On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 254, of 266 so far.

Symbol

I woke up here.

It was… I think it was a couple of months ago. Maybe a little more. I could ask the symbol, but what difference does it make?

My name, apparently, is Christopher Allan Dolan. That’s what the panels all say when I approach. I walk towards a panel, it lights up with the tiniest noise that I no longer even notice, and then my name — I assume — appears in the upper right corner. Along with the symbol.

It’s like a lotus flower, in a way, but simplified. Just coloured lines, slowly moving. It’s a computer animation, of course, but it talks. It fluctuates when it talks, too, like it’s mimicking a voiceprint or something. It has a woman’s voice.

It’s everywhere here. On every panel when I approach, and there are a lot of panels. Just about everything seems to be one. Walls, doors, table surfaces… they’re all technology. The symbol is everywhere. When I walk the corridors, it follows me along the walls and from one vast compartment to another.

I have no memory of how I came to be here, and no memory of who I am. I don’t know what I am, except that I’m human. I’m average-looking. About 1.75 metres tall. Brown hair, green eyes. My skin is slightly darker than I expected it to be; I think my ancestry might include a little bit of… but I can’t remember the word, or the place I’m trying to refer to. A country, I know that much. A hot country, with deserts and glittering coastal cities. Somewhere.

This place repeats.

There’s a regular layout, coming off the primary corridor which has to be thirty metres across. There are blocks, each of which has a dormitory, a shower room and lavatory, a canteen, and a recreation room with some office space. There’s also a kind of huge closet in each block, whose walls are lined with machines. I think it’s a multipurpose bay to serve as a medical facility or engineering workshop, all automated.

On my second day here after waking up, I gathered some food into a blanket from one of the beds, slung it over my shoulder, and started walking along the main corridor. I walked all day, I think — not that there are any windows to see any indication of time passing. I walked for hours. I saw more than a hundred blocks before I stopped checking and just kept going.

The main corridor continues straight ahead, off into the distance. The panels serve as illumination, and they only light up when I’m close by, so I can’t actually see very far. There are no flashlights anywhere. As far as I know, there’s another ten miles of corridor ahead as well as behind.

There’s no-one else here.

I’ve searched, and I’ve called out. I’ve listened. I’ve looked for any evidence of inhabitation. But there’s no-one except me. I’ve even asked the symbol, but it’s completely unhelpful as usual.

That information is not available at the moment.

Everything works. Lights, toilets, showers, the food system. The air is breathable, and the temperature is comfortable. The recreation area only has gym and sports equipment in it, though; no books or anything else. I assume those kinds of entertainment are all “information” that’s also not available.

Sometimes I stay in the same block for a couple of nights, and sometimes I move on each day. I vandalised a block once, using the sports gear. Sometimes I kick tennis balls as far down the main corridor as I can, then I encounter them days later. I like doing it, because at least it’s a marker that I’ve made some progress. Walking the main corridor is disorienting. At least it shows that I’m actually here at all.

I assume there’d be block numbers, or names, or labels on all the panels in the main corridor… but there’s something wrong with the system. Not available.

I’ve started to hate the symbol.

Lighting up on whatever surface I approach, gently pulsing like a reminder to stay calm and breathe. The voice is soft-spoken and almost maternal, though still a bit artificial. It can tell me the time, but not the date. It can’t tell me where I am. It can’t tell me who I am beyond my name. It can’t tell me why I seem to be alone here.

It can’t tell me where I’m going.

I like to lie on the floor at the very back of the shower stalls in each block. There’s a vibration there, faint but noticeable. It’s perfectly rhythmic. There’s some kind of machinery somewhere beyond. I’ve tried breaking through (with the sports equipment, with dumbbells, and even with a handheld laser cutting tool from the multipurpose room), but after I smash through the strange plastic splash-back covering, there’s just dull grey metal there. I can’t so much as scratch it, and the laser cutter runs out of power after thirty minutes. When I put my hand against the metal wall afterwards, it’s not even warm.

I think I’m in space. I don’t have any evidence of that, but it seems likely. All this technology, and an installation that’s miles and miles long. Surely it wouldn’t be on a planet. And the vibration might mean that I’m moving. Maybe I’m on a voyage.

If this is a ship, it has no crew that I know of. I’m the only human being here — or the only living thing of any species at all. It’s just me, and the symbol on every surface. Like a lotus flower, animating in soft colours, ever attentive but completely unable to help.

Or unwilling.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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