Pink and gold

Sunday

Mark waved to the moving truck as it pulled away from the curb, clutching his copy of the final packing list in his other hand. Then he went inside and looked around the bare kitchen with the stacks of cardboard boxes. Well, he'd better start unpacking immediately.

Mark had unpacked half a dozen boxes before he uncovered a large flattish one near the back of the kitchen. It seemed to be wrapped in aluminum foil, but when he tried to peel the foil off he realised that actually, the box was made of foil, or some kind of plastic that looked like aluminum foil but had the texture of cardboard. It was prominently labelled with the number 47 and some symbols he didn't recognize. He'd better check the packing list, he thought. He knew the moving company had insurance for virtually all possible risks, so if something was wrong, he was sure it could be fixed easily.

Mark was somewhat less pleased when he'd examined the packing list, because as well as the column listing the box numbers, there was another column he hadn't paid attention to when he signed it, listing "note" numbers. When he cross-referenced those with the list of notes on the back, he figured out that the movers had carefully examined every item he owned, made a list of every possible way each item could conceivably be damaged, and gotten him to sign off on a disclaimer absolving them from that particular form of damage to that particular item. For instance, the number 19 ("electrical damage") had been written next to the number of every box that contained anything electronic - so that if he plugged in his stereo after the move and it didn't work, he couldn't make a claim. All the boxes he'd packed himself were labelled with number 3, ("contents - identity and condition") which appeared to mean that they promised to deliver the box, itself, in good condition; no guarantees as to what might have happened to whatever was inside. The only way he could make a claim on their insurance, it appeared, would be if they had forgotten to list a form of damage, or if they had completely failed to deliver an item at all. He had shipped a box numbered 47, they had delivered a box numbered 47, and he'd signed the form accepting it, so now it was out of their hands even if it wasn't really the same box 47 he had shipped.

Well, now that he was stuck with this box, he might as well find out what was in it. It might be something good. His box 47, according to his own list, was supposed to be dishes: annoying to do without, but easily replaceable. So he picked up his knife, slit open the foil tape on the top of the mystery box, and lifted out the piece of foam rubber that had been stuck in the top. Inside was a gold-coloured paper bag with writing on it in what appeared to be Arabic, and a whole lot of pinkish dust. The bag seemed to be full of the dust, but it wasn't sealed very well and so a whole lot had leaked out and saturated the foam rubber in the bottom of the box.

Mark wasn't sure what the stuff was or whether it had any use, but he didn't feel inclined to spend a lot of time investigating. He was about to try tasting it when he decided that wouldn't be a good idea - it looked like it might be food of some sort, but it could just as easily be weed killer or something. He picked up the open box, which was surprisingly heavy, and carried it out to the garage. As he walked with it, a thin but steady stream of pink powder poured out of a hole in one corner of the bottom, covering his legs and shoes and leaving a trail down the hall and out into the garage. His feet ground it into the carpet; but he didn't notice any of that until after he had plunked the box down in one corner of the garage. He sighed, plugged in the vacuum cleaner, and tried to clean up himself and the floor.

Monday

Mark's co-workers at the Water Board missed him, but they knew that he had just moved into a new house over the weekend. He was probably taking longer to get unpacked and settled in than expected.

Tuesday

Clarissa, age seven, cried "Look, mommy, look at that house!" and pointed out the window as the car sped along East 47th Avenue. Her mother was too focused on the talk radio show she was listening to, and her own thoughts, to pay any attention. They were already late to drop Clarissa off at her father's apartment for visiting rights, and he'd no doubt be angry and sarcastic about it. But Clarissa watched that house until it had faded into the distance. It stood out among the others on the street because it had been painted bright pink, with golden swirls that glittered in the sunlight. Clarissa thought she could see some of the swirling patterns move across the walls, but she was already old enough to know that that was just an optical illusion caused by the car's motion.

Wednesday

Lisa, the office manager at the Water Board, removed Mark's termination notice from the laser printer and put it in her desk drawer. She would give him every chance to explain, whenever he finally showed up, but if he didn't have a good excuse she was prepared to give it to him. It had better be a good excuse, for him to have been gone three days without giving any notice at all.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the office, Larry was staring with concern at the Web-cam telemetry from the inside of the main water tower. He played with the lighting settings, wondering if something could have gone wrong with the illuminator up there. Everything in the picture had a pink cast, and there seemed to be golden flecks swirling like an oil slick over the surface of the water. Then he called Melvin over to his cube and they had a complicated technical discussion, the final result of which was that they filed a request to have the tower cut off from the rest of the system, and sent a guy out there with a test kit to see what was going on. Of course, it was too late by then.

Thursday (night)

If any passengers on the Toronto-Vancouver direct flight had been awake and using GPS receivers against Air Canada's rules while also looking out the window, they might have been surprised - because even though they were supposed to be flying over a major city, there were no lights visible on the ground.

Friday

The United States Government upgraded its terrorism alert status. Midway through the broadcast announcing that fact, all television signals in the Western Hemisphere dissolved into pink and gold snow. The technicians had their transmitters back in order within a few hours, but by that time, nobody had electricity anymore anyway.

Saturday (mid-afternoon UTC)

Yuri snapped the microphone back into its holder. Still nothing but static on the radio. He hadn't heard anything from Baikonur all day; that was the second major check-in they had missed. He looked at the test button on the radio, decided not to run the diagnostic again. He knew damn well that it wasn't malfunctioning. Well, pretty soon it would be time to wake Vladimir, and they could have one of those serious mission-critical conversations that all cosmonauts train for and hope to Hell never to actually have. He stared moodily out the window at the night side of the Earth, which was black everywhere except for a few dim orange patches of forest fire along the West coast of North America.

Yuri wondered how many people were still alive down there and what they were doing. More important things than scheduling resupply missions to space stations, no doubt. Someone had dropped the bomb, obviously. He wondered who. He hadn't heard anything up here - but that was silly. Even the sound of a nuke wouldn't be loud enough propagate through space. In the back of his mind it occurred to him that he had a rare privilege - no human being had ever had the chance to see an Earth without cities, from space, and even in the event that humanity in general outlived himself and Vladimir, such a thing would probably never happen again.

The station began to orbit towards the terminator, and Yuri flipped down the sun shade on the window and braced for the harsh flare of the sunrise. It was more spectacular than usual on this orbit; maybe it was fallout, maybe it was some other kind of pollution, or maybe it was just some kind of natural phenomenon, but the rising sun seemed to stain the entire ocean a fluorescent pink, with swirling flashes of gold.

Urgol_stday

Mrak removed the silver stirring-stick from the pot and held it carefully under his antennae. Mmm, the stew was perfectly seasoned. Probably the first thing to go right for him on this stressful moving day. It still seemed a little thin, though, so he decided to add a spoonful or two of fleem. Now, where was it?

Mrak examined his own packing list, cross-referenced it with the printout from the movers, and determined that he needed to open box number 47. He poked around in the back of the kitchen until he found a box labelled 47, but it was obviously the wrong box. This one was too large to contain just a bag of fleem, and it seemed to be made of some kind of heavy paper. It had symbols he didn't recognize written in an uneven line down the side. Those idiots must have swapped his box with someone else's! Well, things could be worse. If a bag of fleem, even an almost-full one, was all he lost in this move, it would be his best move to date.

Just for curiosity's sake, Mrak tore open the top of the paper box to see what was inside. The contents were not immediately recognizable. He reached in and removed a ceramic object, held it up to the light, and wondered what it was. It was round, symmetrical, concave, and had a pattern of flowers painted around the rim. Some kind of art piece, perhaps? Probably not, he decided, because there were several more apparently identical ones inside the box. They seemed to be mass-produced. Maybe an article of clothing? Mrak tried balancing the object on his head. It wasn't very comfortable. He wondered what kind of strange creature would actually wear such a thing.

Well, it wasn't important. The contents of the box were almost certainly not valuable. He dropped the ceramic item back into the box, where it broke into several pieces with a loud crash; made a mental note to drag the box out to the trash later; and shuffled off to the stove to ladle out the stew, thin or not. He'd have to be sure to buy a fresh bag of fleem next time he went grocery shopping.