Ahkay, finished my homework, so here you go.
The celings creaked. The walls creaked. Wrapped in a flex-weaver, Dyabella's bones creaked.
She'd died recently, and since she was the only one pouring energy into the walls -we couldn't, we weren't old enough- bad things were happening.
The ground was bleached, and the Nothing was seeping through cracks in the patched-over ground. The metal was straining and bulging, and we kept the lights off on those floors. We didn't want to see how bad it was.
I always knew it was a bad idea, of course, to even
think about harvesting Nothing from the boils of the space waves that Seveseves gave out. Nothing burnt through everything, and turned it to more Nothing. Just because ACNRv13.5 could withstand it doesn't mean a mining platform in space could sustain it for longer than a decade. Two or three at most. At least, it'd have imploded and sent us swirling into a vortex right the moment it was built.
But now we're stuck. There's a suspicion that the shuttles had deleted us off their list, and we were abandoned out here to die around Seveseves, our gray sun. Tally and Riveryem didn't give up hope, but they're only youngers, so what do they know?
The Nothing eats away at us. Sometimes it forms a mouth and talks. We ignore it. The way were are in this place is the epitome of boredome. We're frozen and stuck in our routines. There's not that many rooms in the platform, and we've examined each one so thoroughly we know the distance from one room to anywhere in our respective footsteps. The talking makes it worse, though, so we stay higher in the platform. It's not worth going down to hear it gibber to your inner darkness.
i'm sitting, re-counting the number of specks embedded in the glass ceiling. Above the ceiling is a hologram of a blue sky. I've heard Terra had a blue sky. I'd wish I'd been born long enough ago to see it. The only blue we see now is the faded cadet blue of our uniforms, and occasionally the unnaturally bright food comes in some shades of blue.
I've always liked blue. I've even gone and looked up the names for so many different shades when we still had power to spare. Cerulean, indigo, turquoise, aqua...
The ground under me right now creaks, louder than ever. Tally sits up. "Where's Riveryem?"
I know. Riveryem was always the most bored, the one most likely to listen to the Nothing.
I know what he's doing.
By the time Tally and I run down the stairs, he's already done it. There's a big gaping hole in one of patches. Riveryem stands over it with the old emergency ACNR rod, looking crazed. "I've done it," he says. "I've fixed it all. I'm free."
Then the Nothing lunges forth in an empty, spewing fountain and eats the ACNR13.5, eats Riveryem. I see his demented, grinning face before his skin and blood and bones are melted. Tally runs away, up the stairs as the ground splinters into chunks, pieces whirling across space.
I'm balanced precariously on a few fading fragments of the metal. The bland void of the Nothing gobbles at my feet.
I know why you did it, Riveryem. There's nowhere left to run. And all I see before I'm consumed are the slivers of silver, dancing as they're sucked down, down, down into the Nothing.
And I follow.
