Carusoe 19
by Mel King
Cerisse pressed her hands over her ears as the first alarm of the day echoed through the station, the shrieking ghost of a Stuka Siren almost three centuries since the last one was decommissioned. 494 hz rose to 587 hz and fell again; dirty, low frequencies that unsettled you on a visceral level and made you feel like you might spontaneously evacuate your bowels. Not that she had anything to evacuate; there hadn’t been any food for days. Her stomach griped as Jericho's trumpet fell blessedly silent and the day began. She wondered if it had become a kind of evolutionary behaviorism, responding to the siren with pants-shitting terror the way mothers sometimes lactated when they heard a screaming baby.
Until a few days ago, Soowan, the station chef, had been bringing her meals in silence, refusing to make eye contact, tears streaming down his face. It hurt her heart. Soowan had always seemed so happy, downright giggly at times, and bursting with pride over his culinary delights. A lead catering gig for an asteroid mining monolith like Caruso’s must have been a huge career boost for him, she figured. Lesser companies fed their grunts on freeze dried protein mash and daily nutrient shots; word was the newer Zijin-Vale stations didn’t even have kitchens, let alone a chef.
The last time Soowan had come to her room, he’d brought her Peking Duck, an absurdly elaborate meal under the circumstances. His hands had been shaking so much that his perfectly shaped mini- pancakes had slid around on the plate, almost landing in her lap. Free flowing tears had fallen from his lowered eyes as he silently handed her his final offering. When he hadn’t returned the next morning, she’d understood that he was dead, and that it was a punishment. For her. For Soowan, death had probably come as a relief.
