A few minutes later...
Usually, it's pretty obvious when somebody starts to wake up in an ambulance. There's a change in breathing, one of the monitors will ping, or at the very least the patient will groan and ask where they are.
But mister bloody, well, one minute he's still and silent as the dead, barely a beep coming from his monitor, and the next he's got his eyes open and he's giving me the coldest stare I've ever seen. He struggles for a moment against the tie downs holding him into the gurney, and then he relaxes and his eyes close again. A moment later, he takes a deep breath, his eyes flutter open, and he give the obligatory groan. I'm back into familiar territory, until he rasps out, "Damn, an ambulance."
Overcoming the momentary strangeness - you get a lot of strangeness out here, and I pretty used to it now - I try to calm him down. Struggling will only make the internal bleeding worse. "Lay still, don't try to talk. You've got..."
He cuts in over me, like he doesn't much care what's wrong with him. "Do me a favor."
I'm kind of used to this. Usually from the ones that know they're going to die. He's a pretty likely candidate, though the fact that he even regained consciousness is a good sign. Humoring him might be enough to keep him still. "Sure."
"Don't take these straps off me. No matter what else I say or ask for."
I stare at him blankly for a second.
"Later, I might ask you to loosen them up or something. Don't do it. I don't want to kill you."
That last bit gets my attention. The anger on my face must have beat out the what I was going to say, because he cut over me again.
"I'm not threatening, just stating a fact. I don't want to kill you, or anyone else. But if you let me up, I will. I won't be able to help it."
This is strange enough to stop what I was going to say. Puzzled, I watch him for a quiet minute, but he seems to be content to sit quietly. Finally, I ask him something that's been bothering me. "Who are you?"
He pauses to give this a bit of thought, and then gives me a sly grin. "No, I'm with the other ones now. The ones who draw up borders, control currency, handle all the decisions that happen transparently around us? I'm with them. Same group, different department."
It takes me a minute to place the refference, then understanding dawns. I'd walked right into that.
We'd picked him up off a reaver ship, after all. "So I should call you Justin then?"
'Justin' nods thoughtfully. "It's as good a name as any."
"I'm Jeff. Nice to meet you. I'd offer to shake, but..." He smiles vaguely at my lame attempt at a joke, and I re-check the monitors. His respiration is steady, now. And his heartbeat is stronger.
Blood pressure is up to a more normal level. It looks like the IV is helping. The other one is still out, but stable.
There's another moment of uncomfortable silence then. A reaver. Or a zwilnik, a boskone, a dark empirial. There are a dozen names for the 'fraction' that lived off of everyone else (including each other). I'd never met one before, and honestly I was curious.
"So, um...why?"
"Why what?"
I hesitated. It was probably rude to ask, but curiosity won out. It was still a long trip to the moon. "Why did you join the...um..." I couldn't think of a polite way to put it.
"Why am I a zwilnik, you mean? Why are you flying in an ambulance in space?"
I'm used to people who don't like to answer questions. I decided to humor him. "I like to help people. It..."
He interrupts me again. "No. Not the platitudes and rationalizations you tell yourself now that you're here. Not your inner reasonings and internal dialogues. There was no moment in your life when you got up in the morning and said, 'I think that I want to be an ambulance driver'. No. There was a desk, and a chair, and a pen, and a standardized form. It had checkboxes on it. Or maybe a computer screen with a standardized form. Forget about how you felt at the time. Forget about what you think you were thinking. For some external reason, it was very important that you choose the right checkboxes - your grades, your image, your parents, maybe even your ethics. And because you picked those checkboxes over some of the others, you ended up in an ambulance. And because you were different from everyone else, you managed to get your hands on a bucket of goop that could make your ambulance fly. And because everyone else was doing it, you poured some of that goop into the engine of your ambulance, and took off into space. Am I right?"
I nod. He might have been right. I mean, I never really had decided to be an ambulance driver. I'd applied for the job, but by the time I'd gotten out of college it was the only job I was qualified for.
"I had a standardized form too, the first time. I checked the boxes that made me a computer programmer. It wasn't hard work. And when Fen started taking off into space, I studiously avoided the super-goop. That kind of thing can get you fired from my kind of job. And I liked my job. And in the end, it didn't matter anyway. There is no desk and chair and standardized form before you become a zwilnik. Those are just ornaments. And what you're thinking at the time usually doesn't matter much, either. It was everything else - my family, my image, my life. 'What do you want?' is a good question, but in most situations a better one is, 'What do you not want?'"
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm just going to post this as I finish bits of it.
Once I'm done with this story, I'm giving the ship and crew (Jeff, Sally, and the Mission) over to the community at large as characters. 'Justin' may or may not make additional appearances. I'll do his writeup after I'm finished with this.
The speed needn't be a definite thing, I simply wanted a vehicle that went significantly faster when the lights and sirens were going, because that felt more appropriate.
Other comments appreciated, especially in the realm of literary criticism. If this is boring you or dragging on, tell me. My writing tends to be wordy, and I can't self-editorialize very well.
(edit-fix formatting)
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84
Usually, it's pretty obvious when somebody starts to wake up in an ambulance. There's a change in breathing, one of the monitors will ping, or at the very least the patient will groan and ask where they are.
But mister bloody, well, one minute he's still and silent as the dead, barely a beep coming from his monitor, and the next he's got his eyes open and he's giving me the coldest stare I've ever seen. He struggles for a moment against the tie downs holding him into the gurney, and then he relaxes and his eyes close again. A moment later, he takes a deep breath, his eyes flutter open, and he give the obligatory groan. I'm back into familiar territory, until he rasps out, "Damn, an ambulance."
Overcoming the momentary strangeness - you get a lot of strangeness out here, and I pretty used to it now - I try to calm him down. Struggling will only make the internal bleeding worse. "Lay still, don't try to talk. You've got..."
He cuts in over me, like he doesn't much care what's wrong with him. "Do me a favor."
I'm kind of used to this. Usually from the ones that know they're going to die. He's a pretty likely candidate, though the fact that he even regained consciousness is a good sign. Humoring him might be enough to keep him still. "Sure."
"Don't take these straps off me. No matter what else I say or ask for."
I stare at him blankly for a second.
"Later, I might ask you to loosen them up or something. Don't do it. I don't want to kill you."
That last bit gets my attention. The anger on my face must have beat out the what I was going to say, because he cut over me again.
"I'm not threatening, just stating a fact. I don't want to kill you, or anyone else. But if you let me up, I will. I won't be able to help it."
This is strange enough to stop what I was going to say. Puzzled, I watch him for a quiet minute, but he seems to be content to sit quietly. Finally, I ask him something that's been bothering me. "Who are you?"
He pauses to give this a bit of thought, and then gives me a sly grin. "No, I'm with the other ones now. The ones who draw up borders, control currency, handle all the decisions that happen transparently around us? I'm with them. Same group, different department."
It takes me a minute to place the refference, then understanding dawns. I'd walked right into that.
We'd picked him up off a reaver ship, after all. "So I should call you Justin then?"
'Justin' nods thoughtfully. "It's as good a name as any."
"I'm Jeff. Nice to meet you. I'd offer to shake, but..." He smiles vaguely at my lame attempt at a joke, and I re-check the monitors. His respiration is steady, now. And his heartbeat is stronger.
Blood pressure is up to a more normal level. It looks like the IV is helping. The other one is still out, but stable.
There's another moment of uncomfortable silence then. A reaver. Or a zwilnik, a boskone, a dark empirial. There are a dozen names for the 'fraction' that lived off of everyone else (including each other). I'd never met one before, and honestly I was curious.
"So, um...why?"
"Why what?"
I hesitated. It was probably rude to ask, but curiosity won out. It was still a long trip to the moon. "Why did you join the...um..." I couldn't think of a polite way to put it.
"Why am I a zwilnik, you mean? Why are you flying in an ambulance in space?"
I'm used to people who don't like to answer questions. I decided to humor him. "I like to help people. It..."
He interrupts me again. "No. Not the platitudes and rationalizations you tell yourself now that you're here. Not your inner reasonings and internal dialogues. There was no moment in your life when you got up in the morning and said, 'I think that I want to be an ambulance driver'. No. There was a desk, and a chair, and a pen, and a standardized form. It had checkboxes on it. Or maybe a computer screen with a standardized form. Forget about how you felt at the time. Forget about what you think you were thinking. For some external reason, it was very important that you choose the right checkboxes - your grades, your image, your parents, maybe even your ethics. And because you picked those checkboxes over some of the others, you ended up in an ambulance. And because you were different from everyone else, you managed to get your hands on a bucket of goop that could make your ambulance fly. And because everyone else was doing it, you poured some of that goop into the engine of your ambulance, and took off into space. Am I right?"
I nod. He might have been right. I mean, I never really had decided to be an ambulance driver. I'd applied for the job, but by the time I'd gotten out of college it was the only job I was qualified for.
"I had a standardized form too, the first time. I checked the boxes that made me a computer programmer. It wasn't hard work. And when Fen started taking off into space, I studiously avoided the super-goop. That kind of thing can get you fired from my kind of job. And I liked my job. And in the end, it didn't matter anyway. There is no desk and chair and standardized form before you become a zwilnik. Those are just ornaments. And what you're thinking at the time usually doesn't matter much, either. It was everything else - my family, my image, my life. 'What do you want?' is a good question, but in most situations a better one is, 'What do you not want?'"
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm just going to post this as I finish bits of it.
Once I'm done with this story, I'm giving the ship and crew (Jeff, Sally, and the Mission) over to the community at large as characters. 'Justin' may or may not make additional appearances. I'll do his writeup after I'm finished with this.
The speed needn't be a definite thing, I simply wanted a vehicle that went significantly faster when the lights and sirens were going, because that felt more appropriate.
Other comments appreciated, especially in the realm of literary criticism. If this is boring you or dragging on, tell me. My writing tends to be wordy, and I can't self-editorialize very well.
(edit-fix formatting)
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84