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racket.
“Oh, no,” said Beck. “Actually, I was just delivering this to you.” She picked it up and handed it across the table. “Vrosky and I designed this for you – it’s a case for your new racket. The one you had to have made to accommodate your – your new – ”
“Special abilities?” Benjamin finished.
Beck looked down, embarrassed. “Yes.”
“Well, thank you, Lieutenant, I appreciate it.” He opened the case and examined it. “Nice work.”
“Captain. Sir – I – uh. I just wanted to say how sorry I am about all this happening to you.”
“Well, thank you, Lieutenant.” Benjamin sipped at his water. “I appreciate that. Huh! I just said that, didn’t I? Some conversationalist I am.”
Beck smiled. “That’s fine, Sir. I understand you’re under a lot of stress right now. I can go if you like.” She started to stand up.
“No, no, no,” said Benjamin. “Please, stay. Please.”
Beck lowered herself back into the chair. “So, have Commander King and Dr. Tucker figured out how to help you?”
“Actually, yes,” Benjamin said, sitting up straighter and feeling lighter. “Ioban says they’ll have a kind of a serum ready for me to try out by tomorrow morning. It’s supposed to save my mind from slipping out of phase with this time continuum, but allow my body to function in a sort of timeless environment, yet controlled by my mind.”
“Do you think it will work?”
“I have no idea. But I trust Ioban – he’s a good man with a brilliant mind. He understands the science and pays attention to the details. And the doctor is a smart one, too. I believe they can make it work.”
“I hope so,” said Beck, looking Benjamin in the eye. “I really do.”
As their eyes met, Benjamin felt his heart rise up toward his throat, taking his breath away. He thought for a moment that Beck was looking at him, not as her captain, but as something else. Something more. He quickly pushed the thought aside, realized he was staring, and cleared his throat.
“Well, we’d better get to bed, Lieutenant.” He slammed his eyes shut, embarrassed, then reopened them, rubbing the corner of his eye nervously. “I mean, I’d better get to bed. Big day ahead.”
“Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir,” said Beck. “Good night, Sir.”
Beck stood and started to walk away.
“Oh, and Sariah – thank you again for the racket case.”
She smiled and nodded. He cringed inside, realizing he had just broken protocol, calling her by her first name for the first time. He wondered if she’d noticed.
Of course she did, he thought.
۞
Captain Benjamin awoke early and headed down to the medical ward, arriving before King or Tucker. He sat on one of the medbeds and took a few deep breaths. He tried to push back certain thoughts.
This is highly experimental, and could kill me.
If we don’t do something, I’m going to die anyway – or at least, I’ll wish I were dead.
If only I’d moved a little faster, back on that pirate ship. Ha! I can move plenty fast now.
He held up his hand and concentrated hard on it, waving it back and forth, the movement so fast it was not even a blur, but invisible.
What if I die without ever telling Sariah my true feelings for her? Of course, I can’t tell her – what if I live?
Tucker and King entered together through the swinging doors of the medical ward, and Benjamin snapped out of his thoughts and into the moment.
“Everything ready, gentlemen?”
“We may proceed,” said Tucker.
Benjamin laid back on the medbed. Tucker approached him and attached a few biomonitor cables to various points on his head. Opening Benjamin’s shirt, he added more biomonitors to his chest, then rolled up Benjamin’s left sleeve. Ioban brought over a vial and handed it to Tucker.
“This,” said Tucker, snapping the vial into a pressure syringe, “is the stuff. I’ll inject it into your arm – your left arm, to avoid any unexpected reactions with your injured arm. You’ll probably feel a mild burning sensation that will move up your arm. Then we’ll take some new brain scans to see if it’s doing its job.”
Benjamin nodded. “All right.”
“You should know almost right away if it’s working,” said King. “You’ll find that it’s easier to control your right arm – less thinking, less concentration, less effort required to move your arm in super-time.”
“And how will we know that it is actually doing what is intended – saving my mind from temporal extinction?”
“We won’t know until the mutation has consumed your whole body – which, at the rate it’s accelerating, will be about three weeks from now.”
“So, if I’m still around in a month, we celebrate? And If I’m not – then, oh well?”
“This is, indeed, our only shot at this,” said Ioban. “If we don’t see some quantifiable results – that is, if you fade mentally along with physically, we will lose you, permanently. There’ll be no other way to stop it once that happens.”
“Okay, doc, fire away,” said Benjamin. “Let’s get this stuff into my system.”
Tucker touched the pressure syringe to Benjamin’s arm and pulled the trigger. A soft whistling sound accompanied the emptying of the syringe into his bloodstream. As the burning sensation increased, Benjamin struggled to stop himself from writhing in pain. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
“A slight burning?” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re a . . . a master of under . . . statement.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny, we could only make educated guesses about the side effects, since it’s never been tested on anyone,” King said.
After a few minutes the burning abated, and Benjamin visibly relaxed.
“So, can I go back to work?” asked Benjamin.
“Yes,” said Tucker. “There’s no point in confining you to a medbed for three weeks. Either this is going to work, or it’s not. But I do want to monitor you – I’d like you to come see me for a few minutes, once in the morning and once at night.”
“You got it, doc.”
Benjamin and Ioban left the medical ward and headed toward the bridge. They stepped into a powerlift and the doors closed. “Ioban, if, at the end of the three weeks, it turns out that it didn’t work – if I slip fully out of phase and disappear – the moment it happens, I want you to go into my quarters and fire your weapon in all directions.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll be in there, waiting for you. I just don’t want to live like that, Ioban.”
“Johnny, I – ”
“Just do it. I don’t want to have to live out the rest of my days alone.”
“I can’t just kill you!”
“I’ll already be dead,” Benjamin said flatly, looking straight ahead.
“I’ll have to think about this.”
“If you won’t do it, I’m sure Sammons would be glad to,” said Benjamin.
King frowned and sighed in frustration. “I don’t even know if that would work. When you were shot on the Gravani ship, the energy discharge was altered by the quantum phase shielding of your suit. But if you were simply phased out of time, and I shot you, the energy would strike you, but it wouldn’t disrupt your molecules like a normal weapons shot. It may do nothing more than warm your skin. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but when your body phases out – even if your mind doesn’t – you may become virtually invincible.”
“Really?” Benjamin said. “So, my choices are now that in three weeks I will either become a cross between Superman and the Flash, or I’ll disappear and be forced to live my life surrounded by statues, with all things in an apparent state of pause?”
“That’s what I think, yes.”
“Great.”
۞
The three weeks seemed to pass too quickly. Each day, Benjamin checked in with Dr. Tucker, and each
day more of his body was consumed by the mutation. By the end of the three weeks, with mental effort he could move his whole body at incomprehensible speed. The only thing left was to find out if his mind would remain intact in the normal time continuum, or phase out with his body.
“Doc says this is it,” Benjamin said to King as they got into the powerlift together. “He’s going to monitor me all day today, to determine the moment that the mutation is complete. Either I’ll wink out of your existence at some point, or I’ll retain my mind and be able to control my body’s temporal location.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Ioban. “I want to be there when it happens – or doesn’t happen.”
“Have you thought more about my request?”
“Yes. Every day of these past three weeks.” King looked his captain and childhood friend in the eye. “I’ll do it. But, remember what I said – it may have no effect. And I’ll have no way of knowing.”
“I was thinking about that,” said Benjamin. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll communicate it to you. I’ll do something as a sign. From my perspective, you’ll never receive the sign, but you will receive it.”
“A sign? Like what?”
“I don’t know – I can do something – knock something off the table, like a ghost.”
King thought it over. “All right – I suppose that will work.”
The powerlift stopped before the medical ward level. Sariah Beck stepped in.
“Captain,” she said, “may I join you? I mean, I would like to be there for the – you know.”
“Sure,” said Benjamin. “I think that would be appropriate. If it turns out that – well, if things don’t work out