Excerpt of Intergalactic Witness Protection

 

Thankfully, I make sure that all intercom transmissions directed toward Orion go to me alone, because I get a message the moment Orion’s bedroom door closes behind me.

“Reverend Shipping and Captain Orion,” Rose says through the wireless intercoms that I’m intercepting. “Please come to the med-bay immediately. Silas is regaining consciousness.”

A moment later, my mechanical body makes its way into the med-bay, several beats behind the Reverend.

“What are his stats?” Reverend Shipping asks as he rounds the bed and takes his son’s fleshy hand in his.

Rose glances between the monitor and the boy who is stirring in his hospital bed. “He’s stable, and doesn’t seem to be in any pain. But the medication is wearing off enough to pull him out of his sleep.”

The elder Shipping takes a sharp intake of breath, and my scanner says his anxiety levels are raising. But his face is the picture of peace.

Then his son’s eyes open.

For a moment, Silas Shipping blinks at the world, and I know from years of serving as Orion’s alarm clock that the boy sees nothing clearly yet. But he keeps blinking, and then his gaze lands on his father’s face. “Dad?”

Reverend Shipping squeezes his son’s hand. “I’m here, son. I’ll always be here.”

Rose winces, no doubt waiting for a repeat from before.

Silas takes a deep breath of his oxygen mask. In, then out. “But mom...”

“Will always be here,” Shipping gently touches his hand over his son’s chest. “In spirit.”

The younger Shipping closes his eyes, but that fails to prevent a drop of liquid from leaking out. “At least… she’s not… in pain?”

Reverend Shipping nods sadly, and there is no mistaking the sheen of tears in his own eyes. “Are you in pain, son?”

Silas looks down over his body, winces, and then looks away. “How can I be, when so much of it isn’t even me anymore?”

Rose steps forward. “It is still very much you, Silas. Humans have been implementing lost or broken body parts with wood, metal, or even glass for centuries. That is what makes us human; our ability to find a way to survive.”

Reverend Shipping waits for Rose to finish her standard spiel to amputee patients to reach over and grab his son’s metallic hand as well. “Your soul is still all you, son. And your spirit. Nothing medicine, pain, or even death can do about that.”

Sighing, Silas lowers his gaze, and I wish I could detect the soul and the spirit as well as the body, because something in his body language tells me that Silas’s is dying.

Unfortunately, I have no protocol for that.