Into the Eternity Vault Chapter Two

Maddy looks around in search of anything remotely resembling hope.

Chapter 2

555,557,797 AD

After a while, it became obvious that sitting still and refusing to trust the computer would get her nowhere. But it was so easy not to believe. Had the pod glitched? Maybe she’d only been frozen a few days, and the machine had just gone mad.

Although if that was the case, why was she in a desert?

Was she in hell?

If so, then surely it should be that she was denying, not that she'd simply overslept.

Maybe it didn't matter. She was there, and was there for good. No food. No water. And no life that she could see. What had happened to the world? Had she just fallen into a desert, or had the planet somehow been rendered incapable of supporting life?

Maybe a bit of an assumption, Maddy thought. This was only a small part of the world after all. She had no idea where she was, geographically speaking. If all had gone well - which it clearly hadn't - the stasis pod should have dropped her off at the Orlando Recovery Centre. But there was no desert in Florida. At least, there hadn't been.

The first thing to do would be to scout out the area, she decided at last. The tallest sand dune was rocky and stony, with several large boulders balanced atop unstable looking ridges. Some were as large as twenty feet across, big enough to easily squash Maddy beneath their weight. But it would offer the best view.

She peeled herself away from the cube and began her tread across the sand. It was dry dirt, sticking together in clumps, not letting her sink into it as easily as a luxury white beach might have. Every so often a wide crack split the landscape, revealing softer sand of a more reddish colour beneath. Maddy's shoes weren't exactly practical for this kind of terrain; they were designed for business, with about an inch of heel and a coating of black polish that seemed intent on sticking to any sand it touched.

She cursed as she tripped over a small rock, which sent her tumbling to her knees. The grey material of her trouser leg wasn't particularly thick, and exposed her legs to the baking ground. She yelped and jumped to her feet, brushing the hot sand from her body.

The side of the dune grew steeper, and Maddy found herself spluttering and wheezing as dust mingled with the air in her lungs. It wasn't exactly a mountain, but was difficult to scale, especially restrained as Maddy was. The gravity didn't help either.

After about ten minutes she'd stumbled up to the rounded peak of the dune. She shaded her eyes to look around at her surroundings... but still saw only sand. Nothing but wasteland all around her in every direction.

Maddy reached into her bag and pulled out the water bottle, which was already warm. She was tired, and thirsty, and the liquid made a satisfying sloshing noise when she moved it. But the sad realisation slowly settled in, that this would be the only drink she'd get. Maddy took a few quick sips and licked the remaining drops from the surface of her cracked lips. Then she replaced the lid, sighed, and stashed it away.

Then she started the somewhat faster and easier process of returning downhill towards the cube. She knew there was little reason to stay there really, but it was her only landmark and her only shelter. If she didn't stay, then she'd surely die of sunstroke or exposure. She needed to stay put, at least for now.

But there was nothing else to do if she was going to simply stay there, and no activities to stimulate her brain. So Maddy’s mind turned to some very hurtful topics, things her subconscious forced her to ponder whilst she sat silently against the cube. Thoughts that intruded her brain, and just wouldn’t leave.

She was alone. Utterly alone. Utterly alone, and everyone she had ever known, and their children, and their grandchildren, were all dead. That was her punishment. To be dumped into this desert with only a broken computer that insisted she was hundreds of millions of years in the future. And without even an infested mosquito to keep her company. No food, no water, no life, no company, no landmarks, and no freedom of arm movement.

And the worst thing was that she knew she deserved it.

Maddy let her head sink down to her palms again, but felt very little. Her mind wasn't designed to hold so many crushing thoughts. No human was. So she’d have to go through them one at a time.

She stood up, and looked skywards. Still no clouds, and the sun had almost finished its journey across the atmosphere. Maddy estimated it to be about seven or eight o'clock. Not much chance of supper. But the temperature was dropping, which was nice. A shadow slowly fell over the barren landscape, and it wasn't long before Maddy missed the scorching heat of the sun. Beneath her suit she shivered.

As the warm afternoon became a cool evening, Maddy reopened the cube door, stooping over to fit back inside. She closed it behind her, hoping that it wouldn't automatically lock her in until she died of dehydration. Or maybe asphyxiation. Nice thoughts for good dreams.

Maddy curled up uncomfortably, unable to lie flat within the box. It wasn't going to be an easy sleep, no matter what she did. So she simply stared through the window up at the sky. At some point the sun finally vanished behind the horizon leaving an inky black void. But it wasn't fully black, she realized. It was sprinkled with tiny white pinpricks, stars and galaxies, which all looked so alien. A sky half a billion years later, finally proving how much time had passed. A sky where the stars had been gathered up and spilled back onto their blank canvas to make whole new constellations. Some of the starlight would have shone before she'd even been frozen, only arriving now after so very, very long. Some would have been produced millions of years ago, whilst she was sleeping still. Some light was still travelling, and had a million years to go.

And that was how Maddy slept.