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

Chapter 5

Ben seemed more interested in going through the files in the room they'd found him in than doing literally anything else, even eating. Foley didn't think it seemed healthy to spend that much time sitting in the dark reading ancient medical documents, but he supposed that there were few healthy ways to cope with waking up from cryo to find that everyone you know is long dead and you're likely soon to die from a fucking cold or something. All things considered, Ben was actually taking it pretty well.

They'd helped him move the files from the lab to their place so that he could examine them at home, holding off on asking him if it was okay for them to sell or use some of the other stuff they found there. There was no need to worry him with all that right now. He'd somewhat recovered from the cryo, but every rotation now he got sicker and thinner and more exhausted, the very water he drank poisoning him.

"Ali, how much do you know about augmenting?" Ben asked one rotation, Foley sitting by the heater with him and preparing a meal of baked potatoes that Ben likely wouldn't be able to keep down.

"Not a lot," Ali admitted, "But we know people who do. Why?"

"It looks like they put a tracker in me," he answered, somewhat cryptically.

Foley looked away from the simmering pot on the heater. "They?"

"The people who did all this to me."

Ali sat at his other side. "You don't really talk about why you were frozen."

"I'm used to having to keep secrets." He scoffed and closed the file in his lap. "I suppose there's no point now, though, everyone I kept them for is dead."

Foley frowned and went back to watching the potatoes. He didn't know if he would be able to cope if he lost all his friends, Ali and Patty in particular. He'd always imagined that, now that they'd found each other, they'd always be together no matter how bad things got.

"I got caught," Ben explained, "My people suspected that an organisation, One Great Race, was working on weapons and that Zsashos Five was a cover for one of their research facilities. I came here posing as a sort of gardener - it was a bit of a luxury resort for humans back then, so one of the viewing decks was a garden - so that we could investigate."

Patty emerged from behind the divider in his favourite black crop top, the one emblazoned on the chest with a large pink heart. He must've been planning on meeting up with someone later.

"I really can't picture this shithole as a luxury resort," he said, smiling, "And I definitely can't picture anyone bothering to build something like that just for humans. There aren't enough of us for it to be worth it."

Ben frowned. "What do you mean? There are billions of humans."

Foley sucked his teeth. "Sorry mate. The Federation have had us classified as at risk for ages."

"Oh."

He gave Ben a pat on the shoulder. "It's not so bad. Me and Patty are doing okay, aren't we?"

Ben looked at Ali. "You aren't?"

"Well, I'm not fully human, am I? I'm part zahath."

"Zahath?"

"They're newer to the Federation than humans, but they've been around for a while now. You couldn't tell that I'm not pure human?"

Ben shrugged. "I just assumed you had a lot of cosmetic augments."

Foley snorted, tried to hold it in, then looked at Ali, with his beard and crest of fine colourful feathers, and burst out laughing. "I'm sorry!" he spluttered, "A lot of augments!"

"To be fair," Ben defended, a smile in his voice, "I didn't know that was possible. It wasn't before I went under."

"So what happened back then?" Patty asked, clearly holding in a laugh as his eyes flickered to Ali, who also looked close to cracking up, but trying to steer the conversation back to Ben's gardening days, "Did you find anything?"

"Yeah, plenty. I'd just sent a message with notes on most of their research when they found me. From what I can tell, the labs were all shut down pretty quickly after that, but I guess someone still wanted to make money off of the station and it was left in orbit."

"I think I know what you're talking about," Ali said.

Foley looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well...I'm not a historian, but there was an organisation a long time ago...human and osai. They wanted to create a superior species by combining their DNA and enslaving or destroying everyone else. A small group of freedom fighters exposed them."

That did ring a bell, now that Foley thought about it.

Ben gave Ali a curious look. "Is that what they're saying happened?"

"It was a long time ago," Ali said with a shrug, "Does that sound like what you were dealing with?"

Ben returned the shrug. "I didn't know the full extent of their research, just what was happening here. Obviously I don't know what happened after I was caught either, but we did suspect that an osai faction was involved."

"Well, you can probably just look up the trials and see if any of it sounds familiar," Foley suggested, poking at a potato with a sharpened antenna.

"Can I?" Ben said, noticeably perking up.

"Sure. It'd all be public record by now. You could go look through a terminal with access to those archives after you have that tracker looked at."