The Endless Dance Card : 2 / 7

A Kingdom Ship Story
By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

After dinner, the doctor and I worked out our plan for fixing my sleep pod. First, we’d compare the sensor readings from my pod against other pods to see if any individual sensors were abnormally high or low. That could be a quick way of finding the problem, if the problem was simply a bad sensor.

At the same time -- and even if we did find a bad sensor -- we also needed to run through the whole path between the sensor readings and the final diagnosis to make sure that there weren’t other problems that caused or contributed to the bad diagnosis.

None of the troubleshooting was complicated; it was only tedious. Luckily we didn’t have to do it all ourselves. We scheduled a call with the on-duty medical and engineering staff for later in the day. Then I got a head start on the most obvious steps.

I accessed my sleep pod from a terminal in the medbay and kicked off a deep backup. This would record the state of virtually every element in the pod as well as the sensors’ history. The doctor gave me some clothes so I could go physically inspect my pod. I couldn’t move it to my lab yet: there were a lot of forensics to do before we changed anything. The backup was an obvious first step, but I needed the okay from the other pod techs before I ran the deep diagnostics or kicked off a reboot. The reboot would change the state of things and might destroy some useful clue.

While I was off doing the physical check, the doctor was requesting a diagram of the decision tree used by the medical diagnostic software. She also invoked the “second opinion” feature, which I’d never heard of. It was a separate synthetic intelligence that acts as a sanity check: basically, it challenges a diagnosis. As a first step, it tries to disprove the original diagnosis. Then it searches for alternative diagnoses. The doctor also kicked off queries to get more background on the illness itself.

I have to say, it was great to have something serious to do for a change. Usually all of our work is maintenance and monitoring. Finally I had a puzzle to solve.

Also, before, during, and after each step and each activity I mentioned above, the doctor and I had sex, at least once, but usually multiple times. I didn’t think I was capable of it, but somehow being with the doctor brought it out of me. I actually and honestly lost count of how many times we did it. I’d never had so much sex before, and all of it was outstanding. Soul-searing, blinding-light, screaming-hot orgasms. It was amazing. It was great. It was life-giving, and it seemed endless. Just when I’d think we were done, she’d drop her pants and we’d start all over again. At every chance -- even when there was no chance -- we’d interrupt anything to go at each other, to try yet another position. There was no thought involved. We’d just glance at each other, and that was all the stimulus, all the planning, needed.

The only time we had to actually control ourselves was during the meeting with the medical and engineering staff. Before the meeting, we checked each other carefully to make sure there were no clues to our intimate involvement or most recent efforts, and we kept our hands on the table so we didn’t touch each other beneath it.

Dr Harcourt and I were the only physically-awake people at the meeting. Everyone else attended as a hologram. It was an active, animated meeting. Everyone was happy to be involved. The medical staff were very excited by this issue, since most of their work is done for them by sensors and massive synthetic intelligence systems, so here they had a big chance to challenge and improve the automatic health systems.

The engineering staff was equally invested, even if they acted more prosaic, more nuts-and-bolts, about it: they wanted to understand all the causes, whether they were primary, secondary, contributing, additional -- however you wanted to classify them. Qurakas, the head engineer of turn, was quite pleased with the plan Dr Harcourt and I had drawn up. He added several other lines of enquiry, including some peripheral systems that I hadn’t thought of.

Then he told me that once the deep backup was complete, I should run the deep diagnostics, reboot the unit, do another deep backup and deep diagnostics, and THEN move the unit to the lab.

Also, Qurakas had beaten me to the punch on the sensor comparison: “I already ran a comparison of your sensor readings against other pods, and there is one sensor that is way off base. I’m sending you the report, Fergus. After you get the pod into the lab, I want you to pull that sensor and see what you can understand from it. Maybe it’s just broken. Maybe it only needs a tweak. Of course we have spares, but we need to know what’s up with that sensor. I’ll divide up the other work here until you have some free work cycles. For you, that sensor is the prority. Okay?”

When the meeting ended, the doctor and I fell on each other and started kissing and groping. Soon we were having sex once again, and afterward -- no surprise! -- I ended up naked while the doctor was fully clothed. She stood behind me, her head next to my right shoulder. “Don’t mind me,” she purred. “I’m just admiring your derriere,” and she ran her hand slowly over my ass. Then suddenly she stopped. “Oh! That reminds me! I’ve got a surprise for you!” She gave my butt a sharp, affectionate slap, then quickly moved toward one of her cabinets. Before she got there, a timer sounded, telling me that my second backup and diagnostics were complete.

“Sorry,” I said, “I need to move the pod.” She nodded, and tossed me a coverall and some slippers.

Once I moved the pod to my lab, I took a look at Qurakas’ report. Then I set to work to extract the offending sensor. I had to jack up the pod and get into it from underneath. Once I had the sensor in my hand, I took a good look at it. It was an unusual size and shape: it was an ovoid lump with a lot of pins in back. The pins plugged into an oval pad fixed inside the pod. What was also unusual was that the sensor was made by Herman’s Human Sensor Company -- a supplier I’d never heard of. Most of the pieces in the pod came from well-known manufacturers. I checked the pod’s part list, and it turned out that there basically only three parts-suppliers for the sleep pods. There were a dozen or so special pieces that came from somewhere else, but all from companies I’d heard of. This sensor was the only part supplied by Herman’s Human.

I located the spares and took a box of ten to my workbench. I sprayed a red mark on the bad one, pulled the related docs, and sat down to test. Two hours later, I had some interesting findings: nine of the ten spares worked as advertised. The tenth spare worked as badly as the one from my pod. The doctor called me to dinner at that point. It was a good stopping point: I already had quite a bit to think about.

We had sex again, before *and* after dinner. We couldn’t resist. Then I hurried back to my lab. I was anxious to get back to testing. I had an idea that I hoped wasn’t true, so I had to check it out. I set up 10 test rigs so I could check an entire box of spares at a time, and started banging away at it. The results confirmed my fears: one of the spares from the second box was defective in exactly the same way as the one from my pod. I set up some more test rigs, and worked into the night. I slept a few half-hours here and there as the tests ran, then I went back to the medbay for breakfast and more sex. Then back to the lab. I scheduled a meeting of the engineers for just after lunch, and kept pounding away until I’d tested all the spares. A solid 5% of them were defective, all in identically the same way. That’s 150 bad sensors, coincidentally the size of one of our twenty crews.

Qurakas kept his cool during the meeting, but he was clearly boiling mad. “We’re supposed to have 100% reliability on replacements,” he said in a tight voice. “All of them should have been tested before we left Earth orbit. This is unacceptable. Good work in uncovering this, Fergus.” He took a deep breath. “Now, we have a clear priority: we have to assume that at least 5% of the Herman’s Human sensors current in use are defective. They will have to be located and replaced. Since you’re already awake and practical in this, Fergus, it’s going to be up to you. You’ll need to stay awake until this task is complete. You know what I mean: don’t return to your sleep pod, but make sure you take all your regulated breaks; get a good sleep each night. But don’t return to your sleep pod.”

“Not a problem, sir,” I replied, and the image of Dr Harcourt’s naked body came immediately into my mind.

“Okay,” he replied. “Here’s the situation: Our current diagnostic doesn’t identify this defect, so, Fergus, I want you to put the bad sensor back in your pod. Hook it up to the test network and I’ll get a team to work up a diagnostic to spot this specific defect. That way, we’ll be able to find all the pods that need a replacement.

“In the meantime, take a break, Fergus. You’ve done some great work, but now you need to take a day or two off. Honestly, you look like shit. Eat, sleep, do something fun. Maybe you and that hot doctor can hook up, who knows?” I chuckled politely and ended the transmission. Qurakas was right: I really did need a break. I didn’t realize it until that moment, but I was utterly worn out. Exhausted in a way I’ve never been before.

I went back to the medbay and updated the doctor. I quickly realized that she felt as tired as I did.

“We really overdid it on the sex,” she told me. “I know you pulled an all-nighter last night that was actual work, but the endless sex has done us both in.”

“Looks that way,” I said. “I’ve never had so much sex in such a short period of time.” Right at that moment, I had absolutely zero desire.

“Look,” she said. “I’m going to authorize you to use one of the rejuvenation beds. That’ll fix you up.”

“Uh, I don’t know about that,” I replied. “I’m not ready to turn into a teenager right now.”

She scoffed. “It won’t turn you into a teenager! That’s not what the beds do.”

“They take years off,” I protested. “I don’t have that many years to take off.”

“No, no,” she replied. “They can do that. That’s the reset function. The usual function, the default function, is more like a spa visit. It removes toxins from all your body systems. It takes the lactic acid from your muscles. It balances your brain chemistry. That’s what it does. It will make you feel better.”

I was still doubtful. “But it messes with your DNA, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t ‘mess’ with it,” she countered. “Fergus, do you know how aging works? When your body needs new cells, it copies existing cells. As you get older, your DNA starts to fray at the ends. When it’s copied, the copies aren’t as good. Consequently, the new cells don’t work at 100%. The bad-copy effect accumulates and gets worse, and pretty soon every cell in your body has crappy DNA. What the rejuvenation bed does is knit up the ends of your DNA so you don’t get corrupted copies. In any case, you’re too young to worry about any of that. Your DNA is just fine.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you going to use one of the beds, too?”

“No,” she sighed. “I’d like to, but I can’t. As a doctor, I can prescribe one for you, but I can’t do it for myself. It’s like writing myself a prescription. And I don’t feel like confessing to another doctor that I’ve fucked myself silly. I’ll just have to get over it the old-fashioned way: time and rest.”

“Has anybody else on the ship used one of the beds so far?”

“No, we haven’t been out long enough. But you must know that they’re safe. They’ve been in use on every Kingdom ship from the very beginning. Back on Earth, Dr Idlewild's been using one for over 200 years.”

So, we walked to the nearest rejuvenation bed. I climbed in, and Dr Harcourt hit the START button.

Ten hours later, I woke up, dead tired, and a mass of aches and pains. I dragged myself to the medbay. It was so bad that on the way there, I lay down on the floor for ten minutes just to ache and gather my energy. I felt incredibly bad: worse than I had before I climbed into the bed. Dr Harcourt was astonished. “How can you have aches?” she asked. “This is one of the things the bed specifically fixes.”

Convinced that I had done something wrong, the doctor led me a second bed, examined the settings, and told me to hop back on. As soon as I did, she hit the START button, exactly like before. Ten hours later, I woke up aching, exactly like before. Well, “exactly” except that this time I was aching even MORE than last time. Every muscle hurt, even my hands and feet. “I feel like I’ve fallen down a long flight of stairs,” I told her. “And then I got hit by a truck and fell down the stairs again.”

“No way!” Dr Harcourt exclaimed. “This is not right!”

“It’s the damn bed,” I muttered. “It’s defective. It’s got to be.”

“No,” she insisted. “It can’t be. We tried two different beds. They can't both be defective.” She led me back to the lab. “I’m going to take a baseline.” She had me climb into a diagnostic pod. I was so wiped out that I immediately fell deeply asleep. None of the machine’s prodding, poking, or fluid collections woke me. Once the diagnostic was complete, Dr Harcourt didn’t wake me. She wheeled me back to a THIRD rejuvenation bed, slid me onto it, and hit the START button a third time!

Ten hours later, I woke up with a raging fever. The doctor said I was burning up, but I felt so cold, my teeth were literally chattering. My entire body shook uncontrollably. There wasn’t any part of me that didn’t hurt. It was like the worst case of influenza you can imagine. Her face was full of concern. She brought me on a stretcher to a patient room in the medbay. This room had a normal bed, like on Earth. She helped me into the bed, and she gave me something warm to drink. It tasted of lemon, honey, and spices, along with some medicinal aftertastes. Once I’d downed it all, she pushed me onto my side, and slid a white thing about the size of a large bullet into my ass. I sighed. “What was that?”

“Old fashioned medicine,” she replied. “An aspirin suppository.”

“Aspirin?”

“It’s a salicylate. Ancient medicine, but effective against fevers and aches. It’s also anti-inflammatory.”

“Couldn’t I have just swallowed a pill?”

“Sure,” she confessed with a smile, “But this way was more fun, wasn’t it? You know I adore your sweet little butt.” Then she covered me with three warm blankets, kissed my cheek, and I sank into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I awoke, I was drenched with sweat. My fever had broken, and my aches were gone. I felt drained and empty, and weak as a kitten, but I knew I was well. I was finally normal again. I lay there for a few minutes in that pile of warm, wet blankets and sheets, looking up at the pale white walls and ceilings. I not only felt normal, I finally felt real again. That disconnected feeling I used to have, was gone.

As I lay there, I may have I fallen asleep and woke again; it was hard to tell. Then I felt something else: the call of nature. My bladder was full, and the bathroom was a few meters from my bed. I listened as closely as I could, but I didn’t hear anyone nearby. There was a call button attached to my bed, but I didn’t press it. I wanted to get to the bathroom under my own power. So I sat up, and my head started spinning. I expected the spinning to pass, but it didn’t. I closed my eyes, and the world began whirling faster. It was darker behind my eyelids than I had ever seen before. I clutched the bed with my left hand and held onto the bedside table with my right. I did my best to take deep, even breaths and concentrate on my breathing. After a short while, the spinning stopped. I was still light-headed, and I knew it would be prudent to call for help, but I pressed on. I tried to stand, but I saw spots in front of my eyes. I wasn’t dizzy though, so I looked past and around the floating spots and concentrated on standing up.

I took one step, but that was all I could manage. With the help of my bedside table, I sank to my hands and knees and crawled my way to the bathroom. After slow and patient efforts I arrived at the toilet. With the help of a bar attached to the wall, I managed to climb up and sit on the toilet. I sat there, wobbling uncertainly and clutching the sink. I peed like a loud and fragrant river. Then I carefully lowered myself to the floor and crawled toward my bed. I was nearly there when a woman appeared in the doorway. “Careful, there!” she called in a gentle voice. “Let me give you a hand.” She slid her arm under my arm, and with her help I was able to stand upright. I was about to get back into bed, but she stopped me. “Wait -- it’s all wet. Here… hold on…” She guided me to a chair, and on the way she deftly grabbed a dry blanket. She threw it around me, wrapping my body completely and covering my head like a hood. After settling me in the chair, she stripped the bed, throwing the used bedclothes in a corner. She wiped down the mattress with a disinfectant, and flipped it over. Then she fetched clean sheets, fresh pillows, and warm, dry blankets.

As she made my bed, I looked her over. She was a lot shorter and curvier than the doctor, and though she wasn’t fat or heavy, she somehow seemed denser than the doctor, as if she was made of more earthy, robust elements. If the doctor was light like wicker, this woman was strong, like oak. Her hair was blonde, a thick, yellow blonde.

“Okay,” she said, as she made the final tuck and smooth. She smiled and rubbed her hands. “I know your name is Fergus. Mine is Vara. I’m pretty sure that you need two things right now: some food, and a good washing up. Which do you want to do first?”

“Washing,” I said. “Can I take a bath?”

“No,” she replied. “That would lower your blood pressure, and you’re already weak. You can take a shower.”

“Can I sit on the floor?” I asked. “I don’t think I can stand.”

“There’s a seat in there,” she replied, “And I’ll help you.”

She wheeled me to a large bathroom with a big open shower. There was a ledge inside that served as a seat, and the room was pleasantly warm. She stripped off her clothes, explaining with a smile, “It will be easier if I’m naked, too. That way, I won’t have to worry about getting wet.” I was so exhausted that I just gaped at her nakedness. I didn’t have the energy to be subtle. Her body was quite fit and athletic. Her waist was trim, and her hips were narrow, almost boyish, but her breasts were high, round, and firm. She smiled as she watched me take her in. “You can look all you want,” she told me. She bent down to put a pair of non-slip shower shoes on my feet. She unwrapped me from my blanket and walked me into the shower. With a hand-held wand she sprayed soapy foam over my back, neck, and legs. She hugged me to keep me on my feet, and rubbed the back part of me with a soft cloth. Then a warm spray removed the foam, and she sat me on the bench and took off my shoes. After carefully washing my face and hair, she sprayed the foam over the rest of my body, from my neck to my toes, and began to massage me, first with the soft cloth, then with her fingers. It was wonderful to be cleaned and touched all over in that way.

As her hands moved up my legs or down my belly, her fingers inevitably brushed against my penis. She was quite casual about it. Then, after washing every other part of me, she ran her hand under my balls and stroked my groin. She grasped my cock, and at that moment I realized the depth of my tiredness. I didn’t have the energy to be aroused.

“I can give you a happy ending,” she whispered, as she cupped my balls with one hand, and pumped my cock gently with the other. “If you want it.”

“It feels really nice,” I admitted, “but I am so beat that I can’t get it up.”

“That’s okay,” she replied. “Do you want me to stop?”

I looked into her eyes. Her face was two inches from mine. We held the gaze for a moment, and then she kissed me. It was a warm and sexy kiss, but it was all I could do just to sit upright. There wasn’t any response from my cock, even as her warm tongue explored my mouth and her soapy hand pulled on my limp member. She backed off from the kiss to exclaim, “Wow, you really are exhausted, aren’t you!” She rinsed the soap from me, dried me off, and wheeled me back to bed. Then, as I lay under the warm covers, she stood next to my bed, where she dried herself and put her clothes back on.

The dinner she brought consisted of soft foods. There was some kind of green smoothie that she insisted I drink first, then mashed potatoes, mashed avocado, soft cheese, and warm soft rolls with butter. I felt so hungry, I fell to, and Vara had to remind me several times to take my time and eat slowly.

I asked her when Dr Harcourt would come. Vara replied, “She’s taken a few days off. Apparently she’s been working nonstop for several days on a project about the sleep pods and now she needs a break.” I nodded in response, suddenly feeling very tired, and soon I fell asleep again.

After three days, I was well enough to walk in the hall accompanied by Vara, and on one of my walks, the doctor appeared. She looked well rested, but I didn’t say so. I didn’t know how much I could say in front of Zara, since Zara appeared not to have known that the doctor and I had worked together on the sleep-pod issue. But the doctor’s appearance made me realize something: for my entire convalescence, I’d been utterly naked, and in fact right now I was standing naked in the hallway. For about a week, I’d either been lying in bed under covers, or so tired that I hadn’t noticed, but seeing the doctor somehow put a spotlight on the fact that, while the two women were fully clothed, I was standing there without a stitch. I looked at the doctor. My eyes automatically traced the form of her body beneath her clothes, and my penis stood to attention, stiff and pointing upward.

“Hello!” Vara said with a grin. “Someone’s feeling a LOT better!”

“Pleased to meet you,” Dr Harcourt joked. She took my erection in her hand and gently moved it up and down, as if she were shaking my hand. Vara giggled.

“I’m glad you’re up and about,” the doctor said, without any hint of a double meaning.

“And how are you, doctor?” I asked. “I heard that you had to take some time off.”

“I’m fine,” she replied in a dismissive tone, looking at her tablet. “I’m always fine.” She continued to fiddle with her tablet as Vara and I stood there. She appeared to be mulling over something. At last she looked up and said, “Do you think you can walk another fifty meters? I’d like you to hop into the diagnostic pod again. You had some unusual readings last time, and I’d like to see how they are now. I’m hoping they’ve gone back to normal.”

I nodded, and the three of us slowly made our way toward her lab, the doctor leading the way. “Unusual readings? Is it something I should worry about?” I asked, a little anxiously.

She didn’t answer right away, and she didn’t turn back to look at me. She only replied, “First let’s see what your readings are now. If everything’s normal, there’ll be nothing to talk about.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “It’s not that cancer thing again, is it?”

Dr Harcourt huffed in exasperation. At the time I thought she was irritated by my questions, but now I know she was quite concerned, and not sure how to tell me what was happening.

Since I didn’t understand, I began to worry. My heart rate kicked up. Vara noticed my anxiety. She smiled at me and gave my arm a squeeze. I began to walk a little faster, and once we reached the lab, I climbed into the diagnostic pod without any prompting. After what seemed like an exceptionally long cycle, the doctor had me climb out. Vara wrapped me in a light blanket and sat me in an armchair.

“What is it?” I asked, my heart in my mouth. “Please tell me.”

The doctor scratched her head. “I can’t explain this,” she said. “I don’t know what to make of these readings.”

“What are they?” I demanded, growing more frantic by the minute. “What do they say?”

“Okay,” the doctor said, obviously stalling. She clearly didn’t want to tell me. She drew a deep breath, rubbed her face, then finally came out and said it: “You’re in exceptionally good health, Fergus, but… well... the machine says that you’re... female.”

“What!?” I exclaimed.

“The machine says that you are a female. As I said, I don’t know what to make of it. I’m going to have to consult my colleagues.”

“Wait -- obviously the machine is defective. Let’s try a different machine!” I suggested.

“This *is* a different machine,” she replied. “When I saw these readings earlier, I also assumed the machine was defective, so I swapped it out with another. And we ran diagnostics on both machines. They’re fine.”

“No,” I said. “No. Obviously, they’re NOT fine. They’re defective. And -- just as obviously -- I’m male. The machines are defective.”

The doctor and Vara glanced at each other.

“You don’t believe this crazy diagnosis, do you? You didn’t believe my sleep pod when it told you I had cancer. You did other tests and you proved that the machine was wrong! Why don’t you do the same thing now? Just because it mistakenly says I’m female doesn’t make me female! If it told you that my skin was indigo, would you believe it? No -- of course not! You’d look at me and know that the machine had messed up!”

“Look,” she said. “I told you twice already that I don’t know what to make of this. I also said that I need to consult with my colleagues. Any test I could or would do, the diagnostic pod has already done. Twice. Your blood work and other tests say that you’re female. At the same time, anatomically, externally, you’re obviously male.”

“Right!” I exclaimed. “The machine is messed up!”

The doctor made some subtle sign to Vara, who nodded. Then to me, she said, “I think I should give you something to help you calm down. How does that sound?”

“I don’t need to calm down!”

“You’re obviously very upset. You’re shouting.”

I stopped talking and tried to find a different tack. “Listen: I’m betting that if we look at the parts list for that machine, we’ll find that there’s something from Herman’s Human Sensor in there, monkeying things up. And by the way, I have the same suspicion about the rejuvenation beds -- at least the one that I used. There’s something wrong there as well.”

The doctor sighed. “I think you’re getting carried away here. I can see that you’re not female. I know that you’re not. But I must believe that this machine has a reason for saying that you are, and we need to find out what that reason is.”

“It’s simple!” I shouted. “The stupid thing is broken! The rejuvenation bed is broken! There is NOTHING wrong with me.”

“Fergus, I’ve told you several times that I know that you’re a man. And yet, the machine says otherwise. This is a puzzle we have to solve. As far as we know, there’s nothing wrong with either machine--”

“AND THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!” I shouted. “How many times do I have to say it: the machines are defective! They’re defective! You’re not listening to me!”

The doctor bit her lower lip and paused for a moment before replying. “And you are not listening to me. You ought to examine your attitude here, and maybe talk with one of the psyche team. This is clearly a delicate moment for you. I know you used to stare at yourself in your sleep pod, and you expressed a strong mistrust of the rejuvenation bed well before you used it. You’ve gone from certain feelings about your sleep pod to antagonism toward the rejuvenation bed, to mistrust of the diagnostic pod. What happens if your negative feeling extends to the ship itself? At that point, there’s nowhere to go. Listen to me, Fergus: just because your sleep pod had a harmless defect, you can’t be suspicious of every machine on board.”

“I’m not suspicious of every machine on board!” I shouted. “Just that thing over there, and the goddamn rejuvenation beds! That’s what messed me up! We need to look at them! There’s probably some crap from Herman’s Human in there, too!”

Dr Harcourt caught Vara’s eye and Vara nodded. The doctor turned and left the room.

“Where’s she going?” I asked.

“I’m sure that she’s coming right back,” Vara assured me. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you know what we ought to do? We ought to get you some clothes, and then we can talk about the -- what was it? The Herman’s Humans thing? What’s that about?”

I was glad to explain. “Herman’s Human is a small sensor manufacturer that NOBODY has ever heard of. They made a defective sleep-pod part that started this whole mess. I'm sure that they are the key to all this. I’m convinced there’s a similar issue with the diagnostic machine and the rejuvenation bed.”

She stepped behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. With her thumbs, she gently massaged the base of my neck. “Why don’t you tell me what needs to be done?” she suggested, in a soft, neutral voice.

“Oh, that feels good,” I sighed, as she squeezed and massaged my shoulders and upper arms. “Well, we should use the same approach we employed on the sleep pod: first compare the sensors -- also, in this case, the radiators, pulsers, and the analog parts. We’d see if there’s a difference with the other units.”

“Mmm,” she said. “That makes sense. And then?”

“And then…” I tried to organize my thoughts. Now that the doctor was gone, I’d begun to relax. I went on to describe the steps we used on the sleep pod. I told Vara how we’d need to adapt the plan to the two other machines. She very adeptly kept me talking, by prompting me with questions, and saying, "That makes sense. And then?" at intervals. Stupid me! -- I thought she was actually listening. In retrospect I realize that she was simply humoring me until the doctor returned.

When Dr Harcourt appeared in the doorway, she had her hand in her jacket pocket. Vara called to her, “Doctor! We need to get this man some clothes. He’s been telling me his plan to check out the machines.”

“Yes,” I said. “Just like we did on the sleep pod.”

“Ah,” the doctor said, nodding, as she sauntered closer to me. She was looking down. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. That was odd, certainly, but I thought that maybe she was embarrassed about not having listened to me before. When she reached me, and was standing right next to me, she said, “I guess we ought to schedule a meeting with the techs and the doctors again, then.”

“Yes!” I cried out, finally feeling as though I was being taken seriously.

“Right,” the doctor said, but she wasn’t speaking to me. She spoke in a tone of command. And it certainly was a command: Vara slipped her hands down to the middle of my upper arms, then locked me in a bear hug. The moment her hands closed in front of me, the doctor pressed a hypospray against the meaty part of my left shoulder. I cried out in surprise and dismay. Immediately I felt myself falling into darkness. The room was fading, growing smaller, and moving far away from me.

“Just let it happen, Fergus,” I heard the doctor say. “It’s for your own good.” And then, nothing. I was gone.

What happened next? The two of them wheeled me back to one of those damn rejuvenation beds, lifted me onto it, and hit the RESET button.

I know they meant well, but your own personal road to hell, you know, is lined with people who think they know what’s best for you.