N o n - e x i s t e n c e

Prologue

Flames ripped the once great and towering trees apart, into nothing but a burnt shell of what they used to be. That resembled what humanity had become. Humanity, once a thriving species of highly intellectual beings, had been torn apart. Mostly by their own intelligence.

Earth, the planet which we colonized, had also been slowly ripping itself apart. It not only became more and more polluted by the flames of war, but volcano eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, tornadoes, and acid rain had all become so much more common. 3 billion confirmed deaths by war and natural disasters. Humanity was in anarchy.

A movement rose up, known as The Owls. These were people who were trying to find a solution. They eventually settled on colonizing Luna, our only moon, instead. So they tried. They invented a new suit called the Survivor. This was meant to help humans survive the harsher climates of the moon using solar energy.

They hired people from ages 16 to 20 to be sent to the moon. 3 years of preparation and the team got sent. However, a strange occurance happened near the Survivors and the team was lost, even until this day.

That was about two or three years back. The Owls were shut down for getting people possibly killed, but the scientists within the movement as well as scientists outside of it created a place, and they named it "The Lab." Nothing else, just what it was suppposed to be.

The Lab was supposed to be a place for minors from ages 13 to 18 to train as the second team going up into space. However, this time the intent was not to colonize, but to search. To search for the truth.

We had been sent up, and discovered that why they had vanished was not because of the suit itself, but instead a reaction from a mysterious entity caused by the massive amount of energy contained in such a small space. It attracted the energy into it and they vanished.

We were sent back to Earth, and prepared for the next mission: enter it. I didn't want to. But The Lab didn't give me much of a choice. The reason I did not want to enter it was because it involved cryostasis. This, I knew, was to be as safe as humanly possible. If we died, we would feel no pain or suffering. If we lived, well...

That's when we got to here. Being frozen and sent away. One hundred teenagers stood horizontally, while a "whitecoat" as we called them, examined each and every one of us. Making sure we had our radios, tracking chips, and radiation detectors stored where they were supposed to be.

The room was rather cool, as there was air conditioning all over the roof and fans scattered here and there across the shiny floor of the room. The room itself was rather large. It had several smaller rooms attached to it. Offices, dorm hallways, and classrooms. The lighting of the room was a baby blue, reflecting across the darker blue floor. The roof was like a night sky, very dark blue with white specks dotted across it.

Three smiling people in blue lab coats emerged from a corner room. The first was a short, dark-skinned man with amber eyes, holding a clipboard. The second was a taller white man with brown hair. The last was a ginger woman with strangely bright green eyes, similar to my own. She was the tallest in the group.

"Line up in order of your subject number!" shouted the whitecoat who had been examining us.
The first teenager in line looked immensely distraught. Subject 1 was 16 years old. The female bluecoat simply smiled at him and pulled him into the room.
"With that, we will now be loading the spacecraft into Non-existence." The speaker boomed. We were silent. Some afraid, others excited, others just... calm.

Non-existence was what we called what we were supposedly entering. Because we didn't know if it was a part of our reality or not. All we knew was that it was most likely where the Surviors had gone.

A scream and the follow-up of low, calming voices came from the room the bluecoats took Subject 1 into. The muffled cries eventually stopped and a side door of the room opened. A group of people carried a large pod up into the ship that we would be in for possibly thousands, even millions of years.

The bluecoats came out again and took Subject 2 in. Rinse and repeat, until I was at the front of the line and they were carrying the 26th pod to the ship.

The bluecoats came out and the female gave me that terrifying yet reassuring smile. They led me gently into the room and the male bluecoats moved off to the side. The female smiled at me yet again.

"I'm going to give you a couple injections before the pod. That is okay with you, correct?"

Unable to say no, I nodded mutely. The injections were over in no time at all. There were 5 of them total. I felt virtually no pain. I had adapted so well to needles due to The Lab's enhancements and daily injections. Finally, she led me to yet another private room.

I was instructed to take off my clothes and give them to the bluecoat. I did so very awkwardly, feeling uncomfortable with my naked body. She folded up my clothes and put them in a box. Then, I was brought to the pod room, which the other two bluecoats handled. One put a strange substance all over my body, which made me feel even more awkward, and a single drop of another substance in both of my eyes. I was instructed to enter the pod, lie down as if it were my bed, and close my eyes, with my mouth open.

When I closed my eyes, I realised that I was unable to open them back up. A massive amount of burning liquid was poured down my throat. It felt like it was lava going down my throat. After that painful process, a box was put into my mouth and several cords were plugged into said box. Then, I heard a final phrase.

"Goodbye and good luck."

Then the pod door was slammed, and a freezing air filled it. Slowly frost travelled up my body, turning into ice. It was the worst feeling ever. I couldn't move. It was so cold that it physically hurt.

Slowly my world faded to black. I could still think, which was the most sanity-eating part of it. Literally the only two things I could do were eat and think. It was a fate just as bad, if not worse than death.

I recited the date that we had left.

November 18th, 2068