New Year, New Me, Less John Hurt?
Nah!
John can't quite get his feet under him. Every third step is a stumble that he doesn't have time to recover from before the next rock jumps up and bites his ankle. As if the forced march Virgil is keeping them at isn't exhausting enough now the vegetation is out for blood.
"Slow down." John tries to say, but it comes out slurred and almost unrecognisable, even to his own ears. Virgil doesn't slow or pause or even look his way, just keeps pulling them onwards, so maybe he didn't even say it out loud.
John's shivering hard enough that his bones are rattling and even clenching doesn't help with his teeth's attempt to ram themselves into his jaw. He's going to have sore muscles tomorrow no doubt, and probably bruises from his trip down the river even if he can't feel them right now. He can't feel much of anything – he knows that Virgil is gripping his wrist but he has to focus or it fades away, just like the scenery is fading in and out: a blur of white snow and black shadows. The roaring static of blood pounding through his ears is a white noise, pushing everything else down to a muted, blurred, hush.
John's reward for years of work and dedication is the skills and certification to live and work on a one-crew space station. With that magnificent view comes certain sacrifices: freshly cooked food, clothes that don't double as a spacesuit, and fresh air. Standing on the river bank John had welcomed the brisk wind chafing his cheeks, carrying that indescribable scent that means rain or snow is on the way. Then it gave him back the feeling of being alive, but now, just a few minutes later, it's cutting and biting. It slashes through his soaking trousers and whips against his skin, creeping across his back and down his arms, leaving a tingling burning where it caresses. Never more has he wished for his IR uniform and Brains' superior engineering that usually protects him.
The journey down the river had been too quick to take in: tumbling darkness and confusion, being slammed into rocks and scraped along the river bed. He'd taken a shocked breath before realising he was under water, and is now paying the price for it – a ball of ice is sitting in his chest, pulsing with each inhale, sending tendrils of cold through his veins.
"You still with me? Start talking if you are." Virgil gives him an uncalled-for jostle that briefly ignites his bruises.
"Wha' 'bout." John gets outs, a little clearer than before but still interrupted by his chattering teeth.
"Anything. What are you working on at the moment."
"'s a paper. 'Bout pulsars."
"What about pulsars?"
"All 'bout pulsars. Everythin'." Four years, thousands of telescope hours, cutting edge analysis and John was about to start on the most important paper of his life. He's got two co-authors who are leaders in their respective fields but they were waiting on him for the final algorithm to interpret the last batch of data. And they had been waiting for at least three months because he needed about twelve hours to finish and bug test the programme. Twelve hours that he didn't need instead to eat or sleep or work or conduct maintenance or manage two dispatches at once and fend off a third. He's now seven hours into the work and with the end of data analysis in sight the writing itself could begin.
"John!" Virgil manages somehow to elbow him in the ribs as they lumber over a fallen log. That's right. He was meant to be talking. He's good at talking. Almost as good as he is at coding. It's all just about finding the right phrase, the right words, the variable to progress to the next stage. What makes people tick? What are their conversational keys? Where's the missing parenthesis? It's all the same, a puzzle to be unpicked. He's good at puzzles: number puzzles, word puzzles, Rubick's cube. Or he would be, if his fingers weren't so numb and stiff from the cold.
Hmm that's interesting. He's not as cold as he was. He's still numb, and the wind is still cutting, and his lungs still ache, but the freezing lead in his arms and legs has lessened. He should be able to start moving better soon. The layers borrowed from Virgil are working because he's even starting to feel a bit warm.
That's. No. That's not right. There's something. Something about that. Something wrong. Something Virgil should know.