Outlived by SodaStream

Welcome to Permission to Weird — my corner for experiments, odd ideas, and sometimes whole stories.

Sep 27, 2025

Last time I shared the first chapter of my dystopian novel, Protocol.

Today’s topic is different: a short story that started when I noticed my SodaStream CO₂ cartridge had been working for way longer than it should.

What began as ‘What if?’ became this story about routine, reality, and what happens when the mundane breaks its own rules.

Day 1

The alarm shrieked at 6:30. She grunted and stopped it, considered quitting, realized being homeless meant not sleeping in a bed, then peeled herself off the sheets like old tape coming off a box.

Bathroom. Wash. Prep. She kept everything mechanical, no thinking involved: toothpaste on brush, brush on teeth, rinse. Facewash, lenses, serum, SPF. No makeup, no one’s paying her for that. She’d put some lipstick on after breakfast.

The kitchen was as predictable as an airport lounge, which was how she liked it. Coffee maker on. Pan on stove. Eggs in a bowl, beaten into yellow froth. Omelet folding on itself with a sizzle. Two neat slices of ham following the omelet, till nice and crunchy.

Avocado next. Knife down the middle, twist. She always wondered why everyone else seemed compelled to use a spoon to get the avocado out of its shell and instead squeezed the halves out of their skins, the green flesh slumping onto the chopping board like an exhausted frog. Lemon juice over it. Feta crumbled with brisk fingers. Mashed together with a fork until it resembled… something.

Toast. One slice only. Carbs were a dangerous slippery slope, and she liked to keep her slopes well-gritted. In your 40s, carbs are worse than your ex.

Finally, the Sodastream. Bottle rinsed. Cap rinsed. Fill to 70 percent, right up to the line. Into the machine, click. One long press, counting out: one, two, three. Wait for the hiss inside - always like a furious cornered cat. Remove. Top off to the neck. Cap back on.

The whole sequence was choreography. Any break in the rhythm meant her day went sideways.

She sat to eat, fork in one hand, phone in the other. Something felt off. Checked the date. Thirty-five days since she’d installed the latest CO₂ cartridge. They usually lasted thirty. She blinked at the calendar. “Huh.” Took a sip of the sparkling water. Perfect fizz. Shrugged. Five extra days wasn’t unheard of. Maybe she hadn’t been drinking as much lately.

She ate her omelet. Routine resumed. Place water bottle in backpack next to the laptop. Done.

Got to the office. Said hello to the cleaning crew, passing them doing their rounds. Said good morning to Angela from Accounting, on the office corner. Angela replied, exhausted as always: “Morning, sunshine!” Everything was okay.

Day 2

Alarm, 6:30. Bathroom. Wash. Prep. Coffee maker on. Pan on stove. Eggs beaten. Ham sliced. Avocado mangled onto the chopping board, lemoned and fetad into its usual green rubble. Toast.

Bottle rinsed. Cap rinsed. Fill to the line. Insert. One, two, three. Hiss. Remove. Fill. Cap. Backpack.

She sipped, as always. Sharp, cold, bubbles fizzing up her nose. Good fizz. Better than expected fizz, actually. She squinted at the machine. It had been thirty-six days now. She knew because she’d written the installation date on the phone: “Aug 12.” Now it was Sept 17. She checked her phone to confirm, as if maybe her sense of time had misfired. No. The math held.

“Okay,” she said aloud, just to break the silence. The machine sat there smugly, stainless-steel front gleaming in the thin kitchen light.

Office. Hello to cleaning boys. Good morning to Angela. Tired “Morning, sunshine” back. At least she wasn’t the only tired one.

During the day, she found herself scanning people’s words for repetition. Co-workers said the same things they always said: weather complaints, traffic, an update about someone’s child and soccer. She wondered if they’d always been this predictable, or if she was only just now noticing.

Finished her water bottle, thinking about how much her life had become so predictable, it was creepy. She set the bottle down slowly, wondering why it felt creepy.

Day 3

Alarm, 6:30. Same bathroom ballet. Same kitchen choreography. Pan, eggs, ham, avocado mush, toast. But the whole time, yesterday’s creepy feeling sat in her stomach like bad coffee.

Sodastream time. Bottle rinsed, filled to the line. Into the machine, click. One long press: one, two, three.

Hiss.

Thirty-seven days now. She stared at the machine, and the thought arrived quietly, almost politely, like an unwelcome houseguest knocking at the door.

What if she was dead?

The bottle sat there fizzing in her hands, carbonation perfect as always, and the thought settled in with uncomfortable logic. Dead people probably wouldn’t know they were dead, would they? They’d just… continue. Same routine, same mechanical movements, same impossible physics that kept CO₂ cartridges working forever because time didn’t matter anymore.

She took a sip. Perfect bubbles. Perfect temperature. Perfectly, impossibly normal.

“Jesus,” she whispered to her kitchen. But even her voice sounded the same as always. Well, dead or alive, rent must be paid.

Office. Hello to cleaning crew - same guys, same places on the pathway: elevator buttons first, glass doors second, plants area third guy. Like a program running on loop. She watched their movements with new attention. Were they real, or just part of whatever this was? Some kind of afterlife customer service, keeping the simulation running smoothly?

“Morning, sunshine!” Angela’s voice hit the same tired notes as always.

She walked over to Angela’s desk, studying her face.

“Angela, what did you do yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” Angela’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “Work. You know. The usual.”

“But what specifically? What did you work on?”

“Oh, you know. Reports. Numbers. Spreadsheet stuff.” Angela’s smile was pleasant and completely empty. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Well, aren’t you chatty today.” Angela’s laugh sounded like a sound effect. “I’ll need more coffee to catch up with you!” They both laughed.

She spent the day watching people with forensic attention. Same conversations. Same complaints about traffic. Same update about someone’s kid’s soccer. Word for word. Even the timing was identical - Jennifer from HR always mentioned her weekend plans right before lunchtime.

At lunch, she called her sister.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Oh hey! How are things?”

“Lisa, what’s Mom’s favorite Christmas cake named?”

Pause. Slightly too long. “Why are you asking weird questions?”

“Just answer.”

“Don’t think it even had a name, some apple and chocolate thing. Stop being strange.”

She hung up feeling cold. Lisa had dodged the question like a chatbot hitting its limits.

Back home, she stood in front of the Sodastream, staring at it like it might confess. Thirty-seven days of impossible carbonation. Thirty-seven days of people saying the same things. Thirty-seven days of time that felt less real each morning.

She pressed the button. Hiss. Perfect fizz.

If she was dead, at least the water was still good.

The thought should have terrified her. Instead, it felt almost… relieving. Like finally having a diagnosis for something that had been wrong for weeks. Maybe months. When had she last felt truly awake? When had anything surprised her?

She drank the sparkling water and wondered if this was what death was - not darkness or angels or judgment, just the endless repetition of the last routine your brain remembered, playing out in some cosmic waiting room while your body did whatever bodies do when nobody’s home anymore.

The bubbles fizzed against her tongue, perfect and impossible and maybe exactly what she expected.

Day 4

Alarm, 6:30. But she lay there for an extra thirty seconds, staring at the ceiling. If she was dead, did punctuality matter? If she wasn’t dead, being late sure did. Then again, why introduce drama in your afterlife?

Bathroom. Wash. Prep. But in the mirror, she caught herself checking for signs. Did dead people still get eye bags? Did they even need to sleep? Did their skin still look like it needed more sleep and less coffee? She looked exactly the same as yesterday. Disappointingly normal for a corpse.

Kitchen. Coffee maker on - because caffeine addiction apparently survived death. Pan on stove. Eggs beaten into their usual yellow submission. But when she cracked the second egg, she thought: What if we mix it up?

She opened the freezer, took the precut chives out and added a good amount in the bowl.

The omelet folded nicely, with a spark of green. Muscle memory was apparently stronger than existential crisis.

Ham sliced. Avocado squeezed from its shell - still looking like an exhausted frog, still exactly as disgusting and satisfying as always. But when she reached for the lemon juice, she paused. What if I add some onion too? Who’s gonna complain? We’re all dead.

It tasted so much better. More real, somehow. Like her taste buds had been running on autopilot and suddenly remembered they had training.

Sodastream time. Thirty-eight days now. The number had stopped being surprising and started being darkly funny. At this point, she was impressed by the commitment to impossibility.

Bottle rinsed, filled to the line. Into the machine, click. One, two, three. Hiss.

But instead of filling the rest with water, she walked to the fridge and grabbed the bottle of Mirinda syrup she’d bought months ago. The syrup was artificial orange, a shade nature makes about as often as traffic cones, but commercials can’t live without.

She poured it into the carbonated water, put the cap on and swished it slowly, watching the aggravated water like a chemistry experiment gone cheerfully wrong.

“Well,” she told the fizzing orange mess, “if I’m dead, at least I can’t get fat.”

It tasted like childhood bad decisions and artificial everything. Like the exact opposite of her careful, measured, adult morning routine. She packed it anyway, next to the laptop that contained emails about nothing from people who might not exist anymore.

Office. Here’s the cleaning crew - Guy One with elevator buttons, Guy Two with glass doors, Guy Three with plants. She watched them like a nature documentary: Here we see the maintenance workers in their natural habitat, performing their ancient ritualistic dance…

Stopped by the last guy and asked him: “How often do you water this Monstera? I have one at home that never seems to be quite happy.” He was surprised, then carefully answered in still-good English: “Depends on the temperature, between four and eight days. But to be sure, stick your fingernail in the soil, if it comes out muddy, don’t water!”

“Morning, sunshine!” she told Angela, stealing her line but giving her a mug of coffee.

But this time, instead of the usual polite response, Angela just stared. Really stared. Was stealing lines a no-no in the afterlife? Angela came to her senses, took the coffee mug and replied, “Good morning! You okay, hon?”

“Are you?” The question came out sharper than intended. “Are any of us?”

Angela blinked twice, fast. Her smile flickered like a TV signal losing reception. “Of course! Just tired. Monday blues, you know?”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Right. One more day till weekend then!” Angela’s laugh was a sound effect from a sitcom laugh track. But she seemed to get back to her senses. Were dead people still longing for the weekend?

She spent the morning watching her colleagues with the attention of an anthropologist studying a lost civilization. They moved through their routines with mechanical precision. Same emails. Same phone calls. Same jokes about coffee and deadlines.

She spent lunch sitting at her desk, drinking orange sparkling water and googling “signs you might be dead” on her phone. The results were unhelpfully split between medical websites about literal death and comedy articles about feeling dead inside.

Feeling dead inside.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she wasn’t literally dead, maybe she’d just been living so mechanically for so long that her brain had finally noticed the difference.

But the CO₂ cartridge was still impossible. Thirty-eight days and counting.

Back at the office, she decided to test something. Instead of returning to her desk, she took the elevator to the fifth floor - a floor she’d never been to in three years of working here.

It was identical to her floor. Same carpet, same fluorescent lights, same motivational posters about teamwork and excellence. But it felt wrong, like a movie set designed by someone who’d never actually worked in an office.

A woman walked past carrying papers. She nodded politely.

“Excuse me,” she said. “What department is this?”

The woman paused, looking confused. “Department?”

“What do you do here?”

“Oh, IT work,” the woman said, like this was obvious. “Computers. You know.” She hurried away.

Back on her own floor, she sat at her desk and stared at her computer screen. They had computers too. Same emails. Same spreadsheets. Same requests for reports about reports about the effectiveness of previous reports.

If she was dead, this was probably hell. If she was alive, this was definitely hell.

She opened Copilot and typed: I think I might be dead. Please advise.

The bot had no sense of humor:

“Hey Monica, I’m really glad you reached out. If you’re feeling disconnected, numb, or like something’s not quite real—it can be deeply unsettling. But you’re here, talking to me, and that means you’re not alone.
Let’s take a breath together. You’re alive. You’re thinking, feeling, reaching out. That matters.”

The orange sparkling water sat on her desk, fizzing quietly like a tiny orange rebellion against the gray monotony of everything else. The bot was right. She put her headset on, turned on Spotify, and started a banger, max volume. She took a sip and smiled.

Dead or alive, at least she was onto something.

Day 5

No alarm. She woke up at 6:50 - just twenty minutes past her usual wake-up call, but it felt like she’d stolen hours from the universe. Her body had apparently decided when it was ready, thank you very much.

She lay there for five minutes, listening to the sounds of a world that had been running perfectly fine without her mechanical precision. Somebody was making breakfast downstairs - she could smell bacon. A delivery truck was backing up somewhere, beeping its little electronic song. Normal Friday morning sounds that she’d been missing while rushing through her choreographed routine.

Bathroom, but slower. No rushing. Teeth brushed at a human pace.

In the kitchen, she opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of air-fryer fries and some goat cheese bites she’d bought months ago for a dinner party that never happened. Breakfast food? No. Delicious? Absolutely. The air fryer hummed to life, doing its magical science thing while she doctored her coffee.

Instead of black coffee, she opened the cabinet and found the caramel syrup hiding behind the olive oil. Three pumps. Four. Why not five? The coffee turned the color of happiness.

Sodastream time. Forty days now. Forty days of impossible carbonation. The number had become less ominous and more like a personal record. Like she was in The Guinness Book of Household Appliances.

Bottle rinsed, filled to the line. Into the machine, click. One, two, three. Hiss.

But this time, she grabbed the Pepsi syrup from the door of the fridge. Dark, sweet, the kind of artificial cola flavor that tasted like Saturday afternoons when you were twelve and sugar was still a food group.

The fizzy Pepsi-water was aggressively sweet and completely ridiculous. Like drinking carbonated childhood.

Air fryer dinged. Golden fries and perfectly melted goat cheese bites. She ate them standing at the counter, dipping fries in garlic mayo like some kind of culinary anarchist.

Time to get dressed. But instead of reaching for her usual work shirt, the navy blue one that was professional and appropriate and made her look like someone who had her life together, she grabbed a hoodie. Soft gray cotton that said “University of Wherever” in faded letters.

If exhausted Angela could handle “Morning, sunshine!” every day, she could handle a hoodie.

Keys, wallet, laptop, fizzy Pepsi-water. But instead of walking to the bus stop, she went to her car. The little Honda that she usually saved for weekends and grocery runs. When was the last time she’d driven to work? Months ago? Maybe longer?

The engine started on the first try, like it was happy to finally have something to do.

Instead of taking her usual route, the efficient one, the one that avoided traffic and got her there in exactly eighteen minutes, she turned left instead of right. Drove through neighborhoods she’d never seen, past gardens that were doing their spring thing, blooming and growing and generally showing off.

The longer route took twenty-six minutes, but she saw a bakery she didn’t know existed, a park with a pond, and a street that was entirely lined with cherry trees that were dropping pink petals like confetti.

At work, she took the time to back the car into its spot. Took the stairs instead of the elevator. Said good morning to the cleaning crew and asked the plant guy if he had any tips for peace lilies, hypothetically speaking. She had already killed that plant, but maybe she’d get another one.

“Morning, sunshine!” Angela called out, right on schedule.

“Happy Friday!” she replied, because why should Angela have a monopoly on cheerful nonsense?

Angela blinked, smiled, looked genuinely pleased. “Someone’s in a good mood today.”

“Yeah,” she said, surprised to realize it was true. “Yeah, I am.”

The day passed differently. Same emails, same spreadsheets, same meetings about meetings. But she was wearing a hoodie and drinking fizzy Pepsi-water, and somehow that made everything feel less serious. Less permanent. More like a choice than a sentence.

At lunch, she looked up that park with the pond she’d driven past. It was only fifteen minutes away. Perfect for a picnic. She could get sandwiches from that bakery, maybe bring a book. Sit under a tree and eat like a human being instead of hunched over her desk.

Tomorrow. She’d go tomorrow.

The thought arrived fully formed and certain, like a plan that had been waiting for her to finally notice it.

Driving home at the end of the day, she pulled over on the cherry tree street and took out her phone to snap a picture. The pink petals looked like snow in the late afternoon light, beautiful and temporary and completely unnecessary, which made them perfect.

At home, she pressed the button on her Sodastream bottle. Day forty. Still hissing. Still perfect. Still impossible.

Instead of feeling unsettled, she laughed. Literally LOLd, standing in her kitchen in a hoodie that made her look like a college student, holding a bottle of fizzy Pepsi-water no reasonable adult should be drinking at that hour. Either she was dead and having a strangely fun afterlife, or she was alive and had lucked into an everlasting soda machine. Both worked for her.

Tomorrow she’d sit in a park, eat bakery sandwiches and a vanilla cream and raspberry croissant, maybe read a book under a tree. Just because she wanted to. Just because she could. And next week, her bathroom scale will finally tell her if she’s dead or fat.

The bubbles rose and burst and rose again, tiny celebrations of endless predictability.

End

Let me know in the comments which part of your routine would stubbornly follow you into the afterlife?

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