Time Traveler Part I (Feeling Like The World Forgot Me)

Chapter 3

All of Zsashos V's original crew quarters had been designed to double as escape pods. In case of emergency, a crew member could go to the terminal at the back of their room and eject it from the station and, presumably, out of danger. Otherwise inaccessible lockers would be opened, revealing enough rations to last the average adult human a year. All of this information had been provided at Ben's briefing when he'd been shown his pod before his first shift on Zsashos V.

Foley, Ali and Patty had made their home in the empty space where a pod used to be, but had long since been ejected. They said a lot of people had lived here before them and made the space habitable by building bunks and small walls to divide the space up, all eventually leaving or dying.

Ali, who seemed to be covered head-to-toe in cosmetic augments and purple tattoos, assured him that all they found when they first moved in were a few bodies.

"Here," he said, helping Ben sit on a metal crate by a mess of scrap metal in the middle of the room, "I'll get my things and check your vitals and all that."

"You're a doctor?"

"Well, no. But I know enough."

It wasn't like he had options, he supposed.

Patty sat on a crate beside him, fiddling with some kind of wireless controller. Lights blinked on in the heap of metal, a warm glow emanating from its centre.

"Space heater," Patty explained when Ben gave him a questioning look. He indicated to what looked like the grate from an air vent stuck to the top with wire. "You can cook on it too."

Ali returned, setting a large bag on the floor beside Ben and pulling a crate closer. "Do you feel dizzy at all?"

As Ali looked over him, occasionally making a concerned hm at a reading his scanner gave, Patty and Foley moved crates off an unused bunk. Ben wondered what the plan was. They were scavengers, perhaps they meant to cut his throat while he slept and sell the tech they got from his body. Maybe they wanted his organs too and they'd act friendly until they found buyers for his heart, liver and kidneys.

Or maybe they would just wait for him to die. Ben knew the risks of cryo and why long distance space travel was such a bitch. His body wasn't built for whatever pathogens existed in humans now.

"So..." Ali started.

"Bad news?"

"We'll have to wait and see," he said noncommittally, "Cryo can have side effects and you'd obviously had...surgeries just beforehand. The tech is old, and honestly I'm not sure what any of it does."

Ben suspected that Ali was hoping he'd provide some clarity.

After a moment of silence, he continued. "There's also the problem of..."

"Disease," Ben finished for him, "I know."

Ali visibly deflated in relief at not having to explain it to Ben. "We don't exactly have anything like what you'd need to safely bring your immune system up to speed."

Ben gazed at the heater. "I suppose there's no point to you wearing your masks, then. I probably won't last ten lunar revolutions."

"Lunar?" Foley repeated, setting a small box by the fire and taking out some kind of salvaged cooking pan, "Zsashos Five orbits the sun, Lliri Twenty Four. I don't think any human could last a revolution."

Ben frowned. "Zsashos Five was put in orbit around Iphion's moon, Kestruna, so that guests could watch the storms on its surface. That was its main selling point."

Foley put water and what Ben assumed was food into the pan and set it on the grate over the heater. "Well obviously it started off orbiting a moon or planet, but when it got big enough they moved it."

He had to be fucking with Ben.

"Well, how big is Zsashos Five now?"