Walking down halls of metal and tubes. There is an odd calming effect to it, don’t you agree? Silver is a very sterile colour, but it is indeed boring. I can see it in your eye, not even ten minutes in and already you are bored with the colour. Don’t worry, I promise that all of this will change. Sooner than you might think. However, let’s not delay. You are near the infirmary.

  Heh, didn’t expect it to be what you imagined? You thought it would be a room full of computers and techno wizardry beyond your comprehension. Instead, it is a room no bigger than the place you sleep in with a black block at the centre. It has no carvings, no way to tell what it does. Just a solid black slab. Sorta reminds me of the block from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Out of the movies created by humanity, that was one of the most boring and pretentious out of them all.

  That right there is your wonder device. The thing that can fix any injury and sickness. All you have to do is lie on it and do nothing for a few seconds. Sure, it may look like nothing. But that right there is the best the universe’s smartest minds came up with. It has many names, but I just call it the slab. No, I will not tell you its official name because you don’t know the language. A rough translation of one of the names will be “healing device made by Galio of the planet Skalairo the tenth”. Let’s just call it the Slab for your sake.

  How does it work? That is hard to describe without going into detail about nano-void theory and matrilateral manipulation without first describing quantum entanglement in a medical context. Honestly, it is a tiresome thing to explain, and I hate to go through it. To put it simply, and I mean painfully so. It is a hospital in a box. You will be scanned, examined, diagnosed, and treated at the same time.

  Before you asked, yes, I designed it myself. A silly question as everything in this ship is designed by me. But to entertain your question, I made it simpler and only have relevant information about you and the human species. It will save you several nanoseconds of runtime. Which I think is a good thing in the long run. As that means we can do more things with those free nanoseconds.

  As for its shape. Well, I just got lazy. I can make a tube that you lay in and wait for a bit. Or you can just be on that cube and pretend it is a bed. In fact, your bed does the exact same thing. I only kept the infirmary in case you want to play doctor or something.

  Funny, it reminds me of a few people back in the day. There is one person who was so fixated on wanting to be a doctor and not be a soldier. They built their entire philosophy around wanting a future without soldiers or war. Instead, all of them would be replaced with healers and doctors. Let’s just say, that person was very interesting. A shame they use it to justify their morally questionable actions to serve the “greater good”. You'll learn more about them, I promise you that.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Why do I make something like this? Well, why should I make anything else? Though simple in its design, the entire point of this ship and this place is to be as comfortable for you as possible. A bit of home with a dash of space wonder. Something for you to sit back and relax to. A simpler life, an honest one. If you want, to really get you into the mood.

  Before you ask. Yes, you can and you will die again. While you are physically immortal, I am more than aware that you will come to terms and be ready to die. You are the last actual thing that is living in this universe. The only one with a soul. All life, all biological material, is long gone. The body, as you already know, is synthetic. Your soul is decaying, slowly, but it is decaying. Once its time is up, you will simply cease to exist.

  Don’t be alarmed, it is painless and instant. You won’t even know it when it happens. You will just simply die. It will be like how you died in the 21st century. You will have a really long period of sleep and nothingness. Wonder how it was almost instantaneous? How you were there, on Earth, and now you are here. That is all death ever is, one long period of sleep. But how you died, .

  The universe is, what is the word to describe it? Similar… yes, similar. It is a living organism, its heart beating a rhythm which manipulates the universal clock. Moving everything forward until its eventual end. It isn’t like the concept of time you are familiar with. No, that is just a phenomenon of gravity and void energies. The universal clock is something different entirely. It is what caused the birth and eventual death of this universe. Every beat of its heart is slow, never following any pattern of time.

  For example, in one part of the universe. It could detect two beats of the universal heart in a span of three billion years. On earth, they would detect five in a span of five seconds. There is no proper way to measure the heartbeat of the universe, as the readings will be way off due to a variety of external factors. You can only detect it accurately once everything has died. Annoying, I know. Knowing the universal clock can only be measured when the universe is dead.

  I suppose you want to know, really know. . Clever of you for pointing out that my explanation is far too simplistic. Okay, I’ll give you that. I’ll tell you. I might even tell you a simple story about it.