"committed" By A.r. Kirby -- Episode 35: "an Awakening In Atlanta"

COMMITTED by A.R. Kirby

Episode 35 An Awakening in Atlanta

L

ight from the flat-screen television mounted into the wall cast a multi-hued glow around the room where Ralph and Vernon sat, the two men looking for all the world as if they were waiting for a bus. They were on a sleek leather bench, Ralph on the end nearest the television, Vernon to his left. The old man sat hunched over, elbows on knees, chin propped on his intertwined fists, the itchy stubble on his face scratching his knuckles each time he yawned. Ralph, on the other hand, sprawled on the bench with his long legs stretched out in front of him, leaning back against the bench with his hands behind his head. The room was an architectural dream of smooth lines and aesthetic purpose, and it reeked of ergonomic convenience, comfort, and warm Scandinavian slickness. The recessed lights in the ceiling were turned down low and provided barely any illumination at all. Cubiststyle cabinets and closets, with brushed metal knobs and hidden hinges on their doors, adorned most of the open space along the walls. Several modernist crystal vases,

Committed by A.R. Kirby

each filled with a variety of fresh flowers, were scattered about the room. Were it not for the large hospital bed in the center of the room -- and the still, quiet form of Brandon Mays lying beneath a blanket on it -- a casual observer might mistake the room for a luxury suite in a fancy boutique hotel in Copenhagen. But it wasn’t a hotel room; it was one of seven infirmary suites located at the Collective outpost in Stone Mountain, where Brandon was brought following the incident with the pissbot at the rest area. Ralph finally stirred and moved to get off the bench. “I can’t handle this waiting,” he said as he rose and stretched. “I’m going down to the canteen for some coffee. You want some?” “Sure,” Ralph replied quietly, keeping his eyes on the young Associate in the hospital bed. “Collective makes some pretty good coffee.” “Anything in particular you want? I think I saw a sign in the elevator for their new Chai tea. You can get it halfcaf with soy and whipped cream.” Vernon turned to look at the big Anasazi and saw that Ralph had a goofy grin on his face. The grin vanished as soon as he caught sight of Vernon’s eyes. “Whoa, whoa, just kidding,” Ralph said as Vernon turned back toward the hospital bed. “Plain black coffee. Hot. I’ll be back in a few.” 2

Episode 35

Ralph turned and moved to leave the room, the door hissing open as the walked out, then sliding shut with the same sound after the passed through. As soon as Ralph was gone, Vernon began to speak in a low, quite voice. “Well, kid, you wanted adventure, and you got it,” he said to the unresponsive Brandon. “Probably a little more than you bargained for.” He paused and looked around at the room. “At least the Collective takes care of their own.” It was true. Beneath the Ikea-catalog facade, the room featured some of the most high-tech medical equipment available to man. With a flick of a finger, a doctor could have access to almost any diagnostic tool or lifesaving device imaginable. It was a monument to medical science and evidence of the Collective’s commitment to the people who dedicated their lives in its service. Vernon was about to say something else to Brandon when he heard the door slide open again. “What, you forget your wallet?” he asked, never taking his eyes off of the young Associate in the bed before him. The man in the white lab coat stopped at the foot of the bed, laid down the box he had been carrying, and reached around to his backside. Not surprisingly, his found his wallet in his hip pocket where he had placed it earlier in the day. “No, no, it seems as if my wallet is right where it is 3

Committed by A.R. Kirby

supposed to be,” the man said. Vernon turned toward the source of the strange voice and saw who he supposed was one of the Collective’s doctors. A second later, his suspicions were confirmed. “I take it you were expecting someone else,” the man said, walking over to Vernon on the bench and extending his right hand. “I’m Medical Associate Ryland, and I’ve been in charge of the team taking care of Associate Mays.” Vernon shook the doctor’s hand, but didn’t get up from his seat on the bench. “So tell me,” Vernon said, “what’s the story?” The doctor took a seat next to Vernon on the bench and looked at Brandon for a long time before speaking. “It wasn’t easy,” the doctor said. “He was pretty bad off. I’ve been here almost twenty years, and I can’t tell you how many just flat-out weird things I’ve seen field associates come in here with. This one, though -- this one was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. We did all we could do. Now it’s time.” The doctor stood up and moved to the head of the bed and placed his palm on Brandon’s forehead and left it there for a moment. Shaking his head, he moved to a panel adjacent to the bed and waved his hand in front of it. A section of wall slid back and out of the way to reveal a number of small screens and dials surrounding a large red button that blinked on and off. 4

Episode 35

The door to the infirmary slid open a third time and in walked Ralph, a cup of steaming coffee in each hand. He nodded acknowledgement to the doctor as he handed Vernon a cup and took a sip of his own. “What’s going on?” Ralph asked as he took his seat on the bench. “Doc says it’s time,” Vernon said, and looked down into his cup and sighed. “I hate having to do this.” “You’ve done this before?” Ryland looked astonished. “Yeah, I’ve seen my fair share of hopeless cases before,” Vernon said. He rose slowly from the bench and waved the doctor away from the panel. “You wanna give me a hand here doc? I guess there’s nothing else but to do it. I just hate how loud it usually gets.” “Loud?” Ralph asked, watching as the doctor moved around to the other side of the bed and placed an arm over Brandon’s chest. “Oh yeah,” Vernon said. “You might want to cover your ears. This might get ugly.” Slowly, Vernon moved his hand to the wall and pressed the button. A bright light like a flashbulb enveloped the room for an instant, then stopped. Almost immediately, Brandon opened his eyes, jerked upright, and began screaming his head off. Vernon joined the doctor in trying to restrain Brandon as he thrashed on the bed, yelling and cursing. 5

Committed by A.R. Kirby

“THE BUTTON RESTARTS TIME,” Vernon yelled to Ralph as he tried to hold the flailing body of his young companion onto the bed. “When you restart someone’s time after they’ve been displaced, they naturally want to pick up right where they left off. Remember where Brandon was when I used the time displacer on him?” “He was huddled in a corner of the rest area having his arm eaten off,” Ralph said, calmly sipping his coffee from the bench while Brandon thrashed and wailed on the bed. “Exactly,” Vernon said, pushing his elbow into Brandon’s chest. “So he thinks he’s still there, at least for the moment. Give him a second and he’ll chill out.” “Sometimes the results are pretty funny,” Vernon said to the doctor. “When I was a young Associate, some friends and I time displaced one of our superiors while he was on a date. They had sneaked off and were making out, going at it pretty hot and heavy, when - pow! We hit them with the displacer. We let his date go on her way, and we took the guy to the zoological section, where we put him into a cage with a particularly slimy -- but harmless -- space slug. Then we restarted his time. He made out with the slug for a good two minutes before he realized what was going on.” “Doesn’t say much for his date if he made out with the slug for that long,” Ralph laughed. “That’s what we thought, too,” Vernon said. He turned his attention to Brandon, who was starting to calm down. 6

Episode 35

He seemed to recognize Vernon’s face and laid back on the bed, panting. “You okay kid?” Vernon asked. “What happened?” Brandon asked breathlessly. “The last think I knew, I was about to die, and now I’m ... where?” “You’re back at the Collective, son,” Vernon explained. “So what happened?” At this point, Medical Associate Ryland took over. “When we got to the rest area, you were in pretty bad shape,” Ryland said. “From what we can tell, something triggered an attack mechanism on the robot in the bathroom, and it infected you with microscopic nanoviruses -- tiny machines that were eating your body away. Thank goodness you were time displaced -- it stopped the nanoviruses before they could finish you off.” The doctor paused and retrieved the box from the end of the bed, then resumed speaking. “We kept you displaced and brought you here, where you underwent some pretty remarkable surgery. It was tricky; we couldn’t bring you back into real time because the nanoviruses would crank up again, and it was possible that they could have infected a lot more people. But we figured out that we could use an electromagnetic pulse to short out the nanoviruses. So we did, and it 7

Committed by A.R. Kirby

worked. “Once we cleaned them out, it was a matter of working with your arm -- or what was left of it, anyway. We collected all the dust we could from the rest area, but we apparently didn’t get all of it, because when we tried to reconstitute your arm, all we could come up with was a stump with three fingers.” If Brandon was shocked at the news, his face didn’t show it. “So what do I have now?” he asked. “Let’s take a look,” Ryland said, and pulled the blanket away from Brandon’s chest to reveal a metal socket in his left shoulder.. “That’s kinda weird,” Brandon said quietly. “So what am I supposed to do with it?” “It’s for this,” Ryland said as he laid the box on the edge of the bed and pressed a button on its side. It made a hiss like the door and opened to reveal a gleaming metal arm, silver in color. Ryland pulled it out of the box and raised it to Brandon’s shoulder, where the ball end practically leaped into the socket on Brandon’s shoulder and attached with a click “Magnetically attached,” the doctor said with a smile. “It’s our latest prosthetic model. I hope you’ll like it. Now hold still for a moment.” Ryland rotated Brandon’s new appendage in the socket and pressed a button just inside the elbow joint. There was a slight humming sound and then the arm came to 8

Episode 35

life, with LED lights blinking up and down the length of it as diagnostics programs inside the arm began running. Ryland stepped back away from the bed as Brandon stared in amazement at his new arm. Cautiously, he moved the fingers, waggling them back and forth before starting to flex his wrist, then the elbow, and finally the shoulder joint. “It feels just like it’s my own arm,” he said with astonishment. “It’s supposed to,” Ryland said. “Are you feeling any pain?” “No, no pain at all,” Brandon said as he pressed a button on the inside of his forearm, causing a small video screen to pop up and then retract. “It feels.. it feels fine, I guess.” Brandon looked up from his arm to see all three men staring at him with concerned looks on their faces. “I know this must be hard for you,” Ryland said. “Losing a limb to that kind of trauma can have significant consequences, even if you have a fully-functioning prosthesis. But we can have some semi-skin grafted onto the arm, and you won’t even be able to tell that anything ever happened. And we’ll have one of our Social Work Associates work with you as you adjust.” At that, Brandon let out a huge belly laugh, and went on laughing for a full two minutes. “You’re kidding, right?” Brandon wiped away a tear 9

Committed by A.R. Kirby

from his eye. “I don’t need any ‘semi-skin’ or some namby-pamby Social Work Associate helping me deal with my issues. This... this is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me! Ralph, Vernon and Ryland each looked confused, so Brandon did his best to explain. “I’ve been a computer and science fiction geek all my life,” he said, staring at his gleaming metal arm. “Terminator, the old Westworld, I love all that stuff, especially robots and cyborgs. This is like a This is a wet dream come true for a dork like me!” To be continued...

10