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Brother Anderson’s awareness suddenly contained a patient emergency alert. These presented as a location vector containing distance and direction, almost like an arrow overlaid on his conscious field of awareness. They were triggered by the ship’s automated life support system biofeedback subsystem. It automatically monitored vital signs of every registered life-form on board.
Immediately, he turned and began to break into a quick pace toward the med bay. But the arrow spun around, and he became briefly disoriented. He was moving the correct direction. But the arrow disagreed. It was pointing away, off toward his right. Not toward med bay, but toward... the mess hall. Hannah! She was in danger!
Brother Anderson took off. His chassis smoothly repositioned into rolling mode even as he ran, and he picked up speed, moving faster than was deemed safe or allowable. As he zoomed down a long corridor, he examined the alert details. Hannah appeared to be in a sleep state, but her blood pressure had dropped dangerously and there were several toxin indicators present. He quickly reached the likely conclusion and ran a check to confirm the likely results. Yes, it checked out. It had to be the case. The pills! Or to be precise, too many of the pills at once, coupled with a hefty dose of alcohol!
“Dammit Hannah!” he swore, much to his own surprise. She was rubbing off on him. He didn’t usually use such language. It took a couple more minutes to reach the mess hall. He gathered her in his arms and sped off toward med bay, running a few more checks. He confirmed by trace analysis of her breath that she had indeed consumed a substantial amount of alcohol, but he would need a blood sample to determine any more details. An emergency oxygen mask popped out of a recess in his chest, and he clumsily placed it on her face, a task that was difficult to do while carrying her. Why he wasn’t equipped with a third arm was a question he had wondered about on more than a few occasions. Upon reaching med bay, Brother Anderson hurried to set Hannah comfortably upon a bed and administered a proprietary mix of bio-stabilizing solutions through the misting function of the more robust oxygen supply of the facility. It took only a few moments for her heart rate, and other systems to begin to stabilize. Her data patterns slowly began to settle into normal ranges.
Suddenly though, there was a blip, a sharp peak lasting only milliseconds. Which channel had it been on? It was gone before Brother Anderson could move his attention to it for analysis. He reviewed the past second’s data, but it did not appear in the report. It was as though it had not happened.
Blip - there it was again. This time he was waiting for it, scanning on all channels. It was not from Hannah’s readouts at all. It was from Colin’s.
“Oh my god!” Brother Anderson exclaimed. It was the only semi-appropriate response that came to mind. “This is quite extraordinary.” At the sound of Brother Anderson’s voice, a somewhat weaker signal rose on Colin’s electroencephalogram output. Brother Anderson waiting a few seconds, before speaking again.
“Hello Colin.” Another small peak. “Can you hear me Colin?” Again. The signals corresponded to the timing of his voice. Colin could hear him! This was amazing!
Aside from the fact that after this much elapsed time, the chances of recovery from coma were very slim, the fact that Colin should begin to show signs of response to stimulus at this exact moment were simply stupefying. This moment. When Hannah and Colin, the only two surviving humans on board the Ventas-341, were both simultaneously in an unconscious state, and were, for the first time in close proximity to one another. It was eerie! Brother Anderson imagined some subconscious psychic connection somehow passing energy of information between them. But of course that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
Yet here they were. Colin on the brink of death, nearly killed fighting to save the ship. Hannah, spinning out of control, strung out, hopeless and alone. Hannah, self-medicating and isolating, and Colin, unresponsive to all the known medical protocols, and yet somehow activated by the mere presence of another human. It had to be pure coincidence. And yet...