Level: Observer

About 7000 AD
My brother had a ball. When you tried to kick it, it moved away from you. I grew tired trying to hit the thing.
“Don’t think about kicking it,” he told me. “The ball is designed to read your intentions. Think about nothing.”
It felt very satisfying when I finally got a foot on it and sent it into the back of the net.
A ‘beeping’ interrupted his memories.
So I have been asleep?
He tried to open one eye, but it felt gummed up. Screwing his face up to make tears, he eventually managed to open one, only to see a panel, which proved to be the source of the ‘beeps.’ A sign flashed, ‘Hello Omah,’ in in red letters. You’re in waking up phase. I’m administering stimulants.’
“Oh great! Thanks! I hate cryo-sleep!”
A distant hum occurred at the same time as his cryo-chamber began to incline. The glass-lidded container, little more than a box, began to raise at his head’s end and continued inclining until he lay at a forty-five-degree angle. The lid opened and straps released his arms and legs. He felt sharp stabs of pain as a needle retracted from each arm, but didn’t have the energy to say:
“Ouch!”
His legs felt distinctly wobbly, so it came as a relief to see an attractive woman approaching him in a white jumpsuit. The only problem; her skin was blue.

---

“Hello Omah DeLion. How do you feel?” the blue woman asked.
“Oh … well, a little groggy … . Where am I?”
“You’re inside the Samual Levon Desire.”
If Omah hadn’t been suspicious of her pause before answering, he certainly was of the emphasis on ‘inside.’
“You make it sound like a beast. The belly of the beast,” I replied, laughing. “Is it some kind of hospital?”
“Something like that. But you’re the only patient right now.”
The woman, tall and elegant with a sheaf of silky black hair thrown into a casual bun on top of her head, fussed around her tall, dark and handsome patient efficiently.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Well, that’s easy. You told me anyway. Omah DeLion. What’s yours?”
The blue woman began to unfasten Omah’s sleep corset with practiced skill.
“Soother.”
Omah wasn’t a tall man and always felt inadequate until he knew whether a woman stood taller than him or not, and when he felt inadequate, he tended to be aggressively sarcastic:
“Soother? Is that your boyfriend’s pet name for you?”
“You can cut the jokes. I don’t have a boyfriend. Such concepts died long ago.”
“They did? Nobody told me.”
“How do you feel?”
“Hm. A bit angry. I think I argued with somebody last night. My partner?”
“If you did, she’s long gone. You should forget the argument.”
“What? What year is this? I think I feel sick.”
“Never mind the year. It’s a long time after your last memories. You’re a survivor.”
“Well that makes me feel a little bit better.”
“Do you feel like walking? It’s good to walk, if you can manage it. It will help you to recover quicker.”
“Well, I don’t think I can walk. My legs feel like jelly. But I would like to take a look around … . If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. I’ll get a buggy.”
Omah noticed the second disconcerting thing. It had been on his periphery for some time, but he had managed to ignore it. Now he no longer could. His arms were blue too. He struggled toward a reflective window, crashing into a trolley and falling over several times in his attempt. A metallic tray fell from the tray and came to rest against his hand. Raising it, he stared at his reflection.
“Blue. My face is blue! What the hell happened to me!”

---

Soother didn’t need to guide the buggy. It kept pace beside her, hovering almost silently. Nevertheless, she occasionally had to nudge it sideways when it tried to force its way through a hatch before her. She led the tiny convoy through a maze of tunnels, so complex that Omah quickly gave up his plan to memorise the route in case escape proved necessary.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“To meet the others?”
“Others? Patients?”
“Ha! Ha! You could stay that. But we think of ourselves as crewmen.”
“Ah! Ha! So this isn’t a hospital?”
“Wait and see.”
The attractive Soother pursed her ruby-red lips and swung her hips just a little more suggestively, proving to Omah that she enjoyed teasing him.
Omah had been just about to ask the question most pressing in his unusually agitated mind when the buggy burst through another hexagonal iris-hatch and presented him with a panoramic window. The view through the transparency took his breath away.
A crystalline star-field spread from corner, broken only by an immense wing, perhaps a mile long, and the forward fuselage of what clearly constituted an immense star ship. It looked far larger than anything Omah had ever seen or thought possible. He craned his neck to peer over the sill of the window and looked down upon a depth of fuselage, just as sickening in its extreme perspective reality. He swallowed:
“This is the Samual Whatyoucalledit?”
“The Samual Levon Desire, named after the last President of West – in the end, most of the inhabitable Earth.”
“Yeah. The last? What happened after that?”
“You can find out later. Shall we go to the Ward Room?”
“Wait. I have to look at this a little longer.”

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