The last month has felt like an apocalypse– a very slow apocalypse.
California skies turned orange. Every day I watched the red sun rise until one day the air quality was so bad that I had to stop going outside.
Staying inside was worse, of course, but I had to do it to protect my littles.
The fires on the west coast were the last straw for me. Between being shut away from everyone, and shut away from nature I finally felt like I was cracking. It really did feel like the end of everything.
I know that everyone handles things differently. I’ve always handled myself through writing. I also tend to inject a bit of levity into my processing.
Thus, The Test Tube was born. Written several months before I hit the mental apocalypse wall, it felt like the right time to put it out there. I hope you enjoy it!
The Test Tube
By Jill N Davies
It might be hard to believe, but the day the world ended was like any other day. That’s because the end of the world was a complete accident.
Seriously.
It took a lot of research, but I’ve concluded that the doomsday device was likely nothing more than a regular old test tube.
Based on years of research I believe that test tube 1536 held the liquid that ended the world.
1536 looked just like every other test tube. This can’t be true, of course because if it had been almost any other test tube things wouldn’t have worked out the way they did. But I suspect that 1536’s smooth Pyrex surface was covered in microscopic defects, a porous landscape of the work it had done and the foundation that laid out the beginning of the end.
This was likely result of a manufacturing error that was documented in the fall of 2016, shortly before 1536 arrived at the laboratory receiving building along with 499 other freshly manufactured test tubes. By all appearances it was identical to all the other test tubes, however, while every other test tube underwent a careful cooling process that resulted in a smooth surface, 1536 cooled next to a broken fuse that resulted in an invisibly bubbly exterior. Approximately 8,000 test tubes never left the manufacturer due to this error. 1536 must have been missed because it was supposed to have rested on the line of what was determined ‘safe.’
According to the records, 1536 was used to detect heavy metals. During the experiment, microscopic flecks of lead sulfate must have adhered to the extra-porous surface of 1536. That was the beginning of the end. Unfortunately, there was no way for anyone to know at the time.
In the spring of 2020, the laboratory relocated to the southeast side of Texas. 1536 made the cross-country journey by freight in early April 2020. Approximately 13% of all glassware was damaged. If 1536 had been one of the disposed glassware items things would have been different, but it survived in pristine shape.
On the last day on Earth, 1536 was retrieved from available glassware along with 36 other test tubes, 3 one-liter beakers, a 500 mL round bottom flask and a package of fresh tips for the variable micropipet.
Test tubes were lined up on the lab bench. While the serum was being prepared, a lab tech added a small amount of highly concentrated acid into each tube as was indicated in the experimental design.
Nothing happened visually, but upon the addition of the acid to 1536 the lead sulfate that had been clinging to the bubbly, porous surface began to dissociate.
The acidic solution was supposed to rest for exactly ten minutes before the tubes were dumped. If that had happened, everything would have been fine, but it never did.
After the lab tech added the acid to the test tubes, he went to start a timer, but they had all been moved to the other laboratory by night shift. He dutifully left in search of the timers but was stopped in the hall by the day shift manager, who was doing a safety audit.
The manager wanted to know why the liquid waste container was within an inch of being full and had not been taken out to waste collection. The lab tech did his best to explain that it was next on his list, but the shift manager wouldn’t hear it. So the lab tech, forgetting about the timer, dutifully switched gears and the day shift manager dutifully ticked the audit off of his to-do list.
Meanwhile the experiment continued. After the nitric acid, the lab tech was meant to put a buffer solution into the test tubes in preparation for the serum. When the scientists approached the bench and saw the liquid in the test tubes, they assumed that it was the buffer solution, not nitric acid. This, of course, shouldn’t have happened, but lots of things that shouldn’t happen end up happening on any given day.
When the serum was added to the nitric acid in 1536 the lead ions must have bounded to the activation complex. This caused such an intense exothermic reaction that flames shot out of the top of the test tube. Those flames ignited the serum within the other test tubes creating such an intense heat that the scientists were forced to evacuate.
By the time the fire department responded, the entire laboratory site was a flaming inferno. That inferno sunk into the growing fault line that split the eastern side of Texas.
That same intense heat caused unprecedented tectonic activity, creating a worldwide volcanic chain reaction. The temperatures on the surface of the earth reached upwards of 100O C, causing a massive extinction event.
One portion of the laboratory was shielded from this disaster. When the Eastern Texas plates opened up it swallowed the north wing of the laboratories from the blast shield on. They were encased in an insulative layer of semi-molten granite, protecting everything inside. The Earthen shell protected everything within, from laboratory equipment, to the mainframe database and the lab tech, who was dumping the liquid waste behind the blast shelter when the accident happened.
I’m that lab tech, and I may be the only person left alive in the world. There may be others who were able to protect themselves, but I have no way of confirming that. I’m trapped in here.
I tried to escape for the first couple of years, but it’s impossible. I’ve survived by eating grossly mutated amphibians and distilling water from the gasses that waft in from the tectonic vent. I’ve passed the time reading the archives and piecing together the events that lead to the end of the earth.
After all, I figured someone should document it.
You know, just in case there’s anyone still out there…
The End
Want something with a bit more meat on the bones? I write short stories for reedsy. You can check out my entries:
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I’ve been published in a winter anthology. Check out my short story Shipwrecked Santa in Angry Eagle’swinter anthology, Apocalyptic Winter- Book 2. You can get your copy on Amazon today
If you’ve got an idea for a flash fiction story send it to me at author@jillndavies.com
Tune in next week for more Flash Fiction.
If you’ve got an idea for a flash fiction story send it to me at author@jillndavies.com.
Tune in next week for more flash fiction.
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