That first night he didn’t sleep, but lay back on his cot and stared at a bubbled security monitor in the ceiling, wondering if this was a test.
The second doctor he encountered had an unflappably optimistic professional demeanor, and Mitchell distrusted her for no good reason except that nobody was that genuinely enthusiastic about anything. In spite of himself, Mitchell shook her hand after Baz escorted him to her lab.
Her space was a bit more inviting than other areas of the hospital. Handheld terminals lay strewn across the desk among forgotten drink bottles and writing implements. A sweater hung over the back of a chair. Photos shone from wall displays: image after image of human brains, parts color-coded and labeled.
A dark-skinned woman with short hair and an eager smile, she came around the desk. “Lieutenant Greenau? I’m Doctor Ava Keesey. I’ll be starting your therapy today.” She offered her hand.
“Not Doctor Dalton?”
“I’ve requested your case. I hope that’s all right?”
He didn’t know what his choices were to be able to make one, so he said nothing.
“Have a seat right over here, Lieutenant.” She guided him to a reclining chair surrounded by unidentifiable equipment. Gingerly, he climbed in; its cushions molded under him, supporting his body. The chair tipped back until he was horizontal.
“Any questions before we start?”
“Is the Drake still in dock?”
“I don’t know. I can check for you.”
Her smile was fake; he didn’t think she would check.
“What happened? Why was I brought here?”
“It’s better if you remember on your own, rather than construct false memories based on anything I tell you. If you can please keep your head back, I’d like to start the scan.” Her cool hand on his forehead eased him back against the headrest. “You’ve been through a cortical mapping session before, yes?”
“Yes.” Every navigator had one done at the start of their career. A baseline.
“Then you know all about this. Just relax.”
Machinery closed over his crown, sensors pressing against his scalp, tickling the fuzz of his hair. He looked straight up to off-white ceiling.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’d like you to move your left thumb. And again. Left index. And again. Left middle. And again.”
And so it went, through the range of motor skills, then across the range of sensory input. Keesey played music and noises, offered him tastes, put sandpaper and cotton into his hands, recording the results with straightforward efficiency.
“Now I’m going to show you some colors, each one for a few seconds. Pay attention, please.”
A screen swung into view over the chair and flashed to life, displaying solid blue, then green, then yellow.
He went to the navigator station, slid into his chair and belted in. Ready for the jump in three, two—the monitor showed a swirl of color. The wrong colors, circling like predators—
Orange, red, purple. Mitchell blinked. Solid squares appeared in sequence on the screen. Harmless.
“What is two plus two, Lieutenant?”
“Four.”
“Two times two?”
“Four.”
“Four times four?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen squared?”
“Two hundred fifty-six.”
Yellow, orange, red.
“Thank you.”
The wrong colors. They were the wrong colors.
Keesey moved away, her footsteps clicking on the hard floor of the lab. He remained locked in the chair, unable to turn his head.
“Can I sit up?”
“In a minute, Lieutenant.”
He wished he could see what she was doing. He heard clicks, movements, maybe fingers tapping on a keypad, or machinery shifting into place. All the sounds were inexplicable.
Mitchell waited a painful, silent minute before saying, “Doctor?”
“Patience, Lieutenant. I want to get a little more data.” Did her voice sound stressed? Uncertain?
She went through the entire sequence again, generating a second cortical map. Finally, she released him from the equipment.
“What’s wrong?” he said, sitting up.
Her smile didn’t seem any different than the one she gave him at the start of the session. “How much do you know about OSDS?”
Occupational Synaptic Dysfunction Syndrome. It was the bogeyman, the monster in the dark. The price they paid for crossing the void. Some people said M-drive propulsion violated the laws of physics, and the Universe took the cost of that somewhere else: in the minds of the navigators who plotted courses through the unreal. Their minds became… nonlinear.
“It affects the neural organization of the brain,” he said.
Keesey said, “It develops when some neurotransmitters don’t reach adjacent neurons but instead stimulate neurons in distant parts of the brain. Reducing the stimulation our patients receive can prevent the damage from getting worse by keeping faulty connections from developing. That means sheltering patients, perhaps more than seems reasonable. I’ll have some instructions for you once I’ve had a chance to study the scans.”
“You made two maps. Is that normal?”
“Just confirming the data, Lieutenant.”
She hadn’t believed what she saw the first time.
“But I don’t feel sick.” If he were really well, he wouldn’t have to keep saying it.
“And we want to keep you that way.”
She escorted him back to his quarters herself. He would never be allowed to just wander, would he? He was curious about every door, every branch in the corridor. Every place he couldn’t go. And where was the Drake now?
They’d almost reached his quarters when a scream rang out and echoed along the walls. The corridor curved to match the curve of the station; the scream came from ahead, just out of sight.
Keesey’s practiced demeanor slipped. “Stay here.” She gripped his arm and pushed him against the wall, as if she could stick him there.
When she trotted ahead, Mitchell followed her, to where Baz was half-helping, half-dragging a thirty-year-old man in a hospital jumpsuit through an open door. Mitchell couldn’t tell if they were trying to enter or leave what must have been the man’s quarters. Baz held the man’s shoulders, as if he were simply guiding him, but he stumbled, his legs buckling as if he couldn’t support himself. Disheveled brown hair hung around his shoulders, he held his hands over his ears, and his face was twisted in an anguished cry. He screamed again.
Keesey knelt by the patient and tried to take hold of his face.
“Morgan, look at me. Morgan! Focus!”
The man, Morgan, squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
Keesey said, “Baz, I can’t look after him now. Take him to the infirmary, and I’ll be there in a minute.” She pulled something out of her pocket—a patch—and slapped it on Morgan’s wrist. His struggles subsided; his moans continued.
The orderly nodded and lifted his burden, guiding Morgan along the corridor, past Mitchell, stopping every few steps as the man doubled over, then raising him up and continuing.
Keesey quickly took Mitchell’s arm and steered him back to his own room—just a couple of doors down from Morgan’s. She keyed it open with her wristband, and she urged him inside. He was being put away in a box.
“What’s wrong with him?” Mitchell asked.
“Get some rest, Mitchell. We’ll talk later about your treatment.”
“But—”
“He has OSDS, Mitchell.”
He sat at his tiny desk and pretended it was the Drake’s navigator station, the self-contained compartment located through a hatch at the fore of the equipment-laden bridge. Here, isolated from the bustle at the heart of the ship, he monitored the calculations that allowed the M-drive to fling the ship from one point to another across folded space. It was a mind-boggling journey, possible through a complex quirk of physics, comprehensible through advanced mathematics. Nevertheless, Mitchell was a romantic, and he could imagine the journey—not an instantaneous manipulation of space-time, but a race across the galaxy, stars flying past in a Dopplered rainbow of colors, the gas of nebulae swirling in his wake. The stuff of children’s adventure stories.