by Z D Dean
Samix freed Zade from the shields and brought him inside the ship. As the outer door of the airlock closed, the ship jumped, but not before it was hit by the oncoming solar flare. Samix began providing first aid in the airlock, while the pressure cycled. When the lock equalized, Jorloss helped Samix get Zade to the isolation chamber where he received medical attention. While the ship was in warp, an initial diagnostic was run. The solar flare had damaged the sub light engines and some of the other systems of the ship. Jorloss spent the time in warp gaining a full understanding of the human physiology. He had documented everything in order to send the information back to the Unity. The ship had dropped out of warp just before Zade awoke, and the ship was on a three day flight to an uninhabited planet where the crew could repair the ship. As Samix finished her story she looked at Jorloss who gave her a thumbs up.
“How long before you can return me to Earth?” Zade asked Samix.
“We are unsure, but as soon as we complete repairs, we should be able to take you back. We have no need or desire to interact with class two species, such as humans,” Samix responded.
“Why do you keep referring to mankind as a class two species?”
“A class one species is a species that although sentient has not yet begun to look toward the skies,” Samix explained. “A class two species is any sentient species that has made some limited trips into space but remains divided into factions, thus limiting their progress. A class three species, like Jorloss’s and mine, have united as a society and conquered space travel.”
“Huh, makes sense, I guess,” Zade said, lost in thought about everything Samix had told him. Regaining his focus, he looked at Samix. “Am I supposed to just hang out in this 10’X10’ walk in closet for an undetermined amount of time while you fix the ship and go back to Earth?”
“You have two options,” Samix replied dryly. “Option one is to remain in isolation for the duration of the flight, for your own safety. The XES01 is a multispecies ship. There are pathogens aboard that you are not immune to that would possibly kill you. Option two is that you can receive a limited nanite treatment to immunize yourself, at which point you would be assigned quarters and have limited access to the ship.”
“Nanites?” Zade inquired.
“Jorloss’s species, the Garnoo, has perfected nanotechnology and developed the nanite treatments,” Samix explained. “Nanites can be programmed to do anything, and can be injected into the bloodstream, where they complete whatever task they are assigned—in this case, to build your immunizations. The technology has essentially eradicated disease and prolonged the lifespan of Unity members, with some species reaching 10,000 years old. The treatment that you would receive would be the basic Unity treatment that all citizens are given.
“Once in the bloodstream, the nanites utilize components of the host’s intake to make required changes. Small changes are almost unnoticeable, whereas larger changes would elicit a strong hunger, forcing the host to increase intake and thus provide the nanites with the material required to make the manipulations to the host’s physiology. In the event that a required material was not in the host’s diet, it can be administered via injection by any medical personnel.”
Samix explained that the treatment being proposed to Zade would complete two tasks. First, the nanites would alter Zade’s antibodies and immune system, immunizing him for all know diseases. Second, the nanites would remove and replace the speech section of Zade’s brain with an ultra-dense piece of brain matter. After the new speech center was in place, the nanites would transfer all known language data to it, allowing Zade to communicate with anyone from the Unity and other discovered languages without the aid of the translation device he now wore. Jorloss assured Zade that the procedure was completely safe, noting that both he and Samix had had it done when they were children, which is why they didn’t require a translator to talk to Zade. Furthermore, Jorloss guaranteed that within six to eight Earth months, all of the nanites would be passed and no longer be in Zade’s body. The nanites would leave behind the new speech center, which would allow Zade to speak any Earth language fluently, as all had been added to the Unity’s lexicon based on information collected while orbiting Earth.
Zade couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see an actual spaceship. Plus, if he played his cards right, Samix might let him off the ship while they were at their repair stop. The idea of being the first human to set foot on a distant world was just too enticing to turn down.
“Let’s do it,” Zade said with excitement. “I want to see space up close.”
While preparing for the procedure, Jorloss explained that Zade was to be given a sedative for his recovery. An individual’s first nanite infusion was a strange experience, with most patients often complaining of a slight tingle, similar to having ants crawling all over them. Secondly, as the nanites replace the speech center of Zade’s brain he would be unable to communicate, so the time would be better spent asleep. Since Zade was going to be sedated during his recovery, Jorloss instructed him to eat enough to supply the nanites for the duration of the modification. As he finished the instructions, he opened compartments in Zade’s cell that contained enough food to last Zade a week, but Jorloss assured Zade that it was the exact amount based on metabolism to complete the modification.
As Zade finished the last of the food, surprised at how good it was and at how much we had been able to consume, Jorloss looked at him nervously.
“There’s one more thing,” he stammered. “I have to enter your room to administer the nanites while Samix watches from the outside. The door will be locked behind me, and in the event that you try anything harmful, Samix will raise the temperature in the room to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. My species can handle those temperatures, and as you know, your species cannot. Do you understand?”
With a nod of recognition Zade sat down in the chair and waited for Jorloss to enter the isolation cell. With the hiss of air pressure regulating, Jorloss entered the small room with two syringes: one full of clear liquid and one full of a metallic grey liquid. Jorloss administered the clear liquid first. Zade assumed that it must have been the sedative. After a brief moment of silence, Zade’s head began to spin, and Jorloss administered the metallic grey liquid. Fully sedated and as threatening as a newborn puppy, Zade was helped out of the isolation chamber and into the most comfortable bed he has ever felt in his life. Just a Zade closed his eyes for some much-needed rest, he saw Samix and Jorloss kill the lights and walk out of his room. Zade had the most vivid, pleasant dreams he had experienced since he joined the army, and for the first time in his life, none of them were in English.
Chapter 3
Zade awoke in a dark room resonating with the sound of machinery. As he stood up, the lights in his cabin raised, highlighting the spartan yet comfortable living quarters that Jorloss and Samix put him in after the sedative and nanites kicked in. Although the room was comfortably cool, Zade’s clothes were stiff with sweat. Looking around the room for any other amenities, Zade noticed a horrible smell that seemed to be emanating from somewhere near him. Searching for the source of the foul odor Zade checked the bed, dresser, and small adjoining bathroom. Nothing. After moving back to the center of the room, Zade stretched and wondered what could be making the smell, and if it was normal. With hands clasped above his head, the source of the odor was revealed. Zade was the sources of the smell. His last shower had been the night before the mission in Afghanistan. Judging by Samix’s description of events, Zade guessed that must have been over a week ago.
Pulling off his uniform and boots, Zade headed to the bathroom to try and figure out how the space shower worked. Like the main area of his quarters, the lights in the small bathroom were motion activated, and as soon as he entered, they matched the lights in his living area. Noticing a small keypad and screen just inside the shower door, Zade read the keypad and turned the shower on. Zade enjoyed his first shower not taken in a trailer in over a year. Turning the shower off triggered a set of warm air
blowers that dried Zade off as he exited the bathroom. While heading toward the dresser to look for an undershirt to put on under the utilities provided to him in the isolation chamber, Zade noticed that the old uniform which he had kicked into the corner was nowhere to be found. The dresser contained standard compression undergarments and socks. After donning the items, Zade searched through the other drawers only to find they were empty. Doing a lap around the small room wondering where his uniform had gone, Zade watched as a small door open just ahead of him on the wall. Inside the small closet were four freshly pressed uniforms and four sets of boots. Grabbing one of the outfits and laying it on the bed, Zade dressed, taking notice of how these uniforms seem to fit his frame perfectly. Zade wasn’t a huge guy, but he didn’t have a twiggy runner’s frame either. One of the biggest problems he had with his army uniforms was finding a set that could fit across his broad shoulders, while remaining trim enough not to tent over the rest of his torso. These uniforms had to be custom tailored; they fit exactly like Zade preferred.
After doing one final check to ensure that he was dressed properly, a habit bred and fostered at the military academy, Zade stepped out of his room. Zade’s room opened directly into a common area with club seats and end tables. To the left of the common area was what appeared to be the galley. It had one long table in the middle and some kind of vending machines on the back wall. Jorloss was sitting at the table staring blankly into the ground while sipping on some hot beverage. Hoping for a hot cup of joe, Zade began walking toward the alien doctor. Just as he grabbed a seat across from Jorloss, he noticed movement behind him. Standing and spinning around abruptly, Zade saw a humanoid, robotic skeleton standing directly at his six.
“Don’t worry,” Jorloss said from behind Zade. “It’s just the SSILF tasked with escorting you around the ship. Captains orders.”
Zade was pleasantly surprised that he had understood Jorloss without a translator, and reached up to touch both ears just to be certain there wasn’t one there. His hearing was so much clearer than it had been through the translator. In the med bay, with the earpiece, Zade could still hear Jorloss’s native tongue in one of his ears, and there was a slight delay between when Jorloss’ mouth started moving, and when the translator started speaking. It was like the shitty Afghan bootleg movies Zade had amassed across three deployments.
They were being honest about the nanites. I can understand everyone.
“Any chance that y’all have coffee on this ship? I could really use my morning cup,” Zade asked as he sat down.
“You could try the food machine, but I would suggest grabbing a cup of the stuff on the hotplate. The machine never gets the recipe right for extremely unique things like coffee. The pot on the hotplate has a drink from my planet called sloop. It is like your coffee, with all of the same stimulant effects, and I’m pretty sure it’s safe for you to drink.”
The food machine, which Zade decided to call the gut truck, since it seemed to better quality food than the kitchens in Afghanistan produced, contained a variety of food components. It included protein paste, carbohydrate paste, an amino acid-based fat paste, liquid vitamins, liquid minerals, and water. Profiles were created for every person on the ship based on their species and planet of origin. All Zade had to do was select a meal item out of his profile, and based on the selection, the machine would combine the substances together to match the nutritional breakdown of whatever food had been selected. Sometime while Zade was sleeping, a profile had been created for him. Thanking Jorloss for his advice, Zade headed for the food processor. Looking at the screen only one name was comprehensible to Zade and that was his. The others must have been written in their native languages. After selecting his name, all of the information on the screen turned to English. At the top right corner, the time and date were displayed for Earth, and down the left side meal categories were listed. Noticing that it was 6:00 am on Earth, Zade selected breakfast, and then chose coffee, four scrambled eggs, bacon, and oatmeal. From the condiment menu Zade chose brown sugar and hot sauce. If Zade knew anything from his time in the army it was that scrambled eggs and oatmeal were the two hardest foods to fuck up. He was hoping this held true for alien food processing units. If it wasn’t, he had the hot sauce; enough hot sauce can make anything edible.
Everything smells great. Hope this thing gets bacon right, at the very least. I can survive here indefinitely with bacon. If it fucks up bacon, I’m getting off now.
Zade grabbed the tray that the gut truck spat out and headed for his spot at the table across from Jorloss. With some hesitation, Zade tried his breakfast. To his surprise the eggs and bacon were spot on, and only the oatmeal missed the mark. Grabbing the coffee to wash down the meal, Zade began asking Jorloss about the ship. Upon first taste, the coffee didn’t seem too different from coffee back on Earth, but the aftertaste was horrific, and only got worse as time passed. One sip was all it took for Zade to pitch the coffee in lieu of some sloop. The prospect of being forced to go without caffeine was far worse than the prospect of getting sick from some alien drink. The sloop was actually pretty good. It reminded Zade of black tea, but stronger. After talking with Jorloss a bit more and finishing his drink, Jorloss informed Zade that the captain wanted to see him. As Jorloss got up to leave, he tossed his tray in a small trash can built into the wall. Zade followed suit.
Shadowed by his robot chaperone, Zade left the galley trying to follow Jorloss’s directions towards the command deck. After hanging a left and heading towards the command deck at the front of the ship, Zade noticed the environment had changed. The galley, common area, and quarters all seemed to have some attempt at comfort included in their design. Once Zade left the berthing area, the ship took on a very utilitarian, functional aura. The corridor he was traveling in had just enough light to safely navigate it. The walls were barren metal with the occasional outline of a door breaking the monotonous silver. The floor was just a grate with miles of cable running under it. If he didn’t know any better, Zade could have mistook this place for a submarine or the deep interior of a Navy ship. The hall ended at a short staircase. Zade climbed the six stairs and entered the command deck. Upon entering he was awestruck. The view was amazing.
The leading edge of the V-shaped command deck from floor to ceiling was a panoramic view of space. Millions of stars in every color, from white to deep red, were scattered against a perfectly black backdrop. To the left side of the command deck a gigantic, twisting, green and orange gas cloud sprawled past the bounds of the windows. To the right, a quasar extended indefinitely, cutting space itself in half with perfect purple line as long as the eye could see.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Samix asked from somewhere to the left of Zade.
Unable to respond for a moment, Zade finally managed a quiet “Yes.”
Prying his eyes from the panorama in front of him, Zade scanned the command deck. Zade had entered at the back-right corner of command deck, which was roughly shaped like a triangle, point forward. The back wall was covered in monitors and different system readouts. In the center of the back wall sat Samix in what Zade suspected was the captain’s chair on an elevated platform that covered the back quarter of the command space. Just behind the left shoulder of the captain’s chair there was a man-sized indentation in the wall, which housed what Zade expected was another one of the SSILF, similar to the one currently shadowing him. Forward of the captain’s chair on the lower level of the command deck were four workstations angled toward the center of the room. Zade looked from Samix to the windows and back.
“You can sit at one of the workstations if you’d like. We have time before we start landing procedures,” Samix offered.
“O-Ok,” was all Zade could manage to stammer.
Without removing his eyes from the view, Zade moved toward the closest workstation to sit. Just as he got to it, Samix locked out the screens and controls. Zade sat engrossed by the view for what could have been seconds or days, the magnitude of his situation finally setting
in. Every Sci-Fi book he had read, every game he had ever played, every movie he watched—Zade was living all of them right now.
“Captain Zade…Captain Zade…Captain Zade!” Samix said finally breaking Zade’s reverie. “You need to get up, I am leaving the command deck for some sloop.”
“Come on, you guys have the dog and pony bullshit in space, too? Where everyone needs to stop what they’re doing to stand and salute when the captain leaves the room?”
“What?” Samix asked, confusion staining her voice. “No. You just have to stand up and leave. I’m going to get a cup of sloop and I don’t want you up here when I am not around.”
As Zade stood to leave he could almost make out the system they were going to. One star was moving independently across the star-scape, a behavior known as parallax displacement, which meant that it was significantly closer to the ship than the other stars. As Zade followed Samix out of the command deck and toward the galley, he tried to figure out how he was going to word his question to her. He needed her to say yes. Samix turned right and into the galley heading straight for the sloop. After grabbing a clean mug and the pot, she headed to one of the chairs in the common area. Both the galley and common area were deserted. Jorloss must have been in the medical bay working. Zade grabbed a cup and took the seat next to her. After filling both mugs, Samix sat back, gingerly sipping on the drink. Zade, forgetting how hot the drink was, pulled down a big gulp, immediately regretting his choice.
