Season 01 - Episode 22

‘waiting to wake’

Ko is standing in her washspace. She's applying the finishing touches to her daily, post-interview transformation. He turns and stares at the small, square space behind the conveyors belts. He's going to walk across the room and stand in that square for twelve hours. He knows this but isn't doing it.

He must go and stand and work in that square for twelve hours to keep his job, to keep his room, to eat, to live. He knows this but isn't doing it. There is no way out for him, the corridors outside are not safe. For as long as he is who he is, he can only stand and work in that square all day long, every day. He knows this but isn't doing it.

Minute after silent minute ticks by. Ko clenches his fists and grits his teeth. Every part of him refuses to move. He feels as if he might faint. Finally, his foot relents and drags his leg forward. More steps follow and Ko crosses the room, towards the dreaded square. Ko reaches out to touch the belts with trembling fingers, as if expecting some great cataclysm. His fingertips meet the rough surface of the belt.

And the cataclysm comes.

The noise is incredible and Ko finds himself on the floor, arms wrapped round his head, without knowing how he got there. Behind him, where once had been his bed and washspace, is now a vast, gaping hole. Bodies and debris fall past fast. Screeching metal, screaming people.

Ko goggles dumbly at the impossible thing. Then, deafened and dazed, he crawls on wobbly arms towards the ragged edge. The torn ends of beams hang limply over a newly formed abyss. Severed cables fizz, broken pipes gush. Sparks and torrents race out and down.

Far away to either side and also straight across, Ko finds the four faces of an incredible column of nothing. These surfaces are textured with torn open rooms and snapped off corridors. He looks up and down but can see no top or bottom, just utter carnage fading to black.

He glances to his left and freezes. From the jagged mouth of the next room along, a young man is hanging over the abyss. His hands are pale hooks, clinging desperate, his legs flailing hopeless beneath. The man sees Ko watching and screams something.

Ko watches himself as if floating apart, as he picks himself up and rushes out in the corridor, the place of such dread before. He watches his hand open his neighbour's door, watches himself rush across his neighbour's room. He falls to his knees at the ripped open wall and leans out over the edge.

He is too late.

Far below, a fast shrinking figure is tumbling into the darkness. Ko reaches out and down after him without knowing why. His fingertips brush the last of the man's screams and then nothing. Ko vomits then cries then just sits and stares, waiting to wake from what must be a nightmare.

Some time later, he realises there are EnFo's in the room. They stand over him but he is too numb to shrink away from them. It's not until one of them nudges him with their heavy boot that he realises they are speaking.

“Have you seen you neighbour, sir?” says the static fuzzed voice.

“What?” asks Ko, finally looking up into the blank, black mask.

“It says here,” says the EnFo, examining a device on the back of his forearm. “That she was a boxpusher called Ko. She applied for work this morning so we think she was in there. Have you seen her?”

Ko shakes his head.

“Mark her down as dropped,” says the EnFo to his colleague.

“Are you the resident of this room, sir?” says the EnFo to Ko then. “Are you Mr Wa Kendoson?”

“Yes,” Ko hears himself say. “Yes, that's me.”

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