-Z-Whatever actually is?”
Doctor Rana smiled thinly. It became obvious that, to her, I was merely a glorified lab rat. A means to an end. “Operation Z309P was officially initiated in coordination with the federal government and the UN,” she explained. “It concerns the movement of biological matter between dynamic points on the…”
That was where she lost me. Even if I understood any of the scientific jargon she was spewing, I wouldn't have been able to hear her over the frantic pounding of my heart. Now that it was so close at hand, the great unknown felt scarier than it had before. Damn you, H.P. Lovecraft. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest, or like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. I thought for sure my heart was about to break free from the confines of my ribcage. Was it too late to choose certain death?
By this time, Dr. Rana had finished speaking and was staring at me with a bemused expression.
“Were you listening to anything I just said?” she demanded. “We require you to be fully present today. If you can’t do that, we can find someone else who would be more than willing to take your place.”
“I’m listening,” I said. “But I’m going to need you to explain that again in English, please.”
Dr. Rana shook her head and pressed her fingertips against her temples.
“Picture a four-dimensional fabric called space-time,” she said slowly. “If an object with any mass were to sit on that piece of fabric, it would cause a dimple or a bend. The bending of space-time causes objects to move on a curved path, which is what we know as gravity. According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, time slows down or speeds up depending on how fast you move relative to something else. To make a very long story short, we’re talking about transtemporal travel.”
She paused, seemingly for dramatic effect, as if she had just said something rather impressive. When I just stared at her blankly, Dr. Rana sighed. “Time travel.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“Are you joking?” I chuckled, incredulous. “Are you saying you’re sending me back in time?”
But Dr. Rana didn’t crack a smile. “Forward in time, actually,” she said, without a note of humour in her tone.
I sat there silently, waiting for the punchline. But from the way Dr. Rana was looking at me, it was clear she was being perfectly serious. At this point I was sure I had either completely lost my grip on reality, or I had actually been dropped into the middle of a sci-fi book. Either of those options seemed more realistic than real-life time travel.
“And you needed someone expendable,” I said finally. My tone contained no bitterness – only fascination. “In case something goes wrong.”
"Well," Dr. Rana cocked an eyebrow. “I’m glad you’re taking this so well.”
After a brief, awkward pause, she looked straight into my eyes.
“You have the opportunity to be part of something amazing here,” she said quietly, leaning closer to me. “I’m talking about the biggest turning point in human history. This is a chance for us to start fresh. To save the environment. To anticipate problem events and stop them before they can even occur. This is your chance to finally do something worthwhile with your life. What do you have to lose?”
Ouch. Hurtful as her poor excuse for a pep-talk had been, Dr. Rana was right. My family and friends had rightfully abandoned me. I had no achievements or accolades to speak of, aside from a half-completed history degree. It was either die alone at the hands of the Crown, or stay here and be part of history in the making.
So, I agreed, and the lab exploded in a flurry of activity as preparations resumed.
Being in the know did nothing to quell my anxiety. In fact, it made it significantly worse.
“Pay attention, because I’m only going to say this once,” Dr. Rana said. The robotic, clipped tone was back. “You will be transported to this location, precisely one hour in the future. I expect our team will be anticipating your arrival. You will be subjected to a series of tests to ensure your DNA structure remains intact and that you did not suffer any other ill effects during the transtemporal shift. You will be held and studied for a period of 14 days, after which you will be released with a full pardon. You will be required to report back here once a month indefinitely so we can study any long-term effects.”
She paused. “Are you ready?”
“What a stupid question,” I replied. Dr. Rana laughed humourlessly. She pressed two small white stickers to my temples. Then, a lab tech handed her something that looked almost like a detonator. It was a large silver button attached to a Velcro strap, which she affixed to my hand, so the cool steel of the button was pressed flat against my palm. It was heavy.
“When you’re ready, stand there and hold the button for fifteen seconds to initiate the transtemporal shift,” she instructed, pointing to a flat, circular platform in the center of the room.
“Will it hurt?” I asked. A childish question.
“I don’t know,” she replied flatly. “Good luck.”
I nodded and stepped onto the steel platform. It vibrated faintly beneath my feet. My head started to spin. This was, without a doubt, batshit crazy.
I glanced at the digital clock on the wall, which broadcasted the time in large, blazing red numbers: 09:16. Then I gulped and closed my fist, holding down the button.
It was the longest fifteen seconds of my life.
At first, I didn’t feel anything, just the buzz of the vibrating platform. Then, I heard a high-pitched ringing that seemed to come from everywhere at once, like an extreme case of tinnitus. Then my vision began to swim, and I felt the vibration intensify until it felt like each atom in my body was being forcibly split apart. I screamed in pain, but somehow didn’t let go of the button. Everyone was staring at me with apprehensive expressions. Suddenly I felt a tugging sensation behind my navel, as if I were being yanked offstage by a giant invisible Vaudeville Hook. I screamed again as my body disintegrated and I was thrown into nothingness.
***
A moment later, I realized I could smell smoke and burning rubber, and something else. Something sickeningly sweet. I must still be alive, I thought, if I can smell.
But I couldn’t see a thing. It was as if everything around me was obscured by smoke. I blinked a few times and coughed. I must still have eyes and a mouth, then. As I got my bearings, I noticed the glowing red numbers in front of me, faint, flickering weakly, but still visible. The clock. It read 10:16.
I had done it. I had actually travelled through time! But if I could see the clock, I wasn’t blind after all. It slowly registered that it really was smoke obscuring my vision. A thick, black, choking haze that made it impossible to see anything around me.
“Hello?” My voice was a faint rasp. “Doctor? Can I get some help here?”
But now the smoke was beginning to clear, and it was obvious that I was not going to receive an answer. I gasped in horror at the decimation surrounding me and thought, there must have been a mistake.
The laboratory’s walls and ceiling had been reduced to massive piles of rubble. Miraculously, the floor I stood on had somehow maintained its structural integrity, but without the walls and ceiling I had a panoramic view of the carnage surrounding me.
The sky outside was a blazing, fiery orange. It looked as if there had been a massive explosion – absolutely everything was gone. Every road, every car, every building, every street sign and every plant as far as my eyes could see had either disintegrated completely or was reduced to rubble. Hundreds of charred bodies littered the streets. Smoke rose from the scorched earth, and everything was covered in ash. I could hear nothing, only a terrifying, deafening silence.
As I registered my more immediate surroundings, I realized I was surrounded by the bodies of the doctors and scientists who had been watching me so intently just moments before. Or rather, I supposed, an hour before. Some were crushed beneath toppled equipment, and others looked as if they had simply been burned to a crisp where they stood.
Doctor Rana was the closest to me. Her facial expression was frozen in shock but not fear, as if she hadn’t even had time to get properly scared. Her white lab coat was now coated in soot and blood. She was still on fire.
I realized the sweet stench I had noticed before was the smell of cooking human flesh. I stooped over and vomited, spewing strawberry rhubarb across the floor. I knew in my gut that something terrible had happened mere moments before my arrival. If I had arrived sooner, would I have had a front row seat to whatever calamity had just occurred?
The air was scorching hot, filled with suffocating dust and smoke. It burned my skin. I looked down at my hands; they were already growing red and blistered.
Suddenly, the floor under my feet began to tremble violently. The digital clock on the wall grew brighter and the red numbers pulsed and flickered erratically. The air grew hotter – more stifling. I looked up and saw dozens of bright yellow orbs suspended in the sky like strange stars, hardly visible through the orange haze. But then I realized they were steadily growing larger. Squinting harder, I spied the unmistakable tails trailing behind each orb as they hurtled closer to impact.
Finally, I realized what was happening. Despite the carnage around me, I had to laugh at my timing. It was a desperate, animalistic howl of a laugh. How had nobody seen this coming? Weren't there people who made an impressive living keeping an eye out for approaching world-ending space debris? I figured at this point it didn't matter. The so-called experts had likely been burned alive along with everyone else. It was almost comical. Of course, the first time I get to participate in something meaningful and the world ends before I can even be recognized for it.
So, it will be certain death either way, I thought. That figures.
Although I had managed to miss the main event, clearly this calamity didn’t intend on leaving any survivors. The orbs loomed closer and closer, and as they did, the air grew hotter. My burning, blistering skin was already covered in a thin layer of ash, which was making it difficult to breathe. I thought of ancient Pompeii and the poor souls who had been just far enough from Ground Zero to die slowly, excruciatingly, encased in tombs of ash.
Panic began to set in. I realized I was still howling with laughter, my voice echoing through the barren wasteland that had once been a thriving city. I thought of everything I had done in my life and how it had amounted to absolutely nothing, just like Dr. Rana had said.
In the same breath, to some relief, I realized the same went for everyone else on earth. All the Nobel Prize winners, the Olympic athletes, the celebrated war heroes, the revered Hollywood celebrities, and even the renowned scientists with all their great discoveries… it was all for nothing. All of man’s achievements, all that history… Completely erased, and all it took was a single moment.
For whatever reason, I found this absolutely hysterical. I howled with fresh, maniacal laughter as tears streamed down my face. My eyes settled on the flickering clock on the wall, and I realized that meant that the power was somehow, miraculously still on. I did the only thing I could think of: I closed my fist around the silver button strapped to my hand and began to count backwards from fifteen.
Fourteen… thirteen… twelve… The button had grown hot from the searing heat. I felt my skin melting against the steel, but refused to let go. Nine… eight… seven… As the first of the asteroids entered the atmosphere, the earth bucked beneath me. I cried out with relief when I heard the familiar high pitched ringing. It was working.
Four… three… The air was white hot now. I felt my blood literally begin to boil inside my veins. Every atom in my body burned excruciatingly. The red numbers on the clock were flickering weakly: 10:19.
Two… one.
***
I was still laughing hysterically when I opened my eyes. I was back in the lab, fully intact, and everyone seemed to be alive and well – at least, for now. I looked around frantically, gasping for air, and noticed the clock read 09:19.
My sense of relief was brief. I knew nothing had changed. Sometime in the next hour the world was going to end, and everything would be for nothing.
I collapsed into a trembling heap on the platform. I fumbled with the button strapped to my hand with my weakened, charred fingers, flinging the cursed thing across the room with all the strength I had left.
“Let’s get some help over here,” I heard Dr. Rana shout as she ran to my side and helped me into a chair. “What happened? These look like third-degree burns. Did this happen during the transtemporal shift?”
“We have to call someone,” I gasped. “You sent me to the goddamn apocalypse!”
Dr. Rana’s eyes widened for a moment, then she shook her head.
“That’s impossible. We only sent you an hour ahead. This had to have happened during the shift somehow.”
She began scribbling on her clipboard, but I grasped her arm.
“No, you have to listen,” I said. “Everyone was dead. The sky was on fire. There was a comet or whatever. An asteroid? A space rock, I don’t fucking know. A hundred of them in the sky, heading right for us. You were dead, all of you!”
“I assure you,” Dr. Rana said softly, gently prying her arm from my grip and beckoning another doctor who had been hovering behind her. “That’s quite impossible. If there was an asteroid large enough to do any lasting damage on trajectory toward Earth, we would have known about it long before now. There are hundreds of experts around the world whose job it is to make sure of that. Please, you need to settle down so we can tend to your burns.”
The other doctor advanced, brandishing a large syringe. I suspected it must contain some sort of sedative. I backed away. “Why is nobody fucking listening to me?” I screamed. “We’re all about to die!”
“Please, you need medical attention,” Dr. Rana said slowly, sternly, as if she were speaking to an errant child. “Need I remind you, under the terms of your agreement, should you interfere – “
I felt the floor begin to vibrate as a low rumble filled the lab. The utensils and equipment began to rattle. The windowpanes shook. I held a finger to my lips and Dr. Rana fell silent. She held her hand up and the doctor holding the syringe retreated.
“Do you feel that?” whispered one of the lab techs. Her voice trembled.
Murmurs filled the room. Suddenly, a woman who had been looking out the window screamed in terror, pointing up at the sky. Everyone huddled around the window. I didn’t need to look; I knew exactly what they were seeing.
I supposed I would get to see the main event, after all.
All my stupid fears of the unknown and certain death, I mused. All my regrets about not having accomplished anything significant. Pointless… all pointless. All of mankind's technological achievements, the expansion, the wars, the celebrations, the crimes and the industry, all for nothing. And it was all about to be blown to oblivion.
Strangely, I found myself thinking of my family. My father, who had always been so stoic and even-tempered - not like me. During the summers of my childhood he would take my sister and I on long road trips in the mountains with only a map, a few changes of clothes, a fully stocked cooler and his old Chevy pick-up truck. At night we would fill the truck bed with blankets and pillows and stare for hours at the endless expanse of midnight sky stretching out before us. As we pointed out various imagined images in the glimmering stars and galaxies that spilled across the sky, to my childish imagination it seemed as if the jagged mountain peaks threatened to poke holes in it.
My sister was a celebrity defence lawyer down in LA now. Even I had to admit, her client roster was impressive and she never lost a case. Perhaps I would have fared better if she had been defending me, but we hadn't spoken since Father died. Not even Mother was speaking to me - not after what I did. It was understandable. I wished suddenly that I could call both of them and say goodbye.
Even more strangely, for the first time in my life I found myself regretting the path I had walked. I wished I had settled down with a nice girl and gotten married, or completed my university education like Mother and Father so desperately wanted for me. Perhaps then I would have ended up with children of my own, or at least a group of real friends, and we'd have gone on summer road trips to the mountains together.
But that wasn't how things had turned out, and now it didn't matter. Nothing did.
The air was already growing hotter, and the digital clock on the wall was pulsing and flickering. Everyone was panicking now. A few people were attempting to take cover. Others were simply standing in the middle of the room, having realized there was no point. Some were on their cellphones, dialing their loved ones for final, hurried goodbyes.
I looked at Dr. Rana. Her face was frozen with that familiar expression of shock. I had seen it before.
As the scorching light outside the window grew blindingly bright and screams filled the room, I found myself laughing hysterically again.
I closed my eyes and counted backward from fifteen.
© Victoria St. Michael 2021