Chapter One | Rhythm
John, if he's perfectly honest, doesn't really want to be here at all. He's tired and space-worn and, if he takes the time to consider the sensation, actually sort of bored. He's worked his way through three holo-programs that needed re-coding, played a good fourteen games of auto-chess, and has manually gone through the latest telemetry readings, that Eos had relayed for him from his Thunderbird, no less than eight increasingly duller times. At this point, he's well and truly run out of things to occupy himself with.
Having nothing to do is something wholly unfamiliar to John Tracy.
The Oxford AstroSci lecture on Laser Communication that he's been personally asked to guest attend, all the way over in England, had better be worth it. John sighs heavily at the thought, his breath congealing on the cool glass of the train window he'd been staring blankly out of for the past twenty minutes. He spaceman lets his eyelids fall closed, sinking back in his seat and pinching at the pressure build up in the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. This is taking forever.
The only noise is the constant, droning hum of the train's engines underneath him and, though the soft vibrations that travel up through his seat don't bother him too much, there's a constant awareness at the edge of John's consciousness that they're there. The regular clack clack as the train passes over slightly uneven rails is the only thing that breaks up the monotony. Clack clack. Clack clack. Clack clack. The rhythm would send him to sleep, if only he could let it.
John is not the only passenger aboard the private, GDF funded train; the Lady Penelope, for one, has her own compartment down the corridor, along with a few other important officials. They're all bound for England at high speed, but even these days it takes time to cross the globe. Three hours from Melbourne by plane, then five along the new European Interrail from Italy, then it'll be two more before arriving in England via the Channel Tunnel.
It'd be much faster if you happened to have a Thunderbird to hand. Heh. Landing One in the middle of the University grounds would hardly be subtle... but it's nice to imagine. It'd sure save the monotony.
The monotony, John suspects, is exactly why Penny scheduled his presence on the train: to alleviate hers. It had been nice of Penny to schedule accompanying him into her timetable. After all, she didn't have to work his flights to ensure that they would end up aboard together, just so that she could make sure that he wasn't travelling all that way alone. She'd even tweaked things so that they could have adjacent compartments. Penelope prefers travelling with companions and John does miss face-to-face human interaction during his stints out of the atmosphere, and so her working his lecture into her timetable to correspond with her return from the heat and luxury of Italy does seem very purposeful.
Everyone who knows John Tracy knows that he has always been happiest above the exosphere. Scott used to worry about him, drifting alone up in space. Big brother hadn't been able to understand how it was that John could spend so little time around people and still be content. He'd worried that their astronaut had just been taking one for the team, isolating himself so that his brothers didn't have to, but when he'd brought up his concerns with his father, Jeff had just smiled.
He's not wired like you, Scotty, he'd said. You're an extrovert and the way you feel happiest when you're with lots of people is how John feels when he's alone. He's not lonely. He still gets to be with people, he calls, he visits, it's just done on his own terms.
And it's not like John doesn't enjoy Penny's company. She's a precious, trusted old friend and so he doesn't mind her manipulating them together - after all, she's been doing it since back when they had a seating plan.
He only wishes he was being a better companion.
He'd been sat with her and Parker for the last few hours but John had developed the strains of a headache and apologetically retreated to his own compartment for a little peace and quiet. The kind that doesn't involve exhausting politeness and Sherbet the pug gumming at his coat; leaving damp saliva trains on three hundred dollar mauve fabric. The morning aboard had smelt like spilt nail polish and a lack of sleep, and John had just felt too thin for company.
The spaceman pulls his arms tighter around himself, as if he's gotten chilled. Perhaps he shouldn't have stripped his now-soggy overcoat off. The mauve fabric is now neatly folded above him on top of his small case in the luggage rack. John isn't sure he has the energy to stand upright and get it.
He opens his eyes to gaze out at the dark blotchy blur of the snowy, mountainous landscape as it rushes past. His head tips forward; forehead pressing against the cold glass of the window, trying to ignore the ache that goes right down through his bones as the vibration of it shakes him. He closes his eyes again.
Gravity is always too heavy nowadays. He's been down longer than thirty seven hours by now and still the effects of prolonged life in space have yet to leave him. Sore feet, achy head, poor immune system, nausea, vertigo. His arms are shaky with his reduced muscle mass and bone density. His heart feels weak.
Everything smells too much and tastes too much and the air he's breathing feels literally thicker than the recycled, refined Nitrogen-Oxygen of his station. His eyeball-pressure-induced glasses have been discarded on the table - John had gotten sick of the feeling of them vibrating on his nose with the motion of the train. Everything just makes his headache worse.
There's a bing of the overhead speakers that, had John been more with it, would probably have made him jump. The door to his small compartment slides back to admit a thin, curved man in the GDF rail uniform; all starched navy blue lines and an empty, blank expression.
"John Tracy?" He checks, voice monotone and perhaps a little nasally, as if he has had a recent head cold (or, to the more aware, as if he is purposefully distorting the sound).
John looks up with a bit of a hopeless nod in response; his neck muscles making their complaint clear at the action. All he really wants now is to sleep, but as this attendant seems to have finally brought him the water he'd requested a good twenty minutes ago, John decides he'd better at least make the effort to drink it.
The glass gets set down from the tray onto John's little desk, just to the left of his blank holo-laptop. The liquid inside it forms a tiny whirlpool with the movement.
"Thank you." John says, hoarse around the heaviness of his tongue. The uniformed man shoots him a… peculiar look, pausing for just a moment before he takes his leave. The expression is a quirk of the corner of the server's mouth, shadowed under the slim moustache that's sleeping flat along his top lip. Which is... strange... John doesn't recall the man having a moustache when he came to take the order, but the spaceman doesn't really have the energy to ponder this for long.
It doesn't click that something is amiss here.
The glass is cold under the astronaut's fingers. Everything feels cold when he's not covered by a temperature and pressure regulated space suit, but this is especially cold; condensation on the outside of the glass smearing under his digits. The liquid isn't quite perfectly clear.
The headache throbs behind John's eyes and raising his arm to drink takes far more effort than he'd have liked it to.
The crash of breaking glass and the choked lack of breath as the cyanide hits his system are much, much easier.
...
Author Note: So this is something that got started a good couple of years ago and is now far enough in progress I feel ok starting to post it. Please leave me your thoughts if you enjoyed so far, thoughts always appreciated. Love y'all. - Len