Notes: Avalon is a fictional town – if there is an actual Avalon, California, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was, I do not know of it. The "Avalon" in this fanfiction is made up; any resemblance to a real city is coincidental. Also…remember the July incident, that Vash went to the city to look for a relative of Rem's? I believe his name was Lebanon Vasquez (Count Lebanon Vasquez, a murder that Vash got accused of, though there is no definite record of him ever having taken a life). The Lebanon Vasquez in this story isn't him, but is his grandfather. Finally, a virtual donut for any Smegheads out there who get my little "Red Dwarf" reference. (I'm such a geek!) Don't worry if you don't, it's little and unimportant.
A Thank You to my beta reader for this chapter, Dead Legato!
THE ANGEL AND THE WARRIOR
Chapter 4
I ducked inside the bus station quickly, shaking the rain off my coat. I was on my own now, required to redeem a validation slip for a paid ticket to Avalon, California to the SEEDS Officer Training facility. For the past two months I had been undergoing testing and evaluation at the Springfield Military Processing Station in the wing set aside for Project SEEDS. It worked very much like a military recruitment – or so I guessed as much from what I remember Alex mentioning and from what I saw the military enlistees going through in the halls.
My results on the intelligence and aptitude tests were very high, qualifying me for officer status, should I choose to train for it. I made that choice. My set job was to be dual, as my education and experience in journalism qualified me to be a Recordkeeper.
I took my ticket from the man at the counter and looked at it. I immediately handed it back.
"Sir? Isn't this ticket supposed to be to Avalon? There's nothing printed under 'destination' here."
"Oh," the man said, adjusting his eyeglasses, "must be a misprint. Never seen this error before. Where was it supposed to be to again? Miss?"
"Avalon…California."
The old man scratched his whiskered chin as he pulled another ticket. "I could just let you keep the one ya got," he stated.
"Why would I want to keep it?" I asked, "It's a misprint. I'm just going to throw it away."
"It's a blank ticket. You could write in any destination you choose. You can write in Avalon, if you wish…you could write in Seattle, New York, Phoenix…or anyplace, instead, whatever destination you choose."
I smiled at the joke and took the new ticket he handed me. "Avalon, thanks." I said, and sat down in a plastic chair to wait for my bus to arrive.
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Arrival at Avalon was a bit surreal. There were so many people. I waited in many long lines, filled out pages and pages of paperwork, and confirmed my identity with my various cards and certificates more times that day than I cared to count. Most of this stuff was electronic due to the need to preserve the last precious stands of forest, but by the end of the day my wrist was cramped thanks to recycling and a need for physical records.
I was assigned classes, like college, necessary for my training. I was to begin by taking Basic Astrophysics, Advanced Plant Maintenance, Interpersonal Communication, Leadership Development, and Advanced General Biology.
After deciding that my brain was going to explode, I found my group's dorm. It was a communal women's dorm, very Spartan, with rows of beds lined up with wall lockers and a large latrine with showers. It was a military barracks. I was one of the first to make it to the dorm, so I began to unpack and converse with the few other girls there until I saw an unexpected, familiar face.
She stepped into the cavernous room and stared at me blankly. "Rem?"
"Julia?"
The other girls stared at us strangely as we ran to each other and had a "glomp-fest". "Glomping" was what Julia called it, anyway – tight, fierce hugging. "Hugging" was not adequate to describe our crushing of each other. Julia Vasquez was my cousin and one of my best childhood friends. I hadn't seen her since she got married and moved to Los Angeles over two years prior. We had written to each other sometimes, but hadn't had the chance to travel and meet each other.
"What are you doing here?" we both asked each other at once.
"Where's Lebanon? I asked, curious about Julia's husband, "Is he here, too?"
"Of course!" she laughed, "The couples' apartments were getting full-up so they put me in this dorm and him in the 2B men's dorm next door. Hey, is Alex with you? I remember you telling me you had a boyfriend the last time you wrote me."
Our lives had both been busy, or maybe I had just been so despondent I had just forgotten to write her…Julia did not have electronic mail.
"Rem, what's wrong?"
Julia put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her slowly. "He's the reason I'm here," I whispered.
"Is he here with you? I wanted to meet him. Oh…don't tell me you're coming off a bad breakup…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything, I'm such a dork."
I remained silent for a long time.
"Rem?"
"He died," I said at long last, "called to a mission in the war. His plane was shot down."
"Oh, Rem, I'm so sorry."
"It's alright, don't worry about it. I can help you unpack."
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My next several days at Avalon were considerably less awkward than the first. Everyone in my dorm was taking the same classes, except for Julia, who was taking several advanced botany and ecology courses. She was, along with her husband, part of the design crew for a series of experimental microenvironments to be built into the fleet of SEEDS ships.
I became fast friends with everyone in the dorm, but especially with this lady named Mary. An energetic woman with mousy brown hair and thick glasses, she was set to become a navigation technician. She smoked, but tried to refrain from it around me, as I didn't like the smell. She, Julia, and I would, in our free time, hang out with some of the guys from the neighboring barracks. Julia was happy to be around her Lebanon, of course, and the rest of us left them alone together most of the time. The rest of "the crew" consisted of Rowan, a computer tech from Pennsylvania and Joseph, who was already a captain of the project, finalizing his training.
Life went on for many months with classes after classes and training in all aspects; mental and physical, even spiritual for those of us who sought out the chaplains and went to services.
The project was to run like this, if all went well with the preparations; SEEDS was not to have just one crew. This is why many were in the officers' training. There was to be one command ship, one major Plant ship and five smaller ships containing only Plants, and the rest were Coldsleep ships. Radiation from the Plants reaching out across space, coordinated through the formation, would maintain the ships with the people in Coldsleep.
Because of the Plants there needed to be only one small crew on the command ship, where the project heads were to be held in Coldsleep. Since SEEDS was to be adrift in search of a new homeworld for an indefinite period of time, that crew would be rotational. All those selected to be a part of the navigation crew – 375 of us – were to be frozen and awakened at intervals aboard the command ship. The crew was to be five to seven persons each shift, and the shifts were to be two-year stretches.
All our records were cleanly entered and cleanly kept, so that crew members with particular skills could be awakened when necessary. Coldsleep put the body's aging process at a standstill. Awakening, referred to alternately as "resurrection," was a delicate procedure, but had nonetheless been successfully computer automated in a series of animal experiments – then voluntary human tests.
All of us, before the final preparations, were to undergo three days of Coldsleep to prepare us psychologically for an experience that could last several decades out in the cosmos. My first sleep took place in a somewhat small laboratory. I was very frightened, and fought to contain my nervous shakes. Rowan and Mary were with me that day, also to undergo their first freeze. Rowan assured me that I shouldn't worry, that the computers controlling the process were absolutely reliable.
Viewing subjects that went before in their big glass, coffin-like tubes, however, made me even more frightened. Men and women, locked in frozen coma lined the walls of the laboratory, still and white like corpses. The doctors explained the procedure in vivid, even gruesome detail. They said that, essentially, to go into Coldsleep was to die, at least in the clinical sense. They were still perfecting the process, and promised that by the time Project SEEDS was to be launched that it would be completely painless. For now, some pain was to be expected.
I laid down on the padded, body-form lounge in one of the tubes, its domed glass lid open above me. One of the technicians placed a mask over my nose and mouth. I was told to breathe deep of the anesthetic as electrodes were placed on my chest and forehead ad needles into each of my arms. This was the most disturbing and painful part of the process – the beginning of the slow draining of blood through long, clear tubes to freeze separately and minimize tissue damage.
I was drifting off. I fought it. In my mind I knew that this was routine and I would be okay, but a primal survival instinct took over, an inner scream that I was dying and had to stay awake. I could not move. I felt my heart slowing. More needles, long and thick, were inserted somewhere under my ribs. My vision grew fuzzy and dark and I felt the mask slip off my face and heard a thump as I gasped and felt a terrible frigid wind…
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A tingling ache, garbled voices, something warm on my brow…
"Careful with this one, her freeze went awry. Bring her up slowly."
"Alex?" I whispered, trying to reach out, but my arms failed me. I saw his face above me, smiling.
"Rem…"
"REM!"
I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard the soft, deep voice of Joey.
"Huh?" I mumbled.
"Easy, you're going to be alright," he softly said, "It'll hurt for a little while and you'll be very cold."
Two stabbing pains hit me in both sides as I looked down and saw two metal shafts slide out of me. My shirt was stiff and smelled of frost.
I think I lost consciousness after that, because I don't remember anything more of the Coldsleep laboratory that day. I woke up in a hot room shaking and covered with blankets. Mary, Rowan, Joey, Julia and Lebanon were there, sitting in chairs surrounding my bed.
"Good to see you awake," Mary said, "You had us worried." I sat up, a sudden sensation of cold hitting me.
"What happened?" I asked urgently. Joey reached out to me and held my hand. It was so warm that it hurt. His hand felt like fire. Joey spoke.
"Bad freeze," he explained, "It happens sometimes. You weren't completely knocked out before the automation began. Coldsleep usually goes easy, but they almost lost you. We need to watch you for a few hours, just to make sure you're alright. Would you like some coffee? You need to get warmed up."
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My next experience with Coldsleep was less dramatic, though I had to be given pills to calm my nerves before going into the chamber. I woke up quickly within the open tube and suffered from the tingling cold only for an hour. The needles in my sides were still awful. They were necessary for stimulating the heart in the waking process, through some sort of energy current conducted through them. I'd forever bear small scars from them.
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Julia gave me a tour of her work department. Aboard one of the SEEDS fleet ships was a vast chamber, which was called the Hall of Life. Along the walls were rows of vials containing blue liquid on metallic shelves etched with electronic pathways.
"Embryos," Julia explained, "well, some of these just have base DNA, but most are embryonic vials. This is just the zoological room. The botanical room is larger and not as cold, doesn't need to be, we keep mostly dried seeds and spores in there…"
"So these are all animals…" I stated.
"They will be," Julia elaborated, "the first generation shall have to be watched closely – being grown in fluid is no real childhood for any creature, but our testing has proven successful thus far. Yeah, once the new homeland is established and the ecology is deemed able to support introduced species, these will be 'birthed' according to what can be supported first, according to our needs next. We expect to grow insects and livestock first. Come, I'll show you something more, on the command ship."
"Wow!" I exclaimed, blinking my eyes. The fleet was set to launch in three months, but not all the ship interiors had all of their internal electricity on in all the chambers. The command ship was to be the final to get its lights turned on – it was to lessen strain on the Plants and because, while many of the other ships were being loaded with civilians in Coldsleep, the command crews were the last to be frozen.
I had stepped into the Recreation Room from a dark chamber. The light was like the sun, pure and yellow-white. I smelled grass and dew. I looked at the flowering trees a few yards away from me. I walked to them and touched their rough bark.
"Yes, it's real!" Julia stated, "The grass is real, the soil, and the trees. Do you hear the birds? We have birds here, insects, and even a few mammals. This Recreation Room is a fully functioning temperate climate ecosystem! Isn't it wonderful!"
"Yes," I sighed, "Yes it is! This is just…amazing!"
"It seems limitless, doesn't it?" Julia replied, "The inner walls are illusionary – Advanced Image Generation."
"Like a video game…" I murmured, my left hand occupied with stroking the bark of an apple tree, gazing up at the cloudy expanse of "sky". "Very cool….how do you find the door?"
"Oh!" my cousin laughed, "That's right here, come with me. Don't walk ahead or you'll run right into the wall."
I did walk ahead of her and bonked my nose…right into a low-hanging cloud. I rubbed my face and watched as Julia traced her fingers along a piece of the cerulean blue surrounding us.
"See this pale green patterning here? It's thin, but not hard to see when you know what to look for."
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The day came when my barracks was to board the command ship for the mission. Everyone was tense and happily excited at the same time. There would be neither fanfare nor long goodbyes that day, though I had a long visit with my family the week before to say my final farewells. I think Knives took it the hardest. He told me that it was like I was dying because we would never see each other again. I told him that he need only to dream and to remember, and I would be there – that we would always be with one another in spirit. I tried to put the sadness out of my mind by thinking about Alex. I had to do this, for me, and for him. It was the future I had chosen and I had to reach for it.
Joey, Mary, Rowan and I would freeze at the same time, along with thirteen other persons, as part of the second wave of the command boarding. The launch with all of its press and hoopla would not take place for another month – after the final boarding.
I had been here, in Avalon, for nearly three years - just shy three months. I knew my duties upon my future awakening; mainly Plant maintenance and data recording for the mission log.
Julia and Lebanon were not to be on the command ship with us. Though they both held officer status, they were transferred to another vessel. I was surprised to see Joey carrying a small black animal.
"Are you allowed?" I asked of him, "I thought the project heads made you get rid of Frankenstein! How'd you pull this off?"
"Of course!" he laughed, "I insisted upon it. I'm needed too much for the old men to refuse…I could not leave my kitty behind! She has no one else to care for her. I pulled some strings, the techs even rigged up a little Coldsleep chamber for her."
So, we boarded, lying down side by side in the Coldsleep chambers, ready to meet destiny.
END CHAPTER 4
Lady Shadowcat, 2002.