Chapter 14

"How is he?" Cally asked Doctor Cottle.

"He's stable," Cottle replied. "But he seems to be in some sort of coma. But it's unlike any I have ever seen. He's exhibiting enormous amounts of brain activity, as though he's a major television broadcast signal. I've never seen anything like."

"Do you know what it means?" Cally asked him.

Cottle shook his head. "I'm sorry but this is well beyond my expertise. It's beyond anything at all that we as a race have discovered up to this point."

"When will he wake up?" Cally inquired.

"There's no way of knowing," Cottle replied. "He may wake up in five minutes, he may never wake up. It's entirely up to him now, there's nothing more that I can do."

Doctor Cottle walked away to fill out some paper work on his previously deceased patient.

Cally sat beside the bed and grabbed my hand. "You came back from the dead already," she said. "Please, you have to come back again."

My hand squeezed hers but otherwise there was no other movement.

"Marcus? Can you hear me?" she asked getting excited.

There was no answer. I couldn't move my body. Something was preventing it. But I could hear her. I was aware of everything that was going on around me but I was helpless to do anything about it.

I can hear you, I thought in my mind.

Cally glanced around the room, "Who said that?" she asked more to herself.

Who said what? I thought.

"Marcus? Is that you?" She asked me.

Could she hear my thoughts? Was I able to talk to her? There was nothing that I wanted to do more than stand beside her and assure her that everything was alright. I imagined myself standing beside Cally, looking down at my comatose body.

"It's going to be alright Cally," I said.

Wait a minute. I heard that out loud. It sounded just like my voice. I could still see myself standing there beside Cally and my own body. She turned and she looked at me.

"Marcus? What is this?" Cally asked.

"I don't know," I replied.

I looked down at my hands. I seemed to have a body. I reached out to touch Cally my hand made contact with her the smooth skin of her cheek.

"But you're lying right here, how is this possible?" Cally asked.

I racked my mind trying to come up with an answer for that. "Some form of astral projection or something," was all I could think to say.

"So you're a ghost?" Cally asked.

"Maybe," I answered with a shrug.

Just then a nurse approached. She was a short middle aged woman with short brown hair. "Are you okay Specialist?" the nurse inquired.

Cally looked at her a bit confused. "Yeah I'm fine," she replied.

"What's that about?" I asked her.

"I have no idea," Cally answered.

"Are you sure you're okay Specialist?" the nurse asked. "You seem to be talking to yourself."

"I'm not talking to myself," Cally protested. "I'm talking to the Lieutenant."

"Specialist if you'll just come with me," the nurse insisted.

"I am not crazy!" Cally insisted.

I stood there watching dumbfounded unable to do anything. Apparently the nurse couldn't see me. This reminded me of something but I couldn't remember what. My memory was muddy.

"Doctor Cottle, could I please have your help subduing this patient?" the nurse requested.

Doctor Cottle came over, "What seems to be the problem."

"The Specialist claims to be talking to Lieutenant Sittler," the nurse replied.

"Look I know that this is a very stressful time for you," Doctor Cottle said. "I can tell that you and the Lieutenant were, romantically involved."

"No weren't," Cally corrected him.

"Yet," I added with a mischievous grin.

Cally shot me a slightly annoyed glance and a slight elbow in the ribs. I noticed my body flinch.

"What was that?" The nurse asked.

"I'd like to know to," I agreed as I stared down into my own face.

"I just elbowed him in the ribs," Cally replied slowly.

"His body's reaction seemed concurrent with being elbowed in the ribs," Doctor Cottle. "But you didn't touch him."

"That's because he's not in his body," Cally tried to explain. "He's projecting some kind of, mental image that apparently only I can see."

"Well I can't say that this is completely surprising," Doctor Cottle said. "We have no idea just what his mind is capable of doing."

"Neither do I," I said.

"Neither does he," Cally repeated for me.

"He can hear us?" the nurse asked.

"Of course," Doctor Cottle answered. "Inside his mind he's conscious. He's just lacking control of his body. But he's still able to hear everything that goes on around him. And if he's projecting some kind of image I assume that he can at least see what is going on."

"He can interact with things," Cally said. "Or at least me. He's holding my hand right now."

It was true. I was holding on to Cally's right hand with my left hand. I swung it back and forth slightly. To Cottle and the nurse it must have looked rather odd, since they could not see me. Doctor Cottle poked in my general direction with his clipboard.

"Hey watch where you poke that," I said pushing the clipboard back towards him.

Cottle stared at the clipboard in amazement. Something had actually pushed it back at him.

"What was that?" Doctor Cottle asked Cally.

"That, was Beanpole," Cally replied.

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"This is starting to get ridiculous Doctor," Admiral Adama said. "First he comes back from the dead and now he's doing some kind of astral projection and telekinesis."

"Sir, with all due respect when a person comes back from the dead after two days we really have no idea what they can do." Doctor Cottle reminded him.

Adama just gave the Doctor a stern look that shut him right up. He looked down at my body and then at Specialist Cally.

"He certainly look rather dead," Admiral Adama commented wryly.

"I can assure you I'm not dead yet sir," I said.

The Admiral made to response to my comment.

"He assures you that he's not dead, yet," Cally passed the message on for me.

The Admiral looked about for some sort of explanation to all this.

"His projection is only able to be seen and heard by Specialist Cally," Doctor Cottle said. "How it does seem to be able to interact with the rest of the environment."

"Well isn't that just dandy," Adama said. "I'd like to know why he decided to suddenly rise from the dead and go storming off to yell at Doctor Baltar. He left the vice president in a rather useless state. He's in his room muttering something like "he killed her," over and over again."

I tried to think back, but I couldn't recall ever doing anything like that, in fact my memory of the past month was rather garbled.

"I, I don't know," I replied rather surprised that I couldn't remember.

"He doesn't seem to know," Cally replied.

"It entirely possible that everything that he has gone through has affected his memory," Doctor Cottle said. "As I've said before the brain is a very unknown organism and there's no telling what has happened to his brain."

"Well how long till he's back to normal?" Adama asked.

"We don't know sir," Cottle replied. "He may be stuck like permanently."

"Damn, that means I lost another good pilot," Adama cursed. "Not to mention my best interrogator. We've trouble with the peace movement once again. Although they don't seem to be so peaceful anymore. Rumour has it they have a nuclear warhead. I don't know how they got one but I'd really like to find out."

At that moment I felt incredibly useless. I was unable to do anything. I had no idea how far I could project my vision away from my bed. So far I had stayed within 30 feet of myself.

"Let me know if anything knew develops," Adama said as he left.

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Will our hero ever awaken from his coma? Or will Cally become a Baltar-esque character who talks to a Number Six-like Beanpole? And what happened to Baltar? Find out in the next exciting chapter.

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