The Room That Wasn’t There
Table of Contents
1: The Extra Hatch
Mara was halfway through fixing a heat regulator when she noticed the power spike.
“Jonno,” she called across the corridor, “why is Sector 7B drawing current?”
Jonno Virek poked his head out of the pantry, brow furrowed. “Sector what now?”
“Seven B. Between the galley and auxiliary bunk.”
“There is no Sector 7B. Always been six sectors. The ‘Queen’ may be a tarted-up crate, but she’s geometrically honest.”
Mara turned her tablet so he could see the diagram. Sure enough, there it was: a neat rectangular compartment labelled 7B: Quiet Lounge. It even had a tiny teacup icon.
“Well that’s worrying,” Jonno muttered.
They found the hatch nestled between the tea locker and the dry-sock cubby — a place Jonno swore was just wall yesterday. A faded brass plaque read:
7B: Quiet Lounge. Please Remove Shoes.
Mara checked the seal. No tampering. No dust. It looked like it had always been there. She glanced at Jonno.
“You first.”
“You have the toolkit.”
“You have the life insurance.”
Jonno sighed, rubbed his temple, and opened the door.
Inside was a tidy little lounge. Potted fern. Reading lamp. Wallpaper in understated lavender. And, in the centre, a man sat peacefully in an armchair.
He was quite dead.
2: No One Enters, No One Leaves
The corpse — a tidy-looking elder in a cardigan — sat with his hands
folded and a teaspoon clutched between two fingers. The spoon bore the
faint engraving:
Peregrine Queen – Set of 12 – Do Not Microwave.
Jonno’s eyes narrowed. “That’s my teaspoon.”
“You’re sure?”
“I counted them last month. I always count them. There were twelve. Now there are eleven.”
Mara examined the room. No visible exits. No crawlspaces. No vents large enough for a hamster, let alone a cardiganed stranger. The chamber was sealed and self-contained.
She tried running a scan. The scanner beeped twice and declared it was “having a moment.”
The ship’s AI, Glynis, flatly refused to acknowledge the room at all.
“I don’t see anything there,” said Glynis. “Are you playing make-believe again?”
“It’s a man in an armchair holding a stolen spoon,” Jonno said.
“Unlikely,” Glynis sniffed. “That spoon set is discontinued.”
Mara attempted to map the room’s dimensions. The blueprint refused to load. Then other rooms began vanishing from the ship’s internal model — the laundry bay flickered, the shower became “not found,” and the emergency biscuit shelf was downgraded to theoretical.
“This is bad,” she muttered.
Jonno nodded. “We need to stabilise him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes. But whatever he is, he’s clearly anchoring something. And that something appears to be us.”
3: The Cup of Continuity
Jonno disappeared for ten minutes. When he returned, he carried a tray: a fresh pot of Darjeeling, one chipped cup, and a single ginger snap.
Mara watched him set it gently beside the corpse.
“You think he needs a cuppa?”
“I think he already had one,” Jonno said, “and the ritual needs completing.”
He poured the tea with solemn care. The spoon remained loosely curled in the man’s fingers, but the air in the room seemed to still — like a radio finally tuned to the correct frequency.
Outside, the ship stopped flickering. The shower returned. The emergency biscuit shelf restabilised, along with its mandatory ginger supply.
Sector 7B was gone. Not destroyed — simply… gone. The hatch now led to a blank wall, as it always had. No reading lamp. No wallpaper. No quiet.
Jonno found the missing teaspoon two days later, neatly stacked in the cutlery drawer with a small sticker on its handle:
DO NOT REMOVE.
Mara gave Jonno a long look. “Did your hair always part that way?”
Jonno squinted at her. “Possibly. Did your eyes used to be that shape?”
They stared at one another for a beat.
“Room did something,” Mara said flatly.
“Good thing it didn’t get the spoon,” Jonno replied.
Comments
Post a Comment