Aeolus Investigations Episode 12

Available from Amazon.com.

In episode 11, following a bizarre side trip to Eloisa, Lexi Stevens and her husband Ron Samue, came home from the Dark Space.

Since then, four years have passed. Their son Crane eventually forgave them for leaving, largely because it was explained to him why they left. Shortly after their return, Crane met the girl who would one day become his life mate, Risha Et Turmin. Now, they’re both fifteen. Lexi takes them on a diplomatic training mission, along with their two Grake friends, Padi and Kacen, to introduce a recently discovered human-occupied world to the Accord.

From orbit, noticing anomalies about the Cryton civilization, the team transports down to investigate. They should have landed. Cut off from their starship, Apollo, they’re forced to fight for their very lives against the Cryton natives who have a disturbing tendency to claim, “You’re safe now.”

Synthetic Chapter 1 – Conversion
Synthetic is available on Amazon.com.

Lexi Stevens opened her eyes to see a well-dressed, androgynous-looking, stranger leaning over her. She didn’t remember passing out. She was slightly groggy. Her eyes weren’t focusing the way they should making the woman look somewhat blurry. Nor could she feel any mental presence. After all of these years of being aware of everyone around her, that set off mental alarm bells.

Oddly, her first thought was, Her name had better not be Martha. It was a minute or two before she recalled the basis of that thought. Once before she woke up in a situation like this — confused, disoriented and without a hint of the extrasensory mental abilities that even then had almost become a normal part of her everyday life.

That prior time, she had been trapped in a simulated reality on the Badowine colony ship Hope, waking from what her Badowine captors intended for her to believe was a twenty-five-year-long coma. Her sim-nurse, Martha, had passed the time until her parents arrived reading her Dr. Seuss books. Once home with her simulated parents and, to her amazement, her teenage sister, the sim had almost been fun, like a vacation from real life until Halloween, the night the zombies had attacked. It had taken two months for her true memories to come back — for her to realize that the life she had been living, as pleasant as it had been, couldn’t be real. At that point she had broken out of the sim. Then she had dealt with the Badowine. Years later, trapped in the dark universe, her sister Allie had finally resolved the Badowine problem. Rather elegantly, Lexi thought. I guess I’m assuming this is a sim, otherwise why is my mind dialing back to the Badowine episode?

This woman watched her with an odd little smile on her odd little anime face. “Good, you’re awake. My name is Mertha. I’m here to help. I know you must be confused. The short of it is, your diseased body has been cured. You’re completely safe now. I know your name is Lexi. The others have been asking after you.” She paused. “The confusion and the weakness will pass soon. If your vision is blurry, that is to be expected. That too will pass. These are all perfectly normal side effects of the Cure. They don’t last long. A few days at the most. You’re safe now. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Lexi looked around the small, featureless room she was in. The room was white, starkly so, without even as much as a window to break the monotony of the white walls. Other than the bed she was lying on, there was no furniture. Nor did she see any medical equipment. If she had just been cured of something, she would have expected to see medical equipment. Here there was nothing.

Her eyes still refused to focus. As she turned her attention back to Mertha, the woman resumed speaking. “I’m to be your guide while you’re adjusting to your new life. You may find some of the changes brought about by the Cure to be disorienting, possibly even frightening. That is understandable. I’ll do my best to help you through that. Try to stay calm. Just remember you’re safe now. Completely safe. Be comforted that you have nothing to fear. You will find that you are different than you were. This you’ll soon realize. What was done we did out of compassion for your well-being, with your best interests in mind.”

It bothered Lexi that Mertha, in under a minute, felt compelled to throw the word ‘safe’ into her spiel four times. Nice to know I’m completely safe. Idiots. What did they do to me?

Mertha was a slim, relatively attractive woman. With nothing for comparison, Lexi couldn’t judge her height. She knew it should be five-eight, the same as every other individual her team surveyed on this planet. Mertha’s skin was olive-brown, her complexion smooth and flawless, like an anime doll, which she somewhat resembled. Even struggling with her blurred vision, Lexi noted Mertha made heavy use of cosmetics. Her face was otherwise plain. Her features seemed relatively stiff and expressionless.

Lexi looked down at her own arms, at smooth, olive-brown skin. Not only where her arms the wrong color, they weren’t as long as they should be. Someone had stolen her muscles, too. Her mind was messed up. Thinking was slow. Something was clearly wrong. She knew that somehow this wasn’t her, but couldn’t think of anything she could do about it. At least not yet.

Is this another damn sim? It almost has to be. Or am I in a coma again and dreaming this? No choice but to go with it until I know more, one way or the other. This woman, Mertha, has a name strangely like Martha. If this is real, did my precognitive sense come up with the name Martha in the Badowine sim? It could have. If that’s the case, then it implies that this is neither a simulation nor a coma-dream. The only alternative is that this is actually real. Wouldn’t that be a bitch and a half. Still the two names being so close is too slim a fact to base any conclusions on.

Still laying on her back, with Mertha leaning toward her, she had no sense of the woman, standing no more than four feet away, either through telepathy or empathy. That was strangely disturbing. Despite her prior thoughts, it also strongly suggested this was a sim in which those abilities might not exist. Without evidence either way, it was dangerous to assume anything. This could be real. She suddenly became very concerned about Risha. “I look like you, don’t I? You swapped my body. How? Why?”

Mertha smiled placatingly. “Allow me to take you to the others before I explain. All of your group are safe now. Completely safe. You’ve all been cured. The two of you who looked to be made of stone were treated first as I had no idea how resistant to the disease they might be. Frankly, I’ve never heard of a manifestation of the disease with those symptoms. It looked painful. I can’t imagine they had much time left.”

That made six times.

“The young man and woman were treated next. You were the largest and sturdiest in your group so you were processed last. I must apologize for that, but I held doubts that all of the Cure stations remain viable. They haven’t been needed for ages. There was no one other than myself to monitor. I couldn’t handle more than two stations at a time.”

She paused. “Yes, I know that is an excuse, but still, it is true. You’re feeling weak now. That is perfectly normal. It will get better over the next day or two. You can expect to be weak until you adapt to your body. At least you are safe now. I have a wheeled transport chair for your use.”

“Do me a favor, Mertha. Do not tell me I’m safe again.”

Mertha looked taken aback. “But you are. Safe, I mean.” Lexi would have smacked her, but lacked the strength. Instead, she sat up on the edge of the bed. The effort required for that small action was remarkable. She sat still while the room spun around her. “The others, my children, how are they? Where are they?”

“They all took the cure extremely well, the young male especially so. The two odd-looking ones responded as expected. The young female panicked at first, for some reason screaming she was alone, even after I wheeled her into the room with the others. The young male comforted her. When I left them, she had quieted.” She watched as Lexi stood from the bed, not letting go yet, but clearly mostly balancing on her own feet. “I do have a transport chair for you,” she mentioned again. “It is unheard of for anyone to be able to stand so soon after receiving the Cure.”

“Well, as long as I’m safe now,” Lexi said, appalled that the nastiness she felt was not satisfactorily projected in her voice. She managed to get the sarcasm in there, though.

Mertha wisely chose to ignore the comment.

Lexi smiled grimly at her while she took the few steps separating them. It was odd being five-foot-eight rather than six-three. The floor was closer than her mind expected it to be. She hadn’t been this height since she was thirteen and that was a long time ago now. She did place her hand on Mertha’s shoulder, for balance, before saying, “Let’s join my children. I’ll walk.”

Synthetic is available from Amazon.com.