I realized as I started talking about the CWS4 I haven't posted my writing here in at least a year. So here is a short story I wrote!
First came the seed, an intruder to the wall of white. It was an insignificant fleck of dust in the white tide. If Ethor's eyes weren't so jaded to the spectacle he surely would have missed it. Then there was another, and another, and soon they spread like cancer in a doomed body. They grew and combined, forcing the white into smaller and smaller patches until finally they showed their true form – nothing more than stars in space, given the illusion of singularity by the intense speeds Ethor had just came down from.
His console beeped. All systems were normal, he had dropped out of Q-Space, and there was an ongoing communication request from Tim Erickson. With a few nimble clicks, Ethor patched him through. “Lo, Tim.”
“How'd those coordinates work out for ya?”
Ethor glanced at the digital map on the wall. “Hang on, still updating – thirty minutes shaved off. You're a lifesaver, Tim.”
“I run to Korat almost every week, I know how the drifts go. Experience is a wonderful thing.”
“Any other experience to share?”
“Land at Port Frimou.”
“But-”
“I know Kelay is closer to the hospital, but the director is a paranoid little man, and you have tags clearing you to visit the Mani-3 system. He'll ask you so many questions you'll lose the time advantage. Trust me.”
“Yeah, alright, I can do that. I've gotta go.”
“Take care man. I'll comm you again when this is over.”
The communication clicked out of existence, and in it's place was a three-dimensional map of the local area. Ethor spun the digital globe in his hands. “Voicetag – Computer, change destination to Port Frimou. Change priorities – Alpha is speed of arrival, Beta is safety. Do not halt upon communication from destination.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
Ethor got up from his chair and rubbed his eyes wearily. Ten minutes – ten minutes he had to spare before he was in Korat space. Then he'd have to deal with whatever ******-off stiff got stuck with manning port communications at three AM local time. But for now, he could relax.
He popped a couple of pills from a small bottle in his pocket. Caffeine, adrenaline, whatever let him steal time from the rested, future version of himself. They were his last. The last few days, he had been on an unnatural high, but he was nearing the end point. He couldn't slack off, though, not with what was at stake.
Here he checked to ensure his cargo was undamaged. It was still intact, as well it should be, with how many times Ethor had wrapped it. He may have been rushing but he knew what risks he couldn't take. He had spent the extra ten minutes encasing it in three protective shells, even though he could sue the manufacture if even the first one broke. He had spent the extra twenty minutes waiting to reach the hospital lead physician, to ensure that he would be ready when Ethor arrived. He even – and this was the step Ethor was beginning to regret – took the two hours to officially register the package. In all his years as courier the port officials had almost never asked for the database registration as long as the tags were cleared. But he couldn't take any chances, not with what was on the line.
The cargo was a liquid, a liquid that seemed to sparkle. Ruby Red – the street name for Patrocaloine. It was the only known cure for Drieker's Disease. Obtaining it wasn't exactly a crime, at least in the Universal Court's eyes, but the only planet for lightyears around that manufactured it was actively applying for secession and had a habit of shooting down courier ships. As such, the local hospitals were almost always out of the stuff when a case of Drieker's popped up. Untreated, it was invariability fatal. But if he hurried and brought this to Korat Planentary as fast as he could, maybe his girlfriend Amanda would live.
Amanda – what a girl. She was nice to be around with, and she wasn't the clingy sort, which was more important than you think when your job sends you around the galaxy. He'd be gone for months (at least in her frame of reference) and would come back with only a day to spend with her. No lectures, no “Don't leave me like that again!”, just someone to relax with while he could. A committed relationship without a commitment. It was a good deal for a Courier.
He had barely begun to reminisce about her when the console beeped – he was in occupied space. Ethor sat down. Not to man the controls, as his ship was quite adept at flying itself when there were no hostiles. But he had to look dignified and official for the Communications Officer. “Please,” he murmured to himself, “just be a respectful person who looks at my tags and lets me go.”
Ethor flipped on the auto-answer switch and waited. About ten seconds later, the Communications Officer appeared on screen. “Identification.”
“Ethor Gamiss, Courier Services. 736-tripleA-C42.”
A few seconds passed as the official read the data attached to Ethor's ID. “Well, your identity checks out and your tags are valid. As well, I see you even registered it in the database. That's above and beyond for such a small delivery, and it makes my life much easier.” Thank goodness, now he'll clear me for landing and I'll be on my way.
“However, there is one small problem.” Damnit. “You've applied here for Class A landing and port permissions. Deliveries are Class C. A Courier with such a record as yours should know this.”
“Patrocaloine is a life-saving drug, and there isn't any on your entire planet.”
“Class A landing strips must be kept reserved in case the military arrives.”
“Are they?”
“Hmm?”
“Are they coming? Right now?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then please. It's the difference between life and death.”
The official sighed. “Be quick, then. If the military shows up and you're
there it's my ass on the line. But, truth be told, I'm sick of those muscleheads asking me to give them special privileges because of their rank when we both know full well that they're just going to get drunk.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Don't thank me. If anyone asks you landed illegally.” He smirked. “No one's gonna ask, though. No one ever asks.” The communication was severed. Ethor strapped himself in and assumed manual control. He could land a few minutes faster than the autopilot.
The landing field was empty when Ethor touched down. He wasn't surprised. It wasn't often he was allowed to land on Class A facilities, but every time he had he had been the sole craft in eye vision.
Within a few minutes the cargo was on a small forklift on the ground. To hell with post-flight investigation. Ethor would just give it a good pre-flight before he took off. As soon as the Patrocaloine was ready for transport, a small, golf-cart like buggy had arrived to his ship. This was something very familiar to Ethor: a Local Transport Craft. Ethor quickly loaded the cargo from the forklift to the trunk of the LTC – something he had done more than most people had eaten.
He flashed his ID as he got in the vehicle. “I'm licensed to drive these things, and I'm in a hurry. May I?” This was a long shot, but hey, maybe he looked important landing in Class A space.
The driver shook his head. “No. I can't give you the keys to the LTC. But I can get you quickly to where you need to go.”
“Whatever Rail line will take me to Korat Planetary faster.”
“We don't run the sub-rails at night, sir. It's three hundred miles to the nearest station that's active right now.”
****. Should've landed at Port Kelay after all.
The driver could obviously see the distress on Ethor's face. “Have no worries. The streets are empty enough that I can take you right there in the LTC. Just wait in that seat and you'll soon be at the front door.”
Waiting – that was the worst part. The driver was making good time, steering the LTC through all of the shortcuts one would expect a native to know. But Ethor was powerless. Amanda might live, or she might die, but at that particular moment Ethor had no control. To alleviate his feeling of helplessness he called up the hospital. There was no answer. This wasn't as dramatic as one would think – at 3AM the phone was usually the first thing neglected in a personnel crisis. But it added another dagger of fear in Ethor's chest. He turned off the clock function of his omni-bracer. That was unnecessary stress at a time like this.
The LTC had barely begun to slow down in front of Korat Planetary when Ethor opened his door and leaped out. As soon as it stopped he opened the trunk and grabbed the Ruby Red. “Communications Officer has my ID, bill my account with that, I don't need a ride back!” he yelled as he ran in.
A nurse was waiting at the front door. “Mr. Gamiss?”
“Yes!”
She obviously knew exactly why he had come, as she quickly ran into
the main body of the hospital, yelling “Right this way, please!” Even with his encumbrance, he managed to keep pace with her.
They finally arrived in an operation room lobby. This time, it was a doctor waiting for him. “Give me the Patrocaloine, please.” Ethor recognized the voice as the lead physician he had contacted earlier.
As Ethor handed him the package, he breathlessly asked -”Amanda, is she still alive?”
“She's crashing.” Oh god. Ethor knew what a Drieker crash was. The heart stopped, the body was paralyzed, and the only thing keeping the body alive was the disease itself, trying to leach a little bit more sustenance out of the shell it inhabited, a firing of the instinctive mechanisms when it was too late to matter. “I think we can bring her back, though. It's a great thing you did here, Ethor.”
The doctor and nurse went in to the operating room proper. Before he closed the door, the doctor added, “Don't follow us. Your clothes are not sterilized, and right now that could make the difference between life or death.”
For a few minutes, Ethor stared blankly at the wall. Was this really it? Those days and days of rushing from Mani-3 to Korat, and now he had to just sit and wait, not knowing if his girlfriend would live or die.
Waiting – that's the worst part.
And then his body gave up and he collapsed on the floor.
<>
He woke up in a bed. The room had the typical hospital décor of plain beige walls and a single screen mounted on the wall for entertainment. Ethor didn't turn it on. Instead, he jumped out of bed – and promptly fell in a sprawling heap. He smiled and muttered to himself, “Have I really been keeping myself in that bad of shape? Sorry for the extended adrenaline high, body.”
Ethor pulled himself up and checked his omni-bracer. There were dozens of messages waiting for his attention; he sorted them by priority. The first one was Priority 1, a message from Korat Planetary. He knew then, but opened it up anyway. “We offer you condolences,” and here he deleted the message and sat down. His mind clear from the addles of fatigue, he saw the situation too well. Who the **** was he kidding? A Drieker crash meant death. Patrocaloine couldn't prevent that. Amanda had been dead when he had still been driving in the LTC. The doctor had to have known that as well. He was a nice man for the lies he told. Presumably they just went in the operating room and waited for him to pass out.
He was crying by now, of course, but not nearly as much as one would think. His emotions had been fired up by the quest, while his mind had known the truth from the start. Amanda had been dead since she was diagnosed and the drug was too far away. Ethor simply couldn't sit and watch her die – that's why he had went. But his rational mind had been quietly, internally shedding tears from the start. So when his consciousness had caught up – there was the other half of Ethor comforting it, holding him together. You got used to tragedy as a Courier: you know too many people for anything else to happen. It's a job where you make hundreds of friends, and of each hundred ten would die of disease, three of warfare, one of a ship malfunction.
He checked his next message. Tim Erickson, Priority 2-, contract attached. Ethor couldn't help grinning despite his sorrow. No one ever used the plus and minus system anymore – unless they were making sure their friend would hear their message promptly but not be the bearer of the ultimate bad news. It was a voice recording, a voice husky and reserved. Tim must have been watching the hospital reports and known the minute Amanda was pronounced dead, while Ethor was sleeping. “Don't worry about anything, okay, bud? I've got the room rented out for the next two weeks, and I'm taking your jobs over for the moment. I don't have much time for this, though, so just sign the attached contract to start using your vacation time. It's all done, just needs your signature. Incidentally, how the hell do you have so much vacation time? Take all of it, man. Let loose for a while.”
The contract popped up.. Ethor numbly signed it Good old Tim. Now there's someone who wouldn't have bothered with the whole trip. There's someone who has a good head on his shoulders. His responsibilities now taken care of, Ethor promptly ignored his other messages and went to bed.
<>
The two weeks were up. Ethor was caught by surprise: he had not talked to a single person or so much as looked at his omni-bracer since he had read the letter. In the end, the doctor had to knock on his door and say, “Time to go, Ethor. But first...there's something I'd like you to see.”
Ethor put on his omni-bracer and checked the time to verify the doctors claim. Seeing it was indeed time to leave, he left the room. “Alright.” It would probably be some cutesy bull****, but hey, the doctor had humored him in his time of need so it was only fair to do the same. Ethor was mentally whole, now, with his familiar protections – the armor of indifference, the shield of experience, and the bolts of cynicism holding it together.
The doctor led him to a small lobby. A girl of perhaps 10 was sitting in a wheelchair. Her eyes were to the ground, her head was bald, and she looked generally sickly. Ethor mentally groaned. Was he supposed to feel so pitiful for her that he would suddenly be okay about his girlfriend dying? This is why Ethor had long ago learned to resolve this issues himself – people were just so damn clumsy about it.
“Tell him your story, Jamie,” the doctor instructed.
The girl looked up, and a wan smile crossed her face. “I was diagnosed with Drieker's Disease two months ago. They tried to treat me at a private hospital on the other side of the planet. But they had no Patrocaloine and they said I was gonna die but then later they said I wouldn't die and they sent me here and then I didn't die.”
The doctor smiled. “They had monitors on the official databases, Ethor.
Normally, they wouldn't have known until it was too late. But you official registered the delivery, and they had her here before you even touched down.”
For a few seconds, numbness: and then a wave of relief so powerful he had to grab on to a chair to stay on his feet. If he hadn't registered the package, Amanda might have lived – might. But that act had guaranteed this child's life. To trade an uncertainty for a certainty: this was one of the core values of Couriers, and it was always a good trade.
“Well, doc,” Ethor said, “Looks like you had the right idea.”
“I'm glad we can see you out the door healthy in body and mind. Now, I believe your ship has caused quite an uproar, being parked in Class 1 space illegally for such a long time.”
“A SPACESHIP?!” Jamie interjected. “Like, that flies in space and dodges lasers and stuff? Tell me a story about your spaceship, pleeeaasseee?”
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Now, Jamie, this is rather a serious matter Ethor has to attend to.”
Ethor waved the thought away. “I gave my rights to Tim Erickson temporarily. Knowing him, he's already found a way to sue them instead.” He took a seat beside Jamie. “Besides, there's always time for a story.”
Jamie eagerly wheeled to face him.”Tell me a story about your spaceship, with super-fast space flying and lasers and – and a space worm!”
Ethor contemplated his journey to get the Patrocaloine. He had retraced that flight hundreds of times, blaming himself for every misstep along the away. Now, though, he was not morbidly brooding but instead reflecting on narrative value. Super fast space flying? He had gone above the legal speed, yes. Lasers? Well, the orbital defense station had taken a few potshots at his ship as he had landed. Hadn't even breached his shields, but Jamie didn't know that. Space worm? Nothing of the sort, but Ethor had seen one before and he could improvise. “Sure.”
He leaned forward, new energy in his veins. Cynicism was all well and good, but not for story-telling. “This is a story with a spaceship that flies super fast. There are lasers.”
Jamie looked at him suspiciously. “And a space worm.”
“The space worm is the best part! But we can't skip ahead. It has to start at the beginning. There's a space pilot, going to a far off planet to get a special medicine.” He smiled. “A special medicine for a very special girl...”
First came the seed, an intruder to the wall of white. It was an insignificant fleck of dust in the white tide. If Ethor's eyes weren't so jaded to the spectacle he surely would have missed it. Then there was another, and another, and soon they spread like cancer in a doomed body. They grew and combined, forcing the white into smaller and smaller patches until finally they showed their true form – nothing more than stars in space, given the illusion of singularity by the intense speeds Ethor had just came down from.
His console beeped. All systems were normal, he had dropped out of Q-Space, and there was an ongoing communication request from Tim Erickson. With a few nimble clicks, Ethor patched him through. “Lo, Tim.”
“How'd those coordinates work out for ya?”
Ethor glanced at the digital map on the wall. “Hang on, still updating – thirty minutes shaved off. You're a lifesaver, Tim.”
“I run to Korat almost every week, I know how the drifts go. Experience is a wonderful thing.”
“Any other experience to share?”
“Land at Port Frimou.”
“But-”
“I know Kelay is closer to the hospital, but the director is a paranoid little man, and you have tags clearing you to visit the Mani-3 system. He'll ask you so many questions you'll lose the time advantage. Trust me.”
“Yeah, alright, I can do that. I've gotta go.”
“Take care man. I'll comm you again when this is over.”
The communication clicked out of existence, and in it's place was a three-dimensional map of the local area. Ethor spun the digital globe in his hands. “Voicetag – Computer, change destination to Port Frimou. Change priorities – Alpha is speed of arrival, Beta is safety. Do not halt upon communication from destination.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
Ethor got up from his chair and rubbed his eyes wearily. Ten minutes – ten minutes he had to spare before he was in Korat space. Then he'd have to deal with whatever ******-off stiff got stuck with manning port communications at three AM local time. But for now, he could relax.
He popped a couple of pills from a small bottle in his pocket. Caffeine, adrenaline, whatever let him steal time from the rested, future version of himself. They were his last. The last few days, he had been on an unnatural high, but he was nearing the end point. He couldn't slack off, though, not with what was at stake.
Here he checked to ensure his cargo was undamaged. It was still intact, as well it should be, with how many times Ethor had wrapped it. He may have been rushing but he knew what risks he couldn't take. He had spent the extra ten minutes encasing it in three protective shells, even though he could sue the manufacture if even the first one broke. He had spent the extra twenty minutes waiting to reach the hospital lead physician, to ensure that he would be ready when Ethor arrived. He even – and this was the step Ethor was beginning to regret – took the two hours to officially register the package. In all his years as courier the port officials had almost never asked for the database registration as long as the tags were cleared. But he couldn't take any chances, not with what was on the line.
The cargo was a liquid, a liquid that seemed to sparkle. Ruby Red – the street name for Patrocaloine. It was the only known cure for Drieker's Disease. Obtaining it wasn't exactly a crime, at least in the Universal Court's eyes, but the only planet for lightyears around that manufactured it was actively applying for secession and had a habit of shooting down courier ships. As such, the local hospitals were almost always out of the stuff when a case of Drieker's popped up. Untreated, it was invariability fatal. But if he hurried and brought this to Korat Planentary as fast as he could, maybe his girlfriend Amanda would live.
Amanda – what a girl. She was nice to be around with, and she wasn't the clingy sort, which was more important than you think when your job sends you around the galaxy. He'd be gone for months (at least in her frame of reference) and would come back with only a day to spend with her. No lectures, no “Don't leave me like that again!”, just someone to relax with while he could. A committed relationship without a commitment. It was a good deal for a Courier.
He had barely begun to reminisce about her when the console beeped – he was in occupied space. Ethor sat down. Not to man the controls, as his ship was quite adept at flying itself when there were no hostiles. But he had to look dignified and official for the Communications Officer. “Please,” he murmured to himself, “just be a respectful person who looks at my tags and lets me go.”
Ethor flipped on the auto-answer switch and waited. About ten seconds later, the Communications Officer appeared on screen. “Identification.”
“Ethor Gamiss, Courier Services. 736-tripleA-C42.”
A few seconds passed as the official read the data attached to Ethor's ID. “Well, your identity checks out and your tags are valid. As well, I see you even registered it in the database. That's above and beyond for such a small delivery, and it makes my life much easier.” Thank goodness, now he'll clear me for landing and I'll be on my way.
“However, there is one small problem.” Damnit. “You've applied here for Class A landing and port permissions. Deliveries are Class C. A Courier with such a record as yours should know this.”
“Patrocaloine is a life-saving drug, and there isn't any on your entire planet.”
“Class A landing strips must be kept reserved in case the military arrives.”
“Are they?”
“Hmm?”
“Are they coming? Right now?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then please. It's the difference between life and death.”
The official sighed. “Be quick, then. If the military shows up and you're
there it's my ass on the line. But, truth be told, I'm sick of those muscleheads asking me to give them special privileges because of their rank when we both know full well that they're just going to get drunk.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Don't thank me. If anyone asks you landed illegally.” He smirked. “No one's gonna ask, though. No one ever asks.” The communication was severed. Ethor strapped himself in and assumed manual control. He could land a few minutes faster than the autopilot.
The landing field was empty when Ethor touched down. He wasn't surprised. It wasn't often he was allowed to land on Class A facilities, but every time he had he had been the sole craft in eye vision.
Within a few minutes the cargo was on a small forklift on the ground. To hell with post-flight investigation. Ethor would just give it a good pre-flight before he took off. As soon as the Patrocaloine was ready for transport, a small, golf-cart like buggy had arrived to his ship. This was something very familiar to Ethor: a Local Transport Craft. Ethor quickly loaded the cargo from the forklift to the trunk of the LTC – something he had done more than most people had eaten.
He flashed his ID as he got in the vehicle. “I'm licensed to drive these things, and I'm in a hurry. May I?” This was a long shot, but hey, maybe he looked important landing in Class A space.
The driver shook his head. “No. I can't give you the keys to the LTC. But I can get you quickly to where you need to go.”
“Whatever Rail line will take me to Korat Planetary faster.”
“We don't run the sub-rails at night, sir. It's three hundred miles to the nearest station that's active right now.”
****. Should've landed at Port Kelay after all.
The driver could obviously see the distress on Ethor's face. “Have no worries. The streets are empty enough that I can take you right there in the LTC. Just wait in that seat and you'll soon be at the front door.”
Waiting – that was the worst part. The driver was making good time, steering the LTC through all of the shortcuts one would expect a native to know. But Ethor was powerless. Amanda might live, or she might die, but at that particular moment Ethor had no control. To alleviate his feeling of helplessness he called up the hospital. There was no answer. This wasn't as dramatic as one would think – at 3AM the phone was usually the first thing neglected in a personnel crisis. But it added another dagger of fear in Ethor's chest. He turned off the clock function of his omni-bracer. That was unnecessary stress at a time like this.
The LTC had barely begun to slow down in front of Korat Planetary when Ethor opened his door and leaped out. As soon as it stopped he opened the trunk and grabbed the Ruby Red. “Communications Officer has my ID, bill my account with that, I don't need a ride back!” he yelled as he ran in.
A nurse was waiting at the front door. “Mr. Gamiss?”
“Yes!”
She obviously knew exactly why he had come, as she quickly ran into
the main body of the hospital, yelling “Right this way, please!” Even with his encumbrance, he managed to keep pace with her.
They finally arrived in an operation room lobby. This time, it was a doctor waiting for him. “Give me the Patrocaloine, please.” Ethor recognized the voice as the lead physician he had contacted earlier.
As Ethor handed him the package, he breathlessly asked -”Amanda, is she still alive?”
“She's crashing.” Oh god. Ethor knew what a Drieker crash was. The heart stopped, the body was paralyzed, and the only thing keeping the body alive was the disease itself, trying to leach a little bit more sustenance out of the shell it inhabited, a firing of the instinctive mechanisms when it was too late to matter. “I think we can bring her back, though. It's a great thing you did here, Ethor.”
The doctor and nurse went in to the operating room proper. Before he closed the door, the doctor added, “Don't follow us. Your clothes are not sterilized, and right now that could make the difference between life or death.”
For a few minutes, Ethor stared blankly at the wall. Was this really it? Those days and days of rushing from Mani-3 to Korat, and now he had to just sit and wait, not knowing if his girlfriend would live or die.
Waiting – that's the worst part.
And then his body gave up and he collapsed on the floor.
<>
He woke up in a bed. The room had the typical hospital décor of plain beige walls and a single screen mounted on the wall for entertainment. Ethor didn't turn it on. Instead, he jumped out of bed – and promptly fell in a sprawling heap. He smiled and muttered to himself, “Have I really been keeping myself in that bad of shape? Sorry for the extended adrenaline high, body.”
Ethor pulled himself up and checked his omni-bracer. There were dozens of messages waiting for his attention; he sorted them by priority. The first one was Priority 1, a message from Korat Planetary. He knew then, but opened it up anyway. “We offer you condolences,” and here he deleted the message and sat down. His mind clear from the addles of fatigue, he saw the situation too well. Who the **** was he kidding? A Drieker crash meant death. Patrocaloine couldn't prevent that. Amanda had been dead when he had still been driving in the LTC. The doctor had to have known that as well. He was a nice man for the lies he told. Presumably they just went in the operating room and waited for him to pass out.
He was crying by now, of course, but not nearly as much as one would think. His emotions had been fired up by the quest, while his mind had known the truth from the start. Amanda had been dead since she was diagnosed and the drug was too far away. Ethor simply couldn't sit and watch her die – that's why he had went. But his rational mind had been quietly, internally shedding tears from the start. So when his consciousness had caught up – there was the other half of Ethor comforting it, holding him together. You got used to tragedy as a Courier: you know too many people for anything else to happen. It's a job where you make hundreds of friends, and of each hundred ten would die of disease, three of warfare, one of a ship malfunction.
He checked his next message. Tim Erickson, Priority 2-, contract attached. Ethor couldn't help grinning despite his sorrow. No one ever used the plus and minus system anymore – unless they were making sure their friend would hear their message promptly but not be the bearer of the ultimate bad news. It was a voice recording, a voice husky and reserved. Tim must have been watching the hospital reports and known the minute Amanda was pronounced dead, while Ethor was sleeping. “Don't worry about anything, okay, bud? I've got the room rented out for the next two weeks, and I'm taking your jobs over for the moment. I don't have much time for this, though, so just sign the attached contract to start using your vacation time. It's all done, just needs your signature. Incidentally, how the hell do you have so much vacation time? Take all of it, man. Let loose for a while.”
The contract popped up.. Ethor numbly signed it Good old Tim. Now there's someone who wouldn't have bothered with the whole trip. There's someone who has a good head on his shoulders. His responsibilities now taken care of, Ethor promptly ignored his other messages and went to bed.
<>
The two weeks were up. Ethor was caught by surprise: he had not talked to a single person or so much as looked at his omni-bracer since he had read the letter. In the end, the doctor had to knock on his door and say, “Time to go, Ethor. But first...there's something I'd like you to see.”
Ethor put on his omni-bracer and checked the time to verify the doctors claim. Seeing it was indeed time to leave, he left the room. “Alright.” It would probably be some cutesy bull****, but hey, the doctor had humored him in his time of need so it was only fair to do the same. Ethor was mentally whole, now, with his familiar protections – the armor of indifference, the shield of experience, and the bolts of cynicism holding it together.
The doctor led him to a small lobby. A girl of perhaps 10 was sitting in a wheelchair. Her eyes were to the ground, her head was bald, and she looked generally sickly. Ethor mentally groaned. Was he supposed to feel so pitiful for her that he would suddenly be okay about his girlfriend dying? This is why Ethor had long ago learned to resolve this issues himself – people were just so damn clumsy about it.
“Tell him your story, Jamie,” the doctor instructed.
The girl looked up, and a wan smile crossed her face. “I was diagnosed with Drieker's Disease two months ago. They tried to treat me at a private hospital on the other side of the planet. But they had no Patrocaloine and they said I was gonna die but then later they said I wouldn't die and they sent me here and then I didn't die.”
The doctor smiled. “They had monitors on the official databases, Ethor.
Normally, they wouldn't have known until it was too late. But you official registered the delivery, and they had her here before you even touched down.”
For a few seconds, numbness: and then a wave of relief so powerful he had to grab on to a chair to stay on his feet. If he hadn't registered the package, Amanda might have lived – might. But that act had guaranteed this child's life. To trade an uncertainty for a certainty: this was one of the core values of Couriers, and it was always a good trade.
“Well, doc,” Ethor said, “Looks like you had the right idea.”
“I'm glad we can see you out the door healthy in body and mind. Now, I believe your ship has caused quite an uproar, being parked in Class 1 space illegally for such a long time.”
“A SPACESHIP?!” Jamie interjected. “Like, that flies in space and dodges lasers and stuff? Tell me a story about your spaceship, pleeeaasseee?”
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Now, Jamie, this is rather a serious matter Ethor has to attend to.”
Ethor waved the thought away. “I gave my rights to Tim Erickson temporarily. Knowing him, he's already found a way to sue them instead.” He took a seat beside Jamie. “Besides, there's always time for a story.”
Jamie eagerly wheeled to face him.”Tell me a story about your spaceship, with super-fast space flying and lasers and – and a space worm!”
Ethor contemplated his journey to get the Patrocaloine. He had retraced that flight hundreds of times, blaming himself for every misstep along the away. Now, though, he was not morbidly brooding but instead reflecting on narrative value. Super fast space flying? He had gone above the legal speed, yes. Lasers? Well, the orbital defense station had taken a few potshots at his ship as he had landed. Hadn't even breached his shields, but Jamie didn't know that. Space worm? Nothing of the sort, but Ethor had seen one before and he could improvise. “Sure.”
He leaned forward, new energy in his veins. Cynicism was all well and good, but not for story-telling. “This is a story with a spaceship that flies super fast. There are lasers.”
Jamie looked at him suspiciously. “And a space worm.”
“The space worm is the best part! But we can't skip ahead. It has to start at the beginning. There's a space pilot, going to a far off planet to get a special medicine.” He smiled. “A special medicine for a very special girl...”
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