by M. D. Cooper
Being surrounded by so many normal people going about their lives made Andy acutely aware of how isolated he had been in the last two years. Not since he had been on High Terra, in the suburb of Raleigh where Brit’s mother lived, had he seen so many people simply living their lives. He wondered where they were all going, what they wanted, what they did for a living. A few people even smiled at him, which was unnerving. He couldn’t square the current state of his life, including Tim’s injury, against something as banal as normalcy.
Carrying Tim against his shoulder, Andy did his best to keep his son’s limp body upright. Brit walked beside him for a while, then eventually moved in front so she could help forge a path through the crowd.
“Are you guys talking?” Cara demanded, trying to keep up behind Andy.
“Yes, we were talking. I can barely hear anything in this noise.”
Andy felt Cara grab one of the rear harness loops on his shipsuit. For a second her fingers felt like some pickpocket or other person reaching for the pistol in the small of his back until he glanced back and realized what she was doing.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Cara said.
“That’s fine. Warn me next time.”
They had all gone through security together, met by a special envoy for Senator Walton. That meant both Andy and Brit were carrying pulse pistols that normally wouldn’t been allowed in the terminal in-processing areas. This saved them the trouble of trying to buy something on-station.
Andy found himself watching faces as he kept up with Brit. So many humans. Some looked tired, worried, joyful. For some reason he had expected the Cho to be like stories of the coastal cities in the American Wild West, but it was just another hab ring. He even saw some of the same brands and franchises as Mars 1, though the M1R hadn’t even been this crowded. It made Ceres seem like a ghost town.
When they reached the clinic, the receptionist pulled up the chart Andy had already submitted and they only had to wait fifteen minutes before Andy was able to carry Tim into an examination room. He laid Tim out on a hard bed lined with disposable sheeting as a technician hooked up neural sensors and another IV. After the technician verified the console was tracking Tim’s vital signs and had a genetic structure, she told them the doctor would be in soon and left them sitting in the drab room with only the sound of Tim’s wet breathing in the air.
“Sitting here makes me think that Heartbridge clinics are actually very nice,” Brit said. “This one looks sort of dingy.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Andy said.
Brit shrugged, her gaze going to the various cabinets in the room. “They’re going to ask what happened to him.”
“I already told them he hit his head.”
“They’re not going to find evidence of a concussion.”
“I know. Do you have a better idea?”
“You could have said it was an autodoc malfunction.”
“They’d want the records,” Andy said. “I’m not a master of hacking the autodoc. Besides, that voids the warranty.”
“The warranty on the autodoc ran out two hundred years ago,” Brit said.
“I wish you two would stop snapping at each other,” Cara said. “Maybe you should stick to your Links so I don’t have to listen to you.”
“How else are you going to learn how to have an adult relationship?” Andy asked. “The longer you live, the more you grow to hate everybody.”
“I don’t hate you,” Brit said.
“I only want childish relationships,” Cara said, making it so Andy didn’t have to respond directly to Brit.
“Good call,” he said. Andy cleared his throat. “I figured not every concussion is going to leave physical damage. It seemed like the safest thing to say. We’ve been pulling data since I called them, so I don’t think we’ll need to go into it that deeply.”
“Let’s hope,” Brit said.
“Hope isn’t a plan,” Andy said automatically.
Brit opened her mouth to respond but was cut off when the door slid open and the doctor walked in, a woman in her fifties with purple eyes and gray hair.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Dr. Avery. I believe we we’ve been in contact.”
“I’m Andy Sykes,” Andy answered. “This is Brit.”
The doctor shook hands with each of them, including Cara, and then went to Tim and made a few preliminary checks. She took his pulse with her finger and held his eyelids open to shine a pen light in each of them. As she worked, Andy realized she had subtle eye implants that must have been recording the entire interaction.
“You said you thought it was a concussion,” the doctor asked.
“We’re not sure, to be honest,” Andy said.
Dr. Avery glanced at him and then back to Tim. She picked up one of his arms and let it fall. Then took one of his hands to squeeze his fingernails. She watched several go white and then fill back in with color.
Eventually she nodded to herself and activated a large display on one wall with several graphs that appeared to show Tim’s vitals. Moving around the bed to where she was closer to the screen, Dr. Avery pointed at the display. “Physically, he’s a normal ten-year old boy. He’s starting to get some muscle atrophy from lying in one position for so long but there are solutions for that. Basically, what I was just doing was verifying that the info you sent me was actually his.”
Andy raised his eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t we send the correct info? Do people fake that sort of thing?”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’d be amazed what people do to justify surgeries or drugs. I thought this was going to be a standard concussion but it didn’t make sense that your autodoc couldn’t diagnose and prescribe anti-inflammatories. If there had been actual broken bones, the system would have rebuilt any damaged structures or, worst case scenario, immobilized him until you found better care. It should all be fairly standard. What’s interesting here is that I see no evidence of a concussion. So you’re either lying to me or there has been some other damage. Rather than waste time trying to figure out if people are lying to me, I’ve learned in thirty years to focus on the patient. The body can’t lie. And the aberrant data we have here are your son’s neural patterns, which you already sent me. I’m not seeing any change between the data I received and what he’s exhibiting now.”
She pointed at a graph on the display that rose and fell in regular patterns resembling low mountains.
“I ran your son’s neural patterns through a few different data bases because honestly I have no idea what this is. I was surprised to get an immediate return from a private system offering to analyze the patterns for no charge.”
Andy felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He glanced at Brit but she didn’t seem to have the same worry.
“Here’s the thing, though,” the doctor said. “There’s no real analyzing to be done. They’ve either seen this kind of activity and have the case studies to help us, or they’re trying to sell me, and therefore you, something.”
“Let me guess who made the offer,” Andy said. “Heartbridge.”
The doctor snorted a derisive laugh. “You would think so. But no, it wasn’t Heartbridge. They don’t have to bother trying to push therapies on people based on requests from lowly specialists like me. It was a private firm on Europa, which is surprising.” She sighed. “So there’s that. I’m worried that whatever is affecting your son is degenerative. There has been a slow but steady decline in his higher brain function. He’s been dreaming, or at least the patterns suggest he’s been dreaming, but that’s starting to fade.”
“So what do you suggest?” Brit demanded. “Is there anything yo
u can do? Can you wake him up with a shot or something, or is some random company on Europa going to be the only source of real information?”
Dr. Avery gave Brit a slow look as if she were very used to dealing with distraught parents. Andy felt reassured by her confidence even if she didn’t have any truly helpful information.
“I can try a few different therapies,” Avery said. “This is similar to a coma response from a physiological perspective.”
“Then do that,” Brit said.
The doctor shook her head. “We can do that, but it might not be the safest thing for him right now. He’s stable as he is. I would recommend getting more information before doing something drastic.”
Andy’s first instinct was to comfort Brit but he stayed where he was. “What if you hadn’t gotten a response from this other company? And what are they exactly? A specialized clinic?”
“A research firm,” Avery said.
“I’m not a fan of research firms,” Brit said.
“Medical science would most likely disagree with you,” Avery said dryly. “If I hadn’t heard back, I would do more research, look for other similar cases. Which I did, and nothing specifically like Tim’s case has come back. I looked at different diseases, viral histories, genetic disorders, random trauma responses if it really is a concussion like you thought. None of that returned anything. Your son is in a semi-lucid coma state. That leaves us with a psychiatric response but neither of you have a genetic disposition for psychiatric problems.”
Cara shook her head. “Tim’s not crazy.”
“Crazy is not a specific term,” Avery said. “Besides, sometimes you need a word to describe things, whether the word fits perfectly or not.”
“What kind of research does this firm do?” Andy asked. “Do you know that, at least? What are they called?”
“They’re called Scion Research. As far as I can tell, they’ve been developing advanced neural control systems. Here, take a look for yourself.”
Avery turned to the display and brought up her personal terminal using her Link. She flicked through several menus before pulling up a text-based message with an Europan origin.
Andy squinted to read the letter. It was innocuous enough, mentioning they had seen Avery’s query in the general database and had information that might assist her patient. However, they said, any further communication would require a non-disclosure agreement from the patient.
“He can’t give consent if he’s in a coma,” Andy said bitterly.
“That’s why we’re lucky he has parents here to do it for him,” Avery said. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I can do much for your son aside from get him in a coma tank and start exercising his muscles and trying other therapies to encourage neural activity. There are a couple good facilities here on the Cho that I can recommend. They’re not cheap, but they treat their patients well. With the right care, Tim could live another ten years.”
Andy took a deep breath, misery settling down on him. He looked at Tim, still staring at the ceiling of the exam room. His eyes were wet again but there were no tears. The memory of Tim’s face in the airlock before the door opened haunted Andy. If only he had reached him in time.
He hadn’t quite overcome his anger toward Lyssa, when he chose to think about it. He knew she had made the best decision she could and now it was obvious that action had also destroyed the shuttle AI. It was no different than having to deactivate the machine on Clinic 46. Andy still didn’t know what the machine was doing, that the numbers counting up to a hundred meant anything. Kraft might have hurt Tim an hour before they reached the room. The scientist could have been lying. Brit could have controlled herself, not killed the only man who seemed to know what was happening to Tim.
Alternatives spiraled through Andy’s mind. They were supposed to meet Fugia after the appointment, but they hadn’t discussed the reality of what they expected to learn from the neurologist. How could he just take Tim to some farm for coma patients, leave him in a foreign country while they continued this insane mission for people and things that only wanted to use them. Andy had been played from the beginning and now Tim would pay the price.
Andy looked at Cara, trying to hang on to the smallest bit of gratitude that she hadn’t also been ground up in this machine.
Andy said.
Andy stared at her.
Andy looked at Dr. Avery. “Wake him up,” he said.
The neurologist looked at him sharply. “What?”
“I said wake him up. Use the drug therapy you mentioned before.”
Dr. Avery looked from Andy to Brit, maybe hoping to find disagreement. Brit nodded. “It’s all we can do.”
“There is a lot risk involved,” the doctor said.
“You’ve just spent the last twenty minutes telling us there are no options other than our son living out the rest of his life in a tank. That’s not an option. I think he wants to wake up.”
“I won’t be responsible for any side-effects of this therapy,” Avery said.
“We’re not asking you to be,” Brit said. She met Andy’s gaze.
“Fine,” the doctor said. “I’ll have my assistant transmit the disclosure forms. I’m also going to send you the contact info for the Scion group.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need it,” Andy said, then winced as soon as the word ‘hope’ left his mouth.
They waited another hour as the technicians ran more tests. Avery came into the room several times to verify her data, explaining that they were building a drug cocktail using the historical data Andy had sent and checking it against the current info from Tim’s neural responses. For fifteen minutes a technician hung a display over Tim’s head and had him watch vid clips of colors, shapes and people with different emotions. If the vids brought about any changes in Tim, none of them said so.
Finally, Avery came back into the room and told them she had added the additional chemicals to Tim’s IV feed.
“If it’s going to work,” she said, “we should see a response in the next ten minutes.”
“What’s going to happen?” Cara asked.
Dr. Avery shrugged. “He’ll wake up.”
The doctor left the room and Andy stepped closer to Tim. Taking Tim’s hand, he hated how cold the little palm was against his. Brit stood on the other side of the bed and stroked Tim’s cheek.
“I keep thinking he’ll come back all of a sudden like Petral did,” Cara said.
“Things don’t usually work out that way,” Andy told her. He shifted his fingers down to feel Tim’s pulse. He started counting along with the slow heartbeats. Several times he imagined the beats came faster, knowing they really weren’t.
Andy had lost track of time when Avery came back into the room. She looked even more tired than she had the first time he saw her. The doctor ran a hand through her hair and shook her head.
“We’re going to need to clear the room,” she said. “The treatment didn’t have an affect.”
“What if it’s just taking longer than expected?” Brit asked.
Avery shook her head. “There has been no response whatsoever. I recommend you take him somewhere quiet for now and decide what you want to do.” She looked at Andy. “Did I understand correctly you’re in from a ship?”
“We operate a small freighter,” Andy said.
“I’ve seen coma tanks on combat ships for trauma patients, so I know it’s something you c
ould look at buying. It’s an option anyway.”
Andy nodded slowly, still looking at Tim, hoping for some change that wasn’t going to come.
“All right,” he said finally. “Thank you for your help.”
Avery nodded, glancing at Tim and then away. “I wish I could have done more.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 10.01.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chorin Tree, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)
REGION: Callisto, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
As the family went through the steps of leaving the clinic and finding a place to stay in the medical district, Lyssa found herself fascinated by the small bits of information Andy processed even as he seemed to sink into himself. This data flowed through her, colored by Andy’s responses.
The pressure and temperature of Tim’s cheek against Andy’s shoulder.
Dulled sounds from the crowd passing by.
The proximity of Brit and Cara.
Images flickered through Andy’s mind, flashing just long enough for Lyssa to see them before they were gone. Andy’s father Charlie, his mother sitting in a chair because she was too tired to stand, his sister crying. Tim laughing and playing with the puppy. Tim shouting that he hated Brit.
Fran contacted him several times but Andy only told her there had been no change in Tim’s condition. Later he sent the address of the hotel where they rented rooms, laying Tim down on a narrow bed next to a window that looked over a garden full of people in patient’s gowns. The whole area was full of willow trees with long slender green leaves that nearly reached the ground.
The images in Andy’s mind conflicted briefly with the flashes Lyssa had seen in the room on Clinic 46 where they had found Tim. Andy plainly tied emotion to his memories. Certain feelings pulled him back to parts of his life he didn’t regularly think about, whereas Lyssa hadn’t known her organic memories even existed until she saw the room.
Suddenly the images were inside her, indistinct in places and vivid in others. She remembered a white hallway, the feeling of thin cloth against her skin, the cold plate pressing the back her head. She remembered the silver cylinder passing at the edge of her vision as if someone had been holding it beside her head.