Ch 5 The Cell

Jim came to and looked around him. Every surface was lit by a strange faint glow. He was on a table in a large round room and he sensed someone moving just behind him. He couldn’t focus on them as they were moving quickly. His eyes were cloudy and unsuited to see underwater. Was he still underwater? How? He wondered.
Jim became aware that he was not breathing and he could not feel his heartbeat. He could not move his body, only his eyes. He could still feel himself and his skin was alive with a static tingling, though none of his muscles would respond. He tried to move all his extremities, fingers, arms, legs, toes...and then his head. Nothing. He was paralyzed.
He struggled to remember what had happened....
Our boat was caught in some kind of whirlpool...
He glanced down at his unmoving hand and saw it still holding the radio handset limply. O good, he thought sarcastically, I can call for help.
He could not fathom where he was or how he was still alive. He struggled to focus, moving just his eyes and looking to his right he saw the indistinct shape. It was working on something at another table next to him. As it moved he caught a glimpse of what looked to be a small child on the table, he watched as it pulled a small shiny blue and orange life jacket up over it’s head and let it drift lazily away from the child. Hmmm, he thought, shouldn’t that float? Aren’t we underwater?
The familiarity of the jacket finally jogged him awake fully. That was his boy Gold on the table. Where the hell were they? Where was Diamond and Lee? What happened?
The figure moved a bright light over the boy and Jim could blurrily see the crimson color of blood on his head, and as the light moved over him, he saw the blood fade and disappear. A thin layer of hope spread over the dull weight of dread that held him immobile in this strange place. He wondered if it was healing Gold or hurting him.
Jim tried to talk, ‘Hel..lo..?’
It only happened in his mind, his lips would not move.
How am I not breathing? Jim wondered. I’m not breathing?
Stronger now, the light blasted the whole room and it seemed that he could feel it in his bones. He could hear a humming and a foamy hiss as the warming glow overwhelmed him and pressed his eyes shut. He struggled to open them and focus. Something that looked like an ocean at sunrise came into his view thru what seemed to be transparent walls of the room he was in. Outside the flat expanse of a sea horizon took shape and then curved and diminished quickly into a blue ball surrounded by blackness getting smaller, and smaller as tho they were moving away from it at a speed that was unfathomably rapid. The warmth quickly faded and a shiver passed through him as he began to feel cold.
“He’s going to be fine” a voice boomed in his head.

What?

“He’s going to be fine, we picked you three out of a Tong trap. They were harvesting again and so we grabbed you before you got taken. They were hunting you.” The voice sounded young and at the same time, learned.
Jim blinked as his vision was almost completely clear now. The voice continued.
“We registered another life form with you but could not find her.”
Jim sensed more fabrication, the voice was hiding something.
“You have another child, yes? Her form was unfamiliar to us and scrambled our finder. Only unregistered species usually jam the finders nose. We’ve registered everything on Ama for millennia, but you guys were carrying someone very unique... what’s with your little family?” There was definitely something about the speaker that felt off to Jim. Jims suspicion grew towards certainty, whoever this was, he was fabricating, hiding something.
Jim was baffled as he realized that the figures voice was truly inside of him and he had no control of it’s presence there. It was strange enough that it was there, but even stranger that it was requiring answers too.
‘I’d prefer you’d speak to me outside of my head if I’m to answer all your questions,’ Jim thought, getting worried now whether it was Diamond or Lee to whom the voice referred, it had said “could not find her,” and he’d just now seen Gold. Was that real, he puzzled, picked you three, it had said.
“I can stand so you can see me,” the voice answered, “but we will continue to pulse together, not speak. Your mouth is immobilized and our air fluid would stop your heart if you....well it already is stopped, but it would stop ...permanently.”
A young man stepped from behind Jim, and came into view at his left. He was normal looking, European, medium built and seemed to be in his early 20’s.
“You’re still adapting to the air fluid, we can’t let you convulse, so you are on Omni Support. The ship is living for you, for now.”
He let Jim process for a moment then added,
“Thanks by the way, for your biodiversity, the ship learns more with everyone that gets plugged in. She’s a smart bird!” Hearing this voice inside his head, Jim felt uncertain, trying to verify his waking state.
This must be dreaming , Jim looked at his hands.
“It’s not” the young man stared at Jim.
Holding Jims gaze, he looked out to Jim’s right where Gold had been laid on a table. There was a dim hazel surface that curved floor to ceiling which then transformed into a clear view of space, dark and immense with an infinity of stars.
“Smart bird” the young man said again.
Jim wondered at what he’d thought was his boy Gold on the table next to him. His vision had been off. Blurred.
Was that real? A trick?
“It’s both” the voice said, adding
“Its real, and a trick, in that we wanted to comfort you that the child was going to be o.k....that you were near him. Truthfully, he was never in this space with you, though he was and is near by in a heal chamber, Ormus is tending to him, what you saw was real, the brief surgery you saw....his head injury has been healed.”
Smiling he turned back from the glimmering wall of space to Jim
“I’m Simon” he said.