My head spun. Light and shadow danced on my eyelids but I couldn’t open them. My mouth was dry as the desert and blood pounded in my ears every time my heart beat. I tried to move my legs, then my arms, before I realized that I couldn’t feel a thing below my neck. I caught little bits of sound, a language I didn’t understand. The surrounding noise got incredibly loud, pressing in on me and making it hard to breathe. Then I passed out.
When I came to, I heard Rita’s voice.
“Please don’t try to move, Sam.”
I ignored her advice and tried to lift my head to look around. Bad idea. Fire shot through my temples and my teeth ground together. My eyes watered and I blinked several times as she stepped forward into my field of view. She had traded the green dress and black gloves for a simple, blue-grey jumpsuit.
“You are completely immobilized. I’ve tried to lessen your pain but staying still will help greatly.”
I swallowed and took a couple of breaths. “Gotcha. What…what happened?”
“We were involved in a collision. Your body was,” she paused and squeezed her lips together. “There was extensive damage. I can repair it but we don’t have the necessary equipment here on Earth.”
Several questions ran through my noggin. What kind of damage? Why couldn’t I feel my arms and legs? What sort of equipment was she talking about? And what about our discussion before the crash? She had said the Seraphim were here to share knowledge but hadn’t mentioned the test of our worthiness. Were the aliens going to burn the planet or not? I started to flap my gums but she continued.
“Unfortunately, the equipment cannot be moved so we will have to leave Earth. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Yeah, I suppose. If you can fix me so I can move again, what’s the hold up?”
“We’ll need to cross a considerable distance. Once we arrive, your rehabilitation may take some time. Your absence will be significant.”
“How significant? Are we talking days? Weeks? Months?”
“It may be several months before you return home.”
Shit.
I’d miss the baby being born, but it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice. “I just want to be able to see my family again. Which reminds me, when we were talking in the car before-”
She held up a hand. “In due time. I will make you whole again first. Try to relax, we’ll be there soon.” She turned to a brightly colored screen and tapped it a couple of times with her fingers. A curved glass shield began to slide slowly over my head from right to left. It clicked shut, completely surrounding the table I was on. The world went silent, the only sound a soft hissing noise as the container filled with chilled air. I breathed deep and it felt good. The air was fresh, clean, and smelled faintly of lilac. It was relaxing and my eyelids felt like lead weights all of a sudden. If I just closed my eyes for a minute I shouldn’t miss anything important.
For the first time in months I didn’t dream. It was spectacular. One minute, I was falling asleep in a freezer and the next I was waking up, chilled to the bone, thinking I was back home and trying to close the window. I stared blearily at my reflection in the glass, taking note of the stubbly beard. Why couldn’t the past several months have been a dream? If only I’d never seen crispy Tom Donato or gotten my hands on that neon green raygun. If only I’d never met crazy Bobby and Lauren, the Arel Matriarch. If only I’d never lied to the Army and gotten roped into their plan to save the world. If only I could still be blissfully ignorant of it all.
There was a pop and the case opened. The glass lid retreated and I lay there for several seconds. After a while, Rita appeared.
“How are you feeling?”
“Cold.”
“That would be the cryostasis. It takes a while to get used to.”
“I bet. Are we here? And where’s here?”
“Yes, we are on the Seraphim homeworld, Enoch. You’ll get to see it at some point, but right now there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Aww, geeze. More bad news?”
Her expression softened. “I’m sorry, Sam. I should have told you sooner but it was easier to convince you to leave Earth than I initially though. As I said before, your body sustained extensive damage in the crash. It’s time that you know how extensive the damage is.” She turned back to the nearby screen and tapped at it some more.
Lights appeared over my head. They swirled, blinked, flashed, and pulsed. They floated in mid-air and started to make a shape. The image was made up of thousands of tiny lights hanging over the table. I’d never seen anything like it. It took me a second but I recognized it: it was me. The close-cropped brown hair, the lines in my forehead, the twice-broken nose, and now the scratchy beard stubble. As my gaze traveled downward I saw what Rita was talking about.
The rest of my body was utterly destroyed, mangled so badly I couldn’t believe it was actually mine. My chest was caved in and my abdomen looked like ground hamburger. My arms seemed to be broken in several places and my legs, good God, my legs. They were bent in a way that I didn’t know legs could bend. Below the knee they were gone, just not there.
“Where the hell are my legs? Sweet, merciful Christ, where the hell are my legs?!”
Rita came back over to the table and the grisly lightshow disappeared. “I can fix you, Sam. You’ll be as good as new, better than new. I needed to show you what happened so you would understand why you can’t move and why we need to be gone for so long.”
If I could have moved I would have been shaking like a leaf. I could remember being this scared only a couple of times before in my entire life. The first was having to leave Betty, seven months pregnant with Sarah, at her mom’s house while I shipped out. Then there was my crew’s first contact with the Jap naval fleet. And finally, when Betty was in labor with Ben, watching the docs wheel her into the operating room for an emergency C-section.
Rita took one look at my face and turned back to her screen. Warmth washed over me. The hair on the back of my neck relaxed and I felt like I could breathe again. I closed my eyes and suddenly didn’t care that my body was a useless sack of meat and bones. My mind slowed down, almost as if a heavy fog had settled in my noodle. Rita’s voice floated to me through the soup.
“I’m going to transfer you to the surgical center now, Sam. The first procedure will take several hours.”
I made a grunting sound and I was out again. This time I couldn’t stop the thoughts racing through my head. Was she going to saw off my noggin and stitch it on an alien body? Could she somehow stick my broken, shattered pieces back together like Humpty Dumpty? Or maybe she was giving me a ration of bunk and I was already dead.
After what seemed like a lifetime, brightness stabbed at my eyelids and I realized I could feel my chest. It was mostly numb but it felt like it was there, at least. Still no dice on my arms and legs, though. I blinked and squinted into the blinding light.
“Good to see you, Sam.”
“Wish I could say the same. Why is it so bright in here?”
“My apologies.” A shadow crossed my vision and the light dimmed. I opened my eyes the rest of the way and saw Rita smiling at me.
“I can feel my chest.” The words seemed strange, mostly because I didn’t usually have trouble feeling my chest.
“Good! I’m sure you’ve noticed that you can’t feel anything else.”
“I suppose that’s because you haven’t fixed anything else yet?”
“No, but you are now breathing on your own. The next procedure will focus on your abdominal cavity so you may resume normal digestive activity. I had to remove your appendages as they were too badly damaged. They will be replaced, of course.”
I decided to skip right over the questions I had about that and get some answers that might not make me want to toss my cookies.
“Ok. So. What do the Seraphim actually do? Because I was told that we needed to impress you or we’d be history.”
Rita’s smile faded. “Who told you that?”
“An Arel named Lauren and Colonel Cooper of the US Army, who I suppose got his information from Lauren, or other Erelim on Earth.”
“That is false and intentionally misleading information.” Rita’s green eyes flashed. “Seraphim do not destroy the races we meet, we learn from them, and they from us. What would we have to gain from their annihilation?”
“I don’t know. All the resources from the destroyed worlds, maybe?”
“I suppose so, if the world was not wiped clean by the firefight, but I assure you that is not the case. We combine our knowledge and resources with others. The Seraphim are a coalition in every sense of the word and our member nations are willing participants. To suggest anything less is ridiculous.”
“Then what happened to the Erelim? Why was their homeworld destroyed?”
Rita blinked several times. “We did not destroy the Erelim homeworld.”
“But it was destroyed, right? Or was Lauren lying about that, too?”
“We will finish this discussion later. You need to rest up for your next procedure.” Suddenly, I felt very sleepy. Whatever dope Rita was giving me was better than a Mickey Finn.
My legs felt funny. I was moving forward but I wasn’t walking I felt much shorter than normal, too. The grinding metal noise coming from my lower half made me look down. Where my legs had been there were now a pair of treads, like a tank. It worked pretty well with the large belts rolling over uneven terrain, like a walk in the park.
Then I noticed my arms. Attached to each of my shoulders was a flexible metal tube ending in a pincer-like claw. As I bent and twisted them around I realized that they could extend much further than my real arms ever could. Damned if I wasn’t enjoying my new parts.
“Sam.” Rita’s voice sounded far away, like she was in a deep hole.
“Sam.” Now it was louder and closer.
My eyes snapped open. I was flat on my back instead of exploring the rocky landscape of Enoch. A quick try to move my extremeties confirmed that I wasn’t a human tank but still just a roly-poly cripple.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Not bad. No arms or legs yet, huh?”
“Soon, Sam. I wanted to make sure you could survive without the aid of life support before I attached your new limbs. All of your major systems are now complete.”
“I know I’m a boob for asking this but I gotta know. What happened to me, exactly?”
Her face and tone became serious. “You experienced severe trauma as a result of the crash. You stopped breathing and were hemorrhaging blood. By the time I stabilized you and transported you to my ship, your heart was no longer beating and all electrical activity in your brain had ceased.”
“Wait., wait, wait. You mean I croaked?”
“Technically, yes.”
“How am I talking to you, then? How did I come back?”
“I restarted your heart.”
“But my brain powered down? Does that mean I’m slow, now, or something?”
“I don’t believe so. I can run you through a series of mental tests once your repair is complete, but you seem fine so far.”
“Ok. After you jump started my ticker and brought me to Enoch, what have you done?”
“I’ll spare you the technical details, but the first procedure was to reconnect your spinal cord, repair your lungs, and replace your ribcage.”
I started to feel queasy. “You replaced my ribcage? With what?”
“Living bone encased in titanium alloy.” She must have noticed the blank look on my mug. “It serves the same purpose as your current skeletal system with the added benefit of low breakability.”
“Gotcha. Did you replace anything else?”
“Oh, yes. Your spleen, kidneys, stomach, and intestines were damaged beyond repair, as was your pelvis.”
“What about my,” I swallowed and felt my face heat up, “penis?”
“Your reproductive system was not salvageable. I’m sorry, Sam, but you can no longer procreate. I did, however, replace your external organs with an otherwise fully functioning facsimile that is connected to your excretory system.”
Three kids was enough, I suppose. I wasn’t exactly happy about that, but at least I still had my manhood. “Alright. I appreciate the explanation. Tell you what: how about you let me go back to sleep and don’t wake me up until I can jump off this table and dance a jig?”
Wow, I've missed a lot of this series, but this is a great entry to pique my interest. Poor Sam, it's a tragedy that his life was taken, but pretty awesome that it was given back. I don't know anything about the Seraphim or the Erelim but I like the idea that Rita put forth about the Seraphim. Gotta read the rest of the chapters, because whatever happened between finding the ray gun and now is obviously interesting as hell.
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