by Aaron Bunce
Jacoby groaned and reached up to rub his eyes. What does it mean? Did I screen pop positive for something? But what? He wasn’t drunk, and he sure as hell hadn’t done stims in a while, and he refused to touch that newest chem Mike was talking about…what did he call it…brain boiler? Before he could fall too deep into panic, Jacoby typed out a quick response.
[Jacoby] Yes.
His thoughts flashed back to the previous night. He wasn’t immediately able to differentiate between what had been dream and what was real. The data point vibrated almost instantly, and a message flashed in.
[Clinic Automedic response bot]{@##} Response confirmed{@}. Appointment time – 1100 hours. Please arrive fifteen minutes early.
“Damn…damn…damn,” he grunted and rolled over. He clung to the sheet and sat up. His bed was a mess, the majority of the sheets and pillows scattered on the floor. But it wasn’t just the mess. The room still smelled like sex, confirming his suspicions, the fitted sheet showing obvious signs of their lovemaking.
Jacoby rubbed his eyes again and struggled with a stab of guilt. Anna wasn’t with him when he woke. Had it been a mistake? Had he ruined their friendship? The worry filled him and knotted up his guts.
Flinging his legs out of bed, Jacoby threw on a pair of shorts and reached for the door. Classical music – a march, heavy with brass and probably Russian – filled the next room. The door seal popped as it opened, the aroma of brewing coffee filling his nose.
Jacoby walked out into the common room only to find a portable battery unit sitting on top of their small coffee table, a number of glowing power cables draped out over the floor – one to a small wireless speaker, another to a floor lamp, and the last to the coffee machine on the counter.
“Hey, sleepy head,” Anna said from the seat by the window. She jumped up, put her book down, and moved over to the coffee pot.
Jacoby approached slowly, the first signs of a headache forming. He studied the battery unit, the Planitex logo glowing a steady green on its otherwise featureless top. He looked up to Anna. She wore a pair of tight-fitting yoga style pants, and a gray fleece pullover. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the subtle red and brown lowlights never more apparent.
“I got up early and found most of the power off. They’re still not sure of what all is damaged, but are handing out these portable power units to compensate,” Anna said, pouring some creamer into a mug, “I guess there are still large parts of the station without any power at all.”
He took a breath to speak as she poured out some coffee, compelled to apologize for the night before, but couldn’t seem to find the words. His thoughts were a confusing mess – doubt, foggy intimate recollections, more sexual urges, and uncertainty. He wanted to say and do anything in his power to ensure their friendship wasn’t ruined – that they continued to be Anna and Coby, like always.
Anna turned and held out a white mug of coffee, and he accepted it, taking an exploratory sip. She looked to be the same old Anna, accept…she wasn’t. Her eyes were bright, her hair curly and lustrous. Her skin practically glowed. If he hadn’t seen her naked the night before, he might even think that her breasts looked a bit fuller, too.
“Drink,” she said and nodded to the mug. He lifted the mug again and took a larger drink.
“Anna…”
“Hold that thought, Coby. There is something I need to say first.”
Jacoby sucked in a larger drink of coffee than he was ready for and swallowed. The hot liquid burned his mouth and he sputtered. He feared what she would say next, and fought the impulse to stop her.
Coby, I love you, you’re my best friend, but it’s time for me to go home and tell my parents they were right.
Or.
Coby, I love you, you’re like my brother, but it’s all changed now. I don’t think we can be friends after last night. Our friendship is ruined. I have to go home.
“I can see it on your face right now,” she said, stifling a small laugh. “You think you took advantage of me last night…no, you’re terrified that you did, and what we shared ruined our friendship.”
He reached up and patted his face, and secretly wondered if he hadn’t accidentally voiced all of his worries out loud.
“Well, don’t be stupid. We both have had a really tough time lately, and we fought. It was a stupid fight, and we were both wrong, but we fought…which isn’t something we’ve really done before. I love you, Coby, and I always will. We both needed a release…and truth be told, neither of us has had anything resembling an intimate relationship, well beyond our friendship, for a long while now. I don’t regret what we did last night, and more importantly, I don’t want it to change things between us, so I’m not going to let it. I know it’s asking a lot, and maybe it’s not entirely possible, but I hope you can still look at me as the ‘same Anna’.”
Jacoby forced out a breath, only after stars started dancing before his vision. Hell, he wasn’t sure when he last took a breath. She was the “same old Anna”, and he couldn’t even harbor the thought of looking at her as anything but that.
“I seriously thought you were going to hate me, and that you just wanted to tell me that we ruined our friendship and that you were catching the next transport home to your parents,” he sighed, looking to the ceiling and breathing a sigh of relief.
“Oh my god, are you serious?” Anna said, “Why would I ever do that? They’re…horrible…people. You’re my family.”
Jacoby took another drink of coffee and laughed, letting much of that pent up tension go. He met Anna’s eyes, and she squinted, as if reading him.
“Don’t be weird about this, dude. We just had sex, like two or three times last night. There’s nothing to feel weird about, except maybe your stamina…geez.”
“Are you sure?” Jacoby asked, after stifling a laugh.
“Yes, and you know why. Do you remember what I said when you showed up at my door…the night before we ran away?”
He nodded. Of course he did, it was both the most terrifying and amazing moment of his life, up to that point. He’d gotten in a fight with his dad, which turned into a fistfight. Jacoby woke up on the floor, grabbed his stuff, and ran.
“I said, ‘you’re all I got now’.”
Anna nodded. “Your teeth were loose, your lips were bleeding, and your eye was swollen shut. You right arm was hurt, too, remember? You were all bruises and could barely close your fingers into a fist. I told you that it would just be you and me, and nothing would come between us…and I meant it.”
“You and me,” he echoed, warmth blossoming inside.
“Now can I tell you all of the stuff I’ve done already today?” she asked, visibly brimming with life and energy.
“I guess,” Jacoby said, feigning nonchalance, only his data point vibrated loudly a moment later. He unlocked the screen and opened the new message. It was an appointment reminder for the clinic.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong,” Anna asked. Jacoby proceeded to tell her about his screw up at work, his administrative time off, as well as his check up with doc Reeds. He couldn’t remember how much he’d told her the night before, so he rattled on about all of it just to be safe.
“Half the lifts are down, so it’s going to take us twice as long to get to the clinic on A. Go take a quick shower, and we’ll go,” she said, lifting the mug out of his hand and pushing him down the hall towards the shower.
Jacoby showered quickly, the water still ice-cold, toweled off, and threw on some clean clothes. He pushed out of his room, balancing on one foot to pull his other boot on, and followed Anna out the door.
“Must be nice. Just scrub your pits and butt and throw on a clean shirt and go. You guys have it so easy,” she said, not waiting for him as he swiped his wrist against the panel to lock the door.
“Yeah, but we have to shave sometimes, and maybe even brush our teeth,” he replied and barely suppressed his smile.
“Oh, you poor thing.”
They turned right
and walked together past Soraya and Preston’s door. Jacoby eyed the gray steel warily. They were down the hall and around the next corner before he could breathe easily again.
“Now what is the matter with you?” Anna asked and pushed the elevator button.
“Uh, oh nothing,” he said, pulling on his shirt collar to stretch it out. It was an old t-shirt, and he didn’t remember it being so tight. The sleeves were tight, too. Jacoby patted himself down, until he looked over and found Anna watching him. He considered telling her about Soraya the day before, and her almost frighteningly aggressive behavior. Then his thoughts drifted to Lex, the hot redhead in the commissary. Should he tell her about that, too?
“Are you feeling yourself up?” she asked with a snort.
“No!” he argued, but felt his cheeks warm almost immediately, and decided to keep the details about the other women to himself. She’d probably just think he was bragging, and to be fair, he wouldn’t believe him either.
“Well, that shirt does look a bit tight. I didn’t know you started working out again. Is that what you’ve been doing with Mike and the other guys? When you’re not drinking.”
Jacoby pulled down on the t-shirt again, stretching the fabric but didn’t respond. He hadn’t lifted a weight since leaving earth, and yet he felt definitively bulkier, even in his stomach, where he could feel tight muscle beneath his thin layer of carefully cultivated burgers and beer.
The elevator arrived and Anna stepped aside, letting a group step off. They rode the elevator up to D ring level one and worked their way around to the hub, bypassing two transit elevators, until finally finding one in service that would take them through C and B to A ring.
Anna stood on the other side of the elevator, running in place, her ponytail bouncing playfully behind her. Jacoby watched and marveled at her almost sickening energy level.
“So, you wanted to tell me about all the stuff you’ve already gotten done today.”
Anna nodded, and started shadow boxing the air. The gravity increased as the elevator started to move. Jacoby sagged under the pressure, but Anna continued to bounce, as if trapped in her own personal workout challenge.
“You were sleeping, and I was wide awake, so I got up, showered, did a load of laundry, ate breakfast, and…” she said, breathing against the strain, and then proceeded to rattle off an even longer list of chores and tasks. She’d been busy while he slept.
“How do you have so much energy? I feel like I had just closed my eyes before I woke up. Damn, I’m tired,” he said and covered a yawn.
“I don’t know, but I feel good. I mean, like the best I have, like ever! I feel like I could run a marathon, no…a triathlon. My hair was good this morning, none of that redeye I’ve had lately, and my skin is super clear!”
“I’m glad at least one of us feels good then,” Jacoby mumbled as the large elevator stopped and the doors opened.
They stepped into the A ring atrium, the wide walkway a mass of congestion and confusion. Service techs worked behind wall panels, their bags and ladders strewn across the floor. The clutter formed an obstacle course from wall to wall.
“Come on, or you’re gonna be late,” Anna said, pulling him forward through the maze. They passed through bright pools of light and into entire sections of shadow. More workers bustled up ahead, carrying in long, thin tubes and handing them up to workers on scaffolding.
“Those are strings of photo-organic light emitting diodes. They call them solar strings,” Anna said, pointing at them excitedly. “They stimulate vitamin D production in people, and facilitate photosynthesis in the station’s habitat vegetation. The plants grow, breathe in our carbon dioxide, and exhale breathable oxygen. It’s all part of the complicated life support structure in place.”
Jacoby followed, dodging the technicians and trying not to trip over length of cable and tool trays. Sprawling ivy grew up the curved walls. Multi-tiered planters covered the walls on either side of them, masses of green vegetation clustering greedily in the brightest spots. Jacoby spotted plants with wide leaves that looked like elephant ears, to shooting stalks covered with clusters of purple and yellow flowers.
“This looks bad,” Jacoby said, after waiting for Anna to lead them through the worst of the congestion. They fell into step next to one another.
“The accident communications from administration don’t cover the half of it,” Anna whispered but stopped as a group of admin workers in white and gray bodysuits appeared out of a side passage. She coughed and they continued on in silence.
They passed office after office, technicians working in overhead compartments, massive rolls of cable looped on the tables and chairs beneath them. Jacoby continued forward, watching the flurry of activity. He almost tumbled over a stooped person in the middle of the path, but Anna pulled him over just in time.
Jacoby turned to apologize but the female technician was too engrossed in her work to even notice him. She held a length of fiber up to a portable light, the shielding visibly melted and misshapen.
“Do you smell that?” Anna asked.
Jacoby nodded as they stepped up and onto an elevator. She leaned in, swiped her wrist against the pad and selected the up arrow.
“It smells like melted plastic and hot wires,” he said as soon as the doors closed.
Anna nodded. “I stopped into the sys ops control room this morning and overheard the senior operator briefing his crew. They’re calling it a ‘cascade redundancy failure’.”
“Okay? I do rocks and crushers. That technical computer stuff is your playground.”
Anna laughed nervously, but he could tell that it was probably more nerves than humor.
“It means that the safety measures built into the station…the ones designed to protect important power distribution centers and climate control modules failed. The oxygen re-circulator explosion damaged a number of power capacitors, which then discharged their voltage violently, overloading the one-way relays designed to protect the electrical train uphill from power surges. I don’t really understand all of it…it’s a lot of electrical engineering jargon, you see. But it boils down to this – the explosion caused a back feed of current, some shit overloaded, which overloaded some other shit. Lines popped and melted, which damaged data fiber nearby. It’s a fucking mess and they aren’t sure if, or how, they’re going to fix it all.”
Jacoby let his breath out in a dramatic whistle. “That sounds bad, but on a station in the deep, it feels even worse.”
Anna nodded. “They can mess with the atmospheric circulation to keep the air breathable all over station, thanks in part to the greenhouse metric. But the name of the game is power. The reactor is fine, but enough routing systems were damaged that they might not be able to get power to all the places it’s needed…not without shipping cable and parts in from Earth or Mars.”
She finished just as the elevator signaled its arrival on the next floor, the chime warbling like a sick bird. The overhead light flickered as the doors started to open. It all went dark for a moment, before humming back to life and the doors opened fully.
Jacoby met Anna’s gaze, her worry echoing the concern tumbling around in his gut. They stepped out of the elevator to a passage full of people. They lined both sides…some leaning against the bulkheads, while others sat or lay on the ground. The passage was warm, the air stuffier than it had been anywhere else.
“Are they all sick?” Anna whispered as they moved forward.
Jacoby followed and nodded, tearing his gaze away only after a short, bearded man tipped forward to puke in a bag. They all looked sick – with dark bags under their eyes, red noses, and pale, clammy-looking skin.
Jacoby passed a small door on their left, and a memory flashed through his mind. He remembered pushing through that door, and…his memory grew fuzzy. Did I get sick in the next passage? he wondered.
They opened the clinic door and moved inside, only to find the spacious waiting room filled with people as well.
“Did
you know it was this bad…the sickness?”
Jacoby shook his head as they stopped by the counter and waited for the nurse to look up from her large screen.
“If you’re experiencing flu-like symptoms, please scan your id chip to check in and find a place to wait. I can’t guarantee how soon you’ll be seen,” the young woman said without looking up. She wore a surgical mask over her mouth and nose, leaving only her eyes and forehead visible.
Jacoby swiped his wrist over the reader, a large red glowing box popping up on the nurse’s transparent polymer monitor.
“You’re Dr. Reeds’ emergency follow-up appointment. Uh, okay,” the young nurse said, finally tearing her eyes away from the screen and looking up. Her large brown eyes were visibly glassy and a thin sheen of sweat covered her forehead. She turned her head and coughed, the force almost knocking her mask free.
“Sick?” Anna asked.
The young nurse nodded, pulling her mask down to blow her nose.
“I don’t even know why I’m wearing this stupid thing anymore. I’m already sick. This bug is horrible. Not even the synthesized immune boosters are helping much. We’ve already requested a batch of cloned anti-virals, but they won’t be here for three weeks. Uh…Dr. Reeds wants to see you right away. You can follow me.”
The nurse grunted and heaved herself out of her chair, before motioning him through hall to his right. Anna moved to walk away and wait but Jacoby hooked her arm and pulled her around to follow.
“It doesn’t look like you’ve been affected by the power outages,” Jacoby said as they moved down the narrow corridor, closed examination room doors spanning the hall on either side.
“Oh, we were. The clinic went dark yesterday for a full hour or so. We’ve had some blips…where the lights will dim and flicker, but so far today it’s been okay,” the nurse said, speaking slowly, and then gestured towards the largest room at the end of the hall. “Right in here. Have a seat please.” The nurse picked up a black bracelet off the desk and hooked it around Jacoby’s wrist. As soon as it clicked into place, the black band glowed to life, a red light thrumming in time with his heart.