He was nothing.
He was in the void.
No, he was the void.
Once, he had been someone, something. Now he was no more.
There had been thoughts, ideas, names and faces, things that he could no longer catch.
They were clouds, looking as if they were near, when in truth they were far beyond his reach.
They were fireflies, so small and quick that they slipped between his fingers.
Sometimes he still tried, although he did not know why. Letting go and forgetting was so much simpler.
A few remained within his grasp. There was a name, a very familiar name. Galen. A name. But what did it mean?
A face of a woman. Beauty, longing, sadness. Love.
More faces. Safety, warmth, friendship. Family.
All was lost in this vast cold nothingness. None of it made any sense.
Minutes passed. Years. Days. Centuries. It did not matter.
Slowly he became aware of a change. Something that had been was not anymore.
He was alone. All alone. He had not been alone before. It should not have been possible.
His soul, his heart, had left him, abandoned him. He was alone in the void.
For a moment, everything in the room froze. It had been so close. They had almost succeeded. Now, it might have all been for nothing.
The moment, shorter than a blink, went by, and Chambers was in full action again.
"Asystole!" she called out, immediately followed by the same in plainer words. "His heart's stopped."
As if everyone had not understood as much already. "You'd better move away, give us room to work," she told them.
Everyone backed up from the bed, except for Alwyn, who still stood there, by Galen's side, doing nothing, frowning.
"Alwyn? Isn't there anything you can do?" Chambers was yelling at him. Alwyn could tell she expected him to perform yet another miracle. "If you don't have a better idea, I'm going to inject adrenalin. Alwyn?"
Alwyn hardly heard her. He hated being right. He had had doubts, had thought it had all went too smoothly, and so it had. He just couldn't be sure what had went wrong. Was it all the extra strain they had put on Galen's already tormented body? It was the natural, completely understandable explanation. Yet he doubted it. There was something else. Something he had forgotten when all their thoughts were so fixed on the physical side, on medicine and biology.
Dureena had gripped his arm tightly, and she too was shouting. "Alwyn! Don't just stand there! You must do something!"
Indeed, he had to do something. But maybe that something was not what everyone else expected it to be.
It took him a while to gather his thoughts, to reach the concentration it required. Then he cast the electron incantation. This time, it was easy, like connecting with another techno-mage who was in the same room should be. Galen's tech responded immediately, eagerly. Alwyn reached out again, calling two more people into the incantation. The two Galen had most often mentioned to him. Matthew Gideon and Dureena Nafeel.
They were standing in the stone-walled chamber, Alwyn in the middle, Gideon to his right, Dureena to his left. In front of them rested what was left of Galen. The blood was still there, a large dark stain where the fabrics had absorbed it. In the middle of the stain was a vague form, hardly more than a dark cloud with a lighter cloud as its head. Although everything else was hazy, impossible to recognize, the wounds were clearly visible, a vivid crimson intersecting the darkness.
"That's... Is that him? Galen?" Dureena uttered, edging closer to the blurred figure. Alwyn guessed she had been in an electron incantation before. She understood, at least to some degree, what had happened, why she was suddenly in this place.
Gideon had been here as well, with Alwyn. Now he was staring at Galen with a frown on his face, trying to comprehend. "What's happened to him? Why does he look like that?"
"That is what remains of him. It is his self-image, how he sees himself right now. We've almost lost him, but since something still remains, maybe, just maybe, we can convince him to return. I might need your help, he might listen to you where he does not listen to me. That's why I brought you," Alwyn explained. Then he stepped closer to Galen, and knelt next to him.
"Galen," Alwyn began. "I know what you think, and you are wrong. The tech is no longer dead. You are not dead. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying? The tech lives. You must live as well."
The answer wasn't clear enough to be called a thought. It was a confused flutter that touched his mind, so fleeting that he hardly noticed.
"Galen," he repeated, bent even closer to the vague form, his face almost touching the blur that had been Galen's face. "You must come back. I know it's difficult, I know it would be easier to remain as you are and slowly fade into nothingness, but you must try. Because of the tech, Galen. Think of the tech. It is alone now. You live and die as one, you said. But now, the tech lives, while you... I do not think you do. Can't you feel it calling out to you? It wants you back. Like we all do."
"Alwyn's right, and he's telling the truth," Gideon joined in, crouched next to Galen as well. "The tech is OK. I don't know much about it, I can't hear it calling out, but I do know that I want you to return. I, as the captain, together with all the rest of the crew, we want you here, because we need your help. And not just that... Galen, I want you back because you are my friend."
Dureena had sat down by Galen's side. To Alwyn's amazement, she reached out to the cloudy form, and took Galen's hand in hers. As she held it, he noticed that it looked solid - as did the rest of Galen.
All of a sudden, all the haziness had disappeared, replaced by the horrible sight, the grievously wounded body that Alwyn had found when he had first cast this incantation.
"Galen, you idiot! I know you're not dead. So stop playing dead, and get back here. Please," Dureena spoke, and although her voice was as sharp as her words when she began, it broke before she was finished, the last words coming out sad and low, almost a whisper. A solitary tear was making its way down her cheek.
For the second time in a short while, Alwyn got to witness the same wondrous sight. A glimmer slowly filled Galen's wounds, tiny rivers of molten gold finding their places where they belonged, where they had, in truth, been all the time. Then, when all the tech was there, glowing softly, the wounds began to close, torn flesh knit together again, the edges of skin that had been cut open met each other and fused together, so that there was no trace of the horrors that had been. The very last wound to disappear was the metaphorical one, the one with no tech, that had been in his chest. Even the dark fabric of his coat mended itself, covering the hole.
He had caught it!
Galen. It was his name. It was who he was, who he had been.
Galen knew who he was, what he was, and why.
He knew he should not be alone, and that he was alone because had got it all wrong. He had never been abandoned. It was he who had abandoned himself, too lost in desperation, too deep in the void, too certain that he was no more. He had failed to follow the part of himself, his heart, his soul, that had found the way out.
He was not alone now. There were others, many voices calling out to him, some of which were a part of him, while some where not. It did not make them any less important.
Galen followed the call of those voices.
Everywhere around him, the void, the nothingness, was changing. He could see its limits where none had been before. They were falling apart, and through the cracks shone a blinding, golden light that quickly surrounded him.
Alwyn, Dureena and Gideon returned from the incantation to the flurry of action, with Chambers just about to inject Galen with one thing or the other that might or might not restart his heart. Alwyn grabbed her hand, gently but firmly, and stopped her.
"No, don't. There's no need to. And you could start removing all this as well," Alwyn told her, motioning to the life-support machinery.
"No, no... You can't mean that," she uttered, her expression desperate. She had completely misunderstood him. The monitors still showed flatline. She thought he was telling her that he was truly gone and there was nothing left to do.
It did not matter, Alwyn decided. She would see for herself soon enough.
Extreme exhaustion and overwhelming relief washed over Alwyn, and he fell to his knees, resting his arms against Galen's bedside, his forehead against them. He could easily see how Chambers would misinterpret such body language, but he didn't care.
Dureena came to his side, placing one hand on his shoulder, and holding Galen's hand with the other. They waited patiently.
Chambers was working absently, disconnecting all the things that had kept Galen alive this far, but in the end, had not been enough. She was a doctor with a particularly hazardous assignment. She had lost many patients, but never before had she fought such a long, amazing battle and succeeded beyond all hope, just to lose it completely in the end.
"Is he... Is it over?" Eilerson stuttered.
Although the phrases "He's dead" and "It's over" kept repeating themselves in her head, Chambers couldn't force herself to say them aloud, so she simply nodded - and saw Gideon shake his head vigorously.
Gideon's face was tense, but he was smiling. "It's definitely not over."
On the nearest screen, she saw how a few tentative beats broke the straight line, then settled into a steady, stable, if somewhat rapid rhythm.
She could not believe it. It wasn't possible. It was medically impossible for a heart that had no electrical activity left to spontaneously start beating again. She knew Alwyn hadn't done anything. Perhaps it had been the tech. Or maybe it was a miracle. She had already seen enough of those for one day.
Galen drew a deep, shuddering breath, like a man who had been drowning, but had finally reached the surface. After a few gasps, his chest rose and fell evenly.
The pained grimace finally dissolved from Galen's face, the deep lines becoming smoother and less severe. And he smiled.
"It is most certainly not over," Alwyn affirmed.
Newsflash from your Author: Alwyn's telling you the truth. If I were a lazy writer, I could just stop right here. If you are a lazy reader, you can do that, too, since we've reached the point were Galen's not dead and no longer in any danger of dying, at least not in this story (evil grin)... Anyway, it's not quite over yet. I think everyone (including me, you and Galen) really deserves at least one chapter where he's not suffering horribly. :-)