Editing Unanchored

<span style="color:#800000"> '''''A short scene where Rina fills Joshua in on a few things.  Thanks, Andy!''''' </span>



'''Wednesday, 08 Jan 2421''' <br>
'''Blue Sun Shuttle''' <br>
'''En route to Londinium''' <br>
'''White Sun (Bai Hu) system''' <br>
'''0930hrs, ships time''' <br>

I dragged onto the shuttle at Blue Sun HQ rather as I'd had evacced off that hospital roof in Memphis: dazed, hurting and bleeding from every orifice I owned. ''Déjà vu'' was strong, the imperative to get the hell out stronger, and it was with some relief I gained the shuttle and slammed the hatch shut after the others had boarded. Nika was in little better shape than I but she got herself in the pilot's chair and got us out of there. Working my end of things was hard. The sonic device had done enough damage that simply moving was taxing, making my pulse race and my head light. Once we were free of atmo and I was certain that the engines could go on without me, I lay right down on the deck and racked out.

'''***'''

Joshua sat on a bench in the shuttle , staring at the datachip he held in his hand. One tiny chip supposedly containing all the information Blue Sun had on him. Hopefully, this had been worth it, because the crew had certainly paid a price in physical damage to get it. And he, as usual, had been little to no help. All of things, he had passed out on the way into the medical record area, probably due to lack of sleep and drugs. On the way out, he was sealed in a body bag for most of it. It was no wonder Rick had suggested leaving him behind for the Colchester mission. 

At least he had gotten some drugs. Not Flomoxipan, but whatever Arden had found seemed to be doing the trick. The almost constant pressure from keeping people out was starting to ease off. As that weight came off, he felt exhaustion take its place. The combination of the pain from the wounds that the sonic device inflicted on top of the struggle to maintain his sanity over the last six days had him worn out. Not even caring where he was, he closed his eyes and fell asleep almost instantaneously, only taking a minute to tuck the datachip with his life on it safely away.

'''***'''

'''09 Jan 2521'''

I woke to the beeping of my watch, turned the alarm off and saw with some surprise it was 0530. I'd slept dead to the world for nearly twenty hours. Someone had thought to throw a blanket over me and a folded one pillowed my head. I rose gingerly off the deck, sore from sleeping on the hard surface, but nothing leaked out of me and I obeyed my internal prodding for the head.

The shuttle had one at the rear and after tucking myself into the closet-sized compartment I took care of business as best I could. Some of our precious drinking water and my handkerchief got the worst of the muck off my hands and face but the rest of me would have to wait.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The past two months had been hard ones and despite the respite gained traveling between systems I still hadn't recovered the tone I'd lost. Or the weight. My face had that gaunt look favored by the fashionable and the skin around my eyes was dark from fatigue. To be sure, I'd just had my insides scrambled by the Blue Sun sonics and having been through that process once already, I knew no one looked right afterward. Still, I finally saw what the others must have noticed weeks ago--I'd been pushing too hard, running on empty for too long. Sooner or later something was going to give and it wasn't fair to the others to have that threat hanging over them. It would take us three days to reach Londinium and Colchester and I resolved to use that time to heal up as best I could. ''Because what happens next isn't going to be a cakewalk.'' I snapped off the light and quit the head.

It was dim in the main shuttle compartment. I saw Nika curled up in a blanket, lying across two of the passenger seats. Arden slept likewise across the aisle from her, his blanket pulled up to his nose. Closer aft, one of the benches held our gear--what there was of it--and I recognized Joshua under a blanket on the bench opposite. Rick and Zed were nowhere I could see, but hatch to the cockpit stood ajar and light gleamed low beyond it. Straining my ears above the hum of the engines, I could make out the murmur of conversation and I left them to it. If they were content to man the helm while the rest of us slept, I wasn't about to argue the watch arrangement. For one thing, it left me free to check on Joshua.

I knelt on the deck and regarded him a minute. The lights overhead were dim but still bright enough to see he'd suffered from the sonics as I had, as we'd all had. I ducked back into the head to dampen my bandana further, grabbed a self-heat at random from our stores, and knelt before him again. I gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

"Joshua," I said, keeping my voice low to avoid disturbing the others. "Wake up."

'''***'''

As he felt Rina's presence and touch on his hand, Joshua slowly emerged into waking, rubbing his eyes groggily. It had been a dreamless sleep. Or at least a sleep with dreams too weak to maintain their hold on his brain. "What time is it? Was I asleep long?”

'''***'''

"Almost oh-six-hundred. It's tomorrow. Here, eat something," I said. I pulled the tab off the self-heat and felt it grow warm. "Careful, it's hot."

'''***'''

He held the container up to his lips and took a sip of the warm soup. It tasted fantastic and warmed his throat as it went down. He hadn't eaten much the last few days and the soup tasted as good as some of the finest meals he ever had. "Thank you," he said quietly. "Are you doing ok?"

Rina looked worn out, pale and faded like a photograph left out in the sun too long, a mere shadow of herself. After Colchester, whatever the cost, they had to find some downtime to start recovering. ''Or we might not make it through the next job.''

'''***'''

"Okay enough," I hedged. The base of the bench was a row of storage hatches and I sat and leaned against them. I nodded at what Joshua held. "How's the soup?"

'''***'''

"Amazing. Didn't realize how hungry I was. Or how tired I was, it seems." As he said it, he took another sip of soup and looked around him at the crew sleeping huddled across chairs. 

''Tired and hungry in a former prison shuttle...not exactly how I pictured life outside of Blue Sun.'' 

That was the beauty of life, he supposed. It had the ability to whack you upside the head when it took a direction you never anticipated. He took a hand and rubbed Rina's leg in a comforting motion. "Thanks. Not for the food, but for being willing to wander into Blue Sun HQ for no benefit other than getting some information Valerie and I needed. You really deserve better than to be constantly beaten up like this."

'''***'''

“And if the situation had been reversed?  What if it were me and I needed to get records from my past out of there?  Would you have helped? Or refused?” I could see where this was going and I wanted to head it off at the pass.  Self-pity was a luxury none of us could afford.

'''***'''

"Of course I would have. And I'd say I deserve better than to get beat up all the time. But I don't get beat up all that often." And Joshua smiled at Rina to let her know he was doing okay. "Now, on the other hand," he went on, "I would've failed miserably helping you as I would have passed out halfway to the mission point due to lack of drugs and you would've been left without any of your records. Perhaps we should move on from this little alternate reality." 

He took another sip of soup. He hadn't realized until now how much his failures were starting to upset him. His constant reliance on the crew and his inability to give much back. In the past, he would've gotten depressed. Now he was starting to get angry. But unlike depression, he thought, anger can be channeled.

''Find a way to make yourself useful. You were a freaking Blue Sun secret agent, for god's sake.'' 

Distasteful as that past was, it also served as a reminder that he had skills to bring to bear. It was just a matter of finding the right way to use them for the benefit of his friends.

'''***'''

"I didn't ''intend'' to get beat up," I said, annoyed that he was being obtuse. "My point is, we did it because you're ''crew''. That makes you family. And as for failing, that's a load of bullshit. Everyone else would still have been there and we'd have still pulled it off. Your argument's flawed, Joshua, but I wouldn't say no to a little less beating up. Here," I added and gave him my dampened bandanna. "You might want to clean up. I don't think red's your best color."

'''***'''

He took the offered bandanna and starting wiping his face. As he moved it across his face, the cloth came up with dried blood. He looked at her with his head tilted to the side so he could clear an ear from where the sonics had caused blood to drip out. "I know that," he replied in an exasperated tone. "Just because I'm crew doesn't mean you don't deserve to get thanked for helping me anyway."

Joshua moved the cloth to his hands where his fingernails were crusted with dark red blood. His fingernails! That sonic device was both amazing and terrifying at the same time.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Just frustrated for basically being useless in a mission mostly about me located in my former home territory. Still no reason for me to snap."

'''***'''

“Okay, I’ll buy that one.” I’d taken the soup to keep it from spilling and ventured a sip without thinking.  My eyebrows rose.  “This is good,” I said of the soup, then realizing what I’d done, I grimaced.  “Sorry.  Still want it?”

'''***'''

"You need to eat too and you look worse than I do, honestly. Go ahead and finish it." Joshua's stomach rumbled at him in complaint, but his brain had control at the moment. Thankfully.

"Regardless of my...uselessness, at least we came out of Human Resources with," and he reached into his pocket and pulled out the datachip. "something..."

He stared at it again intently, as if the encrypted data would reveal itself to him if he looked hard enough. "Don't know what, but something, at least.”

'''***'''

"Thanks," I said for the soup and drained it in one go. I rose and pulled another from our supplies and gave it to him. I nodded at the chip he held. "As for the rest, I'd say it was worth a bloody nose."

I sat down on the bench next to him and stretched my legs out in front of me. I regarded my boots and sighed.

"I suppose you'd like to hear what happened during your blackout?"

'''***'''

He pocketed the chip with one hand and opened the soup with the other in a smooth motion. "Something happened during my blackout? I just assumed you carted my unconscious body to the records office."

'''***'''

''Shit''.

"Not exactly." I slid a look at him. "You had...I don't know. A waking dream, I suppose you could call it."

'''***'''

"Ooookay," Joshua said calmly. "Really, the last 3 days felt like a single, long fever dream. I mean, if I had to take a quiz to identify what was real and what was a dream, I would fail."

He looked at Rina curiously. "We got through the mission okay. We got the results, even if it wasn't smooth. But you said,'' 'I suppose you want to know...' ''" He took a sip of soup, giving his thoughts a chance to percolate for a minute. Something about the way she said it...it was odd. As he was swallowing a second sip, he realized. 

"I must have done something really freaky if you think that I would want or need to know." He winced as he thought of the possibilities. "Did I read one of the crew? If I did, I'm sorry, but at least I don't remember anything about it."

'''***'''

''Damn.  He's quick.  Too quick by half.''

"No."  I shook my head, even as I wondered how anyone would know if he'd had.  I'd felt nothing the night he'd read me.  ''Worry about that later.''  "You recognized something and you went off after it before we could stop you.  Thing was, it was plain as day you saw something we couldn't."

'''***'''

"I recognized some''thing''." That ruled out having recognized someone he knew in a drugless addled haze. That had been unlikely anyway, as that certainly would have derailed the whole thing. Then the rest of her statement caught up with his thought process. "Wait. You couldn't see what I was seeing? So I was hallucinating. I got us lost?"

'''***'''

"Not exactly lost. Just sidetracked." I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, the better to remember. "Hallway behind a light blue door. White and clean. Doors. You were looking around at...well, whatever you saw, but you moved like you were coming home. You opened a door, walked into a room that was obviously some sort of quarters. There was a bed--pallet, really, no mattress. Bare walls. No furniture. And you said something like, 'I always hated that art'. And you were moving around stuff that wasn't there or maybe stuff that used to be there but wasn't anymore." I shook my head and frowned, thinking hard. "You were ... mumbling and looking for something. I saw you grabbing air, moving things around and opening drawers. I don't know what you were looking for. You...it was almost like the refinery platform. You were physically present but you were somewhere else."

I opened my eyes and looked up at him.

"Getting your attention was practically impossible. Calling your name didn't work. Kissing you didn't work. You were... somewhere else."

'''***''' 

"I said something about hating the art?" Joshua asked as he shook his head in amazement. Blue Sun cleared out the space pretty damn quck. Less than six months and they emptied his apartment. Guess they didn't have any plans on bringing him back there. "I must have lead you straight to my apartment in Human Resources. I despised the art they gave me. Must have been creepy watching me fumble around a cleaned out apartment. Hell, it creeps me out a little imagining it, but like I said, without the drugs, I was not in a good place."

Not in a good place might be slightly downplaying it. If he ever wanted to get clear of the drugs, he had a lot of work ahead of him.

He walked through Rina's story in his head and realized there still must be a piece missing. "When I woke up, I had a brutal headache. Was that from reaction to the hallucinations and passing out? Or did I..." 

''Crap.''

"I got into a fight with one of you, didn't I?"

'''***'''

“Not a fight, no,” I sighed.  “Time was getting short and we had to go. I…knocked you out from behind and Arden threw you over his shoulder and we got you out of there.  I’m sorry, but nothing else we tried worked.  And there’s something else you should know.”  I paused, reluctant to damage his equilibrium further. “We first met you going on six months ago, right?  In June.  On ''Trafalgar''.  The HQ building was spotless. So was that hallway you found.  But that apartment?  It had a layer of dust on it a millimeter thick.  Joshua, you could not have been in that apartment only six months ago.  It had to have been at least a year.  At least.  So…where were you?”

'''***'''

"What?" The question escaped his lips without even really intending to ask it. "You're sure?"

Joshua tried to run through the possibilities. Maybe it was a set of lookalike apartments and he had been housed somewhere else. Although in that case, how did he lead the crew there? Or maybe Rina misremembered.

Or maybe, he admitted, Blue Sun had been faking his memories his entire life. It certainly wouldn't be outside their ethics or technical reach.

'''***'''

“Well, I didn’t ''measure'' the dust. I only eyeballed it.” I bit my lip.  “So it might have been less than a millimeter thick.  The important thing is, the room hadn’t been used for longer than six months.  And before you start panicking, it could be Blue Sun had you in a cryo unit between jobs.  So a week or a day between places on the job as you remember it could have been months if you’d been in cryo.”

Put that way, it seemed too much work on Blue Sun’s part to be plausible.  ''But then again, how much work has Blue Sun put into Joshua already?  Years. At least a decade. What’s twelve more months stacked against that?''

'''***'''

He shrugged as he put his soup down and slumped his head in his left hand. "No need to worry about panic. I think, somewhere along the way, I've lost the ability to care whether my life and memories are faked or real or some sort of dream. You tell me something indicating there's a chance that none of my memories are real and what's my response?" He lifted his head up and shrugged again, this time an exaggerated motion, both hands up in the air.

"If they're faking this set of memories, let me say right now, 'you guys are doing one hell of a job'." And as he said it, he raised a big thumbs up to the imaginary Blue Sun dream engineers. 

He took Rina's hands in his and gave them a squeeze. "Even if it turns out I'm as empty inside as the void of deep space with about as much foundation, I still have the here and now and who I am in this moment. I just have to tell the past to take the flying leap." And he wasn't going to be too concerned with the future either. When the normally stable past was an earthquake fault, then why even try and worry about the uneven future? Especially the one that had Mike Carter returning in it, he thought in a sudden fit of irrational jealousy. He squeezed Rina's hands a little tighter. ''I guess when you have no past, you get a little concerned about losing your here and now.''

'''***'''

"Empty? No. No one could feel what you do and be empty." I squeezed his hands back. "And what you're becoming is more important than what you were. Knowing your past is helpful but it's not all you are. You know that, right?"

'''***'''

Joshua nodded. "I know. But it feels weird thinking that things that I thought I knew because I learned and loved them were just given to me by Human Resources." He took a deep breath. "Let me step back. It's possible, certainly, that my memories are real, just not at that location. Maybe Blondie would know."

'''***'''

Seeing the coast was clear, I rose to my knees and wrapped my arms around Joshua, soup and all.

“This is real. I’m real. You’re real,” I whispered into his ear and kissed him.

'''***'''

Joshua pulled Rina into him and deepened the kiss, holding it until the taste of her lingered on his lips after the kiss ended. 

''She was real. He was real. This was real.'' He repeated the words in his head over and over, until two cynical words wormed their way into the repetition.

''For now.''

'''***'''
  

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