Veyr
Tap.
315,364,106.
Tap.
315,364,107.
Tap.
315,364,108.
Tap.
315,364,109.
Tap.
315,364,110.
Tap.
315,364,111.
Tap.
315,364,112.
Tap.
315,364,113.
Tap.
315,364,114.
Tap.
315,364,115.
Tap.
315,364,116.
Tap.
315,364,117.
Tap.
315,364,118.
Tap.
315,364,119.
Tap.
315,364,120.
I stop counting.
For a moment, I remain perfectly still and listen to the dark.
There is nothing to hear, there is always nothing to hear.
The wreckage hangs around me in the blackness, silent and weightless. Broken pieces of the ship drift through the void, carried by currents too weak to perceive. Twisted sheets of metal. Shards of glass. Loose wires trailing from shattered machinery like pale, rootless things searching for soil.
My eyes wander across the wreckage. After 315,364,120 seconds, I know every piece of this dead ship. Every machine, every wire, every bolt.
The broken console hovering near my left shoulder requires seventeen hours, twenty-four minutes, and eight seconds to complete one full rotation. The jagged section of hull above me has moved three meters since my last measurement. A small piece of insulation has been circling the same dead engine for approximately 25 months.
I know where everything belongs, where everything was when it was still alive.
And then there are the bodies … They drift among the wreckage as peacefully as everything else. Some have been reduced to little more than skeletons, their skin stretched thin over bone. Others are still soft. Still whole.
I watch them pass, I’m always watching them.
I study the way their limbs fold when they tumble. The way their clothing catches on broken metal. The places where their flesh has split. The colors their skin changes when blood is no longer moving beneath it.
The human body is remarkably fragile. I have learned this through observation and experimentation before I was confined.
There are so many ways to make one stop moving and i know them all.
A corpse drifts toward me, it face passed within inches of mine. One eye is missing, the other still open. I stare into it, and for a moment, I imagine it staring back. The idea makes my stomach contract. Not in disgust, but in hunger.
The sensation crawls through me, slow and hot, curling around my insides like something alive. I close my eyes, suppressing the ravenous nature of starvation.
I mustn’t think of food. Food makes concentration difficult, and I must concentrate. My brothers are close, I can feel them. Not with my hands, ears, eyes, somewhere deeper.
They move at the edges of my thoughts, thousands of tiny impulses brushing against my mind. A distant, restless swarm. They squirm and twist, pressing against me, calling without words, pulling at something within my chitin.
Come home.
Come home.
Come home.
I almost answer.
Almost.
Instead, I push them away. They will find me, in due time, they will find me.
Until then, I must remain patient. I must keep my mind open. I must keep counting.
My hand reaches out, resting against the glass box containing me.
Tap.
315,364,121.
Tap.
315,364,122.
Tap.
315,364,123.
Tap.
