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Kel was banging his hand against the door, adamant to finally get his friend out. He knew he’d move soon, and this was the last chance he’d get. It was not his first attempt to get his friend out, and he was used to the feeling of hopelessly hitting the door again and again, not expecting a response.
To his surprise, the door opened. In the opening stood Sunny, the same as Kel remembered him. Short, pale, wearing a professional radiation suit, quiet. He could barely make out his eyes through the somewhat faded visor.
“Sunny?” Kel asked perplexed. He motioned him to come in, and without a word disappeared into the dark interior of the house. It was surprisingly tidy, although not in a way that would indicate it was cleaned recently, or at all for that matter. A thick layer of dust covered most of the room, with the exceptions of worn trails on the floor between the several doors of the house. Sunny marched ahead, up the stairs towards his room, his yellow suit producing a characteristic sound with every step. As they reached the door to his room, Sunny froze and held up a hand.
Kel looked around, unsure what prompted Sunny to stop. To his left was a mountain of white disks, piled high. Upon closer inspection Kel realized it was a huge number of smoke detectors, and he wondered if Sunny had spent time with the fire brigade lately. Kel turned back to his friend.
“Sunny, what have you been doing here?”
His question remained unanswered. Instead, Sunny pointed towards a coat rack next to the discarded pile of fire alarms. On the coat rack hung similar suits to what Sunny was wearing, although far more worn.
“I- Do you want me to wear one?”
Again Sunny nodded. Barely audible through the suit Kel could hear Sunny say something.
“Safety protocols.”
Whilst Kel was putting on the suit, Sunny grabbed a small box, looking like a cellphone, from a bowl and handed it to him. He stared blankly at the numbers, as Sunny handed him an erasable marker. Kel took it too, his gaze switching back and forth between the items. Sunny then tapped a small whiteboard next to the door, which had a table on it and numerous lines of numbers. While Kel was still processing whatever he was holding, Sunny shook his head, grabbed the box again, and wrote something on the whiteboard. Then, he clipped the little box to Kel’s suit.
Seemingly satisfied that everything was up to standard, Sunny finally opened the door to his room. It was an absolute mess. There were cables and tubes running across the floor, criss-crossing up and around each other in chaotic and almost hypnotic patterns, growing towards a big device in the center of the room like blood vessels. Mari’s bed was gone, replaced with an absolutely massive desk. Said desk was completely cluttered, filled to the brim with blueprints, notes, and napkins all depicting math and schematics Kel barely understood. The calculations looked more like the scribbles of a mad man attempting poetry than any kind of math he was familiar with. Then again, he wasn't familiar with any kind of math. Was it even math?
“Oh, Sunny, were you, uh, practicing Japanese again?” Kel asked, trying to strike up any kind of conversation.
Sunny just looked at him. He raised his arm.
“Nya.” Sunny replied, making a scratching motion with his hand.
“O-Ok.” Kel responded.
Several yellow barrels stood at the wall, between them what looked like big metal canisters with a valve at the top. Kel was so enthralled by the sheer complexity, that his eyes were glued to every detail, while his brain was relentlessly trying to make sense of it all.
On top of one of the industrial barrels was a carton box. On the side of the box was scribbled in sharpie, spelling “MEWO”. There was also a Post-it with “Do not touch.” on it. Kel looked at it in horror, a grim realization growing in his mind.
“Uhm, Sunny, is… Is Mewo inside of here?” Kel asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
Sunny nodded in response.
“A-ah.” He swallowed. “Is… Is she still alive?”
Sunny shrugged his shoulders.
Kel placed his trembling fingers on the box, wanting to check for himself, but Sunny slapped his hand. “Ow!”
Sunny shook his finger and pointed at a sign at the wall.
Do not touch active experiments.
Again Kel swallowed.
“Uhm. I’ll be right back, I gotta… I gotta pee real quick.”
With that, Kel started making his way out of the room. Before he could leave, however, Sunny grabbed him by the shoulder. With a stern look, he made Kel look at the whiteboard he scribbled on earlier, handing Kel another marker.
“What…?”
Sunny grabbed the box off Kel’s suit and held it so that Kel could read the numbers.
“Should I… What?”
Something in Sunny’s face made Kel grab the marker without protest, and, unsure what to do, he wrote down the numbers of the box on the whiteboard. The previous line of text said 1235mSv , the new number he added was 1246mSv . He wondered what it meant.
Kel finally made his way out of the den of horror that was Sunny’s room, taking off the restrictive radiation mask. He still remembered the way to the bathroom. It was the same in his house, or in any house in Faraway. The contractors had really dropped the ball on that one. Kel vaguely remembered that everything was built according to some niche architectural style, plattenbau or something.
He opened the door to the bathroom, hoping to find some respite from the madness he had engulfed himself in. Instead, he found that the bathroom was as bad as Sunny’s room. Worse, maybe.
Instead of a pipe running up the wall and ending in a shower head, several pipes were running up the wall, braided with cables, ending in what reminded Kel of a mix between a blender, a lightbulb, and a vase. The end was open, and it pointed straight down. Kel’s unbelieving eyes followed the direction of the contraption, and at the bottom of the shower’s tub, where red sharpie marked a big X, lay a piece of bread between several scorch marks. It had growths attached to it. Despite his growing hunger, he decided against eating the bread. A sign was attached to it, reading Chekov model 2.
The second thing that he noticed, arguably less strange than the futuristic wall decoration but all the more harrowing, was the slumped over body of someone over the sink. The body was wearing the lower half of a yellow radiation suit, the hood lying discarded in the corner. With growing dread in his stomach, Kel approached the body. He softly touched the shoulder of the prone figure. No response. The long black hair was unmistakable. It was Mari. Her body was covered in growths and sores, and she looked like a misshapen potato. Kel felt his breathing cut out, unable to deal with the scene in front of him. He heard steps behind him, he whirled around, ready to throw whatever profanities he knew at Sunny -
Mari stood there in the door, in a lab coat and with a clipboard. Kel had to take a double take.
“Wha - why - what - how - “ He pointed between the two Maris.
“Teleportation accident. Again. Good thing there was no jump rope in the vicinity this time.” She laughed.
“I haven’t seen you - I thought you were - we all thought you - “
Mari looked at her watch. “Oh crap, I gotta go.” She grabbed her corpse, jumped into the shower, and pressed a button after kicking the bread out of the way with a disgruntled noise. A whizzing, stirring up sound emanated from the pipes, and a second later Mari, both Maris, disappeared.
Kel’s mouth was agape, but he decided not to question it. This day was already so weird. This might as well happen. What else was in here, that was less insane to think about?
The bathtub was filled with water, it seemed to be circulating. Kel followed the ripples with his eyes, before he realized the blue glow coming from the bottom of the water. He looked inside and saw several metal rods lying in the water, themselves glowing red, and a blue glow emanating from the water. Kel scratched his head. He noticed the air was quite humid. Another yellow barrel was leaned against the wall. Above the bathtub was a danger sign with the text: DO NOT DISTURB THE BATHTUB .
When Kel was done and just about to leave the bathroom, he was confused to see Sunny walk past the corridor. It looked like he disappeared into the wall. He turned left, back towards Sunny’s room, where, to his shock, Sunny stood. Kel looked at him, then at the wall behind him, back to Sunny, back to the wall, he lifted a finger in protest, ready to ask a question, but Sunny’s blank look made him stop.
Kel needed a drink.
“It’s done.” said Sunny.
“I, uh, I’ll be there in a minute. I’ll grab something to drink.”
Sunny nodded and disappeared back into his room, after dutifully writing on the whiteboard. Kel watched Sunny and then stepped down the stairs, scratching his head. What was done? The kitchen looked unused, except for some trails in the dust connecting the stairs, the counter, and the fridge.
He opened the fridge door, checking if there was anything in there that could quench his thirst, and maybe distract him from this hell he had found himself in. It was mostly empty, save for something labelled nuclear pasta, a half eaten box of Chinese takeout, several boxes labelled “NAPP”, and a heavy iron box with warning labels on it and a logo in the corner. Wait a minute. Kel would recognize that logo anywhere. With no regard to any of the warning labels, he started unlocking the box.
As he unlocked it, alarm bells started ringing throughout the kitchen. Startled, Kel nearly fell over, but he managed to compose himself. He quickly retrieved his prize: A fresh, cool bottle of Orange Joe. He closed the box, silencing the sirens. He slammed the bottle against the counter’s edge as he had done so often, sending the bottlecap flying through the air. Kel didn’t pay any of this mind as he started chugging that sweet sweet O-Joe, as he liked to call it. The little box Sunny had attached to his hip started beeping and blinking manically. Kel took it, looking at it with a puzzled expression. It wouldn’t stop, and he noticed that bringing it closer to the bottle increased the frequency of the frantic beeping. Moving it away reduced it. He entertained himself like this for a minute, after which he grew annoyed at the beeping. He slammed the little box against the counter, stopping the shrill beeps, and with a satisfied nod he reattached it to his suit.
Not wanting to go back to see whatever Sunny finished, Kel decided to wander around the house for a little while. He walked back into the living room. He couldn’t believe the way it looked. He knew Sunny was moving, but it was still weird to see everything as empty as it was. He looked at the carpet, noticing the stain from when he spilled his Orange Joe. He noticed that there were now a lot of other stains. Deciding not to dwell on that for too long, Kel looks out of the glass door leading into the garden.
There were several industrial barrels, all bearing a warning sign or nuclear symbols of some sort, haphazardly lying about. There were at least two barrels out of which oozed some sort of unidentifiable liquid. One barrel even had green liquid oozing out of it, which was in stark contrast to the surrounding grass and plant life, all of which was black and dead. In the far back of the garden Kel could spot the ruins of their old tree house. The tree on which it was built had fallen over, reduced to a shriveled remnant of its once proud glory.
One room he remembered fondly was the piano room, where he and the others would often listen to Sunny and Mari play music. What happened to that room? He walked over and was stopped by a massive steel door. Huh. He grabbed a big wheel with metal prongs and to his surprise managed to turn it. A quarter turn made it latch, producing a satisfying pfonk sound. The door opened. Behind the door he saw a metal contraption stretching from the ceiling, where Sunny’s room must have been, connected to the ground via a massive metal cylinder with countless tubes, dials, and small round windows rimmed with rivets. The walls were covered in what he assumed was aluminum foil. Was this the piano? Kel wasn’t sure, and he had to admit he felt slightly dizzy. He looked through one of the round windows into the depths of the contraption, and he was not sure what exactly he was looking at, but he filed it under “quite upsetting” in his mind.
It was time for Kel to leave. He had seen everything. Eager to bring all this behind him, he went back to Sunny’s room.
“Sunny, is that nuclear waste in your backyard? It’s glowing green and all.” Kel asked with concern, pretty sure at least some of this was not legal, or dangerous.
Sunny stared at him blankly. “That’s just dye. Nuclear waste does not glow green, you troglodyte.”
“Dye.” Kel repeated.
“Yes. I’m dyeing in here, Kel."
Sunny and Kel stared at each other.
"Anyway, Kel. I need your help with this. The activation sequence. It’s why I let you in.”
“Uh…”
“I have this sample I need to put in the beam. I need to operate the device so can you push the sample in there?” Sunny pointed at a trolley loaded with some metal object, lined up with an opening in the contraption that took up Sunny’s room.
“Stage two emitters… activating… now. Kel, I can not predict how long this system can operate at this level, nor how long the reading will take. Please, work as quickly as you can.” Sunny kept pushing buttons in front of him, and Kel stood completely lost, hands on the handle of a trolley with whatever he was supposed to put in … whatever that was, really. “Uh...it's probably not a problem...probably...but I'm showing a small discrepancy in...well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining sequence.” Kel shot a nervous smile at Sunny but Sunny’s expression had his fake optimistic grin disappear. “Nothing you need to worry about, Kel. Go ahead.”
Kel pushed the whatever into the whatever, and was blinded by a loud bang and a bright flash. Sirens started blaring in Sunny’s room. “Shutting down. Attempting shut down.” Sunny said, wiping sweat of his forehead, which was futile as both his arms and his forehead were covered by his radiation suit.
Sunny was now mashing the keys in front of him, each producing a loud clicking sound, and for the first time his neutral expression slipped, slipped into one of terror. “It’s not - it’s not shutting down!” Sunny shrugged. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I guess.”
“What?” asked Kel, not sure what Sunny was trying to tell him. Then, a bright flash blinded Kel.
Outside, Basil fell to the ground as Kim pushed him over.
“P-please Kim, I j-just want the photo album b-back! It- It’s really important!”
Kim scoffed at the flower boy weeping on the ground.
“If it’s so important to you, then why don’t you ask her for it yourself, loser?” She spat back.
“She-she won't talk to me a-anymore…” Basil responded.
“That’s your issue. Now stop bothering me creep, before I kick your ass.” With that, Kim turned and started scootering away.
Basil cried out after her, but his voice was drowned out by the sudden blaring of sirens. Basil looked back dumbly.
Kim, Aubrey, the rest of the hooligans, and everyone else in the park turned to look too. People were saying things, panic evident on their faces, as they started looking around trying to figure out what they were supposed to do. Some people started making a run for it, causing general panic in the park.
Basil and the hooligans however, simply stood still. Kim was trying to get Aubrey to move, but she and Basil had realised something no one else had yet. Aubrey turned to Basil. Whatever words she wanted to say died with her, however. Everyone in Faraway died as soon as the explosion hit, incapable of appreciating the destructive, divine wrath that now wiped away them and all they had ever known. A majestic explosion imposed its existence upon the world, moving the earth and sky away to make place for itself. It was impossible to deny. Impossible to ignore. Impossible to escape. It wasn’t a mushroom cloud though. If you thought it was, you're wrong. That’s a common misconception. They are all dead as hell though but that was obvious.
Kel found himself in a train cart, but outside was just black void. Now and then white specks were flying past the cart. In front of him stood a man in a suit, fixing his tie. He was holding a suitcase in one hand. He looked at Kel.
“Kel Sanchez in the flesh. Or rather, in the radiation suit. I took the liberty of relieving you of your Orange Joe; most of it was government property. As for the suit, I think you’ve earned it.”
“What? I don’t want the - “
“Faraway is in our control for the time being, thanks to you. Quite a nasty piece of work you managed over there. I am impressed.” He spoke with a strange cadence.
Kel was speechless.
“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Sanchez. Well, originally I wanted your colleague, but he is, well… ash. I have recommended your services to my employers, and they have authorized me to offer you a job. They agree with me that you have limitless potential. You’ve proved yourself a decisive man, so I don’t expect you’ll have any trouble deciding what to do. If you’re interested, just step into the portal and I will take that as a yes.”
A glowing ball appeared behind the open train doors.
“Time to choose.”
Kel stared at the strange man. Just what was this?
“It’s time to choose.” The man put a lot of unsettling emphasis on the Os in choose.
Kel shrugged and stepped through the door, another flash of light blinding him.
One last time he heard the strange voice speak to him: “Wisely done, Mr. Sanchez. I will see you up ahead.”
SUBJECT: KEL SANCHEZ
STATUS: HIRED
AWAITING ASSIGNMENT