Notes From the Slow Room

The clocks were useless in Outpost Theta.

I had four: one on my wrist, two on the console, and another built into my glasses’ display. Each ticked at a different rate, betraying their allegiance to the patchwork of relativistic fields that folded the station into itself like taffy. Every so often I’d catch myself staring at the digital readouts, trying to guess which version of time was closest to real—the answer, always, was none.

My name is Tamsin Yarrow. For eight months—subjectively speaking—I’ve been responsible for keeping the station’s environmental systems alive while we wait for the rest of humanity to catch up. Officially, our job is data collection; unofficially, it’s surviving with as much of ourselves intact as possible.

I’d noticed my legs getting weaker by week three. It’s easy to forget your body when your mind is constantly stretched across chronal gradients. Even a stroll around the cramped pod felt like traversing centuries or seconds—depending on which corridor you chose. The medical AI recommended movement: gentle exercise, low impact, regular intervals.

On my third supply rotation, they sent up a box containing the elliptical machine—a squat, silent thing that slid neatly under my workstation. The Putnen Under Desk Elliptical Machine. Its name was stamped in blocky type along the base, but it was otherwise unobtrusive; no one here had room for vanity projects.

I started using it while logging radiation readouts. My knees protested at first; then they settled into a rhythm with the pedals’ glide—forward for thirty minutes (or what my wristwatch called thirty), then backward until my quads remembered how to flex. The resistance dial clicked satisfyingly between levels—my own little illusion of control amid all this chronological chaos.

It was quiet enough that Oleg, two modules down, never heard me pedaling during our daily calls. Sometimes he’d glance at my lower half and smirk. “Training for a marathon?”

“Just trying not to fossilize before extraction day,” I’d reply.

He understood. We all did; age creeps up faster in places like this—not because you’re living quicker, but because you’re forgetting what normal feels like. My skin grew pale in artificial light; my calves tingled at night from lack of circulation despite gravity plating set to Earth norms.

On day 147 (or maybe 148), I received a message burst from Terra: Dad’s birthday was coming up again—already?—and he wanted to video chat if outpost conditions allowed. I positioned myself at my desk with the elliptical beneath me, letting the auto mode churn away gently while I talked him through laggy signal echoes and grainy images.

He’d always been active until arthritis got in his way. "What’s that thing under your desk?" he asked after catching sight of my moving feet.

"Keeps me honest," I said, grinning for his benefit. "Low-impact stuff—they say it improves circulation, keeps muscles from wasting away out here. There’s even a remote so I don’t have to crawl around plugging things in."

He nodded slowly, face softening with something between pride and envy.

Later that cycle—call it night or morning—the comms relay went down in sector B. I spent hours hunched over tangled wires and diagnostic panels while time bled irregularly from one end of the module to another. When it was over and systems blinked green again, exhaustion hit me in waves. My legs felt leaden; numbness crept up past my knees.

That’s when I appreciated most how simple things could anchor you: hands on cool plastic grips, feet pushing quietly against resistance set just right for tired muscles. The machine counted rotations and calories on its LCD screen—a small testament that I existed moment-to-moment within this skewed chronology.

In those drifting cycles between events—when reports were written but answers would take years to reach Earth—I moved without going anywhere. The Putnen elliptical was neither cure nor crutch; more like a tether back to myself: proof that even when time became uncertain and bodies unreliable, there were ways to reclaim a little agency.

Oleg left first—his shift over once his family’s timeline caught up—and new faces arrived with new aches and fresh curiosity about how we managed isolation here in the slow room.

“Keep moving,” I’d tell them when they asked for advice on adjusting to Outpost Theta’s peculiarities.

Sometimes technology means more than circuits or code; sometimes it’s just enough motion in your legs to remind you where you end and eternity begins.