The Anomaly

Waking up, again

Ernest felt his consciousness coming back to him, despite his every instinct fighting to prevent it. He was lying in his own bed, in his own room. As his awareness congealed, around a core of head pain and over a substrate of nausea, the first self-willed act of his mind was to reach back to the night before: to his meeting with The Capt'n, to his talk of the luridly named 'Vortex', their reminiscences of the good old days. The old stories that had rambled ever wider as the drinks kept coming. Then what? Somehow he had got home. He had no recollection of how.

Sitting up in bed only made his headache worse, but there was no alternative. He tottered across the room to the kitchenette, filled a glass with water and drank it down. Miramar Station was clean to the edge of sterility; the grit that Ernest was feeling could only be metaphorical. He felt contaminated by fine dust: behind his eyes, between his teeth, most especially coating the gears of his brain, so much so that every attempt at thought served only to remind himself of his discomfort.

The scene around him was utterly familiar. The same alien walls with their filigree markings: he stared at them a moment too long and felt the beginnings of that vertigo pull of their spiral patterns. Scared he might vomit, he pulled himself away, turning instead to the food cupboard in hope that something there might settle his stomach. 

Some time later, with the initial shock of the hangover now having settled back to a sustained weariness, he left his room and set out for the docks and his place of employment. He passed few people on the way, but then this was normal for Miramar Station. His customary hangover cure – perhaps it would be better termed his self-penance – was to work it off with physical activity. If nothing else, it filled up the hours it would take for his body to rid itself of the poison.

"Sorry, Misery. Got nothing for you today." Cedric, the dock master, grinned to himself at Ernest's obvious predicament. "A couple of pills, and sleep it off. That's my advice."

Ernest shook his head. It was a point of perverse personal pride, but he would never accept chemical solace for his misery, no matter that it had been chemically induced in the first place. He'd got himself into this state, some inner self intoned, and he wasn't one to be ducking the consequences of his actions.

"Nothing at all?" he asked.

"Sorry mate, not a single ship in port at the moment." He paused, reacting to the questioning look in Ernest's eyes. "Dunno what you said to that friend of yours, last night, but it seems he took off in a hurry during the wee hours."

"The Capt'n? Already?" Ernest's thought processes were slower than normal this morning, but they usually got there in the end. A suspicion began to grow.

Among the dock master's privileges was access to the surveillance video. The pair of them sat watching as Ernest and The Capt'n staggered through the docks and on to the ship. A quick fast-forward and there he was again, now in a wheelchair of all things, pushed by a young woman with The Capt'n blundering along beside. A short while later they came back in shot, the wheelchair empty and no sign of Ernest. Not long after, the ship departed.

They had lodged a flight plan, as formalities required, but Ernest didn't bother to look at what he knew would be a work of fiction. He knew where they were going, he just didn't know where that "where" was.

His eye's narrowed. "What the hell is the old bugger up to..."

"What is it?" His friend sounded concerned.

"I never forget. I know I get worse for wear, every now and again, but in the morning I always remember what happened the night before. But that," he nodded at the screen, "that's a complete blank."

"You reckon?" Cedric sounded doubtful. "You looked in a fair old state up there." He gestured at the video. "Then carted home in a wheelchair. Not really surprising is it, that you can't remember?"

Ernest shook his head. He wasn't that sort of drunk – no matter how intoxicated there was always part of him that retained its cold rationality. Call it his navigator's soul, if you must. It was, he suspected, what had prevented him from becoming an alcoholic, despite his best efforts. That and an intolerant metabolism that would expel the drink before it had a chance to rob him entirely of his wits. Alcohol, for Ernest, had never been more than a local anesthetic.

"He must have slipped me something. Takes me on board, ... keeps me there, ... gets rid of me. Then before you know it, he's off."

Cedric remained skeptical. "But why would he do that?"

Ernest grimaced, speaking to the now-empty video screen. "The bastard. I know what he's done. He's copied me. No wonder the hurry to get away."

Cedric looked at Ernest, harder now, as if his concern extended to his friend's sanity.

"Copied," said Ernest, snapping out of his own thoughts. "It's a thing you can do to people like me." Seeing bewilderment in the dock master's expression, Ernest sighed and said the words. "I used to work as a navigator."

"Really?" Cedric sounded impressed.

"Special implants. Still got 'em. Direct neural interconnect to the ship. That's how it works. A navigator doesn't just fly the ship, he becomes it. Hard to explain to someone who's never experienced it."

"I'd heard stories. But I never got to know a real one before. Now you're telling me I've been working with one for the last five years?" Cedric nodded to himself, as if this new information explained a lot.

"And those same implants," Ernest continued, his voice grim. "They can be used to copy your mind. To download it."

"You think this Capt'n bloke ...?"

Ernest nodded. "He must have had someone. Another navigator. A body with implants he could decant me into."

"What about the previous occupant?"

"Gone. Overwritten."