✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Three - Part XII: Midpoint

          Over the next eight days, Gabriel gradually emerged from his coma. He slept a lot, and when he was awake, he was drowsy and forgetful. He also had a stutter that improved a little bit every day, and he suffered from chronic muscle weakness and persistent headaches. It was apparent that he had memory loss as well—he had a hard mental block on nearly everything that had happened on the Temetor One. And while he seemed to remember that Julia was his best friend, most of their relationship history was lost on him. The last thing he remembered was attending medical school with her, but nothing about their career together in Project SETI or anything else. She was understandably saddened by this, but simultaneously grateful that he remembered her at all.

          Julia was waiting for Sam in a conference room in Project SETI. She wanted a progress report on the termination of the project, as well as on Gabriel's condition. She tried her best to appear indifferent to the task, but she couldn't deny that the act of euthanizing and aborting such a large number of Daxut infants had left her with an extremely heavy heart and a profound sense of guilt, especially after all the work she'd done to do the exact opposite.

          She looked up when the door opened, and the familiar redhead crossed the room to join Julia at the table.

          "Good morning," the Executive Director said warmly as she sat down. "Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice."

          "It's no problem," Julia flashed her a small forced smile.

          "So. Tell me about Project SETI," Sam jumped right to the heart of things immediately. "What have you managed in the past week?"

          "Shutdown is proceeding as you ordered," Julia replied promptly with professionalism that she hoped would adequately cover her true emotions about it all. "There were forty-two Daxut offspring in incubators—all of them were given a merciful death via lethal injection and disposed of in the large biohazard disposal."

          Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Good. What about the surrogates?"

          "In both early and late-term surrogacies, I have been inducing labor prematurely," the doctor explained without missing a beat. "Eggs are incinerated in the biohazard disposal, and any offspring delivered alive are also euthanized with an injection and incinerated. There will be no physical evidence they were ever here once this is over."

          "How long will it take to terminate them all?"

          "Well... I've been performing on average eight procedures a day, depending on complications and such," she paused to do some mental math, "I should be finished in about five or six days."

          "Alright. You'll have to notify me as soon as that's completed," Sam made a note on her phone as she spoke. She looked up before she continued, "how's Gabriel?"

          Julia's face relaxed a bit at the change in subject. "He's making a really impressive recovery, considering what he went through. Over the past eight days, he's been emerging from his coma at a steady rate—he could actually go home later, provided he's got someone to take care of him."

          "That's great to hear," Sam smiled. "How are the side effects?"

          "Mm... well," Julia let out a sigh as she gathered her thoughts a little more, "his muscles are weakened, so he's struggling with moving around somewhat... it seems to get incrementally better every day, which is promising. He's also got a bit of a stutter, but it's improving with meds. He gets wicked headaches and has some memory loss that's likely PTSD-related... he honestly got off easy. It could be so much worse."