I'm looking to take a new tack in RP and gameplay. As part of this I want to write a little bit about the most important day/event in the life of each of the characters that I would end up using as part of the said venture. This is where I'm at on the first such attempt. I'm not finished with this one yet (this isn't the entire story), but it's come far enough that I decided to post what I have. I appreciate your comments and criticisms on style, content, and anything else. Always looking to improve my writing.
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Ehram
YC90He was still in shock. There was no sound as he walked down the corridor toward his counterpart's office. He felt like a floating pair of eyes, propelled down the hallway by some invisible force. The laboratory clothes moved against his skin yet produced no sensation, nor did he feel the stiffness of the floor's metal grating in his steps. Although well-lit, this long tubular section of corridor seemed impossibly dark and confining, closing in on all sides like a casket. He was still in shock and his son was still dead.
This must be a dream, he thought.
The portal to his colleague's office was a segmented ovoid constructed of biopolymer and designed to open like an iris to allow entry. Its surface was smooth and colored a soothing dark green, perfectly reminiscent of the deep jungles of Intaki V. Standing only inches from the portal, staring at its pristine surface, the only thing he could see was his son's face. He saw those eyes, locked in a pleading gaze on his own, across that fucking impregnable barrier. He stood at the portal and watched his son die again and again in his mind.
After several moments the portal emitted a low chime and dilated. He blinked and observed the environment around him for the first time in an eternity. Kai Ysbjern's office was the best appointed in the laboratory, perhaps in the entire colony. Contrasting the pragmatic furniture of the corridor and lab spaces, this office was lavished with thick off-white carpet and a heavy wooden desk and its enormous integrated holoprojector workstation. A settee dressed in the black-stained hide of some animal adorned the right side of the office and complimented the similarly appareled throne of an office chair that sat behind Kai's desk.
Kai was not taking audience today, however, and was seated in the left of two smaller leather-wrapped chairs in front of the desk. He had a bottle of liquor within arm’s reach and two glasses were set out on a small table between Kai's chair and the empty one.
"Oh, Ehram," Kai said and stood, walking over to the portal and gingerly placing a hand on his colleague's shoulder.
Ehram was still in shock, but his brain was struggling back toward full cognizance.
Kai gestured toward the chairs and alcohol. "Please come in and sit down," he said.
Hesitation overcame Ehram for an instant as he saw an image of his son again in a flash, but it was an image of joy and laughter. It felt as if stepping into that office would make the past two hours' events somehow more real. Devdan was still alive as long as he stood in the corridor. History might take his crossing that threshold as a sign of commitment. If he didn't go in there, he might still wake up in his quarters and Devdan might still come gather him for their new routine of an early breakfast and reviewing analysis reports.
"He-", Ehram choked and almost said out loud,
He didn't fucking deserve this!Kai simply stood quietly, a reassuring hand on Ehram's shoulder, as the grieving father took one step forward and then another.
Ehram went to the chair across from Kai's and sat down. He was at once struck with a profound thought,
I am the kind of person who sits down under stress. Ehram couldn't fathom where the thought had come from, what it meant, whether he agreed with it, or even if it made sense.
Kai took his seat again, facing his Intaki colleague and removed the stopper from the bottle of liquor and poured both of them a double serving. Without a thought or a word, Ehram took his glass and drained it. The liquor was heavy with the flavor of smoke, warm, and very powerful. It burned his throat and he began coughing, but clenched his jaw and sucked air through his teeth to tough through it.
I'm the kind of person who drinks this stuff, Ehram thought,
that's the kind of person I am.
Ehram realized how disconnected he still was from reality when he had no idea who the pudgy, black-haired man sitting across from him was.
Well-dressed, thin moustache, tattoos on the neck and jaw line, involved in sort of tribal cult? "Kai," Ehram said the man's name out loud as he slowly remembered.
"Yes?" Kai replied.
Embarrassment did not properly describe Ehram's sense of shame at remembering that this was Kai Ysbjern, administrator for the Krusual tribal assembly on this colony and a well-connected figure in the biotechnology firm Eifyr & Co. Ehram's mind found the file it was looking for:
Thirty-seven, Minmatar, from Hek system, smart but no scientist, excellent organizer. Moreover, Kai had been Ehram's immediate counterpart on this joint project, now in its fourth month.
A silence had lingered in the room a few seconds past comfortable and Kai broke it with the only appropriate words he could offer.
"I'm so sorry, Ehram," he said.
This time, hearing his name snapped Ehram's thoughts back into frame. He was instantly disgusted at the taste in his mouth and nostrils.
What is that? He felt the glass in his hand and remembered.
I don't drink, he thought, squinting confusedly at his own actions.
Gather data, he ordered himself. Ehram's mind went all the way back, tried to build a picture of what was going on from the most basic facts.
My name is Ehram en Voth. This is the Freedom Destiny colony on Anher II. Poteque-Eifyr cytopathology hot lab. Reduction of genotype differentiation in high mutation rate wild pathogens by means of nanoinnoculation. Devdan is dead. My son is dead.Ninety minutes beforehand Ehram had watched as the life drained from his only son's face on the other side of ten centimeters of glass armor. Devdan en Voth had entered the lab's Category Blue chamber, the room in which a variety of aggressive, highly adaptive wet and dry (meaning biological and electronic) viral cultures were maintained for use in the project's tests. The Category Blue designation denoted the highest level of danger to human health and called for maximum protective measures for any personnel entering the chamber. Numerous failsafes were also built into the room itself and much of the research staff's interactions with the "CatBlue" were automated.
Repair of those automated systems was, however,
not automated.
Devdan was a very young man to be working in such a place, but he had always learned quickly and spent years alongside his researcher father learning about the medical sciences and laboratory procedure. At nineteen he had more experience in hot labs than many of the staff, yet electronic systems, rather than biological ones, were his true passion. He had the makings of a brilliant AI engineer and his father always encouraged him to broaden his experiences.
When the automated storage and retrieval system in the CatBlue went down from an apparent software flaw at 0514 local time that morning, Devdan was the first person the lab tech on site thought of to fix the problem. When he came in to the lab with his father at 0800, there was a note asking that Devdan come down to the CatBlue. They had both thought that unusual, but also interesting, and Ehram decided to accompany his son to the sub-basement where the chamber was located.
"It's been down for a few hours," the lab tech had said, "I ran the routine diagnostics, but it didn't fix the problem. I was hoping it'd just work itself out, but doesn't seem to be that kind of day." The tech was going off duty but offered to stay and help however he could. Devdan, confident, sent him on his way.
After a few minutes checking out the situation for himself via the control room's interfaces, Devdan decided the problem was most likely a hardware issue inside the CatBlue storage chamber itself. He was excited to suit up and go through the airlock to fix it. Ehram would assist his son from the control room on the other side of the chamber's elaborate environmental containment systems. There were people on staff to perform this kind of maintenance for them, of course, but Devdan had woken up with a problem solving itch to scratch.
You're always trying to encourage the boy's talents, Ehram had thought, reassuring himself about letting Devdan go into the chamber.
What happened over the following eight minutes was still an incoherent mess to Ehram. His memories swirled with intense emotion. Brief flashes of perfect clarity were sucked into a whirlwind with the sudden, uncertain urgency to move in every direction at once. He knew something had gone wrong with the sample extraction mechanism inside the chamber. An agent was exposed to the general environment and the automatic lockdown triggered. His son was in that room with only a few thin layers of protection between him and one of the most lethal known pathogens.
But he couldn't see Devdan.
The boy wasn't in the main chamber.
The airlock! Ehram screamed in his own head as he dashed across the control room to the massive transparent door of the CatBlue's airlock. Devdan lay on the floor just inside the second airlock compartment, nearest the main CatBlue chamber. He was moving slowly, on his back and trying to roll over to his side. He moved like he was in pain. Serious pain.
Ehram tried the airlock controls. He didn't care that he was wearing plain lab clothes. That door had to open. He swiped his imbedded ID chip over the scanner so furiously that a blister swelled up on his wrist. He screamed for Devdan to try and close the door between the storage chamber and the airlock compartment, which was still open for some reason. After some time, seconds or perhaps a minute, Ehram's thrashing attempts to get past the transparent armor door slowed. Peripherally he noticed others were in the control room now, most likely the tech who had just left and some security personnel. The general containment alarm had gone off. That was his boy, his son, his whole life in that airlock. And he wasn't moving.
Why is he just lying there? he thought.
Devdan moved and Ehram's heart leapt up through his throat and tried to choke him. For the first time he saw the ragged tear on Devdan's environmental suit that ran from his collar down to the middle of his chest. It looked like he'd been attacked by a wild animal. The suit material was shredded, but Ehram couldn't tell if the damage went through the innermost layer, which was made of the same material as modern body armor.
Visibly struggling against severe pain, Devdan rolled over on his side, facing toward the control room. His suit was ruined and he was certainly exposed to the environment within the chamber.
Nothing in there could kill in only a few minutes, Ehram thought,
something else must be wrong. "Get this door open!" Ehram shouted, feeling another surge of adrenaline. He slammed his fists against the glass. It was the same material used to protect starships against high-energy weapon strikes. His fists didn't even make a sound against the door. More people were in the control room, but Ehram's eyes were fixed on his son in the airlock.
He screamed himself hoarse, "Open it! Open!
Open!"
The door was completely soundproof, and from the outside its thickness slightly distorted the image of the airlock's interior. For Ehram it was as if he were watching a muted holofilm as Devdan slowly broke the seal on his helmet and tried to pry it off. He got the helmet off far enough to reveal his face, which was covered in blood. Ehram could see the pain in his son's eyes and saw that his breathing was labored and shallow. After this, Ehram slumped to the floor, the palms of his hands pressed against the immovable glass, and looked into his son's dying eyes.
Devdan coughed and spat blood on the floor of the airlock. Grimacing, he weakly reached out toward his father with his own hand. There were no words between them across the armored barrier. And there never would be again. Still, Ehram sat in front of that door, his gaze fixed on his son, repeating over and over again, "I love you, son," as tears poured down his face.
Someone had moved him from that spot. He resisted them, he thought. The airlock door remained closed for another half hour. They didn't let him into the infirmary. They tried to sedate him. He definitely resisted. Kai called for him and he went to the man's office. Was that where he was right now? Ehram shook off the haze of disjointed memories and saw that he was still sitting in Kai Ysbjern's office. The glass in his hand was full. He drank.
"Are you with me, Ehram?" Kai asked. "Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"
Ehram felt the sudden urge to throw his glass at the Krusual administrator's ugly, fat face. Instead, he spoke, but "I don't-" was all he got out before the hurricane of the morning's emotions choked him again.
Kai peered at him, and downed his own glass of the warm, ashen-flavored liquor.
How much have we had to drink? Ehram thought. He almost never consumed alcohol and had no idea how it should make him feel. Kai carefully put his glass on the table between them, then took Ehram's from his hand and did the same. He sat and reached across the table, briefly touching Ehram's knee and looking directly at him. "I need you to focus, Ehram. I need that scientist," Kai said. "This is very important."
Ehram nodded. His attention was turned fully on Kai. He noticed a datapad tucked into the chair beside the administrator's leg.
Kai sat back in his chair, straightened an eyebrow, and began his explanation. "Preliminary review of the data shows that there was an accident with the machinery inside the chamber," he said, placing the datapad on his lap and keying a command. He continued, "It looks like a software failure in the AI caused damage to the robotic sample handling arm. Trying to fix it compounded the original error somehow and the arm moved on its own, pulling a sample out and continuing to move freely."
"It looks like that arm is what hit Devdan," he said.
Hit Devdan, Ehram thought.
"Yes..." Kai confirmed. Ehram realized he'd spoken out loud. Kai gingerly added, "He sustained blunt force trauma to the chest," reading the words from his datapad as if to insulate himself from the cold, scientific description of a gruesome reality. "The sample that was accidentally removed from storage was not compromised. So there was no exposure to the agent."
Pieces of memory started to fall together in Ehram's mind. He assembled facts, compared them to known conditions, and began drawing basic associations as Kai continued his review of the events. The airlock had remained sealed because its inner door, the one separating the airlock from the CatBlue chamber itself, would not close. When he fell, struck by the robotic arm, Devdan's foot lay in the inner door's path. Detecting this, an override prevented the door from closing, and thus the outer door could not be opened. A safety protocol had killed the body for want of a limb.
Devdan sustained a severe blow to the chest from the robotic arm inside the chamber. The software error caused it to move at a speed far exceeding normal operational limits and the arm was itself destroyed. Several of Devdan's ribs were broken and both lungs were punctured. He died painfully over several minutes, each desperate attempt at breath choked by his own blood. These were the facts.
Ehram was about to lose it.
Kai saw a change in the scientist's expression and leapt to keep him focused, blurting out, "We have him in stasis. There may be a way."
Ehram blinked, his mind momentarily paused in the instant before this devastating reality shut it down again. "What?" he asked.
Kai began to explain, "Devdan's bo-" and changed tack quickly, "
Devdan is in a hydrostasis chamber. His brain was without oxygen for only about forty minutes. We can't repair his body here, but his mind-"
Ehram felt unnaturally confused.
What is he talking about? Devdan didn't have a clone or a neural scanner. Does he think I'm wealthy? he thought. For some reason he remembered his mother's reverence for the Intaki spiritual leaders who claimed to be the same individuals reborn over and over in new bodies, the Idama.
Or does he think I'm an idiot?Sensing confusion and perhaps even insult in his counterpart's body language, Kai tried an angle. He started, "Ehram, you know death isn't necessarily the end. In this day and age..."
"That's for the rich and powerful," Ehram conceded.
"And the well-connected," Kai added, raising his brow and tucking his chin into his neck while looking directly at Ehram. He might as well have added the prosaic "wink, wink" at the end.
Ehram was frozen again for a moment as the administrator's meaning sunk in. He saw Devdan's face again, in pain, bloody, and dying on the floor of that airlock. He remembered his own powerlessness, crumpled in a heap in front of the glass. It was like a searing hot knife, plunged into his chest. He imagined pulling the knife out and turning it on his attacker, fate.
In this day and age... he thought.
Death isn't the end."Anything," Ehram said, "I'll do anything."
The Krusual smiled ever so slightly.
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Topic: Ophidian Preludes (Read 1684 times)