A Distant Future

A Distant Future Part 7

COLONY

Susan was mad as hell at Mitch for not being home by the time she finally showed up. All night long she plotted on how to ruin his life completely before finally exposing him as a freak and not a human. She wanted to completely ruin him and drive him to kill himself if she could. She kept an eye on his place off and on throughout the night but she saw no sign of him.

Morning came and she went back to the ship to finish running the rest of the medical scans. Sarah came by around the middle of the day for her turn to be scanned. "Susan, have you seen Mitch around today?" "I have not, and it has been a good day so far." Sarah shook her head in sadness. "Why do you hate him so much? You were head over heals in love with him for a while? What happened?"

"I grew up. That loser freak is not for me and that's all there is to it. Your scan is finished ma'am and you are free from viruses,disease and parasites. Will there be anything else?" "Did you remember to save the files like you were told?" "Yes. Everyone has been scanned and their files have been saved. No one new is infected or ill." "I'd like to see the file on Mitch. I want to know how bad his hand was hurt."

"He had some first and second degree burns is all but the medical system sprayed a healing compound on them and he left after that. I have not seen him since then nor do I wish to see him." I assume you scanned him then saved his file." "I did." Good. Now show me his file. I want to make sure that one of our hardest working young men is alright since no one has seen him since he came here yesterday and left looking a bit upset."

Susan walked over to the computer console and began to look through the files. Finally after a few minutes she pulled up a scrambled version of the file she had made in case she needed to keep the truth concealed for a little longer. "It appears that the file has been corrupted. It looks like something caused it to scramble. The data is lost to us ma'am."

Sarah sighed and gave up for the moment. "This old bucket barely got us here so I guess I'm not terribly surprised the old computer is acting up. If Mitch shows up let him know we'd like to see him about helping us with some projects. He is good at finding ways to get things done safely and efficiently."

Sarah left the ship with the feeling that Susan was hiding something about Mitch but she was not sure just what. Jake met her as she was coming out of the ship looking frustrated. "Any luck finding Mitch?" "None. No one has seen him since yesterday after he left the ship looking upset. What did his medical scan reveal?" Sarah frowned. "No luck there. His file was a victim of a computer error that corrupted the data beyond recovery according to Susan. She showed me the file and it was a mess of errors that could not be read. It looked like something erased the reader tags so the computer had noway to read the data correctly."

Jake frowned. "Susan hates Mitch for some personal reason so it makes me wonder if she has something on him that has him afraid to leave his place. As for the data, there may yet be a way to recover it. I know a few tricks that might work. I think a visit to his house in order to talk to him directly and find out what is keeping him inside. If Susan said or did something to cause this I'll have her hide for this."

Jake and Sarah made their way over to Mitch's small home. Sarah looked at the size of the place. "I forget how small his place is. Our security cells are only marginally smaller than this. He built it himself and used only parts no one else wanted. He told me he did not need a lot of space or the very best of the items we had." Sarah knocked on his door and got no answer. Jake looked in both of the small windows that let in some light. The roof of his place had a small solar collector on it that he had repaired.