IMAGINATION'S PLACE
FICTION
JOURNEY TO THE LIGHT
By; Speaker Gerald Polley
All rights reserved.
Chapter 3
Carol was burning up! She wanted to reach the
call button but she couldn't even reach the cord that was only inches
from her hand. She wanted to look at the clock and see what time
it was. The sign on the door said she had to be at the gate at
six o'clock for head count. She knew it had to be somewhere near
six o'clock. She had worried about waking up on time, and feeling
this bad she must've slept late. She drifted into
unconsciousness, woke again and drifted off again. Finally she
heard a booming voice calling her name and asking why she wasn't at the
gate. She heard the door and then somebody was standing over
her.
"Oh, good Lords!" the heavy voice muttered. "We've
got another one! Control, why didn't somebody check on this
girl? Get a team out here, stat! Hurry! Hang on,
miss! I'll go next door and get Mrs. Tofu. She'll help you
until the medics get here. You're the victim of a biological
attack. Half the people that came in with you are sick, but
it's not very serious. They know how to treat it. I'll be
right back!"
"No!" Carol managed, "I gotta go! I can't wait! Please, help me to the toilet."
The man in the yellow uniform looked bewildered but
finally he lifted her from the bed, carried her into the bathroom,
managed to get her pajama bottoms down and sat her on the toilet.
They barely made it!
"Can you sit up?" the man asked.
Carol couldn't answer. Her body was totally occupied
in one effort. It couldn't seem to do anything else. A
woman's voice could be heard. "Zorba, is everything all right? Do
you need help?"
"Yes!" the man screamed "Yes, Mrs. Tofu! Come on in."
An elderly Asian woman came in. "Oh, my goodness!" she remarked.
"It's not contagious," the trustee managed, "please
stay with her. There's an emergency unit coming. I've gotta get
the girls on the bus and get on with my rounds."
"No way the girls are getting on the bus!" the Asian
woman managed. "They're staying right here! Get them in
here! I can't handle this alone and I'm definitely not having my
husband in here!"
The trustee looked for a moment then snapped "Of course!"
and hurried out. A few minutes later two very attractive Asian girls
came in. Everything after that became a blur. Other people
arrived. Somebody was telling her that they had to cool her body
down. The stuff inside of her couldn't stand cold. If they
brought her temperature down it would die, and her body would quickly
recover. She was aware of shots then cold. But it didn't
seem to be that bad.
Finally somebody was saying "It's working!
Another hour we can give her a shower and let her sleep normally.
Damn! Glad this stuff is cold sensitive! I'd like to
get my hands on the sons of bitches that did this! Fortunately from the
reports only six dead, and hundreds of people were sick, perhaps
thousands."
Carol regained her senses, found herself in clean
pajamas on a clean bed, her mattress was being carried out the
door. "Well, hello!" came a woman's voice. She turned to
see a very attractive blond sitting by her bed. "Well, this is
the best your pulse has been for hours!" the woman remarked. "And
that color looks good. Feeling better?"
"Feeling a lot better!" Carol remarked. "Was that nice Asian lady really named Tofu?"
Her companion roared with laughter. "That's
the closest as we could pronounce her name," the woman answered.
"They gave up trying to teach it to us. They're very nice people!
I'm not allowed to say why they're here. Now why don't you get
some rest. I'll fix you a very light meal. By tomorrow you should
be able to get up and around. I'll spend the night just to make
sure everything is o.k.. But everyone else is recovering fine and
we don't think you'll have any problems."
"People died?" Carol asked.
"Just a handful," the nurse answered. Carol noticed she was wearing a yellow uniform.
They spent a pleasant afternoon, then the nurse gave
Carol a sedative and she drifted off to sleep. In the middle of
the night Carol woke up. The nurse was on the bed with her.
Carol wanted to object to what she was doing but she drifted in and out
of sleep and then woke up again in the morning. There was another
nurse. She came in all smiles. "Well! You look a lot
better than when I first saw you yesterday. Everything all right? Ready
to get up?"
"I think so!" Carol managed, "But.." she hesitated. The nurse looked distressed.
"Come on!" she said "Give! What's going on?"
"The other nurse," Carol managed, "the blond. I'm not sure, I think she got down on me last night."
The nurse with her looked wide eyed. "Oh,
crap!" she managed. "Sorry, dear!" She sighed deeply. "Well,
nothing to do. I'll be right back." A few minutes later she
returned, got Carol up, showered and dressed, and took her out to the
table for breakfast. They had barely sat down when a man in a blue
uniform entered. He was followed by the trustee Carol had seen
before, and, the blond nurse.
"Medical!" he snapped, "Will you be so kind as to
take a DNA swab from this young woman's mouth? I think a normal
person would've brushed their teeth and rinsed their mouth, but I'll
lay odds she hasn't."
The blond sighed. "There's no sense troubling
the labs," she managed. "I did it! I'm sorry, sweetie. The
temptation was just too much. You're really hot!"
Carol blushed. "Well, you're the officer on station," the man in blue said, "it's up to you."
The trustee looked to Carol. "We really need
her! Don't want to send her back to where she was. Would
putting her back to orange and restricting her to service in the
hospital be acceptable?"
"She seems to be good at what she does," Carol
sighed. "I think it would be a shame to put her someplace where she
wouldn't be of any use. Can you do that?"
The trustee nodded. "Very well, then," he
answered. He took out one of those ever present typing machines and
typed out something. In a few moments he handed a print out to
the officer in blue.
"Very good!" the officer snapped. "I like easily
solved situations! I do have to advise you," he told the blond,
"you can appeal."
"I think I've made out pretty good," the blond answered.
"Let's go!" the man in blue snapped. They quickly departed. Only the trustee remained.
"I don't think you're in any shape for training," he
finally managed. "My apologies again that we didn't get to you
sooner! Somebody's probably going to get some disciplinary action
at headquarters! We should've checked on you. But no system
is perfect. We do our best."
"I think you did pretty damned good," Carol remarked, "but really I think I can handle it!"
The trustee shook his head. "Tomorrow!" he
snapped, "Enjoy the day! You've got some pleasant company.
Red can handle your duties and instruct you tomorrow."
"Red?" Carol asked.
"Hey, Red!" the trustee cried, "Come in here!"
A young man with flaming red hair came in. "Hi!" he cried, and waved.
"Hi!" Carol managed, wishing the two older people
weren't there. It had been a while. She had a feeling the
young man was wishing the same thing. Both of the older people smiled.
They weren't stupid!
"Get to work!" the trustee managed.
"Yes, oh benevolent one!" Red teased, and quickly
hurried off. The trustee looked at him like he'd like to spank
him.
"I've gotta get going!" he snapped. "Hard to
keep on schedule. Really wish they'd get me an assistant."
"One thing," Carol asked, "Zorba?"
The trustee smiled and nodded and before Carol
could asked anything else hurried out. The nurse was grinning
from ear to ear.
"No," she managed, "he's not from Greece, but his mother was. He's from Crete."
"Oh!" Carol giggled. "He's nice!"
"He most certainly is!" the nurse answered. "But
I'll tell you something, he's scared of commitment. He killed his
first wife and the second one was killed over here. He's got a
four year old daughter that's lost two mothers. It's going to be
very hard to get serious with that one!"
"What makes you think I want to be serious?" Carol answered.
"There's two ways women look at a man," the nurse
answered, "one way says 'I wanna play!' Another way says 'I want
commitment. I don't want this to be a short term thing.' That's
the way you were looking at that man."
"Shows, huh?" Carol asked.
"Um hm!" the woman answered. They both giggled.
The day was very pleasant. When Zorba came
back he took the helper and the nurse with him. Carol was alone
again. "Damn!" she thought, "He killed his wife? He doesn't
seem like somebody that would do something like that."
The next morning she was at the gate. Red was
dropped off and they got immediately down to work. He took her up
into the tower above the residence and explained that this was a
condensation unit that provided the water for her irrigation. To
operate efficiently it had to be cleaned every day. Dust built up
quickly. She was shown how to use the brushes and the
squeegee. "They'll know in short order," he warned "if you're not
doing your job because the water production would go down. Once you got
that done you've got to go to harvesting." He took her down to
the vehicle that was parked beside the house. It had a little
driver's seat. He showed her how to run it. You drive down
the rows until you find the flag where I left off. Go
ahead!"
It took a few minutes for Carol to get the hang of the
thing, but soon she had it rolling along. She found the
flag. "Park by the next tree!" Red instructed. "Climb up to
the lift."
Carol followed him. Red picked up the flag as they
went by and stuck it in a holder on the back of the vehicle. They
went up to just beneath the limbs of the tree. "See the bunches
of fruit?" Red instructed. "The black ones are ripe. Pick 'em,
put 'em into the chute. With two of us working we'll fill the bin
pretty fast!"
"What do they make with this stuff?" Carol asked.
"Fuel," Red answered, "synthetic gasoline. They
process this stuff just like light grade crude. Sometimes they
mix it with it. The pulp they make bread out of. The seeds
are edible. People like'em! We're beginning to produce major
amounts of fuel. It'll stretch the oil reserves around here and make
them last years longer!"
They worked until lunchtime then went back to the
shelter and had lunch. Now Carol realized why the delicious bread
was so dark! Red looked up and said "Want to?" Carol knew
exactly what he meant, only smiled, got up and headed for the
bedroom. She wanted to! The rest of the afternoon they
worked quietly, just smiling at each other. Carol was going to
miss him tomorrow. Things fell into a quiet routine. One
afternoon Carol was a bit behind and brought her lunch out. She
was eating when a voice spoke up. "My God that smells good!
I wish I could make my issue roasts come out like that!" Carol
turned to see her neighbor had rode his vehicle up to the tree on the
other side of the fence. She smiled.
"There's plenty!" she remarked. "I was going to save
it for supper." She quickly got out another plate, cut off a good
chunk of the roast, put some vegetables on the plate, some bread, and
held it up to the top of the fence. Her neighbor grabbed it and
Carol thoroughly enjoyed watching him eat. He looked awful
familiar. Flaming red hair. Her curiosity was piquing!