Throwaway

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Home is where the heart is.
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TxRad
TxRad
5,918 Followers

The ground rover grew smaller and smaller as it ran over the flat shimmering desert. That it didn't kick up a dust trail only added to the appearance of how fast it was disappearing. With a sigh, I sat down on a rock and looked up at the vast blackness of space and it's dusting of brilliant stars. Home was up there somewhere but I'd never see it again.

I checked the oxygen gauge on my spacesuit. The tank was almost full. They were killing me but they were giving me time enough to make my peace with.... Whatever.... I guess I could take solace in the fact that they would only outlast me by a few months at best.

Air wasn't a problem. The oxygen generator had survived the crash. It could make plenty of air from the rock of the planet and even throw in a little water to boot. Now food, ah, there was the rub. X amount of food and five people didn't divide up for to long. The same food and four people went better, at least in their minds.

I hadn't asked to come out to space and I sure hadn't volunteered to map and explore this rock they called a planet. I wasn't much more than a glorified houseboy and gopher, so I didn't add anything that might help them. I did take food so here I was, with no way back to the camp.

As for getting home, all of us could forget that. Without the hyper-jump unit we were history and a lost piece of history at that. This wasn't even the planet we were supposed to explore. It was gone, an asteroid belt where there was supposed to be open space.

The ship was supposed to come out of hyperspace a quarter orbit in front of the fifth planet. Well, duh, that worked out really well. Starships and asteroids don't mix. Twenty-five people and eighty percent of our equipment vaporized in an instant.

I had been in a vacuum suit and cleaning the waste unit when the shit hit the fan, literally. I was flung clear and later, the lifeboat with the bridge crew aboard picked me up. Assholes, each and every one. The ones in charge, the ones who picked the exit site, and the ones who killed everyone but themselves and me. Now they were killing me. Four hours of air and it'd all be over.

*****

Never one to sit still, I got up and took a look around. I'd use more air but it was better than being bored when I died. Thoughts of being bored to death made me chuckle. It sounded dry and strained in the confines of the suit.

They had dropped me at the base of a mountain range. At one time in the far past, I had tried rock climbing but nothing like the size of these cliffs. They rose straight up for thousands of feet. If I had had the gear it might have been fun to try and scale them.

Gravity was about eighty percent of earth normal. Even with the suit it would be feasible. I wondered what the view would be like from up there, probably a lot better than from here. It wasn't like a fall would do more than kill me. I was dead anyway so what would it hurt. Most likely, I'd run out of air before I reached the top anyway.

The biomechanical grip of the suit's gloves was a help and a hindrance, both at once. It could grip far tighter than my fingers but it could also crush the rock if it was to soft or if I squeezed to hard. The sharp edges of the boots got grip in places that there didn't look like there was any.

*****

I was a little over a quarter of the way up when something that had been bugging me became clear. The rock appeared to be weathered. How could there be weather on an airless ball of rock? Maybe the place had had an atmosphere at one time in the past. Maybe it was just weathered from space dust.

I had nothing to compare it to and no information was available on the suit computer. Maybe I could tap into the escape pods computer system. I looked around and found a small ledge above and to my left. It looked wide enough to allow me to rest on. I couldn't climb and use the wrist pad at the same time.

The view from the ledge was spectacular. I could even see the camp if I upped the magnification on my visor. Everything was black and white with brown and rust colored highlights. It was like an old photograph from a history book I'd seen but I couldn't remember which one. My mind was odd that way.

At one time I had been an engineer but that was a long time ago. It was back before the war, back in a time of peace and plenty. Back before the colonies had revolted against Earth and before my ship had been blown to hell. I had been the only survivor and my time floating alone in space had changed me.

Changed me is the nice way to say I was crazy, mad as a hatter, as the saying goes. Between the emergency meds and the cold of space, I had been dead or as close as one could get and not be there. Some say I was out there for over a hundred years but I figured it was closer to one fifty. The mind can do strange things when you dream for that long.

There are large gaps in my memories from before and then there are things that might be real or from the dreams. I can't tell and neither could the Doctors. They couldn't believe I was alive, much less not a total vegetable. As for me, I didn't care one way or the other.

All I had wanted to do was to rest and retire but the fleet command said I still owed them for reviving me. They were not happy when I told them that was their problem, I had been very happy right where I was. They figured I was crazy but still able to clean trash bins among other shit jobs.

The bridge crew had expected a fight out of me when they decided I was dead weight. Hell, I had been dead before any of them were born so why fight it. If I had the combat meds like before, I would have volunteered. It would have been like going home to my land of sunlit mountains and my dream family.

I sighed deeply at the thought of my dream family, the family that had taken the place of my long dead one. The small dark haired Afro-Asian woman, that I had loved so long and so dearly, the woman who was so different from the love of my life before. May, my wife from Earth had been a tall rawboned Nordic blonde.

The only thing they shared was their everlasting love for me. Stella, my dream wife was feisty and fun loving, where May was steady, laid back, and pragmatic. I often wondered if that was from wishful thinking on my part or some deeply hidden resentment of May. May was a good woman; don't get me wrong. She was just dull and boring.

Stella on the other hand was outgoing and always up to something that made life fun and exciting. Not to mention the sex. Wow! What a difference. Stella could do more with her little slight body than any other three women I had ever met. She made me feel ten feet tall and bullet proof.

The Doctors called it a repressed delusion because May had kids every time we had sex. Well, almost anyway, we had eight kids in eleven years. I love my kids but most of the time I was glad I was gone a lot.

I liked space duty in the solar system, six months out and three months home, made life sweet. It had been mostly rescue and patrol work until the war. Then it got hairy trying to intercept the rocks the colonist threw at us. We'd make a high speed run and then blow the sucker to rubble.

The problem was they threw so many of them we couldn't keep up. Of the few that got through, only about half hit the Earth or moon, but that was more than enough. One such, got the moon base, and May and the kids. I like to have gone mad when I heard but we were chasing another rock and I didn't have the time.

That rock was different. We shot at it and it shot back. It shot better, so much for the ship and crew. So began my dream life.

*****

I gave a little shudder and took several deep breaths. I had slipped off into one of my memory chases. I wondered how long this one had lasted. I checked the air gauge. Less than an hour and a half left. At least it had been a short one, but I could hear Stella calling me, as she was always called at the edge of my mind. Only now it was stronger, more urgent.

I looked up along the face of the cliff and then out across the expanse of the planet below me. I'd never make the top in time, so this ledge was as good a place to die as any. I took a sip of water to ease my dry mouth and then stood up. The ledge was wide and went both directions along the face. I could sit down and die later when I had to.

I couldn't see anything but the flat cliff face to my left and the ledge went around a corner to my right, so to the right it was. These deep space vacuum rigs were a lot better than our in system suits, a lot less bulky and a lot more flexible. I walked the ledge with room to spare.

Getting around the corner was a bit of a problem as the ledge narrowed. Once I was around, the ledge was even wider than before but this face was curved and crooked compared to the straight as a string part I had just left. I set off to walk as far as I could before time ran out.

Time was an interesting thing in my dream world. Days passed to become weeks, months, and years, life happened in all it's richness, but no one got older or died. When I was there I hadn't noticed that anomaly. It was the one thing that the Doctors had me on. It was the one thing that I couldn't rationalize away.

Everything else about my dream world was real or at least it seemed to be to me from inside. Pleasure, pain, hunger, thirst, touch, smell, sight; they were all so real. The warmth and satiny texture of Stella's small bronze colored breast was much the same as May's bigger, softer, and milky white one. They tasted similar in my mouth, although Stella's was almost always salty from sweat.

The worlds were what were so different. One was civilized, mechanical, and industrialized, while the other was urban and old fashioned. Stella's world could have been the late eighteen hundreds instead of the twenty fourth century. I had once talked of space flight and she had laughed at me. The airplane was beyond her belief.

*****

I blinked to find myself staring into the mouth of a cave. How long had I been standing there and why had I stopped? I check my air and found an hour's worth left. An hour left to live. Pick the hour of your death. Well, I could do that pretty close anyway, I thought with a mental grin. Death held no fear; I had been there before.

I looked on down the ledge, it followed the cliff unbroken for as far as I could see. I looked back into the darkness of the cave and flipped on my helmet light. It ran straight and level for a ways and then either came to a dead end or made a turn. The darkness held no fear either, after the darkness of space.

With a shrug, I entered the cave and walked the flat rock floor as if it was a ships corridor and I knew where I was going. I was going to meet death and I hoped he could lead me back to Stella. Stella my love, Stella my world.

Interstellar: To dream upon my trip through the voids of space and time to find a world forever lost in the past.

*****

"How old is he?" The Chief of Staff asked in disbelief.

"Twenty two hundred years is the best guess we have. We can only go by the records from that era and you know how bad those are, with the war and all." The balding Doctor replied. His baldness was of his own choosing and made him stand out in the crowd, so to speak.

"And he's a hand from the Dire Need?"

"Yes sir. He seems to be about the only remains of that mission to be found. Everything else is nearly dust. He's a Senior Tech by the name of Bill Wilson or at least that's the name on the suit."

"And he was in a cave, you say?"

"Yes sir, he was several hundred feet inside and at the bottom of a pit. The odd thing is that the cave is nearly a hundred miles from the main camp."

"How did he get there and why?" The Chief of Staff asked with a confused look on his face.

"I have no idea sir, maybe he was exploring and fell in the pit."

The Chief of Staff waved his hand over his desk. A holograph of his aide appeared in front of him. "Stewart, find out all you can on this Senior Tech they found. The Doctor will fill you in on all the information they have. Get back to me when you know something." He waved his hand and the hologram disappeared before Stewart could reply.

Looking at the Doctor, the Chief of Staff said, "I want a full report on where this man came from and how he got where he was. I want to know his whole record and do a search for any next of kin."

"Uh, sir? He's not dead so why should we notify next of kin?" The Doctor asked slowly.

The Chief of Staff looked at the Doctor like he was totally stupid and a lunatic to boot. "Not Dead? What kind of a scam are you trying to pull? The man's been on an airless ball of rock for twenty two hundred years with only a few hours of air in a suit and he's still alive. Bullshit!"

He yelled the last word. It was archaic and he loved it. He was two years into a four-year public service stint. In another year and four days he could retire with full pension. The fact that he was in charge when they found this lost spaceman would look good on his record and get him a higher rating.

The little Doctor had flinched when he had yelled, so he changed tactics. "Look, I know you're a public servant just like I am and you want to do what's right but...."

"Sir, I can't explain it an more than you can believe it but he is alive. Deep down in the very cores of his cells there is minute energy. How or why is anyone's guess but its there." The Doctor explained.

"Then why haven't you revived him then?"

"Well, for two reasons, sir. One, he'll probably be a vegetable when and if we do and second is the note."

"What note?"

"Scratched on the wall of the pit was a note that said not to revive him for any reason. That he was home and wanted to stay there."

"Home!" The Chief of Staff yelled.

A tone sounded and part of his glass desktop lit up. He spent a few minutes reading and then looked up at the Doctor. He frowned and then went back to reading. When he looked up at the Doctor again he shook his head and then sighed.

"Is there a problem?" The Doctor asked.

"According to this, he wasn't a vegetable after they revived him the first time. Crazy but not brain dead."

"Excuse me? What do you mean the first time? He was like this once before?" The Doctor asked in an excited voice. "Do you know what this means?" He asked even more exited than before.

"I have no idea of what it means other than this guy is one unlucky son of a bitch." The Chief of Staff grinned as the Doctor blanched at those last four words. He loved the fact that he was military and had access to all the old cuss words.

With the thought that the Chief of Staff was an idiot, the Doctor replied, "It means he's found a way to mentally go into suspended animation. A way to cheat time."

"This says that the first time it was caused by a mixture of pain and experimental drugs from his spacesuit and the cold of space."

"That may be where he learned the trick but he didn't have any kind of medication in this suit, believe me. He had air and a small water reservoir, which was almost full. Even the emergency rations and extra power cells were missing."

"This is all so odd, so very odd." The Chief of Staff muttered. "Maybe we should honor his request to not be revived. It sure would make the paperwork a lot easier. Just a military funeral on the moon and no more problems."

"But...." The Doctor started to say.

"Carry on, Doctor. I'll arrange a military escort for our fallen comrade and see that he gets full honors." The Chief of Staff ordered.

*****

Bill Wilson sat in the shade of a large pine tree and whittled on the stem for his new pipe. He hadn't felt good for the last week or so. He was hot and sweaty all the time. He also felt fatigue and stiffness in his joints that was growing daily.

His mind jumped to the pit, his fall, and the message he had cut into the pit wall with his fingers. Had someone found him and taken him home? He hoped not, he was where he belonged and didn't want to leave again. He had missed a lot the first time he was gone from here.

He had left Stella a few days before on shaman business. The way he was feeling was a familiar feeling from long, long ago and he didn't want to be around Stella if he went away again. He also wanted a cover if he came back.

That Stella hadn't given up on him was the only good thing about his last revival. It had taken a lot of talking and promises to get back on her good side. There was no explaining where he had really gone, so he had made up a shaman's story of being abducted by evil spirits.

The cleansing hadn't been a picnic by any means. He still had the scares to prove it but the loving and warm welcome from Stella had been well worth it. They had made love for days like two newlyweds. It seemed like just yesterday as time went here.

Later that afternoon, a cool breeze came up from the east, which was always a good sign. Bill began to feel better and he had more energy. By the time he had finished the new pipe stem, he was almost back to his normal vibrant lively self. He rose and stretched for a moment before heading home. All the stiffness was gone.

Stella would be waiting with supper. It would be good to be back in her loving arms again. Her dusky body would be the perfect way to use this newfound energy he felt deep inside.

TxRad
TxRad
5,918 Followers
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4 Comments
Crusader235Crusader235over 4 years ago
I get it.

I get it. Finally buried with full Military Honors, He is Home. Five Stars.

LynnMckLynnMckalmost 12 years ago
I Don't Know . . .

what kind of shit you were on when you wrote this, but it must have been good :)

I hope you don't run out of it too soon, 'cause I would like a couple more chapters.

Lynn

SouthernAphroditeSouthernAphroditeover 16 years ago
Good concept, lacks followthrough

An excellent premise for a major story series. You could have gone into more detail when he wandered into his dream world during the first couple of times--the bit about being a shaman and all that kinda seemed to come out of nowhere. Otherwise, an excellent start for an interesting series of stories.

SwedeqSwedeqover 16 years ago
Needs a sequel ...

..... you've laid excellent groundwork..... not the rest of the story....

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