I’m fairly certain my body has a better idea of what’s going on than my mind does. Sipping my coffee now it tastes like the first time. Shockingly acidic and hot, but it flows with a warmth that pulls you through that adversity into a deep hug of alertness. In my mind this shouldn’t feel so alien, I just had coffee yesterday. The food is a jumbled bunch of flavors I can’t make enough sense of to decide if I like it or not, but my stomach is clear enough with protests. I slap on one of those blue patches for the nausea and continue the routine.

Everything is green of course. I deliver the update, mark the cycle complete and head to the central pillar to meet up with the inspector from the east wing.

As the door opens on the pillar I can see they’ve finished ahead of me. I fix myself a drink while waiting for them to get done with the simulator. I can taste the tart of cranberry now and it makes me feel almost normal again. For a moment I just stare into the glass swirling the drink around. As long as I can keep that up the rest of this is suspect. I’m not looking up, but if I were to, perhaps I’d see my brother behind the bar, cleaning a glass or fixing his own drink.

There is a tap on my shoulder; it’s not him. The other inspector is finished, “Hey! So how’s it looking?”

“Green. You?”

“Same. We may not get much news up here but at least it’s always good!”

“That is true. I don’t think we’ve worked together before, what cycle are you on?”

“Sheesh. Ugh…” eyes roll back and they take the head with them dramatically, “This has got to be somewhere in the 20’s for me. You?”

“18. I have a little slip of paper I mark on each cycle before a I go back down. I’d lose track for sure without it, but it keeps me grounded in a way. I don’t know if that’s the most appropriate word, but you get what I mean.”

They force a transactional laugh, “Yeah, I get it. So what are we drinking?”

We talk for a while before going back below. Neither of us learn anything new about the other, conversation in the central pillar is more about re-calibrating the self, but in it’s own way the exchange is therapeutic.

All 18 cycles had been the same and tedium was starting to infiltrate the process. Physically, yes, there is a lot of down time. But mentally, it’s all continuous, like you’ve worked 18 days straight. Worse even, because you don’t really sleep, you lay down, and you wake up, mark the pad and get back to doing what you just finished up. On paper, in numbers and words, it’s feasible. In practice though, it’s tough. They said it would be. Hell, they are doing it too, so who am I to complain. At least they said they were. Who knows, all I know is the hash marks on my piece of paper. Twenty-seven now.

Green.

I mess with the simulator again, only to be reminded why I swore it off in cycle three. Never could trust the things back home and especially not here. What does that say about me though? Thirty-six.

Green.

I’ve had three glasses of cranberry and it may as well be water. I’m drinking red ‘less than water’. Forty-two.

Green.

The inspector from the east wing is pacing behind the door, I could hear it the whole time I was doing my own inspection and now I have to decide if I want to open it or not. Before I can decide he approaches the door, and looks through the glass window. The closer he gets the more of his face gets cut off until it’s just his eyes.

His muffled voice warbles through the panes of glass and metal, “Hey! Hey! Did you ever get any blanks? What do we do with blanks? What the fuck is a blank? Hey! Can you hear me?”

I don’t know anything about blanks, I tell them this with my face. He gets it and returns to pacing. I go back to the west wing report station and look up information on blanks. There is an entry of course, suggesting the blanks could be caused by a power failure. “What the hell does that mean,” I say out loud and startle myself. Purge unit it says. Forty-three.

Green.

I hesitate to approach the central pillar because my mind is telling me that the hyper anxious fellow was in there just a few hours ago, which is absurd. My eyes affirm this, it seems I was done first. A few hours later and still no one from the east wing has arrived. Forty-four.

Green, sort of. Green, but units are missing. When I file my report I look for information on that, and there is nothing. I can only assume they were purged. What does that mean though?

The central pillar is empty still, two days in a row my mind tells me. But the east wing door is open. I didn’t even know it could open from this side. When I step in, the floor is covered with technological sinew. Someone else shares my distrust for the simulator; violently it seems. I peek into the east wing to see that things are not always greener on the other side. I feel like these are problems I don’t need to get involved with. Somewhere deep within I hear a flood of anguished curses, and that seals it for me. Time for bed. Forty-five.

Stars. Nothing but stars, spinning slightly out of view.

Then I see the shadow of a thing, a relief of a wheel in negative space. A circle of black turning off the stars as it rolls through the background. Half of the radius erupts in lightning periodically. It gets colder and my viewing angle moves away from the lumbering shadow. Looking at the stars for the last time I can’t help but feel sort of relieved. “‘What do we do with blanks?’ he said. You purge them dumb ass,” I say out loud for some reason. All he had to do was look it up. Forty- six.

I need to find a slip of paper somewhere, to keep track of all this.