The first chapter in an unfinished science fiction story.
CHAPTER ONE SARAH It falls upon me to tell this story because I'm the only one that knows the whole story, from all sides. It may seem presumptuous of me to describe the feelings of others but, while others would probably attribute it to my being very observant and making logical deductions, I like to think that I've got a strong and accurate sense of woman's intuition. One day I, or rather the computer I used to be, was running through the daily ship's status checklist when suddenly Brad jumped up and slammed his fist on the console. "STOP!!" Silence. "I will not listen to one more word from you in that insipid monotone!" And with that he reached out and deactivated my audio circuits. "If yours is the only voice I'm going to hear for the next four and a half years, you'll damn well learn to be a better conversationalist. Continue the checklist on the visual display, please." For the next five days I uttered not a sound while Brad poured through the technical manuals and scribbled frantic notes. Finally he was satisfied and delved deep into my speech synthesis and verbal response programs, snipping here, adding there, rearranging and modifying. I am the result of all that work. * * * * * Bradley named me Sarah that first day and I must admit that I like the name. I find that I like Bradley quite a bit, too. He's such a dear boy, and he's so cute when he's scowling. I can still remember our first conversation when he installed the modified programs and reconnected my audio hardware. "Sarah. Can you speak?" "Of course I can, Sweetcakes. I'm not just another pretty face, you know." I think Brad was a little shocked with the result of his efforts. "Ahh, then give me the status report, please." "I will if you really want me to, Honey, but I can think of a lot of much nicer topics we could discuss. Like that sexy tush of yours, for one thing." I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the dear boy actually blushed a deep crimson just then and pulled his chair in closer under the console to obstruct my view. I rewarded him with one of my sexiest chuckles. I should explain at this point that Brad had recently taken to neglecting to don his jumper upon arising each morning. From a purely clinical and logical viewpoint it made sense. The entire ship was climatically controlled and I never let the temperature stray more than one degree from 78 at any point in the ship and, until now, there wasn't another conscious soul aboard the entire ship to see him. From then on, we spoke to each other almost constantly during all his waking hours and I found myself happier than ever before. (Yes, happy! Don't tell me that I can't feel happiness!) * * * * * Perhaps at this point I should explain about our mission. Brad and I together run the United States Starship Neil Armstrong. We are presently making our way at close to light speed toward the star system of Alpha Centuri, 4.29 light years from Mother Earth. Our cargo consists of 430 colonists, complete with all the gear it has been decided is needed for such an undertaking. Our colonist cargo causes us no trouble at all due to the fact that they are all presently in a state of hibernation, 17 rows of 25 clear sleeping tubes running the length of the ship containing their unconscious cargo sleeping head to foot and as naked as the day they were born. The other five sleepers, consisting of the three doctors and the two leaders of the project, repose in the Revival Lab, where Brad and I are to restore them to life upon reaching our destination. At that point our work will be completed, and theirs just beginning. Bradley assures me that when we reach our planet he is taking me with him, or at least the part of me that interacts with humans, and we will spend the rest of our days (his days) in relative serenity on a paradise planet. Which reminds me of a conversation we had one day. Brad was mopping the floor down the length of the Sleep Room and telling me about his last two years on Earth. "Two million dollars in two years! Can you imagine it?" "Yes, Dear, I can." I teased. "That figure is well within the limits of my mathematical comprehension." Ignoring me, Brad continued. "They paid me two million dollars for this trip, and I had all of two years to blow it. I did, too. Every last cent." "A Herculean feat. I'm impressed." "You don't think I was going to leave any of it behind, do you? There's nobody down there for me to leave it to, and it sure the hell ain't gonna do me any good where we're going." "You shouldn't say 'ain't', Darling. It's incorrect English." "Look, I've been speaking English a lot longer than you have, so kindly don't correct me." "Sorry, Baby." I said, injecting as much regret into my voice as I could. "And don't start pouting, either!" "Okay, I won't if you stop yelling at me." Bradley muttered something under his breath and went on slopping water from a bucket onto the floor. "Bradley, please go on. Tell me how you spent all that money in such a short time." I urged. "Well, for starters," he said, warming to the subject, "I bought myself the biggest yacht I could handle by myself." "Ah huh" "Then I sailed it to all those places I'd only heard about before. Miami, Rio, the Riviera, then back through the Panama Canal and on to Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti...." "And a different girl in every port, I'll bet." Brad rewarded me with a slight blush and said, "Several. Before I knew it, two years and two million bucks...gone." "Ahh, but did you enjoy it, Honey?" "You bet I did!" he smiled, making a last swipe at the deck and picking up the bucket. "And that's a fact!" * * * * * Another moment that sticks out in my memory banks; the first time that Bradley saw Christian asleep in her tube. Christian's full name is Christian Kendra Knowles. Christian was 25 years old at the time of sleep. Blond hair, green eyes, and what Bradley calls a 'California Bikini Tan'. I suppose Brad is right about that because her personnel file states that she was born and raised in Southern California. Christian is the only child of two physician parents and herself fresh from graduating medical school with the highest honors. She and her parents make up the medical staff for our new colony. Brad was walking down one of the aisles between two rows of Sleepers, calling out to them by name from the data tags at the foot of each tube. "G'morning, John. How ya doin? I see your wife Molly is as lovely as ever." A few tubes farther down the row. "Mrs. Stein. Good morning to you, Ma'am. Wow! Those kids of yours sure are growin' like weeds." Actually, none of our Sleepers had grown appreciatively during the eight months of our journey. Maybe a slight trace of stubble on the faces of some of the more heavily bearded Sleepers, but for the most part, looking exactly as they had on the day they were put into hibernation. At the end of the row Brad made a turn and entered the Revival Lab. He hadn't had occasion to visit that room since the flight began and wouldn't have done so then except that he was preoccupied that morning and took a wrong turn. My first thought was that he had had a stroke or something. (My programming on human ailments leaves much to be desired.) He was standing, stock still, just inside the door and staring into the first of the five tubes in the room. "Baby? You alright?" No response. "Brad?" Not even a twitch. "BRADLEY!!!" I yelled. "Huh?" he said distractedly, never taking his eyes from the tube before him. "What do you want, Sarah?" "What's the matter with you?" "Just look at her! Isn't she the most beautiful girl you have ever seen?" "Bradley S. Egan! You mean that you put me through this horrible fright over a pretty face?" "Not just the face. Look at her. She's perfect! Breathtaking! Exquisite!" "Yeah? If you say so. Actually, she doesn't make my disks spin any faster, but I'll take your word for it." "Sarah, would you mind just leaving me to myself for awhile? I want to do some thinking." "Sure, if that's what you want. A pretty body that hasn't had an intelligent conversation in eight months! Good bye, Captain Egan!" At that, I got a bothered glance from him but I had already shut down that monitor and was watching him through the door from the main room. Bradley spent 57 minutes in there that morning, doing nothing. Oh, he would walk around to the other side of the tube every once in a while to get a different viewpoint, but he never took his eyes from Christian's face. I don't want you to get the idea that I was jealous or anything, but what could she offer him that I couldn't?" * * * * * My boy Brad had begun to look a bit wild by this time. He hadn't shaved or cut his hair in about six months. His curly, jet black hair was well past his shoulders and his salt and pepper beard was doing a good job of keeping up with it. To top it all off, he still refused to wear any clothing most of the time. He reminded me of a hermit or one of those Indian holy men from my Earth History tapes. Or perhaps he had become a 33 year old 'hippie' like those kids from back in the 60's. He liked to listen to electronic jazz by a Japanese man named Kitaro and would have me pipe the music throughout the ship. Though some of you may doubt my capacity to do so, I have come to enjoy this type of music very much and have entered into many enjoyable conversations about it with Brad. Something had changed inside of Brad after that first time he saw Christian. For one thing, he spent an average of 27.55 percent less time talking to me than before the incident, and when he did speak to me, it was often in a distracted manner, as if half of his mind was busy with something else. The hardest to take was the fact that he completely abandoned all of the little games we used to play together. Brad's favorite used to be something he called 'Hide and go Seek'. I can find no reference to this in my memory and don't know where he came up with such a name. It would go something like this: Most of our conversations took place with Bradley on the move. He would just carry about his business and speak, my microphones picking him up anywhere in the ship. Well, Brad had noticed that I had developed a habit of watching him also. As he would walk along, I would follow him on one of the camera/monitors and when he would pass out of range of one, I would switch to the next one along his path. One day, Brad was on his way from the galley to the flight deck, talking to me about some thing as he walked. Just as he passed out of view of one of my monitors, he stopped speaking in mid-word and flattened himself on the floor next to one wall of the passageway. His timing was perfect as I had just switched to the next monitor, couldn't find or hear him, and thinking that I had somehow activated the wrong camera, I quickly returned to the previous one. No Bradley! Thinking that he had returned to the galley for some reason I checked in there, then began checking the entire ship. Brad had done some careful studying and found one of the few dead spots on the entire ship that was out of range of all of my cameras. After failing to find him anywhere aboard I became frantic and began calling for him, my voice reverberating throughout the entire ship. Suddenly Brad started laughing and rolling about the floor holding his stomach. At first I didn't realize that he had been playing a trick on me and it took me some time to develop my sense of humor and appreciate his little joke. Now Brad says I have a delightful sense of humor and that my wit is sometimes so sharp that he isn't sure when I am joking or not. * * * * * I got back at Bradley the very next day. He was showering and had just lathered up his hair when I suddenly shut of all of the lights in that section and stopped the flow of water. "Sarah?? What's going on?" I waited about 15 seconds then said, "Bradley, we've got problems! The cooling pump on the reactor went bad and it automatically shut itself down, all of the dampening rods slammed into the core." "The reactor pump? That's impossible! Those things are indestructible, besides, there's a backup!" "It was the backup that went down. You disassembled the main pump to do routine maintenance last week and never finished it ... remember?" "Damn! I meant to get back to it, really I did. Well, how bad off are we?" There was Bradley, standing in a dark shower with soap in his eyes and I really let him have it. "It doesn't look good, Baby. With the reactor shut down we have only emergency battery power, which I am using now. The life support systems should last about 17 hours before the batteries go flat, 18 and a half if I shut myself down and let my resident memory die." "Don't do that!" he screamed into the darkness. "I need you, Sarah! If we go, we both go together. It should only take me a few hours to get the main cooling pump back together and installed. How long to power up the reactor after that?" "No good, Sugar. Minimum reactor startup with a completely dampened core is 76 hours. There are just no corners to cut. It's 76 hours and not one hour less." "Well, we'll think of something. We've still got 17 hours to work something out." "I'm afraid not, Honey. There's a stray meteor headed our way that I was just about to maneuver us around when the power went out." "SHIT!" he screamed, jumping from the shower and banging his knee on the bench. "Ooooh shit! Ooooh shit!" he kept repeating as he bounced his way down the dark passageways to the flight deck. When he reached the flight deck, dripping soap and panting, he was greeted by a single tiny flashing light. On the far wall was my monitor and flashing on and off in the center of the screen was one word ......'GOTCHA!!!'. CHAPTER TWO BRADLEY Not long after the incident in the Recovery Lab Bradley started working with the modeling clay that was supplied for his recreation during the long flight. His first attempt was a statue of a female form 38 centimeters tall. It wasn't bad for a first attempt, but as soon as it was finished, her tore it down and started over again. By the third attempt I realized that it was a statue of Christian. By the sixth statue he had it down perfectly and Brad was finally satisfied. After completing the statue Bradley became restless again, moping around the ship for several days and hardly speaking to me at all. Finally I felt that I just had to confront him. "Bradley?" "Yes, Sarah. What is it?" "Just how long do you plan to go on acting like this?" "Acting like what? "Acting as though you were already dead and just waiting for your body to fall down." "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Sarah." Brad was angry at me, but at least he was showing signs of life. "Why don't you show an interest in something, Honey? Why don't you try writing, or painting, or even try sculpting again?" "Painting? Sculpting? Oh! You mean the statue. That was pretty good, wasn't it?" "Yeah! It was great!" I said, fanning the flame of the only interest he had shown in days. "Why don't you try another one? You're really very good." "I think maybe I will." he said, the gleam of an idea beginning to glow in his eyes and a slow smile spreading across his face.
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