Michael could feel cool air on his face. It felt like silk being gently brushed across his skin: luxuriant. He opened his eyes. Above him hovered a woman. She was the one with the silk . . . then his thoughts jelled. The woman was Deborah, and the silk was a cool wet cloth. She was swabbing his brow. He opened his mouth to speak but only hushed throaty groans emerged. “Shhh,” she said putting a finger to his lips, “don’t try to talk just yet. You’re lucky I know you. Let me try and answer some of the questions that I know must be on your mind. Now promise me you will just listen and not try to ask questions.”
Michael stopped his vocal struggles and relaxed. Deborah refreshed the wet cloth. She gently wiped his neck and shoulders then lifted his limp arms and stroked his sides and chest. “I’ll bet that feels good,” she began. “Now for your questions. You are fine. You are in the final stage of your reanimation cycle. You are currently lying in your suspension berth, in the medical bay with your doctor, and best friend, I might add, giving you a sponge bath. You will feel weak for the next twelve hours while the sugars return to your muscle tissue. I don’t want you to try to move very much. The major muscles will come back quickly, and you will feel a little twitching. This is a good sign, and it will settle down.” She paused again to refresh her washcloth.
Her voice was soothing, almost hypnotic. Her words seemed to float in his mind, moving in sync with the delicious massaging of the sponge bath.
“Now that takes care of your physical status.” she continued. “If you were anyone else, I would leave it there and tell you to sleep. But I know you. You want to know the status of the ship and crew. And you will worry if I don’t tell you; so here it is. Not all the crew are awake yet. The reanimation protocol is going fine. The ship is in great shape. You will have to forgive my nontechnical appraisal; after all I am just a doctor. And last, but not least, the garden is wonderful.”
She placed the washcloth aside and started to dry him with a towel. “Now that’s all I am going to tell you for the moment. There is nothing for you to worry about. I don’t want you getting excited. I want you to sleep, preferably without a sedative. Pleasant dreams, doctor’s orders.”
Michael woke again, eight hours later, feeling like he had a bit of a hangover. This time however, he had a great deal more command of his own body. Just as Deborah had said, he could feel twitching in his calves and thighs. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but strange nonetheless. His suspension berth was propped up at a thirty-degree angle. He moved his head from side to side, slightly amplifying his headache. He lifted his head. Straight ahead he could see the wall of the medical bay. Everything was dim as if the lights were turned down. He could see a display panel on the wall, but it was dark. He tried to move his arms. They responded but they too were twitching. “Hello,” he called feebly before dropping his head back down.
He heard footsteps as if someone were responding to his call. A moment later, Deborah’s face once again hovered over his berth. “Well, aren’t you an early riser. You’ve only been asleep for eight hours,” she joked, “It’s a bit dark in here because the medical bay wake area operates on the same daily cycle as the garden. Right now, it’s oh-four hundred . . . tell me . . . how do you feel?”
“Weak and twitchy . . . and I have a bit of a headache,” he replied feebly.
“That’s good. Do you feel hungry?” she asked.
“No,” he responded slowly.
“Alright, I expect you will be later. I want you to rest, sleep if you can for another few hours and we’ll see about giving you some breakfast. Now I want to take a bit of your blood.” He felt a small prick in his arm before drifting back to sleep.
It felt like no time at all had passed when Michael woke again. This time the lights in the medical bay were bright. His arms no longer felt like paper weights and the twitching was gone. As predicted, he was a bit hungry. “Hello,” he called again, sitting up on his elbows. He looked around. The med bay looked stark and barren, and he could no longer see the panel on the wall. His was the only suspension berth in the room.
Deborah appeared from behind the berth. She smiled but looked tired and a bit haggard. “Is something wrong?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“Nothing is wrong,” she replied. “I knew you would start asking questions. That’s why I am still here, long after my shift was over. I must look like crap.” She pulled a chair up along side his berth and handed him a closed flask. “Here, drink this while I give you a status report.” He flipped open the lid of the flask and brought it to his nose. He thought he could smell vegetable soup.
“What’s this?” he queried. “It smells like vegetable soup.”
“Very good. It is vegetable soup. Now eat,” she replied firmly.
He began to sip the liquid as she spoke. “Michael, I was not completely happy with your blood results. Your hormones are slightly elevated. I have moved you to a private room. I want to keep you here for another day of rest. There’s nothing to worry about, I am just being cautious.”
“I feel fine, can I at least get out of this tube?”
“No not yet. I don’t want any physical stress on you at the moment. I want you to finish your soup now and rest. Now, Michael, promise me you’re not going to be a difficult patient,” she pleaded.
“OK,” he conceded. “If I can’t move, how about sending one of the officers here for me to ask a few questions.”
“Out of the question! I have asked you to rest and you can’t rest if you’re being a commander. You know the dangers of reanimation sickness. I am not going to allow anything that might possibly upset you.”
“But you said everything was going great. What can it hurt to speak to an officer?”
“Everything is going great. But what if the officer I send tells you that some, electro do dad, has shorted out? Even if it’s totally routine and easy to fix you might start giving orders and taking charge. I want you to rest,” she commanded.
“Alright, alright,” he gave in, “can I at least ask what star system we’re in?”
“Oh, so now I’m an asrto-navigator, is that it,” she complained jokingly. “You’re going to get at least one more day of rest and another blood test before I allow you anything. Is that clear! Now everything is just fine.” But everything was not fine, and she knew it. She needed to keep up her act. She needed him as strong and rested as possible before telling him the truth; that everything was far, far, from fine.
Deborah managed to keep the rouse going for two more days, feeding him flasks of soup, pretending to analyze his blood, and allowing him exercise within the confines of the room. Finally, on the evening of the second day the commander was getting impatient. “I’ve had just about enough soup. Either you’re going to medically approve me walking out that door or I will do it anyway.”
She looked at him and shrugged, “OK, I will approve it on two conditions: one, you stay with me, and two, you let me bring you back here when we are finished.”
“Agreed,” he said eagerly. She threw him a set of fatigues and waited for him outside.
When he came out, she led him along the long medical bay corridor. The corridor was dim, and to his surprise devoid of people save himself and Deborah. They walked nearly two hundred meters before they arrived at an airlock. “Now I am going to show you something that will definitely get your blood moving. Don’t mind me if I monitor your reactions.” With that she grabbed his wrist as if to take a pulse and pulled the airlock open.
Michael knew where she was taking him, heaven. It was the balcony two kilometres up in the northern wall overlooking the garden. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. But when they did the view took his breath away.
Two kilometres below and stretched out farther than his eyes could see was the garden. It was in sunset now; lit from three kilometres above by the last flickers of an artificial sun. It was actually a magnetic corridor running down the center of the fifty-kilometre cylindrical ship. Each day in the southern wall a fusion reaction would begin. The gases to sustain the reaction would start in high concentration in the morning and gradually make their way down the full length of the corridor before exiting through the north wall. The effect was breathtaking.
In the last dying embers of the artificial twilight, he could see the top of the forest canopy. It was green and lush and streaked with red light from the tenuous clouds floating in the sky. The forest stretched almost two kilometers from the north wall until it abruptly sank into an ocean ringing the entire artificial world. From his view in heaven’s balcony, he could not see the waves that crashed on the rocky shore or the shallow bays that dropped off deep in the cold depths. The land beyond the ocean was dark now. Night had finally fallen and there was no moon.
The chill night air blew into the balcony and Michael shivered. Deborah was still holding his wrist. She pulled him back and closed the air lock.
“It’s incredible,” were the only words he could utter.
This is an excerpt from an novel Act of God: In the Beginning (2024).
Edited by Marie Ginga
A graduate in computer science and electronics, Jan Byron “J.B.” Strogh has had a successful career in the tech sector. Strogh is interested in writing about the pattern of evolution manifest in both humanity and machine. The series Act of God is based in science and contemplates the long history of human spirituality and how the two must some day converge.