A Final Echo

Something woke up. Something, that hadn’t entirely realized that it was someone. First becoming aware of the bitter, iron-like taste of its, no his, mouth, he heaved a cough and splattered blood over the titanium of the casket that seemed to envelop him completely from all sides, bringing about utter and complete oblivion to his vision. For the first time in years, no surely longer, he thought, he was aware of the oxygen entering his lungs, giving him life, mindful of the coldness of the casket underneath him, the warmth of the air around him, his blood pounding in his chest, and a million other sensations that any ordinary man would have been able to ignore. 

Then the claustrophobia set in. Acceleration of perspiration and heart rate. Dilation of the eyes, epinephrine running through his veins, he pounded with all his might against anything, until by pure chance he hit a small dull red button on his left in his crazed frenzy. The casket hissed, then popped open. Nonplussed, the man slowly sat up and was suddenly aware of the ringing sensation in his ears, no doubt a result of his pounding with all his might against the claustrophobic titanium casket. 

He looked around and understood nothing. He was in some sort of huge chamber, for all he knew, he could either be thousands of feet in the air, inside the core of the earth, or maybe on some distant, faraway planet. All he could hear was a slow hum and the ominous whirring and hissing of the machinery around him. Hissing that felt almost…alive in some way as if the very chamber around him was living and breathing and had a mind of its own…a mind that had brought him here for a reason. 

He looked at one of the chamber’s sides and saw a mass of buttons and controls. He looked to his side, the casket reading, in digital words and numbers, Memory Synchronization Incomplete - 67%.

Wait…casket? the man thought to himself

Then, the memories came. This is no casket, the man thought. This is a Memory Pod. Memories, he was sure, that were not his at all. He had no idea who he was, or what he was, all that he was certain of was that he was in another man’s body, living what was his life, through the lens of his perspective and his memories. A name came to him. Hux. The name that belonged to this body.

Hux understood what the buttons were for. Yet, he couldn’t believe the shocking imagery laid in his mind, no he refused to believe it.

Looking around once more, Hux used his unfamiliar memory to lurch forward and move about the chamber. As he feared, the button he was looking for was right where the memories that weren’t his own told him they were. The small yellow button read Chamber I, and after a brief moment of hesitation, he slowly clicked the button. Another hissing noise. The humming sound in Hux’s ears got louder, making his heart skip a beat. Stumbling forward into the antechamber that lay in front of him. Another mass of buttons, and this time, a network of wiring. He saw the controls to the Central Cooling System, its dial pushed to Max. Strangely, the air did not feel frigid or cool. In fact, it was slightly warm.

Perspiring slightly, as this once more aligned with the memories that belonged to this body, he knew what he had to do. Looking around, he found the storage pod that had what he was looking for, reading the label carefully. Extreme Climate and Radiation Suits. Then, in smaller words, For Surface Exploration Only. Opening the pod, which made yet another hissing noise, he slowly donned the white-and-gold suit, lifting his legs with an unfamiliar wobble. The suit was extremely heavy, and he could hardly see out of the dark helmet of the suit. Feeling the strain on his back, he lay on the ground for a few moments just to catch his breath. 

Then he moved forward, toward the button ominously labeled Up, which was immediately left to the radiation warning sign.

Then he stopped. Why was he doing this? Validation? Would it be better to know for certain, that his memories were true? Or was it better that he would be kept in the dark? 

He grit his teeth. I must know, he thought. Apparently, the man to whom this body and mind belonged to, Hux, thought it remiss to leave a mystery untouched.

Pushing it, another door opened, and he entered the small chamber. As the chamber hissed as seethed, it began to move up. The rickety chamber clearly hadn’t been used in years and years: the inside was coated with some sort of rust, and the loud scraping noise that it made as it uncertaintly made it to the surface made Hux realize that nobody had ever bothered to maintain it for a very long time. The lift bumped every few feet, and with each bump, bump, bump, Hux felt his chest rapidly rise and fall. It was pitch black inside, and all Hux could see was the reflection of his own eyes in his helmet. The air seemed to be getting warmer and warmer.

 He knew what awaited on the other side of the lift. Yet, he had to see it himself. Several minutes had passed, and Hux perspired heavily in his suit. The lift came to a scraping thud, finally stopping.

The lift started to creak open, then stopped. Hux, using all the might that this body, no his body possessed, pushed the rusty old chamber doors to the side, and unsteadily walked out.

His memories were true.

In front of him was a vast red supergiant star. It took up the entire horizon of the surface of the planet. If what his memories were telling him was true…then that would mean that this was the planet Earth in its last few million years of its life. 

He was all alone.

But Hux had memories of people. People he did not know. People he had never seen. But people he had always known. But now they were gone. Or were they? The Pod had said his memory hadn’t finished synchronizing. What didn’t he know?

The man inside Hux’s body screamed, which was muffled by the Surface Exploration Suit. He had Hux’s body. His ears hummed despite not being in the strange chamber hundreds of feet below him. He had Hux’s memories.

 Did this make him Hux?

He continued to scream until his throat was hoarse and he had lost his voice.

He heaved inside his helmet, fell to his knees due to sheer force of it, but had nothing to vomit. Hux huffed and looked around.

If only there were anything to see. Vision blurring from his nausea, Hux looked around and saw nothing but barren, scorched earth, starving for any moisture or water. No trees, no foliage of any kind. No life stirred. The sky gleamed an unnatural shade of angry magenta, fully enveloping anything and everything in its way. In the distant horizon, he could barely make out some sort of dilapidated structure, impossibly far away.

Hux sat on a nearby rock, perhaps for hours. Several times, he considered removing his suit and allowing the elements to make quick work of him. Hux couldn’t bear the thought of being all alone, in a vast empty universe, with him being the only being for light years around. There had to be others like him. Perhaps they were in the bunker, or the many probably hundreds of layers that made it up. He tried to remember, remember if anyone that he once knew could be alive, but his memories seemed to fail him at the worst possible times.

Hux got up at last. Once again forcing the doors of the rickety lift open, he once again descended into the dark, dank bunker hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth. 

Hux arrived once more in the small antechamber. Stripping off his Extreme Climate Suit, he hurried from the chamber through the room from which he awoke and found himself in the middle of what seemed to have once been a large conference room, chairs around a large table-like structure, which, Hux recalled, was capable of holography. 

As the humming sound in his ears continued to pound, Hux continued to look around, and it was clear to see that this chamber hadn’t been touched by a human soul in ages.

Hux gagged and heaved, as the foul smell of rotting meat entered his nose. Eyes watering, nose plugged, he tried to find its source, looking for any hints at all that this place had once been used by people. 

Moving forward, pushing aside a chair, he found a half-decayed body on the floor. Flesh gone, organs spread out and rotting as if they had been eaten away by…something. The only thing that seemed to have somehow remained intact was the brain of this body and its respective neural network. What had done this, and made such a clean job of it? 

Hux stumbled backward, perspiring lightly, as the machinery in the background continued to pump and hiss ominously.

His hand hit a button on the giant central command table, and he saw it bring him to a Records Log. In the corner was the date. 18:52, Paxday, Julios, 44762 A.B.H. 

He saw a list of crew members in the sidebar, and strangely, he seemed to remember most of them. Especially a mouse-brown hair-colored female named Pama, and a tall, slim, green-eyed male named Maren. 

Clicking a training hologram, he saw himself, Hux, charismatic, funny, and empathetic, explaining the basics of the bunker, as well as its purpose. How strange, he thought, that despite having the memories of the person in the hologram, he didn’t have the same qualities or characteristics.

The sun’s radiation is less effective in the bunker, although being in this environment does somewhat shorten our lifespan. Hux turned the hologram off, and continued through the dilapidated bunkers, in search of anyone or anything that could reunite him with the people in his memories.

Hux entered what seemed to be a lounge area. As the humming sound in his ears pounded, he made his way toward the front, the hissing of the previous rooms replaced by a strange beeping. In one of the chairs seemed to be another body, rotted and wrangled, its condition similar to the one in the conference room.

He gasped.

It was Maren’s body. He could recognize the color of the dimmed irises, but the rest of the body was an incomprehensible mess.

Nausea rushing to his mouth, he backed away. He had no memory of his friend being dead. Before he could stop himself, he vomited on the floor in front of him. Tears streaming, he continued to back away, find someone, anyone, who might still be on this ragged earth.

His loneliness fuelled his drive forward.

He had to find out where the bodies were coming from. 

He went through yet another door, and found himself in a laboratory room, microscopes found on countertops and refrigerators in the corners. It was frigid in this room. A trail of blood lead him to a room to the side, the Computing Center of the Biology Lab. 

A body in a chair.

He was thankful that he wasn’t able to recognize whoever this mess of a corpse used to be.

He couldn’t bear the thought of losing another person he was close with.

Clearly, he had been researching something when whatever was in this chamber had got him. In his hand was a Portable Hologram Pod. Hux remembered these as primarily being used to storage information, though they would also be used as entertainment for members of the crew. 

Ears humming, he reached for the hologram, and activated it with surprising dexterity. He was instantly hit with the yellow-green tinge of the hologram’s light. What had this person been researching just prior to his death?

The hologram answered him. Biology Database Entry 40602, the Sinakawa.

Hux looked through the file. A biochemical experiment, which had gone wrong. Created in an attempt to preserve and replicate memories in a different biological host body, turned to a viral disease that infects host bodies. 

Hux stopped. Whatever had brought him into this body with these memories was also responsible for the release of this disease.

He was responsible for everyone’s death.

His own loneliness, his disorientation with the world around him…was all his fault.

The host body would then feed on sources of carbon and proteins, such as human flesh. The Sinakawa would target and track host bodies through a sort of echolocation, in which the it would release a high pitched vibration, allowing it to trace nearby nervous systems.

The file listed other detailed information on the biological nature of the Sinakawa, listing its weaknesses as extreme radiation.

The final sentence of the description.

The host can often hear the echolocation of the Sinakawa. The host will hear a high-pitched, humming or throbbing sound when the Sinakawa is near, looking for a body to feed on.

Hux’s heart stopped. His blood froze, and chills ran down his spine. The humming in his ears pounded louder than ever before.

He backed away from the body, then hit something behind him, dropping the hologram with a small clink, as it shattered, then slowly rolled away.

He turned around.

It was Pama. At least, it was. Standing in the doorway of the small, cramped Computing Center of the Biology Lab, her half rotted body stood nearly upright, her shoulders hunched over, the inside of her mouth visible from where her cheek should have been.

The Sinakawa had reanimated her body.

“Oh….” Pama, or rather, the Sinakawa moaned. “Oh…I’ve been so hungry.”

Hux screamed, then reflexively punched it.

Then he stopped and hesitated. Not only would he probably become infected with this disease, but this was the body of one of his former friends. If there was a cure to this disease…surely he would be able to cure her.

He was furious, furious that his memories of her would become tainted in this way.

Hux backed away, gagging at the smell of the corpse, tears streamed from his eyes upon seeing his former friend.

The Sinakawa reached for Hux.

“I’ve waited so long…been so long. Years since I feasted…” The Sinakawa continued to trudge forward, then with surprising speed, lunged at Hux.

Hux moved backward, quickly running out of room. Then, spotting an opening, he ducked and ran out of the room, ears pounding in his head.

Hux found himself back in the conference room. His heart pounded, and he managed to vomit something, though he had no idea what it could possibly be.

“I’ve waited so long…I will always find you” he heard the Sinakawa say, almost in a trance-like whisper. Hux perspired heavily, then realized what he had to do.

It was his fault the Sinakawa was here. It was his responsibility to end it.

It’s weaknesses. Radiation.

Hux had never remembered himself as being very smart, but he had one very reliable source of radiation in mind.

Carefully walking back into the chamber from which he had heard the Sinakawa, he looked around. Nothing but an eerie buzzing sound.

He barely managed to see it in the corner of his eye, jumping out of the way in the nick of time.

He ran. It was the only thing he could do. 

Back into the room from which he awakened.

Into the room with the Central Cooling System.

The Sinakawa in pursuit. 

“Come…” it said “Join me…we can be together at last…” Hux looked back, and regretted it. She looked just like how Pama was, how she used to look at him whenever he made a dumb joke, or made a stupid mistake.

He had to remember that this was not her friend.

Hux reached for the Extreme Climate Suit, but he had been distracted by the Sinakawa’s look, and it allowed it to close the gap.

It managed to grasp him, and leave Pama’s body, which hit the floor with a resounding thud.

Fighting for control over his body, he ignored the fact that he wasn’t wearing the suit, and knew that he didn’t care whether he lived or died. Hux managed to hit the lift’s button, taking him to the surface.

He saw every single memory that this body contained over and over again, trying to fight, to regain some semblance of control over his body.

The air grew hotter and hotter, his flesh about to combust, all the while, the virus ate away at his body, leaving his nerves alone, leaving him to feel everything.

This is alright, Hux thought, This is my responsibility. I brought this here. It’s right that I end it.

Hux felt the Sinakawa weakening as they got closer and closer to the surface.

He knew he wouldn’t survive this.

Somehow, he managed the strength to force the broken door hinges open, the blazing sun charring his very being. 

The Sinakawa was still strong enough to feed off of his body.

His nerves still mostly intact, he wondered, for the final time, as he watched the blazing red supergiant setting, what it truly meant to be a person, to be someone. After all, weren’t humans just an assortment of nerves that transduced stimuli? Was he still a person, just because he could feel? He lay, contemplating these thoughts, nothing but a mess of what was once a whole, complete body, and was now a mess of tangled nerves. He felt the Sinakawa die.

As he lay, dying, exposed to the elements, he pondered lucidly, Am I still a person?

He died, content that he would no longer feel lonely.