Toby didn’t want her to leave. It had been weeks since he had heard a kind word, felt a warm hand that wasn’t pushing or shoving him around. The doctor was old, she had gray hair that was close-cropped and there were lines and wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, and in that moment, the thought of her leaving was overwhelming and terrifying.
He grabbed her coat sleeve, “Please...” he said, unable to put his emotions into words. It was all too much and he was so afraid, so lonely.
Julie turned back to him, her expression kind and concerned as she saw the desperation on Toby’s face.
“Toby, do you want to stay with me? Is that what you need?”
He couldn’t bring himself to speak. It was as if speaking it out loud would break open the dam and all of pain and loneliness he had held in since Mom and Dad had died would just burst out and never stop. Toby simply nodded, his eyes begging for her help.
Julie stared back, her green eyes glistening. She turned to the waiting worker, “I will be taking this one with me to my lab. We have room for him there.”
Later that evening, when he had been fed, bathed, deloused, and Julie had found him the smallest set of scrubs she could and then rolled up the legs and arms, she had asked about his family.
“Dad died first, and then Mom. She was going to have a baby.” Toby said, fighting back tears. “I’m not a baby, so I shouldn’t cry.”
“It’s okay to cry, Toby. When your parents die, it isn’t a weakness to grieve.” Julie hugged the boy awkwardly. “Don’t ever feel bad about that.”
“I’m nine now, I think. My birthday is August 7th, so I shouldn’t cry. Babies cry.”
“Well, that’s just silly. I’m sixty-nine, so I’m no spring chicken, and I still cry. Never be afraid to show who you are, it is what makes you special.” She showed him a cot set up in the corner of an empty room. “I’ll be right next door if you need anything.”
A week passed and there was no word from the refugee camp, no one demanding the boy be returned. Toby found himself watching and learning from Julie, rarely wanting to leave her side.
Two weeks after she had found him in the camp, as they sat together eating breakfast, Julie looked thoughtful, “Toby? Do you want to stay here with me for a while? I mean, if you would rather be with children your own age, I would totally understand.”
“I like it here.” Toby said quietly. Over the past two weeks he had gained weight, the dark circles under his eyes had vanished, his ribs no longer jutted out sharply, and Julie had filled his room with books, a small desk and dresser, and new clothes and shoes. “I like staying here with you, Julie.”
In the months that followed, Julie allowed him to sit in a corner of her lab and gave him any books he wanted. At first, all he wanted were books on the stars, and space.
“I’m going up to space, like my Uncle Dan,” Toby said at first, dreaming of boarding a spaceship that would go faster than Calypso and beat his uncle to Zarmina’s World. He would land there and be standing on the ground, waiting when Uncle Dan landed.
In time, however, as Julie peered at endless samples through slides, or ran scans, Toby found himself inching closer, peering at her work. Eventually, it became more, a mentor/mentee relationship. They lived and worked together, the rest of the year passing in a blur.
Neither of them could have seen this future when Toby had first felt her hand on his. But their choices on that day were life-changing.
Two years later, Toby now eleven, stared at the reports that littered her desk.
“Julie?”
The old woman was intently studying the latest cultures from a recently infected enclave of survivors from the hills of North Carolina. The incubation rate had escalated from a long 35-day cycle to just nine days from exposure to full-blown infection. The mortality rate remained in excess of 99%.
The connection to blood type had been verified enough times to be clear, only AB negative blood types had any hope of survival. It remained to be seen if the effects of the ESH virus would mutate enough that the survivors would be able to reproduce.
“Mm, yes, Toby?”
“The terato...terato...”
“Teratogenic?” Julie supplied.
“Yeah, teratogenic. That means no more babies, right?”
Julie looked up from the microscope. “Yes and no. Nature will out, Toby. All things defy extinction, and humans are more defiant than most.”
She smiled, “We are a crafty, ingenious species which has survived some pretty heavy sh...,” she amended what she was about to say, “Er, stuff.”
“But what if there are no more babies?” he paused, “I mean if we all have the virus, and we are all sterile, then...”
Julie gave him a sad smile, “A poet, T.S. Eliot, once wrote, ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.’”
Toby shivered, looked at the pages full of death and despair, looked down at his hands and thought of his mom and dad, and his uncle so many billions of miles away. Julie was good to him, kind, and patient. But he missed them. He couldn’t help it. There was a hole in his heart, one that could never be filled.
Julie leaned over, took his hand and looked into his eyes.
“We survive, Toby, and dream and work for a better tomorrow. It’s all that we can do. It is all any of us can do.”
Toby met her eyes with a resolute stare, “I’ll do my part, Julie.”
“I know you will Toby. I can see it in you.”
She shifted off of the stool, rubbed her neck, and beckoned him closer to the microscope, “Would you like to take a look?”
He scrambled to sit on the stool and peer through the microscope at the virus slowly turning in the solution. Julie’s hand rested on his shoulder, reassuring, kind.
Toby’s eyes adjusted to the microscope and he stared at the thing that had taken his parents away.
Here was death, here was the threatened end of all that he knew.
He would study it.
He would defeat it.
Let Her Go
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert Heinlein
Date: 06.26.2103
Calypso Colony Ship
Seeing the apprehensive look on Sam’s face brought it home to Daniel. He was standing there on the Cryo Deck, just a few steps away from Deeks’ desk. For the first time he felt completely out of his element.
Sam was on the prep table, dressed in boy shorts and a tank top and looking sexy as hell. She also looked vulnerable and sad. He had caught her in time. She was scheduled to spend the next eighteen months in Cryo and be revived right before planetfall.
Medry, you are a complete dick.
He knew it. He had pushed Sam away for a week now. And for what? Because of how he felt about her? Even he knew that was stupid. Cryo wouldn’t last forever, and he knew she wanted some future with him, she’d as much as said so.
Kids.
He had read once some sappy sentiment that Janine had posted on her and Luke’s fridge. It had read, “Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
Sappy...but true.
And Sam had said it. After months of blissed out moments together, her thoughts had finally turned to the future, to what their lives would be like after planetfall. She wasn’t the only one. Knowing the fate of Earth had reminded everyone of how fragile human existence truly was. There had been some who wanted to start having babies immediately, before planetfall. At the other extreme were those who were voicing their fears over becoming the equivalent of brood mares, and asking if the artificial wombs could be adapted to support human embryos.
Whenever it even looked like the conversation was going to head in the direction of babies, he’d cut in, changed the subject, and shut her down.
She wanted kids. And all he could think of was Toby.
His...son. And he had left him the
re. Left him to die, alone, abandoned first by his biological father, and then through death, by the only parents he had ever known.
Plenty of kids had been left orphans. A world full of people had died horribly. Toby wasn’t alone in this, and Daniel knew it, but it didn’t change anything. Daniel had left his son, his brother, the mother of his child, and thoughtlessly abandoned them to an unspeakable fate.
They had all had to report to Jacob Carter for evaluation after the news of Earth’s fate had gone ship-wide. And just because Daniel and Kevin and the captain had had some more time to accept it, that didn’t count for much. Everyone ended up talking to Carter, he was the Psych on duty, and the man everyone had to spill their guts to. Captain’s orders, you go until Carter tells the Captain you don’t have to anymore.
He had done his mandatory hours with Carter, cried, howled, and then put his heart and memories in a nice little pocket. He’s passed and gotten out of the required sessions in record time. Until now. Until the conversations started going to babies, kids, families, and planetfall.
He just...couldn’t. He couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t imagine Sam’s belly growing full and round with his child.
It’s just not you, Daniel. You aren’t exactly dad material, are you? Across the distance of billions of miles, a dead woman’s voice still haunted him.
“Daniel, I...” Sam was directly in front of him now.
He put a finger up to her mouth, then leaned in and kissed her. “I’ve been a dick, Sam. And you don’t deserve that.” He took a deep breath, tried to get past the logjam in his throat at the thought of telling her about Toby.
Sam’s expressive gray eyes filled. She played the tough chick well, but once you got past that rock-hard exterior, well, he had seen an entirely different side of her since they had become lovers. Sam was the best of both worlds, smart and sharp-tongued to keep him on his toes, intuitive and sensitive.
In some ways, she reminded him of Janine, and in others, reminded him of someone Janine could never have been.
“I’ve got something to tell you. Something about my family I haven’t told you about.”
Her eyes widened a little.
She knew of his family, who hadn’t talked of their families? She had talked of hers, of a brother who had captained ships to the Moon and Mars. He had held her close when they had received word of his death. They had grieved together.
Evers, who had been prepping Sam, had quietly moved to the opposite end of the Cryo Deck. Deeks wasn’t on shift yet. There was just the two of them.
Daniel took a deep breath and told her the truth about his affair with Janine, his brother’s wife, and Toby. She listened quietly.
“I left him there, Sam. I left him to face a world full of death and loneliness.” Daniel caught his breath, his chest hurt just thinking about it, “How can I even think of bringing another child into the world after doing something like that? And could you even look at me and want a child with me knowing that?”
Sam said nothing, simply pulled him close.
They stood there for a moment and then he said quietly, “I’m in love with you Sam.”
“I love you too, Daniel.”
Moments later, Mike Deeks ambled in, now on shift.
“Time for a nap, Sexy Sam?” he asked.
Despite his flirtatious words, he barely looked at her, intent on his job. Medry wondered if Deeks was still pining for one slim and attractive Kit Tanner.
After handling the transition of all personnel from Earth to Calypso, Kit had gone directly into Cryo. Like a majority of the folks in Cryo, she would not be revived until just before planetfall.
Sam hugged Daniel one last time and nodded to Deeks, extending her arm.
“Can I stay until you go in?” Daniel asked.
She nodded and he squeezed her hand, and then moved out of Deeks’ way.
Daniel watched as Deeks fitted Sam with an IV, inserted the cannula in her nose and filled a syringe with a bright green fluid that swirled inside. He wasn’t much for needles, especially if they were going into him, so he hadn’t really watched when being prepped for his stint in Cryo.
The drug, combined with a gas similar to nitrous oxide would bring Sam’s body into an altered state of consciousness, allowing Deeks to administer another drug which would reduce all body functions to a crawl. Combine this with just the right timing in cooling and Sam’s body would enter a state of what was essentially hibernation.
They had first experimented with it during the long in-system trips to the Mars colony. Six months in each direction, since they couldn’t use the first-run warp drives in-system, and it had been an excellent alternative to feeding two dozen people for half a year before getting to an inhospitable planet with limited resources.
It had also worked well for a couple of cases of cancer that couldn’t be treated at the Mars colony. They had discovered that the hibernating state that Cryo provided slowed down the spread of the disease significantly. It had saved the lives of a handful of people over the years. The in-system drives developed in the past ten years had negated the need for hibernation within their solar system, but it had been the perfect solution for a trip such as this one.
Daniel watched as Sam’s eyes fluttered and slipped closed, her slim, long fingers flexing slightly as if she were grasping for something just out of reach. Daniel ran a hand through her hair, smoothing down a few stray hairs, while Deeks waited a moment and then slid the next injection into her before pushing a button on the bottom of the table.
The entire assembly shifted, the sides of the Cryo case extruding from a section of the floor and enveloping the table with Sam on it. The sides slid up, straps tightening into position and the clear viewing window was temporarily clouded with cooling vapors. Daniel had never watched the process before, and he sucked in his breath.
It was one thing to be in Cryo, or even to come out of it, and quite another to see it done to another human being. It was more than disconcerting. It was terrifying.
Deeks continued to watch the various readouts displayed on the front screen of the Cryo pod, absorbed in blips and lines, which were incomprehensible to Daniel, but apparently made perfect sense to Deeks.
Deeks nodded, murmuring to himself as the blips and lines slowly lessened into barely discernible bumps and valleys.
He looked up at Daniel as if noticing him for the first time and clapped a hand on Medry’s shoulder, “She’ll be fine buddy. It all looks good.”
Daniel helped Deeks shift the Cryo pod upright, guide it via the built-in rails to an open position in the eighth row, and heard the machine click into position in the floor. The portals for the Cryo chems were built into the floor, along with the oxygen supply and more. Each pod plugged into its own set of pipes which were controlled by the Cryo Deck’s main computer.
The mist had cleared slightly, and Daniel could see Sam’s face. She looked dead. It was unnerving, to say the least. As he stared at her face, he thought about what a future with her would be like planetside. Who knew? Perhaps she would wake up from Cryo and decide to find someone else, someone who gave a damn about family and kids, someone reliable, who wouldn’t just abandon a child to a world full of death.
Medry sucked in his breath. Damn it. He wasn’t okay and he knew it. He needed to talk to Carter again, maybe the psychologist could help him be the man Sam deserved. Maybe.
Daniel slipped out of the Cryo Deck and headed for his workstation. He was fifteen minutes late.
Time to Run
“There is just a thin veneer of civilization on our society. What is underneath is not pretty, and it does not take much to peel away the veneer.” – James Wesley
Date: 07.12.2099
Earth – Boston, Massachusetts
The cracks and explosions outside were not fireworks. The children didn’t understand this and whined in turns.
“Mom, you promised.” Liam’s whine was annoying, but it did little to stir Lila Mathers as she sat on the h
ard plastic kitchen chair in Grace Whitley’s kitchen. The transmission had come through last week, right before a solar storm interrupted all further communication.
Transmission Packet
JSS to EMC
/BEGIN TRANSMISSION
Confirmation of contagion on board ship. All hands infected with ESH virus. Initiating isolation protocol to protect colonists in Cryo. Personal messages from crew to family to follow
/END TRANSMISSION
The personal messages had never arrived. The solar storm had seen to that. And now, as the Juniper Supply Ship moved farther from Earth, irrevocably far from efficient communications range, Lila’s world was falling apart.
First travel restrictions, then quarantine, and now martial law had been declared. This in itself was terrifying and brought back the recounted stories of The Collapse, when the United States had crumbled into a civil war that had taken more than two decades to recover from.
“Mom...” Simon, just two years older than his brother knew better, but that didn’t seem to stop him. He was pulling on Lila’s arm. “You promised to take us to see the fireworks!”
Grace Whitley rescued Lila from her sons, recognizing the vacant look in the young mother’s eyes.
“Boys! Listen to me. Those aren’t the nice kind of fireworks. They are the bad kind, dangerous ones. They canceled the 4th of July this year because everyone has been getting sick. We can’t go outside right now, we have to stay here.”
She glanced nervously at her husband TJ, who was on his fourth glass of scotch and looking pissed. He glared at the boys, muttering under his breath. How much more could he drink? When would he blow his top? Grace worried that she had made a terrible mistake bringing Lila and the kids into the house, but what could she do? Lila was practically catatonic.
Yesterday Grace had called Lila for an update. The phone had rang and rang until Simon’s young voice had answered.
“Hello?”
“Simon? Grace asked, “Simon, this is Miss Grace. Are you okay? Is your mama there?”
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