Epilogue

“Aaaand his eyes open.”

-Tom Servo, Mystery Science Theater 3000: Space Mutiny

           

            The shattered husk of what had been the island of Matoul continued to smoke.

Though the island was destroyed, together with the facility it had once held, a number of its deeper chambers remained. Blocked, choked with rubble, and buried deep below the waves, they were nonetheless largely intact.

            Within one of these chambers, sealed by earth and rubble and half-filled with smoking debris, there was movement. The pile of debris was shifting, as though something inside were trying to get out. Like a chick emerging from its egg, the unknown creature pushed and clawed its way up, little by little, until finally, all at once, it burst from its enclosure.

            “I LIVE!” shrieked Dr. Ted Nelson into the blackness. “Ha ha! The treatment worked better than I had ever imagined! Fritz! Fritz, where are you?”

            Next to him, another figure rose slowly from the debris as Fritz, looking thoroughly punch-drunk, emerged groaning.

            “You LIVE!” Nelson exclaimed in delight, pulling his assistant up. “Spectacular! I told Prosser that the same technique that made Hank could be used on ourselves with little to no cognitive loss. And now look! We still live while all else is rubble!”

            He clapped his long hands together and laughed in delight at his own success.

            “Now,” he said eagerly, looking around at the sealed and ruined chamber at the bottom of the sea and rubbing his hands with excitement. “How do we get out of here?”