Aberrant: 200X - Prelude to a Road Trip [FIN]

[Neil Preston]

“Are you going to keep letting those zips push you around,” she started in on him.

“That’s why I gave them my number,” Neil responded. It was an old conversation. “The WHO needs top scientists …”

“Disease resistant scientists, you mean.”

“Yeah, there is that. Dengue fever is a bad thing. It wouldn’t be right to let someone else go there. Besides, it kills us too; One Race and all that.”

“We can make our way through our own messes. Let the monkeys figure out theirs.”

“Freedom for one is no freedom unless it’s freedom for all,” Neil counters, back in that whole debate.

“I agree Neil, freedom for all of us – from them.”

“We share the planet – “

“With your knowledge of diseases, that need not be the case Neil. You know that.”

“Would I be the man – the nova you talk to if I went there?”

She didn’t answer immediately. This was all theoretical word-play anyway. She didn’t really want the extermination of all mankind – just the irritating parts of it. To her, and her powers, it was just a joke. She knew it was something different to him. Maybe it was not something he could do, but it was something he would have to consider in time, as he grew more powerful.

“Ready,” he said.

“Pack all those energy bars?” he half-joked with him. “You know how hungry you get in the field.”

“Right on top,” he responded with a smile. “I’m not planning on going on a diet, and if I run out, I can always pop back here for some more, right?”

“Anytime, Neil. Anytime.”

Neil turned and kissed her on the cheek. There were times, times like this, she wondered what it would be like if they were more than friends. She knew his problems, his addiction. Neil Preston gave too much. He was always giving to others so much that he held nothing back for himself – or for someone close to him. He needed to find away around that, or he would lose himself someday and she would lose one of the few dissenting voices she cared to listen to. Neil was a prize for her. He was a friend. He wanted nothing from her, wishing her only contentment. Peace eluded her, but because of Neil she knew it could be had. He never gave up on her, so she could never give up on herself.

She watched Neil Preston concentrate. She couldn’t feel it, but she knew from the way he described it that he was tapping into the life-pulse of the planet. He could move from bio-system to bio-system until he reached his destination. Reality closed around him. Silently she wished him well on this continuing road of discovery, a quantum road trip through the worst things and times imaginable as he sought more than how to heal others, but how to heal himself.