CHAPTER FOURTEEN
December 19, 2012 AD – 4:22 PM,
Middle of the Atlantic Ocean
19:22 GMT
• • • • •
“Dawnne, you need to stop wiggling. Are you hurting again?”
Luke was standing next to the bio-bed that had Dawnne Boudreaux face down in it. The medical exam bed could be reconfigured for both face-up and face-down positioning, like a massage table. It could also be indented from below to accommodate breasts. Dawnne was wiggling in the bed trying to get her fourteen year old breasts to fit into the cavity only partially designed to fit her small-sized body. Luke was trying to keep her intravenous drip line in her arm and check the blisters on her back. She wasn’t helping him.
He had given both of the children a mild painkiller. The injuries on their backsides were like a severely blistered burn, but not much more. Right now, Luke was ready to grab Dawnne’s raw shoulders and push her down onto the bed if she didn’t stop fidgeting. But he didn’t get the chance. She stopped moving and made a loud groan that could be heard clearly through the face opening in the bed.
“It doesn’t fit right.”
“Is it hurting you?”
Luke hadn’t checked closely when he put her on the bed and lowered the chest cavity. She was still topless, and he didn’t want to embarrass her. Because her injuries covered over half of her body, he couldn’t let her put on a gown top or sheet. Her and her brother were face-down on two of the bio-beds in the infirmary next to each other. Both of them had intravenous lines running into their arms. And both had oozing peeling skin on the entire back surface of their young bodies.
Luke had already cut the burned and melted swimming suit off her brother. Now he had to cut off the only piece of clothing left on the young girl. Her skimpy swimsuit bottom had melted from the intense radiation blast and was now attached to the top layer of skin on her buttocks. Luke had to use a spray-on local anesthetic to peel off the swim trunks and skin from Trés Boudreaux. The fifteen year old boy did not act manly during the procedure.
Dawnne now regretted her secret laughs at her brother during his swimming-trunkectomy. Luke had told Dawnne she was next when he walked over to her bio-bed a minute ago. She’d been fidgeting ever since. She finally stopped in a huff.
“No… It doesn’t hurt. It just doesn’t fit right.”
Luke leaned down and looked. Her small breasts were not touching the bottom of the sunken cavity in the padded, sensor-filled bed. He reached down below the bed frame then turned the pneumatic adjustment knob, and the cavity began to rise with a compressed air hiss. When he saw the side of her small breast start to bulge out slightly, he stopped the air.
“Is that better?” He stood up and walked over to the tray with the instruments before she could say anything. He glanced back and saw her start to wiggle again. He smiled to himself. He knew what she was doing; trying to delay the inevitable.
“Stop fidgeting, Dawnne… I have to get this melted cloth out of your skin… And you know this is gonna be uncomfortable… So stop putting it off.”
Dawnne knew she was busted. She stopped moving. She started whimpering a little bit, but mostly to herself.
Her mother and father were across the room on their own bio-beds. They were lying flat on their backs, and both had intravenous drip lines in their arms, but their bio-beds were tilted up at an angle so they could see their children. A small footstep was at the bottom of the mattress and had been adjusted to fit under their outstretched legs. Janine and Dwayne were both closely watching Luke as he worked on their daughter. Marshall stood next to Dwayne and checked his intravenous lines and the monitor data on the computerized screen above his bed.
The infirmary aboard the Moondance was a fully functional medical facility. In fact, it could function as a small operating room if necessary. The large room could be subdivided and sterilized in compartments. But right now, the room was in its fully open configuration. It had five beds that were mounted in the floor and could be lowered and raised pneumatically. They could also be tilted in virtually any direction.
Above the head of each bio-bed, was a tall screen mounted on the bulkhead wall, which displayed a computer generated outline of the patient in the bed. Sensors in the mat of each bed and around the perimeter of the frame were capable of reading basic metabolic information remotely. Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and a body scan of temperature were displayed numerically and graphically on the screen behind the bed. The tall screens were actually high-definition LED monitors, which had been turned vertically. The scanned outline of the patient’s body was centered in the vertical monitor, and the temperature scan from the bed was displayed inside the white outline. There were several tiny video and thermal infrared cameras above each bed, in the corners of the frame, and on the movable roll bar arm across the top of the mattress. The patient’s entire body could be photographed and video-recorded from head to toe without moving them.
The colors of the thermal reading above each bed made the outlined body look like it was colored by a kindergartner on LSD. Outside the body image were various charts of the metabolic data readings. Other types of data were also listed and monitored here. Any fluids that were being given intravenously, for instance, were monitored and graphically shown with level meters. The information wasn’t just for show, either. All of the information was routed from each bio-bed into a massive mainframe level computer that was located inside a shielded and cooled container behind a bulkhead wall.
The computer was programmed to have the medical knowledge-base of a large hospital staff. Diagnoses, treatments, and even multimedia instructions for everything from a stubbed toe to an emergency appendectomy were available from the on board Doctor Bot, as Marshall had begun calling the medical computer. Out of the six humans and one dog currently in the infirmary, only Marshall knew why he called the computer by that name. He was also the only one who knew what the unmarked wall section near the back bulkhead wall was for. This was where Marshall was subconsciously looking when he noticed his nephew staring back at him.
Luke had independently come to the conclusion that there were a lot of things on this boat only his uncle knew about. But he intended to figure them out. It had now become a game, and he didn’t lose at this sort of game.
Janine had been watching a moment earlier when Luke leaned down and looked at Dawnne’s naked breast while he adjusted the bed. Although Luke only briefly saw her daughter from the side, Janine had given Dwayne a look. He knew what it meant. Dwayne cleared his throat and spoke to Marshall.
“I honestly cannot tell you how grateful I am…”
Marshall jumped into the brief pause. “But?”
Dwayne smiled as he knew he was caught leading into a subject. He should have just come out and said it. These men deserved to be treated up front.
“You’re right… Let’s try that again. I have a few questions. I know you told us who you are. But why are you two out here, and why do you have a ship like this, which was obviously meant to handle what we just went through? And finally, what was that thing we just went through?” Then Dwayne looked Marshall straight in the eyes.
Marshall stopped working and returned the locked gaze.
“Fair question… You and your family got caught under the hole in the planet’s magnetic field, which is what we’re out here to study. My nephew, Luke, is a scientist at NASA. For the past several years, he’s been studying the hole in the field called the Atlantic Anomaly. That’s where you were when a really bad solar storm hit… the kind we’ve been having for the past year. You and your family got caught outside without an umbrella… a lead umbrella.”
Janine looked at Marshall. “Somebody should have warned people. We almost died.”
“They did have warnings, Sweetheart.” Dwayne was slowly nodding his head in understanding as he glanced over at his wife. “That’s why I had the lead-sheet panels installed in the top of the boat and under the deck.”
“T
hat would explain why you and your wife are not as burned as these two.” Luke joined the conversation from where he was peeling melted cloth off Dawnne’s butt cheeks. He talked through the surgical face mask he had put on to protect the young girl’s open, burned skin from his breath.
Suddenly, Dwayne felt the need to lighten the moment. It was starting to feel a little too tense. He needed to relax. He smiled at Luke across the room.
“Wait a minute. If we weren’t as burned as the kids, why did we have to drink that… that…”
Dwayne could not find the right words to describe the radiation shake that Doctor Tomkin had ordered everyone to drink. After tasting a sip, Dwayne had to see both Marshall and Luke drink theirs before he shot his down in three horrible gulps. He finally found some words to describe the thick brown liquid torment.
“… shark poop shake? Are you saying you made me drink that unnecessarily?” Then Dwayne made an authentic yuck face.
It worked. The mood lightened immediately, and everyone chuckled.
Luke started to ramble as he worked on Dawnne.
“Aw, come on. A little fresh shark liver for your alkoxy-glycerols. A little humic acid, in its sodium salt, of course. Some grape seed extract and fulvic acid, just in case you have any heavy metals in your system. Then you add soy-isolated protein, milk thistle and shiitake mushrooms. Plus some reishi, cats claw, red beet and green algae, a little fennel, green tea, quercetin, a dash of astragalus, ginkgo biloba with three types of ginseng… And of course, the real secret ingredient, fresh sea kelp and—”
He looked up and stopped mid-sentence. Everyone was staring. It was too much information. He almost whispered his next thought.
“… alfalfa…” Then he tried to recover, but it sounded like pleading. “Well, there’s a lot more stuff in it. It’s really good for you. It’ll help your immune system fight the radiation damage. It really works…”
Luke realized it was a tough crowd. Everyone was staring at him with a look that said, ‘We don’t care. It tasted like poop.’ He looked down and continued to peel off his young patient’s melted butt-skin and swimming suit. But, he finished with a joke.
“Yeah, I know it tasted bad. But you should see what it does for your teeth. They’ll be so white, you might get blinded.”
Now everyone laughed out loud. Trés spoke for the first time since his swimming-trunkectomy and the wailing.
“I kinda liked the way it tasted.”
His sister just groaned at him.
“Eeewwwwww.”
This generated more laughs; real laughs. Dwayne used the break to change the subject.
“Captain Marshall, I’d love to see the rest of your boat when you get a moment. I happen to be in the market for a new one just now.”
Everyone laughed again. It did everyone some good. Marshall looked at Dwayne between chuckles.
“Name’s just Marshall. The only one who calls me Captain is my first mate, Gilligan.” He looked over at Luke when he said this. Then he smiled when he looked back at Dwayne. “As soon as he clears you, I’ll be happy to show you around my little fishing boat, the Moondance.” He beamed with pride.
“Wow… This is a fishing boat? I never would have guessed that.” Dwayne looked around the infirmary with a bit of a confused expression. Luke jumped back into the conversation but kept working.
“You know, that’s what I keep saying, Dwayne. But ole Uncle Marshall over there has always led a pretty mysterious life. What was it everyone used to call you Uncle Marshall?” Then he stopped peeling and looked up at the group across the room, again. He smiled as he caught Marshall’s eye. Marshall was giving him that ‘don’t do it’ look.
Luke did it anyway.
“Oh yeah, I remember now. The ‘Black Sheep’ of the family… right?”
Marshall just smiled and took it in stride. He turned to Dwayne and spoke confidentially to him.
“See what you have to look forward to when they grow up, right? That’s why I never had any of ‘em.”
The laughter erupted again.
Even Lola the dog was grinning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
April 11, 1995 AD – 11:14 AM,
Unknown Testing Location, USA