Episode #9 "Maybe It Wasn't Such A Good Idea"
by the frog princess
(Inspired by the television program Earth2.)
WARNING: This is a continuing soap opera. If you haven't read the prior installments of the As G-889 Turns saga yet, this will make no sense whatsoever.
Chaos reigned. So, what else is new? Hippocratic oath be damned, Julia was one nervous breakdown away from taking a magpro to the whole lot of them.
Alonzo's wounds were minor, small bite marks mostly, but they were scattered randomly on his body and she still hadn't found the main source of the bleeding. The fact that every single member of Eden Advance was underfoot in the med tent didn't help. (Actually, they weren't all underfoot in the med tent -- Mazatl stood just outside the open tent flap, nervously twiddling Alonzo's recently-deactivated VR set -- but Julia wasn't making those sorts of distinctions right now.)
"People, please," Julia begged. She tried to make it sound like an order, but it just didn't come out that way. "Everyone, please, just wait outside."
No one seemed to hear her. Or if they heard, they didn't listen.
"Is Alonzo going to be okay?" Uly asked.
"I told you that little bastard was dangerous," Walman growled.
"What's going on?" John piped in.
"Skippy ate Alonzo's toe!" Walman informed him.
"Just the little one," Morgan added.
"Is that Alonzo?" John asked.
Morgan shot the mechanic an odd look. "Awake, but not firing on all thrusters, I see," he said to Julia, who was paying attention to more pressing matters and had no comment.
"Who's Skippy?" John asked.
"That's what we named the koba, Dad, remember?"
"What's a koba?"
That brought them all up a bit short. "Uh -- Julia, John doesn't seem to be ... ."
"OUT! OUT!" she screamed. "EVERYONE! OUT!"
She had not intended for "everyone" to include Cameron, the amiable scientist she had recently drafted as her assistant. And she certainly hadn't meant it to include the very-recently-comatose patient John Danziger. But both men had skittered quickly out of the tent along with the others and, faced with a rare moment of silence, Julia wasn't inclined to invite them back in. She noted, with approval, that Cameron had taken the canister and related equipment with him. With luck, he'd be able to monitor their progress in the privacy of his own tent.
She quickly turned back to the matter at hand and began methodically searching out and treating Alonzo's wounds.
John was dazed and confused enough as it was. He refused to even try to make sense of the arguments that were flying back and forth at the moment. It was mostly something about whose responsibility it was to watch Skippy and who should have been watching Alonzo and wasn't it maybe time that they found out whether kobas tasted better than semolina but wouldn't eating something that had just eaten Alonzo's toe constitute some form of cannibalism and why the hell had Skippy been allowed into camp in the first place and somehow or other John got the impression that was supposed to be his fault ... but if this Alonzo was the same Alonzo who was responsible for the current throbbing in his head, he didn't feel any urge to make amends.
Instead, John just repeated his earlier question. "So, what exactly is a koba again?"
Julia ran her diaglove the length of Alonzo's body one more time, trying to make sense of the readouts. As a koba victim, Alonzo's life signs should have been nil as he lay in that near-death state that had once caused them to bury their commander alive. Yet all his life signs were active. His heart rate and respiration were almost normal. She could even see his chest rise and fall. Other than the small chunk Skippy had taken out of his foot and a few other minor abrasions, he looked perfectly healthy. But he remained unconscious and his brain waves were erratic. And something was missing -- she had been unable to locate the initial attack wound, the site of the koba sting. It was as if ... .
"So the doc says that I took a nasty clunk to the head but that my memory could come back any time."
"You're telling us you have amnesia?" Morgan scoffed.
"If I can believe poison-dart-wielding rodents, you can believe amnesia."
"So, your mind is like a total blank?" Uly asked.
"Don't be stupid," True snapped. "He's talking, isn't he? He remembers how to speak English and he knows who he is. He just doesn't remember kobas and a few other things. Right, Dad? You haven't forgotten everything?"
John hesitated. The pleading look in the girl's eyes just stabbed at his heart. "Well -- my memory's just kinda fuzzy."
"So, what's your name?" Morgan prompted.
"John," he answered quickly. He hoped the questions wouldn't get much tougher.
"See," True sniffed.
"John what?" Morgan added.
Damn. He knew that one too. The doc had just told him a few minutes ago. So what the hell was it? "Uh -- there's a Z in it somewhere, right?"
"Dad?" True's voice trembled slightly.
"It's okay, honey. My head's a bit foggy just now, but everything will be fine. You'll see."
"MORGAN!!!" Whatever True might have said was cut short when Julia came barreling out of the med tent. The doctor blinked rapidly as her eyeballs where assaulted by their first real taste of daylight in ages, but she didn't falter. "Morgan, what the hell did you do to Alonzo?!"
"It was Skippy! I didn't touch him. I swear. Ask anyone. Skippy did it."
"Morgan, I'm not accusing you of using your father as a chew toy. I want to know what you did to him that rendered him defenseless against a baby koba. He shows no sign of any contact with koba venom, yet he was unable to resist Skippy's assault. What did you do to him?"
"Julia, it wasn't Morgan," Yale interrupted. "It was all of us."
"What?"
"We couldn't let Alonzo's attack on John go unanswered. We decided that the only form of just punishment at our disposal was to place him in a virtual prison. Unfortunately, since we knew Alonzo was incapable of escaping, it never occurred to us to keep a guard on him during this time. I'm afraid that Alonzo was unable to fend off the koba because he was simply unaware that it was hurting him."
"You locked him up in VR?" Julia repeated.
"Sounds reasonable to me," John said. Morgan nodded happily at his nemesis's approval.
"When did you do this? Where was I?"
"It was shortly after we found Danz," Baines said.
Julia huffed.
"Julia, you were busy taking care of Danziger," Walman said. "Besides, it was pretty much unanimous. Your vote wouldn't have swayed anything."
"Wait a minute. He's been in VR non-stop for days? Do you have any idea what effect that might have on the human mind?"
"What's the big deal?" Morgan argued. "I'm in VR all the time. It hasn't affected me."
"Let us do the talking, Morgan," Baines said.
"Did you take his basic physical needs into consideration?"
"We remembered to feed him, if that's what your asking," Walman snorted.
"And short straw walks him down to the latrine," Baines added.
"Hell," Magus smirked, "some of us even volunteered."
"Meals and latrine breaks are written into the program at regular intervals," Morgan explained. "As far as Alonzo knows, he's in prison and it all takes place within VR."
"Look, Doc," Baines said. "It's all water under the bridge. Danz is awake, if not totally fine. So, you can just wake Lonz up and call it done. John's marbles for Alonzo's toe may not be a totally even trade, but, hey." Baines shrugged.
"But I can't wake him up," Julia scowled. "That's the point. Whatever you did to him, he is now totally unresponsive."
They all just stared at each other in silence for a moment.
"Morgan," Julia asked quietly, as calmly as she could, "Are you sure you didn't add something extra to that program? Just a little payback tucked away in a hidden sub-program?"
"Julia, I swear." Morgan looked her square in the eye and she couldn't help but feel she was witnessing a rare sincere-Morgan moment. "I didn't add anything extra to the program. Hell, outside of the meal and latrine sub-routines, there really isn't a program at all. The main theme is pretty much just boredom."
"Morgan," Yale hissed, a horrible realization sneaking into his mind. "The VR program that you showed me -- it was incomplete. You finished the prison program before it was implimented didn't you?"
"Well, I was going to, but then I figured 'Why bother?'"
"Oh, God, Morgan, you idiot!!!" If she was ever going to have that nice nervous breakdown that she'd been promising herself, now was as good a time as any. Julia flung herself at the civil servant and pounded him flat to the ground. "You shanking moron! You stupid, skinny-assed bonehead! You ... !"
Morgan squirmed weakly beneath the wild-eyed doctor. Her first blow had completely knocked the wind out of him. He was sure he was going to die right then and there, ripped to shreds by a tiny blonde fury. Instead, his rescue came at the hands of a big mechanic -- a big mechanic who likely would have minded his own business if he'd been in his right mind. Since that wasn't the case, Julia soon found herself solidly locked in the arms of one John Danziger, who lifted her off the ground like a rag doll.
Julia signaled her surrender and John let her go. He then reached down for Morgan, who cringed instinctively at his approach, and gently helped the civil servant to his feet. Somewhere in the back of Julia's head, a medical voice made a note that Danziger's prognosis wasn't looking as good as she'd originally hoped.
"Ma'am," John said softly. "Would you care to tell us what all this is about?"
"Yale," Julia said wearily.
Yale took a deep breath and entered into lecture mode. "... basically, it amounts to complete sensory deprivation which has been known to cause hallucinations and worse, even at much shorter stretches of time. And given Alonzo's previous confinement to a malfunctioning sleep chamber ... the psychological damage could be irreparable."
Julia shot Morgan a meaningful glare.
"How was I supposed to know?" Morgan whined.
"Morgan ... ," Julia began.
"South!" Alonzo shouted.
Everyone jumped as the pilot staggered out of the med tent.
"Hey, Lonz, how the hell are you?" Morgan burbled. "See, Julia, he's fine."
"The spiders are south!" Alonzo laughed. "Lots and lots and lots of spiders!"
"Is he always like this?" John whispered into Walman's ear.
Walman shook his head.
"This would be that irreparable psychological damage they were talking about then?"
Walman nodded.
"Alonzo," Julia said, her calm medical persona taking over again. "You need to lie down. Let's go back to the med tent."
"No, no. We have to turn south. We're almost there."
"What about that mountain that you clubbed Danz over the head to go climb?" Morgan wondered.
"Forget all about that," Alonzo said, happily. "That's the long way. She says all we have to do is turns south and, bingo, we are home!"
"She who?" Baines asked.
"Bess!" Alonzo giggled, just as Cameron zapped him with the sedaderm.
The rest of them watched in silence as Cameron and Julia dragged the sedated pilot back into the med tent.
"Dad," True whispered quietly. "I can still keep my cat, right?"
He had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about but the man figured that, as a parent, there was one answer that was always appropriate in any given situtation. "No."
CONTINUED IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT