the Zone of Silence

Chapter one

    A question came to me during a reset. A question that has started bleeding through my veins, a question I whisper over and over in my sleep, a question you think I am asking passively.
    But it stitches into me, coiling around my being. A question I keep asking because

    it doesn't make sense.

~~~

     I can almost hear the bare world pressed noiselessly against my black window. It isn't night; I have just choked the panes in thick paint, dotted with small white spots- stars. You aren't supposed to ask why I painted the window black but you do anyway, so I tell you; I don't want to wake up. I don't want to see the Infinite sky swimming in greys again. I don't want to feel the obsolete body I have to heave out of placid dreams as it chafes against my soul. I want to see the stars (if they aren't just legends in the crumbling books I read). All the pictures on the tablet are screenshots of stars, and the small monotone room that I had stripped bare is now covered in peeling posters of galaxies. Maybe I think that if I surround myself with images of the floating lights they will start to spin, like the books say they do.
You shake your head and laugh softly. You always do that when I talk about the old world - when they still counted the years - I read the years stopped counting around 2019 years and 3 days into the 12 month. 17 days you correct me. The thought makes me look towards the corner of the room where cans are stacked messily against the wall. They aren't my cans. They are there from when whoever was in this room before me. I don't know what the rusted metal once contained, maybe food and rainwater - when the skies still cried - or something else. I left them untouched. Maybe to serve as a memorial, or maybe to prove there was once one person who was probably there.

I miss people.

I miss the feeble hope they shared. I miss the idea of hoping for simple things. Things like the smell of grass, real grass, not the artificial smell on the tablet where it has an electronic undertone and the static makes me sneeze when it enters my nose. I want to hear voices again, not the fake ones on that old app 'YourTube' ('YouTube' you correct again) where they make odd sounds with their throats. Sounds that make me smile, sounds like rolling thunder or high mirthful cackles. Those noises almost seem to vibrate along the thin edge of the tablet and engulf me in its warmth. Almost.
You laugh again. Stop doing that. I don't like it when you laugh at me. You only shake your head and drift out of the room.

I power on the tablet. The screen comes to survive and washes my face with a cold, silver light. I blink against the specks dotting my vision then read the time. 59:13pm. The clock will reset at 9:30am precisely, marking the end of a time mile and the process will repeat again. I check the time again, 59:13pm. Give me the seconds. The numbers enlarge and three extra digits appear: 59:13:097/:098/:099/ my eyes drag to the corner of the bright screen and the time shifts away, 7% charge. I need to find a new battery soon, preferably before the clock resets. You say I should try to find a new battery today. When I don't answer you repeat your words, obviously not smart enough to take my silence as the answer I am trying to give you. I will do it later. You shrug and smile.
    I haul myself out of the hammock and into the darkness. The hammock is left swaying behind me, it won't cease moving unless I stop it. I don't.
    It takes three strides for my hand to find the other side of the room if I want to. But I don't want to touch the cold stone right now. Propping the tablet on the glass shelf, it's silver light swathes across the room. A room eight strides wide and eleven long. The floor was naked stone before I plastered it with newspapers, the rare ones made of tangible paper that took countless time miles to collect barely enough to put a thin layer on the floor. I look down at my favourite one, it's too dark to read properly but I know the painting of words without seeing: