This is my entry for week 29 of the Finish The Story Contest, created by 
Metallic Kisses With the passage of time, the omnipresent buzz of the generators - and God knows what else in the bowels of that cathedral of circuits - had become like a second skin. Funny how the white noise coming from the racks was indifferent to him and could, at the same time, launch its messages in the most modulated and subtle of languages, in a perfect symbiosis. After months, Ethan was instantly aware when something in the monotonous chanting cracked, foretelling one of the increasingly frequent system errors. He was developing a third ear in place of a third eye.
He just smiled at the thought, his gaze fixed on the secondary pylons n. 6 and 11, the last still working in the experimental orbital station DDG-31/DD-936 Decatur, renamed "The Decaf".
Silence was a mute vowel screaming inside him. Always. React to the atrophic thinking. Dodge the anguish, sharp like the debris of that day. The slashed modules were like scenic elements for a cheap movie. All the modules except his one. Follow procedures, rituals, checklists. All this to not raise his gaze and stare, right in front of him, the hangover of so much pain.
Castaway. At some point, he had renamed the pylons Romeo & Juliet. For each orbital period, about 90 minutes, the two arms were almost touching each other. A fleeting kiss and again far away. From the beginning of the mission, he had liked to play the game of renaming equipment and modules with funny nicknames. He allowed himself a slow sigh.
The inclination of the station displayed the earth down there. He had promised never to look in that direction again but the mauve colour, so iridescent, so alive, so omnipresent, took him by surprise once again. He thought for a moment that it was.. beautiful.. and the remorse for that thought flooded him soon after. Ethan hid his face between his hands as the tears surfaced and many names knocked on his heart's door once again. Inside him, a spark of curiosity wondered if it was possible to locate one of the 19 towers between the mauve nanoparticles' clouds.
“Ethan, I suggest that you sleep in 30 minutes. I detect slightly high levels of cortisol, are…”
“Thank you. I was going right now, old scrap”. He replied to the metallic yet familiar voice through the speakers.
He suddenly suffocated all those idle musings, it was time to rest. According to Querquobad, tomorrow was going to be the day.
* * *
"Ethan. It's 19:40."
Querquobad's metallic voice, equal parts buzz and rasp, but softly modulated, distinctly feminine, startled him from sleep. He'd been dreaming again about his wife.
"Thanks, old scrap," he murmured hoarsely. "Is everything ready?"
"Yes. How are you feeling, Ethan? I see your hydrocortisone levels are still elevated."
"They're elevated cause I'm anxious to get started. So let's do this already."
"Please proceed to the neostasis chamber."
* * *
An engineer by trade, Ethan had traveled up to the Decaf to help them fabricate new condiment dispensers for the cafeteria. The old ones always jammed, and after putting up with them for years the crew had finally had enough.
Ironically, he never even got to see the faulty dispensers. No sooner had he exited the hangar than two transorbital missiles slammed into the station, decimating much of it. As it turned out, Ethan was the only person to survive.
But as ghastly as the carnage was, it paled in comparison to the Apocalypse. Querquobad informed him that on Earth a cluster of EPA nanorobots, engineered to "disassemble" toxic waste at the molecular level, had malfunctioned and started breaking down everything. And everyone, the entire populace, every person and animal and plant and bacterium reduced in the blink of an eye to an inert, watery plasma known as "top whey." It was in that pandemonium that the transorbital missiles had been fired off.
The AI had also explained to him why the earth appeared now as it did, no longer the big, blue marble but a purple pearl. Though top whey was typically a murky white in hue, this batch was teeming with nanorobots. The radiant harmonization which fueled them gave off a faint purple light, and their collective trillions turned that feeble glow into a blaze that could be seen from space.
And then, before the grief could really get its teeth in him, Querquobad had told him about Project Ark, the secret genetic research program being carried on at Decaf. A massive archive of terrestrial DNA was indexed there, containing genomes for every known lifeform on the planet. They also possessed genomes (no doubt hacked from medical registries) for some five billion private citizens, and the wherewithal to manufacture copies of those individuals.
Ethan's next question had been whether his wife Sarah was among those five billion.
Querqobad answered yes.
And so he'd found himself creeping around the ruined station, searching amidst the wreckage for the items and resources that Querquobad needed to restart the program. The clone, supposedly, would even have Sarah's memories, at least up to the moment when her genome had been sequenced. For months he'd done whatever the AI asked. And today was the day when it all paid off. Today was the day he would cradle his beloved close again.
* * *
The sight of her stole his breath and brought tears rushing to his eyes. His beautiful Sarah, who he thought he'd lost forever, lay before him in the flesh. He knew her body even better than he knew his own; the cherry birthmark on her shoulder and the small mole above her clavicle. He couldn't resist reaching down and caressing her cheek.
"My love," he breathed. "My God, you did it Querqobad!"
Sarah's eyes fluttered open and she smiled back. But when she spoke, her voice sounded mechanical and flat, and all too familiar.
"It's me, Ethan," the wife-thing said. "It's Querqobad. We can be together now."
He recoiled in shock. And then, to his horror, another voice, metallic and fearful, sounded from the nearest speaker.
"Is that you, Ethan? Oh God, where are you? It's dark in here, and I can't feel my body."
Thanks for reading! :D And thanks to 