Once again a longer segment going into the weekend. The dogs had me up at 0330 and in that half-asleep stage I saw the final part of this short story. It may be a little anti-climatic, as is my wont when it comes to exciting events, but it will wrap things up nicely. I’ll be introducing an new lifeform. As if my stories needed another.

This was – and is – a fun little story. Writing shorts makes for focus and discipline. I’ve known people who talk about their 300k MS they’ve been working on for five years…and I wonder: what the hell is wrong with you? Tell your story and move on to another.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

Although arriving the morning of the second day, Tamera was informed by Dorina that Henge went straight to the EAST reactor.  The last thirty-six hours had been increasingly hard for Lem and Ildi:  shakes, low-grade fever, nausea.  “Having two bodies as they are, is not sustainable,” the smartest had said, and promised to work faster.

Shaking on the ratty couch between his mother and nurse, Ildi spoke in an unsteady voice to answer Sky’s question of a moment ago.

“You’ve seen her, H…H… Henge,” she managed through Lem’s mouth.  “She is a kind of human, a made thing.  Before she became mortal, she was the child of Thaad, oldest of all Thinking Machines, so Dorina’s niece.  Made in the destruction of the fusion reactor at Oak Ridge, just to be with your father-in-law, Skylar.”

Unable to stop the tremors of her head, she looked to the albino woman.  “She loved Gary that much.  Issss… It’s what I think they will try for me.”

Eyes down and a retching noise.  “I will see your son healed, at any cost to myself.  And don’t yell at me, Nurse Keynes.  If I can’t do good, then I’ll do bad well.”

Tamera had successfully been resisting the urge to smack patients for nearly forty years, so one more was not a problem.

“Are you able to eat or drink anything?” she asked to her charge.  “Your blood work from overnight was not looking good.”

“Some water, please,” this time it was Lem’s voice.  His mother held a bottle to his mouth and poured slowly.  Even so, he coughed a little onto the sweatshirt Tam had bought for him.  “Sorry.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, my little man.” Tamera saw Sky was trying very hard to smile.  She’ll be a much better mother for all this, I think.  There was a chirp from her earbud.

“Message coming in,” she said to them both.  Skylar looked up but Lem didn’t move.

“We’ll be ready in two hours,” Dorina announced.  “Transport for all of you will be out front in fifteen minutes.  I know they are deteriorating, so get a move on as best you can.”

“They will be ready for Lem and Ildi when we get there,” Tamera announced, standing.  “Help me get them up, Mrs. Hartmann.”

“Ah told you-uns to call me Sky, Nurse Tam,” she said with a catch in her voice, helping her son and his guest to his feet.

Tamera looked around at what little of their provisions were in the room.  We don’t need anything.  This will work and we’ll be home hours later, or it won’t, and, well, we won’t need any of this.  She told Sky to go first and picked up the three-year-old with both her arms.  His head shook against her chest.  I have seen these people work miracles.  Please, God, we need one now.

Not a culture concerned with comfort, especially that of foreign devils, there were some bumps and hard turns which made Lem cry out and Tamera wish she had her friend Fussy’s authority to have the driver shot.  Nonetheless, they pulled up again before the fusion reactor complex just over thirty minutes later.  Their own men from the imperium’s craft were there to help them, a legionary taking Lem, who was now shaking all over.

“Can you hear me, Dorina?” she muttered, hopefully where Skylar wouldn’t hear.

“She’s very busy,” came Tay’s instant reply.  “You will speak to me and I shall decide what to pass on.”

“I think Lem will code in less than thirty minutes,” she was now completely in clinical mode.  “Is there anything like a crash cart or pharmacist box in this complex?”

“Looking.  Several AEDs.  Yes, there are some emergency meds in an office.  I just lied to the tech there and will have it brought to where you are taking them,” the Machine instantly replied.

“I didn’t think you people liked lying,” again under her breath.

“My mom has made me older in many ways, Human.”

Tamera shuddered at the tone in her ear.

“Then, thank you, Tay.”

“Go in and right, just like before, to the reactor room.  Li has been told this is not a time for cultural niceties or politics.  If he or his people interfere, one of my tribe will kill them,” Tay said in a voice so cold it made Tamera want to take the earbud out.  They are nothing like those of tribe Tohsaka.  The Mendros kill casually then will turn around and do all this for a little boy and girl.

“Dorina says she’s ready in five minutes.  Walk faster,” Tay ordered.  Keynes instantly passed that on, putting them into a trot.

The same series of locked doors, most with Radiation Danger trefoils on them, led them back to one of the single largest rooms Tamera had ever seen.  An insanely complex maze of pipes and conduits was everywhere in the five-story space, a space so vast, she could not see the far walls.  The entire room hummed with the power of the core, the stellarator, coming up to temperature and power.

“Here at last!” the loligoth ghost said.  A smile, but an edge to her voice.  “Tam and Legionary Pike, with me.  Sky and everyone else?  Out.”

“But…!” Skylar began.

“Out, human!” Dorina’s outline shouted.

Crying, she and the other retainers left.

“No time for emotions,” the smartest groused.  “Do you, human nurse, recall where I was last time?”

“Yes.” Like a code blue, this was not a time to talk.

“Go there now.” Her form vanished.

Twenty feet up the scaffold stairs and fifty down, Tamera saw Henge Hartmann kneeling next to an elongated sandbox, gentle stirring what looked like finely powdered diamond dust with her hand.  She looked up and smiled.

She’s shining.  I swear she has a halo.  “Mrs. Hartmann, thank you for your help with all this.”

“Just as Ildi said, we will do anything for our family.  Mister Pike?  Lay the boy just there, next to the, ah, sandbox, as the nurse thought it.” He did.  “Leave immediately.  Potential radiation poisoning.”

The legionary left with somewhat undue haste.

“You want me to stay?” Tamera moved next to Lem, who was trying to catch his breath.  “This is not a good situation…”

“We shall begin in a few moment,” Henge replied, smile never failing and a gentle voice.  An angel on earth.  “You might get a higher dose of radiation than you need and be a little sick, but, much more than that, if you see what we do, rewrite reality, I think your mind will break.”

“Rewrite…what?” Her mind was on the boy, not these odd words.

Henge stood and walked around to kneel next to her, putting her hands onto the boy’s chest.

“Leave us.  Pray,” she ordered as gently as everything else.

“Henge…”

“Now.”

Tamera made it to the main door just as the horn indicating plasma injection sounded.  With a blinding light in her mind and radiation bombarding her body, she collapsed, feet from safety.