Throughout those two days he went back and forth visiting the Excelsior and spending time on the Espurna.
About 90% of the more than twenty five thousand beings that formed the crew were human. The other 10% was a mix of species. Gas beings with their floating cylinders could be seen every now and then, there were some creatures that looked like if a plant had tried to look human and failed miserably, there were also some Drewells, some Jui’kk, and then there was something that looked exactly like a Triffid.
When he first saw one of those he was walking towards the mess hall chatting with some crew and he just froze, to everyone’s amusement, producing some laughs along the way.
“Don’t worry, they are not like the ones in the novel. They’re quite peaceful and have a strong sense of when something electronic is going haywire” - said one of the crew.
The triffid-like creature ignored the noise and kept walking through the passage, the stem moving back and forth.
Most of the humans on the Excelsior were quite young, in the 20-25 age range, and there were all types. Engineers, soldiers, officers, scientists, even some musicians and obviously kitchen staff; it was a lively ship.
He had been treated as a VIP, probably because the Captain was friends with his father and had treated him like family so, for everyone else, he was a “Captain’s friend”.
He had been shown the recreation rooms, bar and zero-gravity rooms; they even had a concert hall. The gym was a huge room with a running track and all the machines and stuff that human gyms usually have, it was always full of people because their regulations mandated that everyone should do 1-2h of exercise every day, low gravity was still something that could mess human bodies. There was a swimming pool as well, encased in inertial dampeners and artificial gravity engines so that it would maintain the water in the pool.
From the interior, the ship almost looked more like a small city. Human engineers had used all the technological marvel of the Empire to create this dream that some sci-fi writers had imagined decades ago.
Back in the Espurna he would see Ryoshi walking back and forth looking at the walls. It was like she could sense they were in jump space but the parasites wouldn’t come out, which made him think the parasites were attracted to something related to the jump engine and not the fact that they were being in jump space.
With all this he didn’t realize the two days of travel were almost gone. He was walking towards the Espurna after an eventful afternoon when he heard the message from the ship's speakers.
“All crew, all crew. Be advised we will reach our destination in five minutes.” - said a voice through the communication system
He ran a bit so he could reach the ship before the jump ended, grabbed Ryoshi who was looking at the walls, and sat on the bridge just in time for that stomach turn produced by exiting jump space. But this time he was ready for it so he didn’t suffer as much as before.
Then a screen lit up and the captain appeared in it.
“Well, this is it. You are clear for launch, you’ll see the station the moment you leave the Excelsior. Give him my regards, will you?” - said the captain.
“Of course! And thank you for the ride, it’s been amazing. The Excelsior is an incredible ship with an amazing crew” - he answered back
“It sure is. But your Kirkugger has nothing to envy us - apart from the gym of course” - the captain joked - “and has given me some ideas; I’ll see if we can find out more about semi-organic ships. Anyway, I hope we meet again young explorer” - he finished with a smile
“Same here, good travels Excelsior!” - he responded
Then he started the in-planet engines to leave the massive ship and left the hangar slowly, it had been short but he grew fond of this ship.
As the captain had said, the moment he left the Excelsior he could see the hospital station.
It was a gargantuan dome, about two thousand kilometres in diameter, sitting in the middle of a sun-less system, if you could call an empty space without a star a system, but the ship scanners informed him there was a small black hole at the center of it and no planets or asteroids or anything else that he could detect apart from the standard communications beacon.
He was about to open comms when all the screens in the bridge got blurred, the sign that the AI was in control.
“They’re taking us in boss” - informed him the AI
“Yeah, I imagined that much” - he answered - “I’m going to take a shower and change clothes” - he said while looking at one of the blurred screens, there was a timer indicating they would arrive in about half an hour so he had more than enough time.
So he took that shower, shaved, and chose a set of casual clothes with the explorer guild motif.
When he was ready he grabbed the data-pad and checked the map of the station; it had already marked the path to where his father was.
He left the Espurna and the first thing he saw was that he was not in a hangar but seemed to be in an open space, with a blue sky and even birds flying around, and it smelled like a forest.
A vehicle was waiting for him, with open doors and no steering wheel that he could see. He entered and sat down, then the doors closed and the vehicle started moving.
Inside, there was a screen that lit up and his mother appeared on it.
“Jordi? What are you doing here?” - his mother said, completely surprised.
“Well, Captain Miller picked me up and told me everything then brought me here” - he told her
“That stubborn meddler, I should have imagined.” - she sighed - “Well, see you in a few minutes”
She looked tired but there was a glint of happiness there, she was probably happy to see him and happier even cause there was no need to lie any more.
During his ride he was looking through the vehicle windows completely amazed. If he had woken up there he would’ve never imagined he was in a space station, everything looked like Earth.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The streets, the amount of people walking around, the shops; there were trees along the way, and some rivers also.
He checked the station on his data-pad and saw that it was actually a lot of different biomes pieced together, so every race in the Empire had a natural environment designed for them. The one for humans was just one tenth of the station, but one tenth was still huge.
The vehicle stopped in front of what he immediately recognized as a hospital and the doors opened, his mother was there waiting for him.
They hugged. A deep, strong hug; he could hear her breathing rapidly and felt her heart beating like a thousand drums.
She walked him to his father's room. They passed a lot of people in white coats and stopped at the door of room 4006B.
When they entered he saw his father lying inside a healing pod. There was a reptile-like being with a white coat looking at a data-pad in front of the pod, it reminded him of his psychologist.
“Any changes, doctor?” - his mother said
The doctor turned and looked at them with emerald eyes, its greyish skin a bit darker around them.
“Nothing yet, we have him stabilized and hope that your amazing human recovery abilities help us out here” - the doctor told them
“But, do we know what’s wrong with him?” - he inquired
“Fucking prions man!” - said a high-pitched feminine voice behind him
He turned and saw a petite human woman, barely 1’5m, red-hair and face full of freckles.
“With all the knowledge of the Empire, they have no species that has anything similar to our prions.” - she continued - “Oh, sorry! I’m doctor Caileanach. I’m helping doctor Jh’rasif here trying to fix your father with my human input.”
Prions, she had said, he recalled reading something about them long ago but could only recall that they were misfolded proteins.
“But so far we’ve managed to stop the spread and stabilize him, the damage done is still there but it has not progressed and we don’t even dare to try to put him to cryo because we don’t know how that could affect.” - she continued - “Is the first time that we have the chance to fight. The previous ones were detected too late; we’re lucky your father travels that much and goes through the contamination process for lots of planets, we wouldn’t have detected it that quick without those” - she said looking at his father.
“Yes, those prions… we don’t really understand them or how to fix them to be honest.” - doctor Jh’rasif continued - “It might have something to do with the regenerative abilities of humans but we faced that with cancers and managed to beat them; but this, I don’t know” - the doctor said, sounding defeated.
They stood like that, looking at his father in the healing pod, in silence, for a few minutes. Then a beep coming from both doctors' data-pads broke the spell, they both apologized and left the room.
-**********-
“Diary entry. Dr Sarah Caileanach.
X-4658465-10.
We keep trying to find a way to fix the prions issue on Mr Puig but I’m at a loss here.
Before the Empire came, prions were already a mystery to fix. We know they are badly formed proteins but even with the technology available to us, we still don’t have a way to correct the issue.
With cancer cells it was easy, we just needed to program nanobots to recognize the cancerous cells and remove them. Prions though are a completely different issue, we cannot remove them without affecting the surrounding proteins nor can we find a way to reconvert those prions into the normal proteins they should be.
But an idea came to me, yesterday, in a dream. I will send all the data to my tutor in University, doctor Varhalaejka, I will write more after. I don’t want to jinx it”
“Diary entry. Dr Sarah Caileanach.
X-4658465-11.
Holy shit I was right! The good doctor Varhalaejka and I did a remote session to explore the issue. He asked me to connect a machine I didn’t even know we had, he wouldn’t even explain what it was for, he just said ‘You’ll see’.
And the goddamn thing was a virtual environment where pandimensional beings can explore higher plans remotely. Like a fucking webcam that can show the viewer higher plans if that viewer is able to process them.
But I digress. I was right! What mr Puig had was a simple infection, but one involving a pandimensional virus, how the fuck are we supposed to fight those? It turns out we’ve got an app for that.
After taking a look with that machine my dear tutor just laughed and said ‘well Sarah, looks like you’re right… again!’. I could feel both his frustration and how proud he was in his voice, Kurkis are a weird race like that.
Anyway, we’ve found the issue now, the virus affecting the proteins should disappear in about two empire days (sorry dear Diary, I grew up with a human timetable so I need to mark it like that) but we’re not sure if the proteins will come back to normal after and how much of the mental degrade will remain.”
“Diary entry. Dr Sarah Caileanach.
X-4658465-12.
Mr. Puig signals looked ok, the prions were no more, so we decided to take him out the healing pod and check his status.
His memory is ok, his movements are back to normal taking into account he just spent two months in a healing pod. Everything looks fine.
A deep scan showed no prions, all the DNA chains and proteins and everything else looking green as heck. Both doctor Varhalaejka and doctor Jh’rasif have made a mention in their notes about my ‘incredible insight and absurd imagination’. All that because a dream I had, we humans are a funny bunch.
I’m just glad I could help. I heard he was an architect working on all kinds of planets and he had friends throughout the whole fleet. And his son (who is quite cute by the way) is a kind of an explorer genius, which is weird because as far as I know all they do is travel to places and throw some drones. I’ll have to check on that, not because he’s cute, mind you, but because he’s a genius, like me.”
-********************-
He was looking at his father doing the walking exercises, his mom by his side.
He had been here for almost a week, but his father looked great now. He was walking, he spoke normally although every now and then he would struggle to find the words.
“That’s the neurons trying to find their place” - the human doctor had said - “Everything is ok but some neuron connections might have been broken so his brain needs to set them up again. Nothing to worry about.”
He had been granted a month leave by the guild but now that his father looked fine he wanted to be out there, doing his job.
Still, he would remain here for a few more days, if only to ease his mother’s mind.
A couple days passed, he was still living on the Espurna, refusing to go to the assigned apartments with his mom, using Ryoshi as an excuse.
His father could now walk normally and he wasn’t struggling speaking any more, everything looked fine so he offered to show them both his ship.
Ryoshi came to welcome them by the entrance, she was just sitting there moving her tail like crazy.
Friday behaved extraordinarily, like a proper host, explaining everything from the lights to the rooms to the kitchen. He saw a glint of a smile on his mom after a few minutes of Friday talking.
They spent a whole day on the Espurna, first showing them the rooms and stuff, then all of them in the leisure room.
Before they left, they hugged him and said how proud they were of him. His father made a half-comment half-joke about slapping Captain Miller but he could tell he wasn’t really serious.
He stayed at the station a couple more days for good measure then sent a message to the guild asking for his next assignment. He received the answer after a couple minutes pointing him to a system far, far, beyond the station and an apology because the closest systems were already assigned and the explorers on route. Thirty days of jump, he had never jumped that long.
He checked the maps and saw he was being sent to the outer edge of the Empire frontier. The mission included preparing and throwing more drones for deep space, like the ones that visit a system before a guild member does a deep scan.
But this station was full of materials. Being a hospital station it would always have the stocks at 80% and a whole fleet of ships would be coming continuously to replenish that stock. He just put a request for enough materials to feed the printer and set it up to start printing drones.
His last night at the station was at the apartment his mother and father had been assigned to. It was a 3 bedroom apartment, a bit more than a hundred square meters, with a fifteen square meter terrace and everything they might need.
They had dinner on the terrace, enjoying the night breeze. Artificial as it was, it still gave a nice summer fuzzy feeling.
They chatted, and laughed, and told stories, and had fun. Afterwards his parents both hugged him and his mom kissed his forehead as if he was still a kid. Hoping to see each other again and with best wishes they said their goodbyes he just went to the Espurna to prepare his next mission.