Chapter 36 - Sol Five, The Universe’s Final Broadcasting Station (1/2)

Mai Dong felt that she was on the brink of death.

In the past ten hours, she had forced herself to sleep six times. This was the seventh time her hunger had woken her up. Over the past two days, Mai Dong had only eaten two sandwiches, three compressed biscuits, and had two cups of water. All of that was enough for an adult’s lunch, but Mai Dong had no choice but to split it into six portions.

She had finished her final piece of compressed biscuit six hours ago.

Mai Dong searched all the modules in the United Space Station, opened every cabinet, and bit down on anything that she suspected to be edible. She was after all a lady from Guangzhou, Guangdong—famed for its inhabitants to eat anything and everything. But even if she was from Guangdong, she would still starve to death from the lack of food on the United Space Station.

The girl curled herself into a sleeping bag, looking at the module walls above her with her eyes wide open. Her face was pale, and she was as weak as a reed.

Mai Dong’s sleeping quarters were a cramped compartment. The space wasn’t much bigger than a bathroom. The sleeping bag was tied to the module wall with nylon bands, and the entrance to the compartment only had a curtain pulled across for a door.

The United Space Station was constantly filled with a pounding noise as if a construction site was just opposite. Mai Dong wasn’t able to shield herself from the noise, even with earplugs. All she could do was tie Styrofoam material securely around her sleeping quarters before stuffing her head into the sleeping bag.

Mai Dong attempted to close her eyes. Moments later, she opened her eyes again.

She just couldn’t fall asleep.

She was just too hungry.

Never had Mai Dong ever felt so close to death. She stared blankly at the opposite module wall’s rope and post-its, as though she could see her end. If nothing unexpected happened, she would silently die alone. She would slowly turn to dust and bone in a corner, unreachable by anyone.

This gave her a suffocating sense of despair. She felt as though she was trapped inside a cage that was being dunked into deep water. In space, no one can hear you scream.

A tiny Shiba Inu doll entered the girl’s vision as Mai Dong reached her hand out and grabbed the toy.

She squeezed the dog with the conniving expression, kneading it again and again as she silently laughed.

“If only you were a real puppy…”

Mai Dong whispered.

“That way, I could eat you.”

Blinding sunlight seeped in from the curtains. Mai Dong knew that the sun had risen again when the white beam of light, shining on the dark inner lining of the living module, moved.

The United Space Station didn’t actually have any night or day. The space station’s orbit period was eighty minutes. This meant that it took less than one and a half hours to circle Mars once, allowing a person in the station to see the sunset and sunrise once. In Earth’s twenty-four hours, the United Space Station would have seen the sunset and sunrise sixteen times.

Therefore, Mai Dong’s sleeping followed a temporal plan. She set an alarm for herself to sleep at fixed intervals, waking up to work when the alarm rang… But, Mai Dong didn’t have much work to do. She was a botanist by profession. In the space station, she had a tiny experiment module for her to plant potatoes, tomatoes, and lettuce. Her research was on the growth of edible plants in microgravity.

Mai Dong crawled out of her sleeping bag, gently pushing the cabin’s wall before floating backward out of the sleeping quarters. Then, she passed through hatches after hatches of cabins, as though she was passing through a tunnel.

The United Space Station was clearly a claustrophobic place, but Mai Dong still found it spacious alone.

Mai Dong had a fixed route. She would first head for the experiment module to check on the seeds she had grown in the vessels after waking up. Then, she would make a trip through all the facilities in the space station to check their functionality.