Embarkment 2577 Read online

  I nodded, afraid to open my mouth in case more dumb things would jump out.

  “I’m sure Anya will be here to check on you later tonight. I’ll be back in the morning when I get off duty. Stay here, get some rest, and call me if you need me.”

  He looked at me a moment longer with a thoughtful expression on his face, nodded, and left.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, the room seemed extremely big and lonely, and I crept up in the sofa, finding comfort in making myself smaller. I should have asked if this century had TV, or a computer game. There was a computer on the ship, surely it would at least have solitaire?

  “Alex, you’re silly.” Talking to myself shook some of the mood away. It might be okay to be a needy wimp after dying and being brought to the future, alternately after making up a fantastic universe in one’s own brain, but I couldn’t afford to wallow in self-pity and fear.

  I got up and walked around the room. My legs still worked fine. I wouldn’t be jumping or running any time soon, but I could move around.

  The bedroom was moderately interesting; big and impersonal. The bathroom offered more entertainment, and I spent some time playing with the console for the sonic shower. Good thing Adam took the time to teach me how everything worked, or I might have sprayed blue goo over the floor…

  I wandered over to the mirror, leaned forward, and took a good look at myself. The eyes staring back at me were mine, no doubt about it.

  Running a hand through my hair, I wished for a brush. It didn’t look too bad, but… Something was wrong. I leaned closer towards the mirror, bent my head forward, and tried to examine the top of my scalp. I had a thick mane of reddish-brown hair, but I got my first grays when I was young, in my early 20s even, and now they weren’t there anymore. Not a silvery streak in sight. I had never coloured it. There were gaps in my memory, no doubt about it, but shouldn’t I remember doing something that atypical?

  Fretting over it wouldn’t do me any good. I stepped back and let the white, loose-fit clothes from sickbay fall to the floor. Looking down at my body, I expected to see scars. Being shot to death should leave some trace. I did not expect my body to look different.

  “What the hell?”

  Cursing didn’t change the image in the mirror, and I took a couple of steps backwards so I could see myself properly. My waist hadn’t been this slim since I was a teenager, nor my boobs this perky. My belly used to pout out at least a little, regardless of how many sit-ups I did, and now it was completely flat.

  I turned around and tried to glance over my shoulder to see my butt. It was perfect. It had always been okay, but never perfect.

  Putting the icky hospital clothes back on was out of the question. I swept a towel around me and trotted off to fetch the communicator thingy.

  I shouldn’t disturb Adam with something trivial. The shape of my body wasn’t all that important; whatever happened wouldn’t be undone just because I whined about it. On the other hand, I didn’t know how to get hold of Ima on my own, and he had told me to call if I needed anything.

  Turning the device over between my fingers, I squinted at the communications’ panel right beside the door. It had a number of mysterious buttons and symbols, but no words. The odds of me finding the way back to sickbay were slim. Even if I’d known the corridors like the back of my hand, I wouldn’t go for a walk dressed in a towel.

  Adam was my only contact with the outside world. He gave me the communicator for a reason, and I needed to stop worrying. I pressed it before I had time to change my mind.

  The room around me spoke with full Dolby surround, or maybe THX, “Hang on Alex, just a second.”

  I heard Adam’s calm voice say, “See this red line? It shows a 0.02 micron deviation in the force field around the core. That’s not critical, but if it keeps drifting it will be. Let’s keep an eye on it for now.”

  There was more, all complete gibberish. I heard footsteps, and the next time he spoke, the voice came from the widget in my hand. These were peculiar times indeed.

  “What can I do for you?”

  I had nothing. I should probably have thought through what to say before calling him. Klutz. Luckily, my mouth could talk without much help from the brain. “I’m sorry to bother you, but would you tell me how to use the radio? I’d like to talk to Doctor Ima.”

  From the looks of it, the communications’ panel could do anything from putting you in contact with someone to locking the door, or why not launching a missile, or changing the gravitational constant of the universe.

  I expected him to give a serene and coherent explanation along the lines of, “Press the button marked with a triangle to activate blah, blah, blah.” Instead, he burst out, “Why? Is something wrong? I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Chapter Four

  It took about three minutes before Adam came in through the door, pulling Ima with him by a firm grip around her wrist. I was still dressed in my towel and wanted to sink through the floor. This was not my best idea ever.

  “What is it, Alex? Are you okay?”

  I pressed my elbows against my sides, hoping whatever deity might still be around in this century would let the towel stay in place. If it fell to the floor, I’d surely die. “I just wanted to talk to her. No big emergency.”

  He leaned his head to the side and said with a warm smile, far from the neutral expression he held in sickbay earlier in the day, “Well, here she is. Go ahead and talk.”

  Ima rolled her eyes. “You’re always overreacting when it comes to her. She’s fine. Besides, Commander, don’t you have somewhere you need to be, like the bridge?”

  Her tail whacked Adam on the behind, but he didn’t even blink, and she gave up on taunting him. She turned to me instead. “What is it, sweetheart?”

  This wasn’t turning out as I imagined, and android or not, discussing my body in front of this intriguing and handsome man made me want to sink through the floor. They both watched me, and I needed to say something. “I…”

  What could I possibly say? Adam gave a slight nod and winked, and I could imagine his voice saying, “You can do it.”

  Yes, I could do it. I took a deep breath and vowed to keep my voice firm. “Ima, what did you do to my body?”

  “Why, my dear, what do you mean? I healed it. You don’t even have a scar.” For being a cat, she was bad at keeping a straight face.

  “It… eh… it doesn’t look like it used to. I liked it the way it was, and you shouldn’t have changed it without asking me first.”

  Adam frowned and scrutinized me. He couldn’t see through the towel, could he?

  After a few long seconds he turned towards Ima and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why would you do that? Her old body was just fine.”

  How did he know? Just how much of it had he seen?

  Ima made quite a sales pitch. “But dear, in this day and age everyone’s improved. Aren’t your boobs firm and perky now? Just imagine how a pair of slacks will look on the cute little behind I gave you. Why would you want to go around with your old body when you can have this new one?”

  To make things even better, the bloody towel was slipping. I too crossed my arms in front of me, to make sure I could hold it. “That’s not the point. My body is mine, well, it was mine, and I liked it.”

  Adam’s watch beeped, shaking us all back to reality. It must be his communicator. A young voice reported, “Bridge to Commander Adam, we’re approaching the Deneb system.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He eyed the two of us. “You girls play nice now.”

  Ima shrugged and I lifted an eyebrow. Adam shook his head as he left. Maybe he wondered what it was with biological beings that made them so utterly illogical and difficult to understand. I knew what Anya meant when she said I had fond feelings for him, but if we had ever been more than friends, he was too tactful to mention it. Did he even… could he…?

  Would an android taste funny? Kissing him might be like metal and a sponge, or absolutely heavenly. T
he old me would have wondered the same thing, and very likely found a way or an excuse to try it out. It sounded like we had spent several days, maybe even weeks or God knows how long together. How embarrassing not to know!

  As soon as the door closed, the doctor sank down in a chair and sighed. “That man is hopeless.”

  I sat too, less worried about the towel now.

  “I’m sorry it upset you, you have a lot to cope with right now, but please believe me when I say my intentions were good.”

  She leaned forward towards me, and rested one of her soft palms on my knee. “If you’re to have a chance of getting a real man in this day and age, a good man and not some space scum, a perfect body is an advantage. At our age, all the good ones are taken. There’s something wrong with most of the ones who aren’t.”

  Once again, I was dumbfounded. I expected her to tell me to get some rest, or something, not give dating advice.

  “You’re not seriously considering spending the rest of your life with the android, are you? He doesn’t feel like we do. It’s difficult enough with a man who is alive, and he could never give you any offspring.”

  This conversation sure took a strange turn quickly. Assuming these people really were fabrications of my mind, why couldn’t I invent someone making a bit more sense? And why couldn’t my imagination provide me with jeans and a T-shirt?

  There were many implications in her words. This might be a good opportunity to gain information, but I wasn’t up to it. “I don’t know what I’m considering, I haven’t been here a day yet.”

  I sounded exasperated even in my own ears. I had lived a lot of my life alone and didn’t want to spend the rest of it that way, but that didn’t mean hooking up with someone was my first priority when ending up in an alien future, on a spaceship. Not to mention she made it sound like I already had without even knowing it. I muttered, “Too bizarre.”

  She lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. A few second’s silence seemed like forever, and Ima sighed. When she spoke, her voice was soft and low, almost a purr. “Look, I understand all this seems scary now, and it’s tempting to hold on to Adam, but he is an android. He’s a computer and not a flesh and blood person like you and me. What if you’ll want to have kids? I sure want to have a litter some day. Having your genes live on is a natural, normal urge for biological beings. I’m just saying.”

  “What about me and Adam, Ima? My mind is blank, remember?”

  “It will come back to you, I’m sure.”

  Her smile seemed sincere.

  “He spends a lot of time with you, even when he should be doing other things. Hanging around in sickbay, getting in my way. It’s a good thing you woke up; he was driving me crazy.”

  That wasn’t it, but I wasn’t up to pressing the subject. Curling up in a corner somewhere to sleep or maybe weep a little seemed much more appealing.

  Ima left a few minutes later, and I pulled a sheet off the bed to dress in instead of the towel. The makeshift toga wasn’t exactly high fashion, but good enough. There must be a way to get real clothes or at least a robe, but I couldn’t figure it out, and I sure wasn’t calling for Adam again.

  I didn’t have to grumble along for long. Anya stopped by just as she promised, and considering how peculiar I found her just hours earlier, it was a bit funny how pathetically grateful I was to see her now.

  She lifted an exquisitely shaped eyebrow. “Why are you wearing the bed?”

  I wanted to throw my arms around her and wail. I looked at my bare feet instead. “I don’t have any clothes, and Adam showed me the replicating thingy, but I can’t get it to work.”

  When she asked it, it produced a robe in no time. The mysterious panel in the wall also made tea, crackers, and cheese for us. “How…”

  Anya walked towards the living room table, and I plodded after her. I snatched a cracker and could almost hear my stomach grumble for more.

  “Did you ever see a 3D printer in your time?”

  I had a vague memory of seeing a big box on TV. It added layers of plastic and made intricate shapes, thin as a sheet of paper. Probably close enough. I nodded, and she smiled. “It’s the same principle. I’m sure Adam will tell you all about it if you ask.”

  A sip of tea gave me courage. “Ima was here earlier, and said some strange things about him. She told me to find a man who can give me a litter.”

  Anya laughed so hard I thought she would fall over. “Ima isn’t human. Her culture lives for their children, and she won’t rest until she has spliced the Captain’s DNA into something compatible with her own.”

  Splicey-the-what-and-the-how? Probably not important. Anya looked quite mischievous. “She and the Captain are very happy together; they both fill a void in the other, but that doesn’t mean her way of life is right for you.”

  “It’s just so difficult, you know. I’ve never had to handle people who aren’t human. It’s hard enough with my own species.”

  Smirking made her look exactly like a photo I once saw of the rock star. It was eerie. “Well, yes, I can see that. You still don’t remember anything of the time you spent with Adam? I doubt he would have told you much about this century, but maybe something…?”

  “I still don’t even know how much time I’m missing. It’s really frustrating. He knows so much more about me than I do right now, and he’s sure not telling.”

  Anya laughed again, and lifted her long black hair over to one side. How could a hologram interact with the world? How could a hologram have tea?

  “Not to return to Ima’s way of thinking, but you do realize he’s very… fond of you, right?”

  Her light eyes scrutinized me, trying to read me in ways I didn’t even know myself. “You’re confused because you can’t remember, but your emotions are much more easily accessible than your memories. It’s up to him what he wants to tell you or not, and Ima might have been out of line, jumping to conclusions, but I would like you to give some thought to this…”

  Her gaze was hypnotizing. I couldn’t look away.

  “You jumped into harm’s way, to a certain death, to save him. No matter how brave a person is, or how high her ideals are, not many people would do that for someone who means nothing to them.”

  “It’s just really frustrating, you know.” Everyone assumed so much, and I was clueless.

  She patted my hand. “It’ll come back to you. Until then there’s no big hurry, is there? I don’t think anyone expects anything from you besides getting strong again.”

  It made sense when put like that. “So, how ‘bout you? Do you have a boyfriend? Eh, I mean, can you, eh, umm, I don’t know what I mean.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Asking a hologram if she had a boyfriend. Now would be a good time to bang my head against a wall or something.

  Anya leaned forward as if to confide something a little forbidden. “I have a boyfriend. He’s a pirate, and our Captain doesn’t care much for him, but we meet up whenever we can.”

  It was comical, and somehow just the way it should be. “A pirate huh? Wherever did you meet him?”

  I pulled my feet up on the sofa. I was making my first real friend in this weird place, and we had a girls’ gossip night. All of a sudden, life was pretty good.

  Anya bit her cheek, looking both amused and embarrassed. Most people probably took her for granted and never thought of asking.

  “We met in a bar when I was on shore leave. He sat by the counter, drinking, and when he saw me, he just swept me into his arms and kissed me. I had never been kissed before, and I pushed him away and slapped him. He was really drunk, and it was the first time I met a drunken man, and he exclaimed I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and by God he would kiss me again if it killed him.”

  I found her breathless way of telling the story endearing. By the time she finished telling me how they hooked up, I was giggling. “What’s his name? What does he look like?”

  She sat with her hands between her knees like a little girl. “His name
is John, and he looks like… He’s tall and strong, and has rather long dark hair, and he usually doesn’t shave much. Do you want to see a picture?”

  Did I ever. The man on the holographic photo was handsome, and it was surprisingly easy to imagine them together. “Anya, you’re a perfect couple. I hope I get to meet him some time.”

  It was one of those things that seemed meant to be. If they hadn’t been together, something would have been wrong with the world.

  Chapter Five

  I had the strangest dream about the zombie apocalypse. I wasn’t exactly participating on either side; I saw events play out, almost like a movie. It wasn’t an unpleasant dream. If it was scary, it was a distant fear, like one you’d get from watching TV, knowing you’re safe in the sofa, shielded by a bowl of popcorn.

  One group of humans were barricaded at a storage facility in Philadelphia, frantically breaking doors open in hope of finding something useful, while a horde of zombies approached the fence. They had a small white and black dog. The pooch barked at something behind one of the men, but I never got to see if it was a zombie or something harmless. The doorbell chimed all the way into my subconscious, and as much as I tried to hold on to sleep to see what would happen, I couldn’t.

  “Who is it?” I didn’t really expect anyone to answer, but the computer’s synthetically merry voice said, “It’s Commander Adam.”

  Not even the zombie apocalypse could break this starship illusion of mine. Was it strange to dream inside another dream? “Well then, let him in.”

  I wasn’t really awake yet, so I pulled the sheets up around me, turned over on the other side, and closed my eyes again. It wasn’t until I heard the soft whooshing of the door and an amused voice commenting, “I think I’m a little too early, maybe I should come back later,” I realized I was in bed, stark naked, with a stranger in the room.

  Opening one eye revealed Adam standing in the doorway with a smile tugging at his lips. Did androids really find things funny, or was it just a part of his programming that claimed smiling would be the appropriate response?