"Drip—Tick—Drip—Tick—"
In the white, sterile hospital room, the diagnostic equipment emitted a regular beeping sound. An old man lay on the bed, wearing a breathing mask, his body connected to numerous sensing devices monitoring his vitals. A cannula on his wrist connected to a bottle of intravenous fluid, the colorless transparent liquid slowly entering his body.
The room was very quiet. Not a sound could be heard from the hallway outside, and the only window did not look out onto a pleasant natural landscape, but onto undulating water waves instead.
Time quietly passed, dust particles in the room slowly settled. After an indeterminate amount of time, a series of light footsteps broke the silence, coming from the corridor, then the door opened.
A girl with light blue, fluffy short hair walked in. She wore a white long-sleeved thin coat, resembling a research scientist, but she bore no badges or pins signifying any occupation.
Approaching the bed, she first glanced at the monitoring devices before sitting down, looking at the sleeping old man and letting time drip away.
About half an hour later, she stood up, pressed a button on the device, and the upper half of the bed slowly rose. After a brief period of mild stimulation, the old man slowly opened his eyes.
His gray eyes, out of focus, looked around, seeming to barely recognize the girl in front of him.
"You've come," he said, his voice weak. If it weren't for the extreme quietness of the room, probably no one would have heard him.
"Yes," the girl gently touched the old man's forehead.
"How long have I slept?" the old man asked.
"35 days, 4 hours," the girl answered.
"That long, huh? Cough, cough," his body shook as he placed his withered fingers on the bed, trying to sit up but unable to do so.
"Let me help you," the girl assisted the old man in sitting up and then softly patted his back.
"Thank you, I feel a bit better now," the old man said after sitting up and resting for a while before speaking again gradually.
"Looks like my time is running out."
"Not at all, I have arranged the best medical plan for you; you can keep going," the girl consoled him.
"No use, the limits of genetics are there, and no medical plan can go beyond that." He had lived for over 200 years, which was almost the human limit.
"If we were to perform gene editing..." the girl started but then hesitated.
"It's not possible, the Federation has long since banned that kind of research, even though I've fought hard against it before—" the old man spoke slowly.
"I have lived long enough. Continuing to struggle has no meaning," he said as he reached out, groping to grasp the girl's wrist.
"You should be eighteen this year, right? You can go to the Central Star Domain to study. There's no need to stay here anymore, cough, cough."
"But I..." the girl bit her lip, wanting to explain something, but in the end, she kept silent, probably realizing that her reasons wouldn't convince the old man before her.
"I know, I understand, heh," the old man tried to appear as though he was smiling, patting the girl's head.
"You're still as adorable when you're coquettish as when you were a child."
His words were nostalgic, spoken slowly, followed by a long silence.
After resting for a while, the old man gathered a bit of energy and continued to speak.
"That's it then, it's time to say goodbye. Now that I've seen you grow up healthy, I have no regrets."
"But..." Looking at the elderly man, tears slowly filled the girl's eyes. She blinked them back and lowered her head to quietly wipe them away.
Soft sobs spread through the quiet hospital room and it took a long time for them to slowly quiet down.
"I..." After uttering a single word, the girl paused, closed her eyes, and then slowly opened them again.
"I'll sing a song," she said and then hummed a melody softly.
The tune had no lyrics—quiet with a tinge of melancholy, solitude infused with memories. Entwined in the gentle voice was a sniffle that could make one cry.
Listening to the song, the old man rested comfortably on the bed, his eyes slowly closing. The beeping of the monitoring equipment became fainter and more infrequent until it finally fell silent.
After the melody ended, the room returned to quiet. The girl stared blankly at the old man who no longer breathed, sitting motionless, and then she lay on the bed and began to cry.
Tears soaked the bedsheet, her back heaving with sobs, occasionally broken by a stifled cough.
Hours later, the girl, finally coming to her senses, slowly stood up, looking at the old man's now gray and ashen face. She carefully pulled up the bedsheet, then walked out of the room with measured steps.
Leaning against the cold, silent corridor, the girl stared at the reflection on the floor for several minutes before she got back up and headed towards the end of the corridor.
[Welcome, Miss Shui Yanqing. How should we proceed with the disposal of patient 11843's body?]
A pale blue holographic screen appeared at the end of the hallway.
"Proceed with cremation and then store the ashes," she replied.
[Understood. An Autonomous Unit is being arranged to move the body.]
After speaking, the girl continued to sit on the side bench in the corridor, lost in thought, until half an hour later, a hemispherical autonomous unit moved to her side and handed her a silver-gray metal box.
The box was sealed, with rows of letters on it, recording the name and lifespan of the ashes' owner.
{Newman Vonkel Ivanovich, 1037.10.05-1255.07.14}
Her fingers gently stroked the letters engraved on the metal box as the girl fell into her memories, it must have been a day more than forty years ago.
The sky was filled with icy sand carried by the wild wind, scraping across the land under the gloomy sky, the world was a dead silence littered with ruins, the remnants of abandoned buildings, exhumed machine parts, once powerful war machines torn in half, one buried in the ground and the other covered by icy sand, with only a few sharp edges still standing against the wind.