Precautions for a Sterile Society
I’m so excited, and a little nervous, to share an original short story I wrote about a year ago. This is the first in what I hope will be a series of science fiction stories sprinkled between my usual articles. Expanding my writing to fiction has been an amazing creative outlet, and I’m excited to share my work with people who aren’t me. With that, I hope you enjoy Precautions for a Sterile Society.
-Christina
Precautions for a Sterile Society
Maeve stared at the soft yellow walls, loathing the color. After thirteen days of yellow walls, yellow sheets, yellow hospital gowns, yellow everything, she thought she’d puke if she ever saw anything yellow again.
“It’s supposed to be cheerful,” the orderly had told her. “They tried white at first and decided it was too plain. Then gray, which was too depressing. So, then they decided to use color and settled on yellow.”
She supposed it wouldn’t have mattered what color they had chosen; after nearly two weeks in the monochromatic room, she would have hated any of them.
In fairness, not everything in her room was daffodil-colored. The machines softly beeping next to her bed were white, their screens glowing blue as they recorded her vitals. The table and chair in the corner were white as well. The floor was white, some kind of new laminate that she assumed was meant to be easy to clean. Everything spotless and spartan, meant to keep her pathogen-free.
That was, after all, the point of all this. Eighteen years ago, when the first pioneers left Earth to colonize Asclepion they were not only an experiment in establishing a new human civilization but also in the eradication of infectious diseases. Though few infectious agents still circulated amongst the population on Earth, things like the common cold and herpesviruses stubbornly hung on. And so, to create a society free of disease, scientists and the government had decided to send only those that were completely negative for any harmful pathogen to settle Asclepion. It was miraculous that they had found people who didn’t have a stray wart or cold sore for that first mission, and even more miraculous that it had worked. Since the founding of Asclepion no case of infection had been reported. Babies born on Asclepion, some of them nearly adults by now, had never experienced a sore throat or fever. It had been such a success that anyone seeking to join them had to be certified free and clear from anything that could threaten that delicate balance.
Thirteen days ago, she had entered the facility and been subjected to test after test, giving blood, skin, hair, saliva, urine, and more to ensure she harbored no active or latent infections. Despite her medical records showing she was up to date on her immunizations, she also received round after round of vaccines. Finally, bruised and sore, she entered the antechamber to her room, filled with a sterilizing gas to ensure nothing lingered, before beginning her long quarantine.
It wasn’t the constant observation, or the incessant beeping of the machines that were beginning to crack her sanity. It wasn’t even the yellow. After thirteen days she was desperately bored. Other than the pre-provided “enrichment” she’d had nothing to entertain herself with. A TV with questionable signal, a checkerboard (why?), and a single book entitled Asclepion: Your Guide to Assimilating, were all she’d had to occupy her time with. There were only so many times you could beat yourself at checkers before you’d lose your mind, and she sensed that she had nearly reached her limit. Knowing that tomorrow, if her final tests came back clear, she’d finally exit this room and enter the cryochamber for transport to Asclepion, was the only thing keeping her sane.
She was grateful for the sound of the metal box sliding out from the wall to break up the doldrum.
“Breakfast,” the orderly’s voice crackled over the PA.
She padded over to the box in her yellow slippers to find her usual meal, perfectly nutritionally balanced and autoclaved, alongside her morning round of pills. Taking no chance of contamination, they’d had her on a series of broad-spectrum antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals since she’d arrived.
She nodded her thanks and took the tray over to the table to eat. She quickly swallowed two pills before digging into the mushy, yet pleasantly flavored food.
The rest of the day passed in a blur until the biohazard-suited technician entered the antechamber for sterilization before entering her room to take her final samples. That killed about an hour before she was forced back into monotony while she counted down the minutes until she could reasonably go to bed, wishing time would move faster.
Of course, sleep didn’t come easy either, though she finally quieted her brain enough to fall into a fitful slumber that was interrupted by the PA alerting her that the technician had returned to prepare her for her journey.
Tubes for feeding, tubes for hydration, and tubes for waste management were inserted as she was festooned in wires to monitor her vital signs before entering the cryochamber. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes for the next 1,257 days was her reflection in the lid of the chamber.
Maybe, if the orderly hadn’t been preoccupied with distributing her dinner and medication quickly so he could catch the pretty custodian before their shift was over, he would have realized he forgot to administer the last dose of antiviral the day before. And maybe, if the technician hadn’t been rushing to take those final samples so she could get home to see her husband off to work, she would have seen the small tear in her biohazard suit.
And maybe, if Maeve hadn’t been so anxious to begin her trek through the stars, she would have noticed a pill missing during her breakfast or the small tear in the technician’s biohazard suit. But these mistakes went unseen, along with the microscopic passenger sealed in the cryochamber with her, content to wait in the subzero temperature until it awakened, warm and at home in their final destination.
