Contemplations in the dark

[Travis Kroells 0]

“Contemplations in the dark”…Kroells’s logs

 

Darkness.  He was surrounded by it.  But he was afraid to move, afraid to hurt again.  For the first time in a long time nothing hurt, neither his body nor his mind.  Sitting here in this darkness was comforting; he could sit here all his life if he wanted to.

 

“Travis, can you hear me?”  Travis closed his mind’s eye, trying to ignore him.  He didn’t want to wake up.  Maybe just not yet any way.  But against his own will the darkness slowly faded away and it hurt again, every thing.

 

“Travis, you owe doctor here a big thank-you.  He may have saved your life.”  Travis groaned at that.  Brian Smith saving his life.  And the second whole sentence he hears when he woke was to thank him.  He would do not such thing.  Smith never even contemplated whether or not he wanted to wake up.  Not once.  But that’s how most doctors are.  They like to take the ‘hard’ emergencies, to save the day and become a hero.  There was only one problem with that, for them to be the healers, the heroes of the day people had to hurt, and die.  

 

Something entered his mind after deciding not to yell at Brian, the shuttle.  That torpedo!  It didn’t explode, but why was the question.  He couldn’t remember any thing, from the mission, from the events before it.  He strained to remember and piece by piece it began to come back.  The scans, he took a scan of the torpedo right before gerb ran the shuttle into the Reaent.  And that was why he was here.  He had gotten up to take the scan.  Instead of staying firm in his seat he got up, and before he could return to his seat he was thrown a good ten feet into the front of the shuttle.  

 

“The shuttle……didn’t….torpedo…explode.”  Every word he tried to speak was slurred and backwards in the order of the sentence.  He doubted that the doctors hanging over him would even understand him.  Travis hoped they did because right now it hurt to do any thing, to think, to speak.  His mind ran over what was in the scans.  It didn’t explode because it wasn’t supposed to.  A homing beacon….  He had to speak with Fred.  Brian debated it for several minutes…Fred was unavailable.  

 

Travis raced over who would understand.  “The second guy…”  Brian turned to him again.  Travis couldn’t remember his name…Ridire….Commander Aidan Ridire.  “Commander Ridire…”  Smith hit his commbadge.  He was saying something that much was obvious.  But Travis couldn’t string the words together.  And before he knew it Smith pressed the hypo to his neck and he fell asleep, into the darkness again.

 

He smiled again.  No pain, no sight, no sound only himself and his thoughts.  He moved, turned around in his own mind to see all there was to see, it hurt but not as much as it would have in the light.  But doing so woke him a little.  He couldn’t do any thing that would do that.  That would wake him; take him out of this place again.  Never again would he wake up.  He’d fight it…..