[h1]What the Cell Cannot Corrupt[/h1]
There are things that cannot be reconfigured, even when, at first glance, the body seems to mutate into something else. What shape of a person is it that remains, always, despite living through a journey made of processes?
My sister and I found a vending machine. It was filled with bags of chocolates and fizzy drinks. We ordered one. We stopped to eat.
A feeling of loneliness enveloped the space station. Once, there must have been life here: mocking laughter spilling from the arcade machines, fleeting moments of companionship around tables, people eating strange burger recipes. The hum of human presence felt so different from the technological novelties—even from the peculiar food—glowing beneath these flickering neon lights.
Now, everything is drenched in screams, in other people’s bodies, distorted and unfamiliar, and in the half-light.
There were signs everywhere: Space Burger, as though the engineers had managed to conquer entirely new forms of nourishment. We found a subtler warning too: Wash your hands. Wear a mask. That was why we wore these suits—a protection for our bodies against whatever had been unleashed here.
But do these suits protect us from anything beyond the body?
We might be perfectly shielded, and yet there is a part of us that remains exposed. Like the researcher who became corrupted while searching for a place called the Sanctuary, perhaps her soul had never been protected at all.
We washed our hands in those sinks, where we could still find fresh water. The water was cool, almost comforting, but we could not remove our suits for long. Perhaps because of the risk of infection.
So we kept walking, slowly, with the measured rhythm of caution. My sister went ahead, while together we carried our torches, their narrow beams barely illuminating the corridors and stairways.
We hear our own footsteps. We stop wherever there is food. There is no one here. We have only each other; we look after one another in the face of the strange noises surrounding us. At certain moments, when we can even hear our own heartbeats, a sudden bang against the walls or within the air ducts seems to strike at our very presence.
We cannot remember where we came from. We awoke from the cold of cryogenic sleep. Our home, Earth, had been dead for a long time.
This little ship is all that remains. Here, a voice—perhaps an artificial intelligence—greets us with an almost unsettling enthusiasm, inviting us to stay and to try to save those who are still left.
And then, among the many crackling creatures, there was one that had become grotesquely deformed. It resembled those places where flesh no longer retains its identity when confronted with inorganic matter. The living had mingled with the dead.
Yet some bodies had fused their flesh together, giving rise to the bio-flesh, as though it were unconsciously seeking to increase its own lethality.
My sister and I resisted. She walked ahead of me as we pushed forward. We had not been deformed, because there was still something within us that could not be reshaped. That was when we realised it: we were not merely protecting ourselves. We had a purpose, a destiny, and we would do whatever was necessary to fulfil it.
And we knew what it was.
The Sanctuary.
And we were its protectors.
So, what is it that the cell cannot corrupt?
Perhaps it is that which biotechnology—this devouring cell that consumes and fuses machines with bodies—can deform. The scientist was trying to unravel the mystery of the cell, yet somewhere along the way, she forgot who she truly was. She allowed herself to be seduced by the reach of technology, with a kind of arrogance that became its own corruption.
We hear that she never made it to the Sanctuary. Yet neither did she seem concerned with discovering who might still be alive in every forgotten corner of this place. She had forgotten the others.
Perhaps that is the worst mutation of all.
No matter how desperately she wanted to repair the damage, no matter how determined she was to solve the enigma of the bio-flesh, she had lost sight of the people caught within it. What a strange fusion—flesh and machine, life and death, knowledge and obsession.
And we do not need to fuse.
So we keep moving, my sister and I, entering every corner and fulfilling whatever tasks remain. Perhaps, little by little, this place might one day be illuminated again—not by the cold glow of machinery, but by people.
By life.
We know this was no accident. Something—or someone—caused it. These poor creatures, most of them human, were the subjects of vile experiments.
My sister and I keep moving back and forth through these darkened corners, where flickering lights seem to warn us of what might be the worst thing of all to deform us: the power wielded by those at the very top.
We prepare ourselves. We are ready to go on.
We traverse the matrix of flesh, stepping into this womb of biomachinery that shelters strange beings, now so terribly deformed that they no longer know what to do, or whom they are meant to protect.
We are in space.
And yet, aboard this ship, there is still the warmth of a home to protect.
