Tomorrows - Chapter 2
BSB - No Pairing - Tomorrows - Chapter 2
More.
Very nearly panicked, she skidded back into the infirmary. HOLY SHIT!! There were people, FROZEN PEOPLE, up there. Breathe, she told herself. It didn’t help.
“Breathe, Lokhet. Get a grip NOW, Ruach,” she gasped aloud, needing the sound of her own voice. Own name. She was the only who’d spoken her name in years. It wasn’t a thing she gave away freely. Slowly, she calmed. The people up there must have been important. Or they knew something that was.
Ruach straightened. She needed an interface. She couldn’t do enough manually. It hit her again how high-tech this ship was. Most of the equipment was only a decade or so out of the mainstream, with the exception of those damn touchpads. But the ship was much, much older. Of that she was sure. She found an interface at the main diagnostic console and jacked in.
Settling herself, she requested all data files on the people upstairs.
Rolling her eyes once toward the ceiling, Ruach focussed inward and began scanning files as fast as she could download.
Nearly an hour later, Ruach opened her eyes again. Dammit. She’d been through every file she could gain access to. She’d learned a lot. Not much of it useful. On the upside, she knew the contents of every meal dispenser aboard. All 3200 of them. But about the people upstairs, she knew next to nothing.
All five were healthy, male humans. They’d been in there an indeterminate amount of time, but all vitals (which the shipboard computer was monitoring constantly) were good. Each one had a designation but no listed name.
BSB1-BTL, BSB2-HDD, BSB3-AJM, BSB4-KSR and BSB5-NGC. She had no idea what that meant.
She knew that all five had implants similar to hers, though more specialized. From what she had, she could deduce that either BSB3-AJM or BSB4-KSR was the counterpart, the person designed to act as the organic half of the ship’s main CPU. Both had deep, central brain stem implants and several secondaries. She needed the counterpart to help her figure out what was going on here. She also knew how to thaw them out.
That was a nice little bit of information, but it left her with a dilemma. Should she?
Ruach wasn’t sure anymore. Who were those men? At best, they were someone very, very important long before she was born. At worst they were the secondary crew. She just didn’t know. Should she leave them to rest with their comrades, or should she wake them in a world far past what they knew?
She sighed. It was really a moot question. They were alive. And Ruach couldn’t leave anyone alive and abandoned on this ghost ship. Which meant getting them out.
Ruach scratched at her cheek. So, now the question became which one? She should reanimate the counterpart first, but was that AJM or KSR? She ran over what she knew again. Deep, central brain implants of indeterminate nature. Secondaries on arms and legs. AJM was listed as mid third decade and KSR as late third. So both were between twenty and thirty years old. That was awfully young for a counterpart. Sighing, she decided to reanimate KSR. He was older. That made him more likely. Counterpart was a high immersion function and required a stable personality. That usually meant older. Okay then.
Ruach unplugged her primary and secondaries. She knew there was a portable around here. It had said so in the inventory. She rummaged through the cabinets, mentally noting the locations of things. She might need them. Aha!
Found it. Ruach plugged the portable into her primary. It was a small interface that sat almost flush against her skull. It gave her mobility, but limited her access to what she’d already seen. That was fine. She had all she needed.
Taking a calming breath, Ruach turned inward again.
*Initiate reanimation sequence alpha one - BSB4-KSR unit.* With a slight hum, the computer obliged. Ruach settled back. In about fifteen minutes, she would have to go retrieve KSR and bring him down here to scan and reboot anything that needed rebooting, but for now, there wasn’t a lot for her to do. The whole procedure was automated. Nothing could go wrong.
Five minutes later, everything did.
Alarms screamed. Ruach leapt from her seat.
Identify malfunction. Oh shit. For some reason, KSR’s pod wasn’t responding. He was being reanimated without being released. There were fail-safes, of course. If the pod didn’t open, the computer would assume that the thawing process had been cancelled or overridden and would attempt refreezing. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the process.
By every indication, KSR was halfway back to conscious. Just like he should be. But the damn computer was trying to refreeze him and if she didn’t get him out, that would more than likely kill him because the human body wasn’t designed to be frozen while half defrosted. It was like letting ice cream melt and then refreezing it. Ice crystals formed. On ice cream, you scraped them off and ate it anyway. Humans threw an embolism and died.
Ruach snatched up a metal rod and ran for the elevator.
Abort cryogenic suspension process. The computer flashed an error warning at her. It couldn’t do that. Shit shit shit and shit again. Ruach boiled out of the elevator and into the room.
Every warning light on panel four was going insane. The window had cleared when the pod had been warmed. Inside she could see KSR gasping desperately for air. Pain was clear on his face. His eyes flashed open. Ruach ran for the tube. Glancing down at him, she vaguely registered that his eyes were staring blindly at her, clouded with agony and confusion. And they were green.
She jammed the bar into the edge of the tube at the seal and pushed down.
Why hadn’t the tube opened? Why? She crammed the bar into the seal a little farther and pushed again. Slowly, she felt the hydraulics on the door give.
Air hissed out of the tube. She jumped as air so cold it burned blasted across her legs. But it meant she’d broken the seal. Registering a ruptured tube, the computer released the locks and it sprang open. Ruach reached in and caught the man with the green eyes by the arms. She hauled him up and over her shoulders. She had to get him out of there and get him warm again.
She staggered into the elevator again. Dammit! Why hadn’t these people put the infirmary on the same level with the cryo tubes?! She stumbled out as the doors slid open again. She laid KSR on the diagnostic table as gently as she could, wincing as his head smacked the frame with a dull clonk.
Ruach ripped the portable from her head. She gasped as her entire body tingled in reaction to the sudden loss on connection.
Shaking it off, she slammed a direct feed into the socket.
Analyze subject condition. The table activated. Whirring, it scanned the man on it. Ruach knew the answer as the computer did. Acute respiratory distress brought on by ice crystals in the lungs. Extreme hypothermia due to incomplete reanimation. And dehydration just for good measure.
Increase ambient air temperature 10 degrees Kelvin. Gradually, the room went from comfortable to sauna. KSR was still trying to breathe through half-frozen lungs. Wheezing, shallow breaths whistled through his open mouth. Ruach ran for the supply cabinet. She thanked every god she’d ever heard of that her mother was anal retentive. A good spacer knew how to do everything but surgery. They had to because there was no one to do it for them. How many times had she heard that?
Ruach snapped back to the present as KSR’s breathing suddenly became strangled and thready. Crap. She snagged what she was looking for and pounded back to the table. Situating herself at the head of the table, she pried his mouth open. He was moving too much. She crawled onto the table on her knees, pinning his thrashing head between them. As gently as she could, she slid the tube down his throat. He gagged.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she muttered. “Oh, lord. That’s gotta hurt. Sorry.”
Finally, she got the tube passed down his throat and into his lungs. She plugged the external end of the tubing into a respirator.
Low pressure. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius. The machine began gently forcing air warmed to body temperature into the man’s lungs. He writhed, tried to scream around the tube. Ruach caught his head in her lap. Held it.
“Shhh. I know it hurts. I know. You have to relax. It’ll pass,” she said firmly. Her voice sounded loud to her own ears. Green eyes shot open, locked on hers.
“It’ll pass. Relax and try to breathe. Relax,” she soothed. His breathing slowed. Evened out. Gradually, his eyelids fluttered. His eyes rolled up.
Analyze condition. He was alright. Dehydrated and exhausted. But he’d be fine with a little time and care. Ruach slid from the table shaking. What had happened? She replayed events in her head as she inserted an IV into one of the ports in his arm. Nice thing about secondaries. No need for needles.
The table and the man’s own implants should take care of any other damage.
Stepping back, she noticed that he was quite handsome. Relaxed, his face was smooth and elegant. And he certainly was well-built. And naked as a jay. Ruach forced back a blush. She’d have to fix that.
She moved over to the supply cabinet, careful not to accidentally yank the interface from her head. Rifling through it, Ruach found clothes. Soft white, drawstring pants. She noticed the letters BTL on the hip. Okay. That implied that another pair would have KSR on them. She dug a little more.
Sure enough. KSR. Returning to the inert form on the table, she crammed his feet into the legs. Still fighting a blush, she slid the pants up over his hips. That was better. No longer distracted by the man’s . . . ahem . . . build, she sat down at the main console to try to figure what had almost killed him.
***
Kevin was floating. It was warm and pleasant. Slightly foggy, he opened his eyes. White. He saw nothing but white. So he shut them again. No big deal. He could feel himself creeping towards the light anyway. He’d get there soon enough. Suddenly, everything started to get cold. Very cold. In almost no time, the air was so cold his teeth were chattering. He tried to suck in a breath. PAIN. Oh dear God! It was like trying to breathe ice.
He couldn’t breathe this. He struggled. His hands banged against something. A lid. Kevin forced his eyes open again. There was a face above him. His lungs seized. He couldn’t make his chest move at all. Someone had wrapped an iron bar around his chest and was slowly tightening it. And his whole body was numb.
Kevin let his eyes close. He was going to die. He had no idea what was going on and he was going to die. Hot air blasted over him. He barely felt it. Or the hands that lifted him. His brain vaguely noticed that he was being carried, but was still mostly worried about he fact that he still couldn’t breathe.
His head thudded against something solid. Pain flashed behind his eyes. He struggled to drag air into his lungs. His chest was aching with the effort.
It was like there was no air to breathe. Oh there was the problem; there was something in his throat. He gagged, chest seizing tighter. The thing in his throat scraped down past the need to choke. He still couldn’t breathe. Kevin panicked. He couldn’t move. Nothing worked. So he couldn’t get whatever it was out of his mouth. Heat was all around him. His skin was beginning to tingle and burn as sensation returned. He was so cold. But it was all secondary. Suddenly, air whooshed into his chest. Gratefully, Kevin tried to breathe. His chest burst into flame. Oh, GOD! It was too hot. Too hot! It was burning the inside of his chest. He tried to struggle away from it.
Hands closed on his face. Hands pulled his head into a lap. Hands? He forced his eyes open. Still struggling to breathe, Kevin peered up at gray eyes. Locked on them. A voice was saying words he didn’t understand, but if he just kept concentrating on breathing and not losing those eyes, it would be okay. Slowly, the burn receded, leaving tingling warmth. Kevin took a breath. Another. He could breathe. The eyes above him blurred. Kevin decided he could relax now. Shivering slightly despite the heat all around him, Kevin closed his eyes and sank mindlessly into the bottomless dark.
Ruach slumped back from the console and unplugged her primary. Damn, but this was frustrating. The computer was insisting that there was nothing wrong with the pod that had nearly killed BSB4-KSR. She glanced over at the man on the table. He was sleeping now. The table had been buzzing and whirring industriously for several hours, repairing this and that. He was almost good as new. He’d be sore when he woke up but hey. She just wished she knew why it had happened. Ruach didn’t dare try to defrost anyone else until she knew for sure. She might not get so damn lucky with the next.
Rising, Ruach walked over to KSR. Time to find out a little bit about this guy. She couldn’t access his brain directly, and wouldn’t have felt right about it anyway. But she could have the diagnostic table identify his implants with some specificity now. She plugged into the table.
Identify implants. Subject BSB4-KSR, she ordered. The table complied.
Tactical and security implants in the mid-brain. Strategy, combat and high speed interfaces in arms legs and central nervous system. Well, shit. This guy was the security officer. She slammed her hand onto the bed frame in frustration. All that, and he wasn’t the counterpart.
Scan program list. Subject BSB4-KSR. A long, long list flashed past blindingly fast. Security, general, operations . . . all the basics. Wait a sec.
Search protocol. Language translation/Babel program. Nothing. This guy had everything but language translation software. He’d only understand his spoken language. Probably English. Hmmmm. She’d fix that. But not until he woke up. Ruach absolutely refused to modify anyone’s programming unless they were functional and agreed to it. That was a direct result of the time her mother had uploaded manners and protocol into her net while she was sleeping. She hadn’t been able to talk well until they’d been deleted. Incompatible with part of her primary matrix. Besides, she didn’t need to talk to him while he was out cold. She yanked the interface from her head.
Interesting as all this was, it still meant that BSB3-AJM was the counterpart she needed. She’d have to thaw him. But first, she’d have to figure out what the hell was going on with those damn pods. Sighing, Ruach slid the portable on and set it to monitor KSR. Then she snatched up her light and a tool set and headed for the elevator.
Maybe she could crawl around up there and SEE what the problem was. Not likely, but hey. She shot one last glance at the beautiful man resting peacefully in the infirmary as the doors closed. She could hope.
More.
Very nearly panicked, she skidded back into the infirmary. HOLY SHIT!! There were people, FROZEN PEOPLE, up there. Breathe, she told herself. It didn’t help.
“Breathe, Lokhet. Get a grip NOW, Ruach,” she gasped aloud, needing the sound of her own voice. Own name. She was the only who’d spoken her name in years. It wasn’t a thing she gave away freely. Slowly, she calmed. The people up there must have been important. Or they knew something that was.
Ruach straightened. She needed an interface. She couldn’t do enough manually. It hit her again how high-tech this ship was. Most of the equipment was only a decade or so out of the mainstream, with the exception of those damn touchpads. But the ship was much, much older. Of that she was sure. She found an interface at the main diagnostic console and jacked in.
Settling herself, she requested all data files on the people upstairs.
Rolling her eyes once toward the ceiling, Ruach focussed inward and began scanning files as fast as she could download.
Nearly an hour later, Ruach opened her eyes again. Dammit. She’d been through every file she could gain access to. She’d learned a lot. Not much of it useful. On the upside, she knew the contents of every meal dispenser aboard. All 3200 of them. But about the people upstairs, she knew next to nothing.
All five were healthy, male humans. They’d been in there an indeterminate amount of time, but all vitals (which the shipboard computer was monitoring constantly) were good. Each one had a designation but no listed name.
BSB1-BTL, BSB2-HDD, BSB3-AJM, BSB4-KSR and BSB5-NGC. She had no idea what that meant.
She knew that all five had implants similar to hers, though more specialized. From what she had, she could deduce that either BSB3-AJM or BSB4-KSR was the counterpart, the person designed to act as the organic half of the ship’s main CPU. Both had deep, central brain stem implants and several secondaries. She needed the counterpart to help her figure out what was going on here. She also knew how to thaw them out.
That was a nice little bit of information, but it left her with a dilemma. Should she?
Ruach wasn’t sure anymore. Who were those men? At best, they were someone very, very important long before she was born. At worst they were the secondary crew. She just didn’t know. Should she leave them to rest with their comrades, or should she wake them in a world far past what they knew?
She sighed. It was really a moot question. They were alive. And Ruach couldn’t leave anyone alive and abandoned on this ghost ship. Which meant getting them out.
Ruach scratched at her cheek. So, now the question became which one? She should reanimate the counterpart first, but was that AJM or KSR? She ran over what she knew again. Deep, central brain implants of indeterminate nature. Secondaries on arms and legs. AJM was listed as mid third decade and KSR as late third. So both were between twenty and thirty years old. That was awfully young for a counterpart. Sighing, she decided to reanimate KSR. He was older. That made him more likely. Counterpart was a high immersion function and required a stable personality. That usually meant older. Okay then.
Ruach unplugged her primary and secondaries. She knew there was a portable around here. It had said so in the inventory. She rummaged through the cabinets, mentally noting the locations of things. She might need them. Aha!
Found it. Ruach plugged the portable into her primary. It was a small interface that sat almost flush against her skull. It gave her mobility, but limited her access to what she’d already seen. That was fine. She had all she needed.
Taking a calming breath, Ruach turned inward again.
*Initiate reanimation sequence alpha one - BSB4-KSR unit.* With a slight hum, the computer obliged. Ruach settled back. In about fifteen minutes, she would have to go retrieve KSR and bring him down here to scan and reboot anything that needed rebooting, but for now, there wasn’t a lot for her to do. The whole procedure was automated. Nothing could go wrong.
Five minutes later, everything did.
Alarms screamed. Ruach leapt from her seat.
Identify malfunction. Oh shit. For some reason, KSR’s pod wasn’t responding. He was being reanimated without being released. There were fail-safes, of course. If the pod didn’t open, the computer would assume that the thawing process had been cancelled or overridden and would attempt refreezing. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the process.
By every indication, KSR was halfway back to conscious. Just like he should be. But the damn computer was trying to refreeze him and if she didn’t get him out, that would more than likely kill him because the human body wasn’t designed to be frozen while half defrosted. It was like letting ice cream melt and then refreezing it. Ice crystals formed. On ice cream, you scraped them off and ate it anyway. Humans threw an embolism and died.
Ruach snatched up a metal rod and ran for the elevator.
Abort cryogenic suspension process. The computer flashed an error warning at her. It couldn’t do that. Shit shit shit and shit again. Ruach boiled out of the elevator and into the room.
Every warning light on panel four was going insane. The window had cleared when the pod had been warmed. Inside she could see KSR gasping desperately for air. Pain was clear on his face. His eyes flashed open. Ruach ran for the tube. Glancing down at him, she vaguely registered that his eyes were staring blindly at her, clouded with agony and confusion. And they were green.
She jammed the bar into the edge of the tube at the seal and pushed down.
Why hadn’t the tube opened? Why? She crammed the bar into the seal a little farther and pushed again. Slowly, she felt the hydraulics on the door give.
Air hissed out of the tube. She jumped as air so cold it burned blasted across her legs. But it meant she’d broken the seal. Registering a ruptured tube, the computer released the locks and it sprang open. Ruach reached in and caught the man with the green eyes by the arms. She hauled him up and over her shoulders. She had to get him out of there and get him warm again.
She staggered into the elevator again. Dammit! Why hadn’t these people put the infirmary on the same level with the cryo tubes?! She stumbled out as the doors slid open again. She laid KSR on the diagnostic table as gently as she could, wincing as his head smacked the frame with a dull clonk.
Ruach ripped the portable from her head. She gasped as her entire body tingled in reaction to the sudden loss on connection.
Shaking it off, she slammed a direct feed into the socket.
Analyze subject condition. The table activated. Whirring, it scanned the man on it. Ruach knew the answer as the computer did. Acute respiratory distress brought on by ice crystals in the lungs. Extreme hypothermia due to incomplete reanimation. And dehydration just for good measure.
Increase ambient air temperature 10 degrees Kelvin. Gradually, the room went from comfortable to sauna. KSR was still trying to breathe through half-frozen lungs. Wheezing, shallow breaths whistled through his open mouth. Ruach ran for the supply cabinet. She thanked every god she’d ever heard of that her mother was anal retentive. A good spacer knew how to do everything but surgery. They had to because there was no one to do it for them. How many times had she heard that?
Ruach snapped back to the present as KSR’s breathing suddenly became strangled and thready. Crap. She snagged what she was looking for and pounded back to the table. Situating herself at the head of the table, she pried his mouth open. He was moving too much. She crawled onto the table on her knees, pinning his thrashing head between them. As gently as she could, she slid the tube down his throat. He gagged.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she muttered. “Oh, lord. That’s gotta hurt. Sorry.”
Finally, she got the tube passed down his throat and into his lungs. She plugged the external end of the tubing into a respirator.
Low pressure. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius. The machine began gently forcing air warmed to body temperature into the man’s lungs. He writhed, tried to scream around the tube. Ruach caught his head in her lap. Held it.
“Shhh. I know it hurts. I know. You have to relax. It’ll pass,” she said firmly. Her voice sounded loud to her own ears. Green eyes shot open, locked on hers.
“It’ll pass. Relax and try to breathe. Relax,” she soothed. His breathing slowed. Evened out. Gradually, his eyelids fluttered. His eyes rolled up.
Analyze condition. He was alright. Dehydrated and exhausted. But he’d be fine with a little time and care. Ruach slid from the table shaking. What had happened? She replayed events in her head as she inserted an IV into one of the ports in his arm. Nice thing about secondaries. No need for needles.
The table and the man’s own implants should take care of any other damage.
Stepping back, she noticed that he was quite handsome. Relaxed, his face was smooth and elegant. And he certainly was well-built. And naked as a jay. Ruach forced back a blush. She’d have to fix that.
She moved over to the supply cabinet, careful not to accidentally yank the interface from her head. Rifling through it, Ruach found clothes. Soft white, drawstring pants. She noticed the letters BTL on the hip. Okay. That implied that another pair would have KSR on them. She dug a little more.
Sure enough. KSR. Returning to the inert form on the table, she crammed his feet into the legs. Still fighting a blush, she slid the pants up over his hips. That was better. No longer distracted by the man’s . . . ahem . . . build, she sat down at the main console to try to figure what had almost killed him.
***
Kevin was floating. It was warm and pleasant. Slightly foggy, he opened his eyes. White. He saw nothing but white. So he shut them again. No big deal. He could feel himself creeping towards the light anyway. He’d get there soon enough. Suddenly, everything started to get cold. Very cold. In almost no time, the air was so cold his teeth were chattering. He tried to suck in a breath. PAIN. Oh dear God! It was like trying to breathe ice.
He couldn’t breathe this. He struggled. His hands banged against something. A lid. Kevin forced his eyes open again. There was a face above him. His lungs seized. He couldn’t make his chest move at all. Someone had wrapped an iron bar around his chest and was slowly tightening it. And his whole body was numb.
Kevin let his eyes close. He was going to die. He had no idea what was going on and he was going to die. Hot air blasted over him. He barely felt it. Or the hands that lifted him. His brain vaguely noticed that he was being carried, but was still mostly worried about he fact that he still couldn’t breathe.
His head thudded against something solid. Pain flashed behind his eyes. He struggled to drag air into his lungs. His chest was aching with the effort.
It was like there was no air to breathe. Oh there was the problem; there was something in his throat. He gagged, chest seizing tighter. The thing in his throat scraped down past the need to choke. He still couldn’t breathe. Kevin panicked. He couldn’t move. Nothing worked. So he couldn’t get whatever it was out of his mouth. Heat was all around him. His skin was beginning to tingle and burn as sensation returned. He was so cold. But it was all secondary. Suddenly, air whooshed into his chest. Gratefully, Kevin tried to breathe. His chest burst into flame. Oh, GOD! It was too hot. Too hot! It was burning the inside of his chest. He tried to struggle away from it.
Hands closed on his face. Hands pulled his head into a lap. Hands? He forced his eyes open. Still struggling to breathe, Kevin peered up at gray eyes. Locked on them. A voice was saying words he didn’t understand, but if he just kept concentrating on breathing and not losing those eyes, it would be okay. Slowly, the burn receded, leaving tingling warmth. Kevin took a breath. Another. He could breathe. The eyes above him blurred. Kevin decided he could relax now. Shivering slightly despite the heat all around him, Kevin closed his eyes and sank mindlessly into the bottomless dark.
Ruach slumped back from the console and unplugged her primary. Damn, but this was frustrating. The computer was insisting that there was nothing wrong with the pod that had nearly killed BSB4-KSR. She glanced over at the man on the table. He was sleeping now. The table had been buzzing and whirring industriously for several hours, repairing this and that. He was almost good as new. He’d be sore when he woke up but hey. She just wished she knew why it had happened. Ruach didn’t dare try to defrost anyone else until she knew for sure. She might not get so damn lucky with the next.
Rising, Ruach walked over to KSR. Time to find out a little bit about this guy. She couldn’t access his brain directly, and wouldn’t have felt right about it anyway. But she could have the diagnostic table identify his implants with some specificity now. She plugged into the table.
Identify implants. Subject BSB4-KSR, she ordered. The table complied.
Tactical and security implants in the mid-brain. Strategy, combat and high speed interfaces in arms legs and central nervous system. Well, shit. This guy was the security officer. She slammed her hand onto the bed frame in frustration. All that, and he wasn’t the counterpart.
Scan program list. Subject BSB4-KSR. A long, long list flashed past blindingly fast. Security, general, operations . . . all the basics. Wait a sec.
Search protocol. Language translation/Babel program. Nothing. This guy had everything but language translation software. He’d only understand his spoken language. Probably English. Hmmmm. She’d fix that. But not until he woke up. Ruach absolutely refused to modify anyone’s programming unless they were functional and agreed to it. That was a direct result of the time her mother had uploaded manners and protocol into her net while she was sleeping. She hadn’t been able to talk well until they’d been deleted. Incompatible with part of her primary matrix. Besides, she didn’t need to talk to him while he was out cold. She yanked the interface from her head.
Interesting as all this was, it still meant that BSB3-AJM was the counterpart she needed. She’d have to thaw him. But first, she’d have to figure out what the hell was going on with those damn pods. Sighing, Ruach slid the portable on and set it to monitor KSR. Then she snatched up her light and a tool set and headed for the elevator.
Maybe she could crawl around up there and SEE what the problem was. Not likely, but hey. She shot one last glance at the beautiful man resting peacefully in the infirmary as the doors closed. She could hope.