Chapter 2.2

We had one glaring problem, that those of us in a leadership position hated. When the researcher died, his bond mate had no one to bond with anymore, and he was the second death this time around.

It was wonderful to make love that was not marred by hate or pain again. Granted, we hated changing during the third act, but the first two were incredible. Even when I was a male, it was wonderful. Not quite as good as when I was myself, but still…

It was three weeks later that it was discovered what the researcher had done to reset the nanites. There was a compound that was, in fact, airborne. It wasn’t understood what was being done to them but it worked. We had staggered our entering stage two as long as possible. John and I had entered stage four when we were ready to start again.

Since we were dealing with people’s possible deaths, we put it to an anonymous vote whether or not we were going to reset every time we reached stage five.

Not surprisingly, no one wanted to go through the pain and periods of stage five and six ever again, so we determined that we would each be with their bond mate when we reset. Unfortunately, we knew that for someone to turn off the fear, we would have to lose someone. We hoped that we could overcome the fear of being with our bond mate before we dealt with the death nanites.

We had many thousand people on board the station, so losing one couple was tolerable, but we were each fearful that the next couple would be ours. I took solace every time we reset when it was neither John or I who died, nor Marc and Kari. After the twenty-seventh reset, Roman’s partner was the one who died. We didn’t know how to respond. He had become a good friend, and we knew he would die before stage three was done for all of us. He would never see stage four and normality again.

I wept when I got to my apartment that night. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing a friend, but the worst was to come.

Roman died approximately three weeks later. It was horrible. I was working with him as he was researching. He asked me to get him some more microscope slides. I went to a cupboard across the room. “Is this the right drawer,” I asked. There was no response. I turned to ask him again, and was horrified to see his body slump forward, and his head roll across the bench he was working at.

I screamed.

It was so hard to deal with. I had seen Perl’s body years ago, but I had never seen it happen.

I never thought again that losing one couple each year was acceptable. I couldn’t. Not when I had lost a friend to the situation.

No matter what I thought of it personally, however, we had to go on. I don’t know how long I mourned Roman, but when we reset again, I held onto my John almost constantly until we heard that the first death had happened. It was so hard. We couldn’t kiss, nor make love. We had to wear gloves until the death nanites were distributed. I was scared to death, but I still loved him. It was the most draining thing I have ever done, like letting spiders crawl over me. I had arachnophobia even when I was a man, but I had lived with it. What helped me with the fear was the fact that I knew someone was going to die soon, and if it was my John, I would never forgive myself for not being there when he died.

Another twenty five years went by, always safe for us and Marc and Kari. Until one day, we were working together in the command center. All of us were wearing gloves and I turned to ask Kari a question. She began to answer me, then the strangest look appeared on her face. She had stood up and was walking toward me when it happened. Her body was apparently following the last command that her brain gave it, or maybe it was her spinal cord making her walk from reflex. What happened will stay with me for the rest of my life. She tripped and started to fall toward me. He head slipped off of her shoulders and landed in my lap while her body sprawled on the floor in front of me.

“KARI!!!” I screamed. I’m not sure if I got her whole name out because somewhere in that yell, my voice broke. I sat there for several minutes, unable to move. John and Marc couldn’t either. They had both turned to face me, or rather, us.

I stared at the head of my best friend. I don’t know how long it was, but I heard a man crying. I looked toward the body, and there was Marc. He had somehow collapsed on the floor, and his head was on her back. I had not started crying yet, but that scene broke me. Those two had loved each other so much. I felt a weight move from my lap, and saw that my husband had moved Kari’s head, and respectfully placed it on the floor. He took me in his arms and kissed me ever so gently, then he moved to Kari’s body and cut the familiar piece of her leg out and left the room carrying it. A few minutes later, he was back and took me in his arms and let me weep. I wanted so much to hold Marc, but he was unbonded. To do so would kill both John and me. John did something I’d never seen him do. He gently picked up Marc and hugged him. Marc was still weeping over the loss of his wife. We started to ease him to his apartment, when the strangest thing happened. We received an incoming communication!

I hate my muse right now. As the words to this chapter came to me, I had to have a box of tissues beside me. Damned Muse! Don’t do this again!!!