Arynthe's Story

The year that followed

(continuation)

When I woke up, I could not move my left side at all. My father left me a message on the computer to explain it was because of the radiation during the apocalypse. It was only harmful after passing through anteron, which explained why my right side was fine. My parents were both paralyzed. 

We were picked up by a friendly telepathic alien whose name was Egeg. He passed my parents' thoughts through to me so that we could communicate. He couldn't always do that, because he worked as a doctor on a spacestation. I asked him if he could do anything about the paralysis, or about my disorder, but he replied he didn't know our physiology and it would take years and years of research. 

We had almost fallen into a state of dull acceptance when I woke up on a morning and noticed the anteron flakes on my right hand. I realized I was growing up: it was time to do great things. I took the database from our escape pod and connected it to the computer in Egeg's laboratory. Combining all the received information with scans and tests on myself and my parents I spent weeks learning literally everything there was to learn about Ashirians. I spent days sitting under Egeg's desk and just analysing data. 

I concluded that the radiation once passed through anteron damaged the nervous system. I won't go into scientific details in this book, but the point is, it wasn't all that easy to find something that would work. The only chance I had was trying and seeing what happened. So that's exactly what I did. 

I guess it was kind of an advantage that I wasn't so limited by years of experience and ethics yet. By now I wouldn't even think about doing what I did back then: experimenting on my own left side. I tried pretty much everything I could think of and that was quite a lot. 

Every night when Egeg was gone, I whispered to my parents about what I had found out that day. They couldn't respond, but I knew they heard me. I had researched that. 

It was what seemed like a normal, average day. The anteron on my right side had grown nearly as thick as that on my left side. And on that day I found the cure, just like that, all the sudden. After checking one last time it wasn't (too) dangerous, gave myself a shot of a substance I knew as cinnilite. I had put it on the "things that might just do the trick" list, near the bottom. It turned out it actually did the trick, and it was fast, too. Within seconds I noticed that I could move my arm again. 

Only a few minutes later I ran back to our hut. "I found it!" I shouted out as I dashed into the room. "I found the cure!" 
They sat there motionlessly, but if it was up to me, not for long! 

My father moved the first. He stretched his fingers, then his arms, and then he tried to stand. He struggled to keep his balance and leaned on the back of the chair. 
"Well done, lady," he said, "I knew you could do it."
My mother still hadn't moved an inch. Then suddenly, I realized I hadn't even scanned her yet. When I did, I figured out she had just died from a heart attack. 

My father and I could not stand still. We used the computers on the station to find out how many other Ashirians had survived and where they were. There turned out to not be many survivors at all, but they were all far away- it would take quite some time to find and cure them all, but we had no choice. We considered it our mission. 

"20% of the population survived," I said after a quick calculation when we were on our way.
"Still many," my father said. "However, I'm not sure how much that number will reduce, considering your enthusiasm."
"Your humor hurts," I hissed. I pressed my lips together and focussed on the little asymmetry in the engines. 
My father just nodded. "It is the art to still laugh about it."

I didn't respond. The engines seemed to be slowly getting out of phase. I searched the circuits around it for the cause. 

"It's your own choice of course," my father said, "but if I were you, I'd laugh as much as I could. After all, laughter keeps you alive. You of all people should know."
What I knew is that it had never been proven. However, I couldn't resist starting to laugh after all. The way my father said that seemed just hilarious to me.
"That's my girl!" my father called out.