[Fiction] The Not So Distant Future

[Neil Preston]

{Written with the enormous assistance of Flicker's Player}

In the not so distant future ...

A sonic boom sounded across the valley and shook the large MASH surplus tent. It wasn’t a jet flying overhead. Instead, it was more like a thunderclap of doom; the next wave of nova elites entering the fight. Neil Preston looked up as the overhead lights swung back and forth in the backlash. Under his surgeon's hands lay a young boy no more than twelve with both legs crushed under the rubble of his home. Despite the boy's plight, Neil’s mind wasn’t on his work. It was with Nova–also known as Flicker or Doctor Madigan--who held the lion’s share of his worry. Neil was at the central collection center for victims of the earthquake that had devastated this portion of the Great Rift Valley in Africa.

A day and a half ago, the earth had heaved, shook, and buckled. Aftershocks had been felt hours later, but the world had started responding in less than one hour. Unfortunately, the overburdened and under-funded government had crumbled in the chaos. Various national and corporate interests, led by Chinese and American concerns had taken advantage, seeking mineral wealth, international advantage, or a new client state. The tool of choice was nova warriors--elites--and as quickly as you could say 'electronic funds transfer,' the combatants had swept into the area. Now, half the aid that had been promised couldn’t get in. With the country becoming a free fire zone half the aid workers in country wanted out.

Neil’s problem was more immediate and more personal. The initial strategy for Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and the Red Crescent had been to establish one major collection center and five outlying aid stations to concentrate the worst of the injured while ensuring the aid was widely distributed. Only two of the camps had been set up before the threat of elite violence had forced the aid agencies to laager up. Their slim hope was that either the conflict would be swift, or that Team Tomorrow would intervene. Those hopes were fading fast. The UN was deadlocked and every concerned party was upping the ante.

The gaze of the beleaguered surgeon went to the one meter by one meter square taped off with white surgical tape: Nova’s teleportation zone. Surgical staff danced around it in the hectic pace of the emergency room. No one placed anything near that small inviolate space fearing an accident might push a cart or box and disrupt her transit. Neil turned his attention back to the boy on his table and readied the splints and cast that would one day allow the patient to walk again. Sadly, the juice had to be saved for the direst cases, and in the hard mathematics of biology, leg trauma didn’t qualify.

When Nova appeared, it was with the greatest economy of motion. She needed no time to study her surroundings; everything was in absolute focus already. Though lack of personnel was choking the central collection center, there was nothing she could do about it. She had her own little corner of Hell already reserved.

“Two cases of plasma and six of fluids," Nova requested. "I’ve got major burn cases; a dozen in the ward and they’re stacking up.” She was already out of the white-taped box and signing morphine out of the dispensary. Two technicians stopped what they were doing and gathered Nova’s supplies into a box as quickly as they could. Flicker spared a moment's glance to Neil, her eyes telegraphing longing, fatigue, and a hint of desperation. She was covered from mid thigh to the top of her chest in the blood that had seeped through her smock. Nova had entered that too large society of doctors who had too little of everything but patients – too little time, medicine, space, and help.

Nova’s time was too precious to waste in worry. Lives were balanced in her hands. She walked into the box and felt her quantum aura surround herself and all the supplies. Then she was back in camp one, immersed in the screams of the burnt. The closest screaming was coming from the operating table. Flicker grabbed another fresh smock and went to work. At this station she had an aide, a doctor named Haradi from Somalia. An unskilled assistant was a poor substitute for a trained nurse. Flicker dismissed the attendant and helped Haradi finish his tricky chest work. When the next patient looked like a one surgeon operation she took her leave; the other aid station had no doctors at all and required her presence as well. Flicker took half the supplies and departed.

An indeterminate time later, measured not in hours and minutes but in bodies aned procedures, icy cold water bit into her scalp and numbed her flesh. Nova Madigan was in the shower, trying unsuccessfully to get the stench of blood, bile, and burnt flesh out of her nostrils. She had been through Hell. A deep emptiness brought on by the total exhaustion of her quantum reserves brought her to this bivouac. She couldn’t teleport fifty millimeters, much less the fifty kilometers between stations. This was her first time out and she was grinding her teeth in frustration, in anger, in a furious desire to not let one more get past her. Finally she cut the water off. Neil handed her a towel over the stall door.

“Thanks,” she mumbled wearily. Nova stepped out of the shower, barely dry. She stumbled into a fresh set of clothing, fought back her gnawing hunger and then headed for the cot in the next tent. Flicker gathered Neil up and took him along with her. There was more healing than sleep could provide in his arms. Together they flopped onto the air mattress on blocks. Flicker stared blankly at the tent's ceiling, trying to blot out the memories of the day. "Seven," she mumbled quietly.

“Seven? Your first time out, that's incredible!”

Flicker's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second.

"No, I lost seven," she explained.

“Love, you weren't supposed to be out there, alone with as little as you had.”

Flicker let out a long sigh and tried to relax, but was unable to force her muscles to let go.

"Doesn't matter," she replied. "I was there."

"They cut our legs off and still expected us to dance. This whole situation ..." Neil trailed off. "I know you nova. You didn't let anyone go. You never gave up, ever."

"No, I don't." Flicker took a moment to collect her thoughts. "But I got beat. Seven times. Seven times I did my best and I got beat."

Neil massaged Nova's lower back and shoulders, fighting the tension.

"You kept coming back, Nova. You kept at it until they called you in."

Flicker smiled at Neil's touch, but shrugged away, shaking her head.

"Lay down," she invited, meaning next to me. "What do you do?"

Neil lay down beside his love. He looked ashamed for a moment.

"I hate," he ground out. "I hate it every time I have one stolen away."

Flicker nodded and listened.

Neil gave Flicker a tired smile. "I guess that's why I don't hate people. I have something more important that feeds my rage ... and I'm ashamed of it. Is it like that for you?" Neil pulled Nova close and ran his fingers through her hair. He drew a lock up to his lips and kissed it.

Flicker nodded again into Neil's shoulder.

That's exactly it, she thought.

For several long moments, Neil couldn't think of anything to say ... to make it better, or make the anger fade away. When it came to him, though, it was a knot untying around his heart. "I love you, Nova. I love you."

"I know," Nova whispered.

This time the silence was brought on by sleep and Neil went right along with her. Sleeping would recharge Nova and Neil’s quantum, but sleeping together would recharge their souls. The two novas were only given four hours. They slept because that was the most efficient way for a nova to recharge their batteries. They were brought back to the waking world because the cold calculus of aid was four hours were all that you could spare someone who would walk the world in a thought, or who could heal at a touch. You gave them just enough juice to stand without weaving and then you wrung them dry all over again. That’s how you saved lives in the Nova Age.