Title: Short Distances
Fandom: Doom (1993) *
Rating: PG-13
Length: 950 Words
Content Notes: Implied canon-typical scary stuff.
Author Notes: For all those times when I thought it would be nice if the lone protag of a Doom title were a woman.
Summary: On the day the lights went out across the solar system, they went out in one of its most distant corners, too.

* Mods: Please tag this fandom as f: video game (category). Thank you.

* * * *

All the clocks in the installation offered multiple readings. One set of numbers advertised the hour according to local time, the locality being Rhea, one of the moons of Saturn. Another set denoted Earth standard time, also called UTC. A third set represented not a specific time, but the difference between real time and time as it passed in ... the other place. The in-between. The non-space. The neither. It had no official name.

Dr. Lucia Balotelli followed that set of numbers like a religion, noting them in her old-fashioned journal and waiting for them to reach a specific range in order to continue her tests – boring, at least on the face of it, but she had never been involved in science for the sake of theatrics. Unlike many of her colleagues at the installation, she understood the importance of numbers, of tedium, of all the small things that made the big things possible.

That mindset had resulted in her being assigned to Rhea, not to one of the facilities circling Mars, or to the new project that had been started in Jupiter orbit. The anomaly that had been detected on Rhea had been too small for full-scale experiments, too small for a military detail and everything that implied, but it was big enough for the small things.

Lucia turned to look at the anomaly in question. At first glance, it seemed to be nothing more than a blurring of the air, like heat rising from pavement in the summer on Earth, but the glass-like cylinder that contained it used several forms of radiation to 'paint' the distortion and make it visible as a red slash in the air, perhaps big enough to admit a human hand, no more.

A scientist from one of the Mars projects might thrust a hand into the anomaly, toss a baseball through it, coerce a small animal in making the journey, any number of risky experiments. Not Lucia. She looked at her readouts, studied wavelengths on monitors, recorded any fluctuations in her journal, and returned to her small desk in one corner of the laboratory.

But one of the fluctuations had gone into the red, its wavelength forming a spike that passed the bounds of what the instruments considered safe.

Lucia brought up the time frame on her desk computer. Normally, she only witnessed a spike if one of the large anomalies – almost always on Mars – became active, but those facilities always sent notice if they intended to pass anything through their gates. And none of those spikes had the size of the one that she was seeing on her screen. She picked up her handset and hit the button, listening for the familiar tone, but ... nothing, and that handset only allowed her to contact other areas of the Rhea facility.

She looked at the anomaly in its cylinder. It shimmered, but nothing more. And yet the monitors showed another spike. And another. A whole series of spikes, every single one of them in the red, showing non-stop activity. Again, she hit the button on her handset. Again, she heard nothing.

What to do, then? Lucia had to review the procedures in her head. She picked up a set of keys from her desk, found one that had a red sticker on it, and inserted it into a keyhole that she had to reveal by lifting a small hatch next to one of the monitors. Turning the key caused a lead-lined steel cylinder to descend from the ceiling, covering the anomaly, containing it. There had been no signs of danger in her immediate vicinity, but ... she had to do what she had to do. She was responsible for the only anomaly at the Rhea facility, and it had to be contained if there was any sign of risk.

She swiped her name badge through the reader by the door and left the room, but not before unlocking one of the drawers in her desk and retrieving her pistol – she had been required to take marksmanship classes for her job, considering the close links between the corporation and the military, but she had never imagined putting them to use.

How long until the next shuttle? The main office sent one to Rhea every thirty days. By her reckoning, she had three days until the next arrival. She had to gather up all six of her colleagues, lock down the facility, and get to the secured area that doubled as a spaceport to await rescue. A small part of her brain said that it might be nothing, that it might be a major discovery, a breakthrough, but that was big-thing thinking, and she was a small-things person. She had to act like it was a possible disaster.

Lucia thought that she heard whispering as she closed the door behind her and typed a code into the keypad to engage the blast shield that then descended to make the door impenetrable. The air acquired a heavy feeling, as if she was not alone. The artificial lights in the corridor flickered.

Nothing had come through the tiny anomaly, nothing that she could detect, nothing that had appeared on any of her instruments. And yet —

She had both hands on her pistol. Only six colleagues. Not a big facility. Only a short distance to the secured area. Had to take it one step at a time, keep thinking small things, one task before the other.

The whispering stopped.

There came a howl from another corridor, not far from her.

The third set of numbers on all the clocks changed to 66:66:66.

And the longest day of her life began ....

END.