AL Clark, Jonathan G. Meyer [the little red hen ebook .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jonathan G. Meyer
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The timer reduced itself to thirty seconds, and she groaned. Her eyes popped open, and she looked around wildly for a moment before asking, “Where the hell am I?”
The timer clicked to zero, and an alarm sounded.
****SHE TRIED TO TAKE A step out of the hiber-pod and began to fall. Chris was there to catch her and laid her down on the blanket they spread out on the floor. After a few minutes, the confused young woman recovered enough for them to talk.
“This is not at all what they told me. I was supposed to wake up on a soft fluffy bed, with friendly people all around me in white coats and name tags that said, Hibernation Specialist. Where are your name tags? Where are the white coats?”
Al was quick to explain, “Anastasia, we don’t have any white coats or name tags for that matter. For some reason, we are the only people awake on this ship. Something has gone terribly wrong, and we woke you because we need your help.”
She shook her head, paused for a second, and said, “Nobody calls me Anastasia. That name is way too formal and takes too long to say. Everybody calls me Ana. What is it you need me to do?”
Al and Chris took turns filling her in on what they knew. She asked an occasional question, but for the most part, she just listened. Al told her of his experience when he woke up and his subsequent amnesia. Chris followed with his awakening, and the year he spent alone exploring the ring. They told her how they met, their discoveries since then, and explained their trepidations about waking his mother. They concluded with their run-in with the kamikaze robot and then what it took to wake her.
Ana grinned and said, “I want my money back. This is not what I signed up for.” Al and Chris laughed, and it felt good. The new group of three was going to get along just fine.
Chris asked the question uppermost on his mind, “Just how old are you?”
Ana hesitated, and it looked like she might not answer, until she did. Something about the question made her indignant. “I just turned twenty-one before we left. Why? Does that matter?”
“No...no, it doesn’t matter, I was just curious. You sure don’t look that old,” stuttered Chris.
She responded, “I’m a lot older than I look. It’s been a problem most of my life.”
Ana went on to explain she was a child prodigy. She graduated high school at fourteen, college at sixteen, and was now a certified hiber-pod technician. Because of all she had accomplished, she was always touchy about her age. They learned Ana was a china doll with brains and an attitude.
Still unsteady after her revival, they helped her over to Chris’ mother’s pod, where she inspected the control panel and gave them the meaning of the worrisome light.
“It’s an indicator light warning us she has been asleep more than the recommended lifespan of the unit. It’s a good thing you didn’t try to wake her the standard way, there are specific treatments needed, and she might not have made it.”
Ana needed food and rest, so they decided to take her to the habitat ring. One more day would make little difference to Chris’s mother, and they wanted Ana at her best when she started the awakening procedure. One on each side, they helped her to the living quarters of the wheel.
On the way back, they scrounged clothes that were closer to her size, and when they strolled through the park, they picked some fruit from the overburdened trees to take back with them. Her favorite was the apples.
Chris and Al set her up in the quarters next to theirs, where she could have some privacy and still be close. The two men returned to their quarters and left her alone to get a shower, eat, and rest.
Three hours later, she was outside their quarters and knocking on their door.
“I’m tired of sleeping. I think I’ve had enough sleep to last the rest of my life...so isn’t there something we should be doing?”
They invited her into the room and offered her a seat at the little table. Ana said she had showered, changed into her clean coveralls, laid on the bed for two hours, and decided she couldn’t sit still any longer.
She informed them, “We need to get some things together before we can revive your mother. She’s going to have to be moved to the medical center before she wakes up, so we’re going to need a floating stretcher. Most of the stuff we’ll need will be in the medical center. We’ll also need to prepare the recovery room.
Al nodded and said, “I’m ready if you are. How about you, Chris?”
“I have been dreaming about this for a very long time. You better believe I am ready.”
“Let’s grab what we might need and take it with us,” suggested Al, “It may be a while before we get back.”
They didn’t have a lot to pack, so it wasn’t long before they were on their way to the hiber-pod bay. Ana liked flying almost as much as Chris, and she was pretty good. However, they had little time to play and moved on.
The lights came on as soon as they entered the recovery room in the medical center.
Chris looked around and told Ana, “We’ve been all over this place. There is not much here.”
She smiled and tapped her foot on the floor, “Most of the good stuff is under here.”
Ana’s revelation proved correct. There were small recessed handles in the floor that opened panels, and underneath was the real inventory of the medical center. The storage space below was more than adequate, with room for everything a modern medical facility needed.
“They did that because it was the safest place to store things for the long journey. Once we got to Avalon, we could unpack it all and be ready for patients in about a day.”
Chris admitted, “Actually, it’s kind of smart storing everything underneath. I sure never thought of it.”
“There are all kinds of things under these floors. Space inside a starship is not wasted, and there is a lot of space. When you walk into any of these modules, you only see about two-thirds of what’s there—you didn’t get the tour?”
Chris glanced at Al, grimaced, and replied, “No, we missed that. It sounds like it might have been fun.”
“And very helpful,” Al added.
“Yeah, that too.”
Chapter Six
They were ready to wake Elizabeth, with everything laid out on tables by a bed in the recovery room. Everything Ana might need was within arm’s reach. This attempt would be the first time she had to perform this procedure. No person on Earth had slept this long, and, therefore, there was no precedence for waking someone after the recommended length of service of a hibernation pod. She would have to count on her skill and training to pull this off.
She programmed the pod for this unusual type of revival and set the timer for eight hours.
“You mother has been asleep for a long time, and she is not young. It’s going to take a little longer to do this safely,” she warned her anxious companions.
They stepped back and got comfortable; settling in for the long wait. The two men were asleep within an hour, but Ana stayed awake and monitored the hiber-pod. She wasn’t able to sleep anyway.
When the front of the pod slid down, thirty minutes before the timer went off, Ana told the suddenly awake men to put Elizabeth on the floating stretcher. They floated her to the medical center, where they transferred her to the bed they had prepared.
Elizabeth looked drawn and gray as she lay before them. Ana hooked her up to the machines that would monitor her vitals and quickly administered two injections. The bed was equipped with an internal I.V. unit, which she hooked up and then opened the valves to allow the fluids she had prepared to enter her veins.
“Now we wait,” Ana said; peering at Chris.
“I’ve got all my fingers crossed—that’s not bad luck...is it?” he asked while grinning.
Ana replied, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Al laughed, and Chris tried to act embarrassed.
Elizabeth’s color slowly improved. She started breathing more regularly and soon after, her eyes began to blink. After an hour in recovery, her eyes finally opened.
She looked around, noticed Chris, and with a voice he could barely hear she whispered, “Christopher, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to welcome my mother to the waking world,” Chris declared. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Um...of course I am Christopher. You kept showing up in my dreams. Now, what is happening? You’re not the people who were to wake me. Is everything ok?”
Ana admonished, “You need to rest for a little while before you talk too much.”
While she was waking up, they slowly told her their stories, and without ceremony or fanfare, she became the fourth member of their party—a small group of two young people, and two not so young.
Al asked if she recognized him, and her thoughtful reply was, “I’m sorry...Mister Clark, but I don’t recall ever meeting you.”
She preferred to be called Liz, and like Ana hesitated to tell her age, except for an entirely different reason. She finally admitted to being a little over forty.
She was tall for a woman at five-ten and thin, with long blonde hair and confident blue eyes that reflected her confidence and drive. Al guessed she was not going to be laying around for long. They stayed with her for several hours and then used the floating gurney to move her to the habitat ring. Ana relocated into a larger quarters across the hall, and Liz moved in with her. As expected, Liz was quick to recover. Within a few hours, she was up and helping Ana make their place more livable.
Ana wished out loud, “It sure would be nice to have some sheets and pillows, and maybe some towels.”
“Why don’t you ask the service bots? They’ll get whatever we need.”
“I don’t know how to call them with the computer terminals down.”
“We don’t need a terminal. There are three hab bots per section in this habitat ring. They’re stored under the floor of the corridor when they aren’t needed—here; I’ll show you.”
Liz got up and walked out to the passageway, with Ana following right behind. On the floor in the middle of the corridor was a faint circle, with a button on the wall and a tiny Service label. Liz pushed the button, and a small open lift rose up from below. They boarded the elevator and pressed the down button.
Under the floor was a small room with three robots lined up; waiting for orders. Liz stepped in front of the first robot, which had several small dents on its pale blue body, and said, “Robot Nine, we require sheets, light blankets, pillows, and towels for four people.” She
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