Broadax Medical Base lay northwest of the ruins of Philadelphia, in a valley shaped by terraforming. It was primarily an Indogene base, centered around the Biodene Project. Other research on native specimens were also carried out in the early days of the base's establishment.
The north and east sides of the base consisted of residential buildings. At the center of the base was the Central Command building, where the infrastructure for waste renewal, energy production, and utility dispersion were located. The Indogenes had long mastered the complete conversion of waste into energy. Adaptations were made for conducting the conversion in earth's gravitational fold.
On the west of Central Command was the Biomed Lab, which included storage of live specimens, mainly human. North of Central Command was he medical center where Votans from all over the region received specialized medical care. Most of the base's residents were medical staff and family. As small number studied terrestrial agriculture, and there was a farm along the southern edge, where research was conducted, and food was produced.
North of the Med Center was the central market, where vendors from surrounding regions conducted business. West of the market and the lab was an entertainment and commercial district, including cafes, watering holes, and a few brothels staffed by humans and Irathients. Few Indogenes found the need for personal entertainment. The district mainly catered to other Votan races, and was profitable for the Indogene community on base.
Typical Indogene living spaces looked like a cross between library and lab. They lived naturally regulated and balanced lives. When their daily lives lacked regularity, they at times experienced psychosomatic symptoms including vertigo, numbness, and hallucinations. Most Indogenes experienced a transition period while adjusting to the shorter solar cycle on earth. The cycle would have lasted 43 hours on Daribo, and would not have included a period of complete darkness, due to Daribo circling two stars.
Not accustomed to this new system's single sun, Votans were at first startled to walk out of their homes and encounter the blackness of "night" as the humans called it. It was an unsettling time adjusting to the shorter sleep cycle, which neither Meh nor Lev had yet accomplished. Lev would not venture far tom the darkness, but Meh had set fear far to the side, an often ventured through the shadows as if was mid-stellus on Daribo. The darkness felt calming to her, and she drank in the billion pin pricks of starlight that were barely visible back home.
So why, on this evening, did the shadows appear to warp at the corners of her vision as she walked from their apartment to the lab? She quickened her pace through the empty central market, and reminded herself that the curvature of her lenses likely distorted her peripheral perception as her sleep cycle had been unsteady. Still, the entrance to the lab seemed so distand, and the distance seemed to stretch past so many shadows and blind spots. She jogged the final stretch and locked the lab door behinder her. She turned on the lightsbefore she cold alow her mind to dwell on various terrifying notions.
Sanitixed and dressed, she entered the temperate biostorage. A grid of square recesses comprised one wall, most of tem occupied by metal cases. The wall distorted and loomed out over her as she approached, causing her to squeeze her eyes closed and regulate her pulse, while reminding herself of her disrupted sleep cycle.
She selected a case and carefully slid it out of the storage wall. The head of a young adult female human rested in a nest of tubes an wires, connected to machinery beneath, which filtered and oxidized blood, and maintained proper moisture and salinity inside the organism.
Meh set the apparatus on a table and began removing bandaging from the eyes. The partially paralyzed face twitched. Meh lifted each eyelid and dropped a solution onto each eye ball. The terrified eyes quickly focused on Meh's masked face.
"Easy there," she told the head in it's own language. Suddenly the body-less head drew a deep breath from absent lungs and an earth-shattering scream roared through the atmosphere, loosening dust from the ceiling. Meh's heart seized in fear.
She shot up in bed, hear pounding and stomach turning from the nightmare that she wished had originated only from her imagination. She sat for half a moment, and then hurried to the nearest rubbish bin. After vomiting the entire contents of her stomach, she washed her face and leaned over the basin, avoiding the mirror. She turned her head toward the window where dusk was rising on the town of Defiance, and on a world where Lev no longer graced her life. There was not a friend within 2000 clicks who she could turn to with her regret, horror, and loneliness.