"Salvage"
36. Choices For A Life
The Palace, Mesphoria – in the year 2033
After they had all come out of the tunnel, evacuated in pairs atop the cage platform, they had called for the medic to come and take a look at him. What had happened to him had never been seen, which would leave them without answers as to what the waters had really done to him. The old man, Pod, had told him he would need to examine him properly when the situation with Cod had been handled. For the moment, there was nothing to indicate he might need some immediate care, so he'd been free to follow the team.
With Cod's ship no longer a blip in the skies of Mesphoria, Sam had been free to follow the medic. The Doctor was still needed at the tunnel site, and that was where Sam wanted him to be. He would let Pod examine him in the meantime.
This was like nothing he had ever seen in a hospital or a doctor's office. Pod had sampled his blood, tested his reflexes, and taken him to a pool where he could see for himself whether the human continued to be privy to the gifts of a Mesphorite. This time he had been dressed accordingly, and when he dove in to the water, the effect had been as instantaneous as it had been pain free. He'd come back out of the pool, finding his legs back as they should have been.
After this test and the results of Pod's analysis, what Sam was told remained half drawn from expertise, and half from guess work.
As was the case with any Mesphorite, which had been one of the greater reasons why this tunnel mission had been so important, the breathing component was going to wear off in time. What remained to be determined was what would become of his binding, what Pod called the fusing of the legs. No living being other than the Mesphorite had ever become able to bind from swimming in their bodies of water, in any occasion where they'd been able to observe it. There was a possibility that, having fallen deep into the source, the waters would have been potent enough to modify him right then and there. If this was true, then there was even more reason to protect the area.
When it came to Sam though, there was no way to tell for certain whether his binding would follow him throughout his life or if it would fade as well. Mesphorite children, already in their mothers' wombs were said to bind; no one had ever happened upon it so late in life.
This could be forever. I might stay like this, like… her.
He still remembered that moment in the tunnel. First she'd slapped him and then she'd kissed him and his head had spun both times. In so little time, something had happened to him, to her as well, he suspected. Somewhere in their hours of descent, he had fallen in love with a woman from Mesphoria, and maybe she had fallen for a man from Earth. When he had fallen through the pocket, she'd been the last thing he'd seen, in that split second where she had seen him fall and the panic had taken her. She was losing him… he was losing her. But then he'd found her again, and he knew he didn't want to say goodbye to her.
He hardly even noticed how much taller than him she was anymore, and really why did it have to matter?
He had ended up on this world at the request of an old friend, to help another old friend, who was meeting him for the first time. This meant that, the day he had first met the Doctor, he had already been to Mesphoria, with him as he was now. He would know whether or not he had returned to Earth. It was years ago and still he remembered it enough to say that neither the Doctor nor Gemma had ever said or done anything that would tip the scales either way. This was entirely up to him, and the choice he would make would be the right choice.
He'd left nothing he couldn't part with as far as work, or a wife and kids. He was alone. His father had died ten years ago, and his mother two years ago. He had his brother and sister, but he could find a way to let them know he was alright, if he chose to stay… Sometimes it felt like he'd already decided.
After leaving the medic, he had dressed again and made his way out so to join the rest of them, down by the tunnel. As he was coming down the long road toward the site, he tried to imagine himself living here, the odd human in a sea of towering green Mesphorite. He had wound himself into their history and their lives as they had made their way down the tunnel. If they kept silent for too long, it would start to wear on them, so he had gotten story upon story from Olis and her children. The further they went, the better they had gotten with talking to this stranger, 'little man' as they called him. He hadn't realized how much he had started getting attached to them, not just to Mersi but to all of them.
Long ago he had been Sam Evans, high school jock, Glee Club talent… Whatever he had imagined for himself, it hadn't really happened. Now here he was, two decades later, on an alien world, and he had gone and found himself at home for the first time in a very, very long time. And he had found love. Maybe his dive into the Mesphorite source had been a blessing. It gave him another reason to stay.
TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)