“Well, my love, are you ready?”
“Ready? Oh, for the jump? Yes. What time will the nurse come by?”
“The nurse?”
“Oh, I suppose you use a medic?”
“A medic? For what?”
“For the injection. Well, I suppose you don’t call it that, whatever it is called where they put that needle in you and give you the drug. For the jump.”
“Oh, for the jump. . On military transports those drugs aren’t routinely available. They are incredibly expensive and difficult to administer. You might have known this but probably half of your friends on the other ship probably couldn’t afford it either. But we definitely don’t get it on this ship. You’re in for the whole ride.”
“Oh?! I didn’t know anyone did that!”
He looked at her, “You thought that the captain and the bridge crew went to sleepy time during a jump?”
“Well, no, I suppose… I suppose I didn’t think about it. I suppose they have to stay awake, don’t they? But… I didn’t know people could live through a jump, awake.”
“It’s not pleasant. But humans do better than computers. We have to turn them off completely.”
“You have to turn off the computers? How does the ship, umm, drive?”
“By hand, very carefully. Before we turn the computers off everything is calculated, and the jump gate is opened by a mechanical device, if you can believe that, a certain number of seconds afterwards. The captain and the crew then pilot the ship into the jump gate and, bang, we are in a new part of the universe, everyone as sick as a dog.”
“How long are they sick?”
“We will be sick for the rest of the day, probably. I understand that the Naval Crew get better at it, or more able to work through it anyway, and are able to be coherent within a few seconds or, at worst, minutes, after the change over.”
“We’ll be sick for minutes?”
“No. We’ll be sick for hours.”
“Hours!”
“Yes. Are you ready?”
“What do I have to do to get ready?”
“First of all, drink lots of electrolytes. Each room has a nozzle for it. Ours is over there, in the corner.”
Illoia went over and looked dubiously at the faucet. “Why do I need to drink this?” she asked, pouring herself a glass and sniffing dubiously.
“Because you’re going to be sick. Very sick.”
“Well, I guess I should count my blessings and be glad I’m not increasing,” she said, valiantly downing her glass in three gulps.
“Well, no, because then you would get the drugs.”
“I thought you said they weren’t available!”
“They are only available for medical use, not for comfort. If you were injured, increasing, a very small child, etc… then they would give them to you. Drink up.”
“More?”
“Lot’s more. You will feel a lot better with enough in your stomach to lose.”
Illoia quailed at that idea, but drank more, and more…
“OK, we should get ready now. We strip the bed and get undressed.”
“Undressed?” Illoia asked. “Are you sure this is really medically necessary, and not just you wanting to see me naked?”
“Unfortunately I won’t enjoy seeing you naked for very long, nor will we have any time to fool around.”
Now annoyed and confused she took her clothes off, stripped the bed, and lay down on the sticky mattress next to her husband. He was humming and looking at the ceiling, not even paying attention to her. Suddenly the lights flickered, dimming dramatically.
“What’s that?” she asked, nervously. His attitude was making her begin to dread the upcoming jump.
“They’ve dimmed the lights.”
“Yes, but why?”
“So we won’t be as sick.”
“What do the lights have to do…” she began, and then her world ended. It seemed to her that there was a white flash, and then everything dissolved into myriad bits of color. She felt as if her mind was spread over the entire cosmos, and then dissolved into it…
And then snapped back into herself, and she screamed. Screamed and hurled, violently, all over herself and the bed. Beside her, her husband was being much more quietly, but not any less violently, sick. She clutched him, and the bed. Her sense of balance, of up and down, any sense of orientation, was completely gone. Worse than merely gone. She felt worse than if she was falling… and much worse than floating. But her husband just lay there like a dead animal.
Not that she could see him. Her vision was like an old fashioned jig saw puzzle with the pieces still in the box. And the sound of her vomiting, and his, seemed to echo and split and merge in her head.
She clutched and clutched at the bed and her husband but nothing seemed to help this impossible feeling so she lay back down, temporarily not heaving, hardly even daring to breath. She lay still and breathed as shallowly as she could and the universe seemed to settle inside of her, if only a little bit. She tried, or thought of trying, to speak, but somehow she had no idea how to do so. There seemed to be no connection between herself, her thoughts, and her mouth. She seemed to be apart from herself, standing aloof, looking on, at herself, in shock and horror.
So she lay there unmoving her eyes glued to the ceiling. The lights must have been turned back up, as the room seemed suddenly intolerably bright. The ceiling was a dull gray, so the jigsaw pieces all seemed to blur together.
And then another wave of nausea overcame her and she hurled. Instinctively she sat up but she quickly realized that that made everything a thousand times worse, so she lay back, and suffered in stillness.
It seemed like hours she lay there, the slightest thought of moving casting her into disorientation; her thoughts, vision, and hearing disconnected from reality. Hours while the jigsaw puzzles of her sight slowly and erratically connected themselves into something approaching normalcy.
“How… how are you doing?” Tom whispered.
“Awful,” Illoia admitted. She liked to pretend she was always in control, but there was no way she could keep up that pretense now… laying in a pool of her own vomit and unable to lift her head in the slightest.
Speaking turned out to have been a mistake, she admitted after another wave of nausea and retching. And the voices echoed and merged around her brain for another eternity.
“Hold still,” she heard Tom rasp out and, to her horror, she saw him start to move. Her horror, because his naked body multiplied itself in insane pieces and seemed to bounce around the room. She closed her eyes and tried to cope with merely the movement of the mattress and the insanity of the sound of his movement, and then the faucet.
“Drink,” he commanded, and she felt the nozzle of a cup placed against her lips, and felt liquid drizzle against them. She opened her mouth, sipped, wretched, and sipped again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and the words did not play as much havoc as her simple ‘awful’ had before.
“I hope you’ll be able to keep that,” he said. “But even if you have to heave, it is better with something in your stomach.”
She heard him scooshing more and more and, finally, unable to contain her curiosity, she opened her eyes. Amidst the chaos of her vision she thought she saw him sitting up at the door, reaching out. “What… are you… doing?” she managed.
“Going to freshen, and get rags,” he whispered, the words crashing around the room before she could make sense of them.
“Naked?!” she hissed.
“There is no article 4 after a jump,” he said. “There won’t be for hours. And besides, only seasoned military are likely to be up, not many wives and such.”
“Why…?”
“Your sense of smell hasn’t returned. When it does, well, you will find out just how awful that can be.”
He triggered the door and staggered out into the hallway. The light from the hallway hit Illoia like a runaway flitter and she frantically closed her eyes, trying not to heave. She heard noises from the hallway which, like the light, battered at her abused senses.
It seemed forever before she heard a noise at the door and then, thankfully, the door slid closed. She opened one wary eye and saw her husband standing, fully dressed, with a pile of rags, bending down to start wiping up the bed. As he moved the rag efficiently around, she managed to whisper, “Thank you. I’m so sorry…”
“Sorry? Why? It’s your first time. After our next few moves you’ll be getting up to wipe down our offspring. It has never felt any better, for me, but I have been able to control my reaction better, somehow. I suppose it is like flitter pilots getting used to all of those turns and things they do.”
He had reached the mattress next to her and suddenly, to her horror, she realized he was preparing to wipe HER down. “You don’t have to do that!” she whispered. It was humiliating to be lying here like this, as if she were an infant having her nappy changed.
“Nonsense,” he said, plying the towel in a business like manner, “Your sense of smell will return soon. So will mine, for that matter.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“After jump the body, the nerves, have to ‘reboot’. The basic functions restart first.. The heart, the lungs. Healthy people have nothing to fear, although people with heart conditions need to be monitored as occasionally a bad heart will just stop. Or start quivering or something.”
“Then the most basic senses return, although not happily. Vision, hearing, and a very confused balance. The more distant senses, as the body perceives them, take longer. So taste, touch, smell… these all wait a while, then come back with a vengeance.”
“Oh…” she said, trying to imagine the horror of a sense of taste running amuck.
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books include:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
Arthur also has a substack, and a website.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von