Broken World: Liars

Broken World: Liars (Chapter 2)

Dr Joan Blackwater, Medic with the US Military

"Captain Darling, I have had two hours of sleep since we got on this ship, and not even in a single session. How many have you had? Eight?"

"Er... Yes?"

"Good for you. So if you would just accept that humans aren't nearly as immune to HST as we assumed, which is were all the data is pointing, I might be able to finish my workload for today and go to bed. I have to work with Thinker Chx tomorrow, and I doubt he would approve if I came there with about the same livelihood as a zombie in the desert."

"But all the people who have been sent up so far were-"

"Less than two hundred people have been in hyperspace before us, Sir. The ones that might have experienced it probably didn't report it because no one else showed any symptoms or at least didn't talk about them. It is my opinion as a professional that this order is important for the safety of the crew, and I urge you to make it official."

Darling sighed. "Fine. Whatever you say, Doctor. I'll give the order." He stood up. "Have a good night, Joan."

"You too, Matthew.", she responded as he left. Once he had closed the curtain behind him (the Item'qar seemed to have a rather loose understanding of privacy. There had been no doors of any kind, but the humans improvised to impair visibility), it was her turn to sigh. The captain was a good man, but he had been raised extremely religiously. His parents and priests had taught him that all governments had been given the right to rule their citizens by God Himself, and even though he had embraced all the changes the world outside his village had had to offer, he still believed in authority so much that everything the government published was like gospel to him.

"Why was the zombie in the desert?"

Joan looked at the entrance as Daniel entered. "Hey", she said. "Are you already done for the day?"

"Not quite, I'm afraid. I need something for my skin." He showed her his left arm. Some kind of a rash had spread over the inside of his elbow. In the very centre, she saw some dried blood. It looked painful.

"I don't have anything for that right now. Soak some cloth in black tea and put it on there. If that doesn't help, I'll try some chemical stuff."

"Don't you dare get too specific", he laughed. She joined in, though her laughter was a bit tired.

"Careful, Daniel, or the others are gonna find out that I'm not actually a doctor.", she joked. "So what did your schedule include?"

"Nothing specific right now. There's no communication in Hyperspace, so I'm not of much use right now. I can't learn Sherim or Tarif until we actually talk to some of them. As long as we're in the void, I just help out here and there. How about you?"

"I'm supposed to meet with a Thinker by the name of Chx tomorrow. He's a xenobiologist and medic."

"Our kind of xenobiologist?", the German asked while tilting his head slightly to the right. "Or their kind of xenobiologist?"

"Theirs. I think we're supposed to help each other learn about the other's species' biology so we can learn to cure them in emergencies. But I got a message from the schedule administration a few minutes ago. Apparently, he asked if there was a mistake because 'surely he wouldn't be paired with a mammal'." She said the last part with as much arrogance as she could, and in a terrible British accent.

"So we have a racist? In space. A space racist."

"Oh god please don't"

"A spacist, if you will"