Three Wishes
The deep space survey ship Sojourner has just passed the halfway point of an eight month scientific mission to survey the planets of nearby solar systems. It is one of many such ships, all seeking eagerly to make discoveries that its crew can claim as their own. This is all a result of humanity’s most recent significant scientific breakthrough, affording faster than light travel. The Sojourner is currently on a more traditional ion drive skip across the alien solar system, from one planet to another.
“What was that?” the captain bellows, grabbing the padded arms of his seat as the ship lurches dramatically. “Status, Jenkins!” he barks.
“Checking, sir,” I answer obediently, holding back any other comments with a combination of duty to my superior officer and plain fear. As my fingers dance across the controls, I thank my lucky stars that I’m not the ship doctor, she is going to have her hands full judging from the force of that blast.
“A sudden and intense abnormality has developed,” I answer, “some sort of electrical storm, centered almost exactly on our position. Sensor data reveals no anomalies detected in the area until just moments before the initial impact.”
“I’m going to need more information than that!” the captain shouts, barely audible over the blare of the klaxons.
I bite back another rude remark, and begin to report, “There is a nearby cloud of particles which has spread explosively with the electrical discharges. The molecules are unlike anything else recorded in our database, but based on their composition they should have been inert. It seems now that that is not the case, and they somehow triggered this storm. I’m charting out what I think the course with the least interference will be based on the density of those particles.”
Jenkins’ shoulders droop as he completes the course chart. “Sometimes I hate this job,” Jenkins thoinks to himself, as he taps out the commands to transfer the data to the helm control computer, “I wish I had an easy job like Meyers there on helm, just following the directions he’s given.”
All at once, I hear, see, and feel the acute effects of a nasty blow to the ship’s hull. It’s unfortunate how many scrapes this ship has been through in the short couple months we have been out here. Add one more notch onto the bedpost.
The captain immediately and forcefully takes charge, as usual. Jenkins, the tactical officer is in the crosshairs, being the source the captain must turn to for the information he now desperately needs. Jenkins manages to come up with the details of the problem, and a plan to get us out of it gracefully, but I’m happy to not be in his shoes.
The captain’s voice booms as soon as Jenkins announces that his charting is complete, “Meyers, get us out of here!”
“Aye aye, sir,” I parrot out. My console lights up with Jenkins’ data. It looks rough. The storm is spread out for some fifty to one hundred thousand kilometers around us. I’ve been provided with a narrow twisting tunnel to the point at the nearest edge.
I take hold of the controls and prepare myself for the precision work ahead. “Ion drive is operating at one-third capacity,” I report, “Thrusters remain at peak efficiency.”
Flying a ship of this size is always a challenge. With such a winding course, it becomes only worse. And to make things more exciting, Jenkins continues to monitor the cloud, and adjust his course plans as I go along. I got into piloting after my first try in a jetcar as a teenager, and I’ve been hooked ever since. The stress that having so many other peoples’ lives resting on your shoulders puts on a man during a flight like this, though, can be a bit much. This particular flight keeps me on my toes the whole time, with plenty of secondary blasts making it tough to keep on course.
About halfway through the flight, as things are just finally beginning to calm down, I think to myself, “It’s times like these when I really wish I was the ship medic. Life must be much easier on the lower decks, with no captain yelling at you, assistants left and right, and endless panels of specialized equipment at your beck and call.”
Back on Earth, I graduated medical school at the top of my class. I’ve always been a wonderful doctor. In fact, for a long time, medicine wasn’t even a challenge for me. I was excited to hear about the new space program, and of the need for doctors on board each craft. Space has always fascinated me.
Once we got up here, so far from any previously charted area, everything changed for me. While I used to be one of the top doctors in the country, now I regularly find myself stumped and searching for a lead on the cure. When the ship pitched and I fell against the wall, I knew it was going to be another busy day.
The scrapes and the bruises came in shortly after the impact. I was glad when nobody came in with anything more serious. A lurch of the ship at the wrong time can give you a broken bone too easily. I thought idly how horrible it must feel to be the helmsman, in charge of keeping the ship steady, after that jolt. In an hour or two, the mystery cases started showing up.
The bridge team tells me it was an electrical storm. That was probably just their best guess. For the whole mission, the bridge has been reporting mundane things like electrical storms, but people show up with the most unusual symptoms. So, I set in for the long haul that I knew would be coming.
Patient number one rests on the bed, with the computer running scans. Patient two has all of patient one’s visible symptomps, but is also unconscious, so gets personal attention first. The heart rate is off, and the extremities are cold. I pull out the medi-pak, and attach sensors to the patients’ temples to monitor brain activity, and start pushing buttons on the handheld device that lets me investigate the heart. It turns out the heart rate is slow because it is not beating normally, but spasming slightly at the end of every compression.
As I do what I can to keep the patient alive long enough to figure out how to help him, my mind wanders. This job has turned out to be more than I really wanted. I enjoyed being a doctor back on earth, where I was really good at what I did, instead of here, where any day might present a challenge that I cannot best. “I really wish I had a desk job instead,” I think to myself. “Something that isn’t so stressful. Maybe tactical officer. Just reading sensor scans all day. Yeah, that wouldn’t be nearly as stressful.”
Prompt: Sunday Scribblings #8.