c. 2024 Rod Ice
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(11-24)
After waking from his coma, Professor Judson Baines felt somewhat disconnected from the literal timeline of events surrounding his passage on the Morningstar III. He remembered being at Evergreen Estates, and doing a sort of archaeological dig through the ruins of that trailer enclave. And he could still recall attempting to pilot his Digger shuttle away from the isolated outpost. But what followed was a blur of semi-consciousness. Somehow, he had returned to the vessel from which this adventure began.
Left alone momentarily, in his bed on the medical ward, he decided to scroll through images on his storage tablet. There were numerous photographs from around the abandoned community of mobile homes he had visited. Additionally, there were scans of lengthy pages full of handwritten text. From a running memoir created by his great-grandfather.
To anchor himself mentally, he read through entries that had been scribbled during the conflict later dubbed as ‘The Great Uprising.’ Each word made him chill, and tremble while reading.
“At first, maybe I thought the reaction from Washington made good sense, you know? I never liked the MAGA types. They looked at things differently. Their rude manner turned my stomach. I like to live and let live. I don’t run in a pack, I’m a loner. One time, I read a quote that was attributed to a magician, a big dude named Penn Gillette. It said, ‘My take on being Libertarian is that I don’t know what is best for other people.’ That hit the bullseye for me, damn, damn, damn! I don’t run off at the mouth, because that shit can turn into action, and folks don’t necessarily like it when I express my opinions. They think tribally, left side or right side. Everything has to be pegged as one or the other. I say screw that! There’s only one neighborhood here, we’re all packed in like sardines. Nobody is special. Anyway, trying to quiet the blowhards was okay with me, until I realized that people were disappearing. Not just on those Larman boats headed to Mars, but to camps set up across the middle of this continent. The crackdown got worse than listening to those instigators. Like fat-ass Linn Speck, and his mawkish spouse, Haki. More than once, I wanted to swing my cane around, when they came to call. But things turned eerie when members of the old Jonovic militia started going away in handcuffs. Pretty soon, others got busted, rubes that just followed the parade. I don’t think they were guilty of anything but weak-mindedness. There’s always been plenty of that to go around at this junkyard oasis. I started thinking that the deputies might be knocking on my door, next. And when the rabble rousers all jumped on those transports, hitching a ride to the Red Planet, it got me thinking. Maybe they had the right idea. Maybe I was just too old and slow, and crippled, to catch the wave...”
Baines rubbed sweat from his eyes, and laid back on the high-sided bunk. His ancestor had received an epiphany, while getting inebriated on Tennessee whiskey. Now, a century later, his own brain was fully in sync.
They were headed back to the space dock above his homeworld, and eventually, another population center among the colonies. His fate had already been determined.
While he languished in the memories scribbled by his progenitor, Dr. Becka Stoudt appeared, with a compliment of instruments in her medical tote.
“Judson! You’ve emerged from the fog, I see. That’s a wonderful development! Kelly Strafe thought that she might have become disoriented, when you opened your eyes. Her reaction to your recovery was an episode of shock. I had to sedate her again, to guard against trauma. Perhaps you can speak with her tomorrow, or the next day...”
The university scholar put his wireless device aside. He yawned from fatigue, and stretched both arms until sensors on his monitoring array triggered an alarm.
“She said were headed back, on a return course to Mars. Is that right?”
Stoudt nodded and fiddled with an analgesic dispenser, at her patient’s bedside.
“Mmm hmm. That’s the current plan. Commander Block said that a greeting party will be on hand when we arrive. You and Kelly are to be... handed off to their rehabilitation staff.”
Baines stiffened under his blanket.
“He agreed to that? He approves?”
The managing physician sighed slightly, in response. Her white coat intensified the glare of overhead lights in the ceiling.
“He’s a soldier, Judson. They don’t get to argue, unless given permission...”
Her wounded cohort shrugged and breathed deeply. This made his ribs ache and throb.
“What about you, doc? What’s your opinion? Will they do any better sorting out what happened to us? Did you debate the point with Hornell Block, himself?”
His caregiver avoided offering details. Yet confessed her displeasure.
“I was advised... by someone I trust... to do just that. But I thought again, before going to see him in person. You know, there’s an intellectual difference between those who follow orders, and others who blaze a trail for themselves. It can be measured with a cranial scope. You see electrical patterns light up, in one brain hemisphere, or the other. I pondered that, this morning. It made me realize I was about to stumble into a black hole...”
The professional nerd frowned and clenched his fists.
“So, that’s it? You just accept the rules like he does? How is that different, Dr. Becka?”
Stoudt stroked her gray curls. She felt uncommonly cold, despite the forced-air ventilation in their ward.
“It’s different because I won’t just react on cue. Look, I can’t turn this ship around. And even if I could convince Commander Block that you’d both be better off staying under my care, he has no power to change minds at New Cleveland or Texas City. He’s a cog in the machinery. If there’s a solution, it’ll come from somewhere else. Maybe the egghead calculations of someone like you. Or, if Lieutenant Strafe is right, through an ancient tradition called prayer...”
The university instructor snorted and smiled. He was amused by her candor.
“PRAYER? ARE YOU JOKING, DOCTOR? DOESN’T THAT CONFLICT WITH YOUR BELIEF IN SCIENCE?”
The medical chief took hold of a bed rail, and stooped low enough to whisper.
“Judson, I don’t have an answer to this riddle. But I’ll take one, from wherever it appears. On a computer screen in my office, or the viewer of your personal tablet. Even in the reflection pool of our chapel, down the hallway from this treatment ward. Right now, what I believe in is finding a way to keep you out of Tonka Hidecki’s hideous chair! I’ll do anything to make that happen!”
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