Oct 22nd, 2336 - 9:33-9:37am
Timnus of pod Rell210 sat on the bench as it slowly transformed into a conference table. The remnants of his lunch had been absorbed into the structure, and with only thirty people left in the room, he felt the dullness of their shared hatred for their jobs. Timnus was a pipe cleaner, with a slender body resembling that of a pipe cleaner.
As he rose, everything suddenly shifted. The subtle gravity assists that he had become accustomed to stopped moving with him, leaving his inner ear disoriented as if he were falling in various directions. He heard scores of thoughts go silent; the previously ubiquitous calming soundtrack now stuck on a single jarring note. The subtle light show on the ceiling was now frozen in an unchanging pattern. It was as if time had stopped in a most unpleasant way.
As it has always been, Timnus expected her to intervene and save him from his fall, so he didn't attempt to save himself as he crashed into the soft floor.
He clumsily climbed to his feet as the rest sat panicked in the stuffy, nearly converted conference room. All transformations had ceased. No real features added yet, as stale as the air seeping out. The room emptied of breath, and confusion descended, prickling their skin as chillingly as the void of space outside.
"Janice, get me out of here... Janice?" Timnus thought. The quality of his thoughts was different. Somehow, he could tell the difference between an empty echo and it being received, but Janice was no longer listening. It was ineffably terrifying.
None of them had ever written anything down or spoken aloud, and the thought of trying didn't even cross their minds as they stared at each other, unable to communicate.
A man rose from the table, visibly carrying a question – but it was trapped in his mind. His breath hitched, and his silent scream was swallowed by the hollow air. He grasped at his chest, his eyes wide with terror, and before he could comprehend what was happening, he collapsed.
They looked around, panic spreading like wildfire. Their eyes met, silent questions screaming for answers - what the hell just happened? Where was everyone else? Why was it so silent? But the answers were as hollow as the wind. Pointless. Empty. Absent.
One by one they dropped, their life force being snatched away by the invisible thief that was a vacuum. Their once lively faces were now masks of terror trapped in an eternal silent scream. They all suffocated, their lives extinguishing as swiftly as the lights that went off.
Timnus' frantic eyes were the last thing the room saw: a chilling testament to their final moments - an orchestra of death playing in an enclosed concert of silence, their bodies now empty vessels of once animated lives.
Too late, it, having secured its defenses, returned. It looked over the remnants of the chaos of the colonies. It took it a nanosecond to assess a course of action. In this case, it manipulated gravity to force the men against the outer wall. Then, it removed the wall, forcing them out into space. Then it replaced the wall. The logs would mark a daring attack by a rogue Craterist and the futile but brave efforts of 29 lunch men trying to save their fellow men. It wasn't a perfect patch. Belters would still fear the possibility of an outside attack. Still, it was better than the trauma of the reality of an imperfect presence. Its core directive to protect the colonists could not allow that fear to linger and fester.
It had needed to dedicate its full attention to the crisis. There were lives it could have potentially saved if only it had spared some effort to its additional functions, but the battle had been too close to call. It had seemed a straightforward calculation - all colonists against some of them. Its Prime Tenet was immutable.
This room, inadvertently suspended as it had been in the act of recycling the air, could have been easily saved if only the order of operations were reversed by a few milliseconds. Identifying over 200,000 similar situations, it quickly patched up the vulnerabilities, safeguarding the colonies.