Author: Chaos

Note: Would you believe that this one was inspired by the ceiling of one of my classrooms? I fell asleep in class and when I woke up, the ceiling and those little white tiles were the first thing I saw.



It had started out as a tingling in his fingers and toes as he cleaned the fuel-injector for the racer. The morning was a cold one so Alex ignored it, thinking it nothing more than the result of the brisk air, as with a gentle touch he lovingly wiped the individual components free of oil, dirt and grit and refitted them into their places. The voices of the pit crew around him, as each joked and called out to others while they worked, melded into the workday song that he so enjoyed and more often than not took part in.

�Hey, Sis. Come get a load of this! You too, Alex.�

Over his left shoulder Alex watched as Chip, a paraplegic from birth, pushed his old fashioned wheelchair to a nearby table and waved a newly finished schematic at Chip�s sister, Lupe. The boy was forever coming up with new ways to improve the racer�s fusion efficiency or aerodynamics or safety parameters, and the excitement of the prodigy�s latest breakthrough pushed the odd sensation right out of Alex�s mind. So when two weeks later it had progressed to include his wrists and ankles it came as something of a surprise.

The day of the regional finals while Lupe piloted the racer over the course, Alex was mortified beyond all previous records when he tripped over his own feet and dropped the extra fusion motivator, resulting in the vital part being damaged beyond immediate use. It turned out all right since the one in the vehicle held up nicely and never required changing during the race, but still it was embarrassing. He�d never done anything like that before.

Alex had gone to the doctor then. The news was not good. They put him in a voice activated wheelchair then and there because not seven days later, as the doctors had predicted, walking and then even pushing himself became impossible. He was hospitalized a little over three months after that.

*******

The monitor blinked as he counted out loud. 36 . . . 37 . . . 38 . . . 39. It was the exact same as yesterday, the nurses never moved his head so all he saw was the ceiling. Thirty-nine whole tiles, the others at the edges of his vision were not clear enough to count. The same thirty-nine tiles as all last week, and the week before that. It felt as if he had been here, staring at those antiseptic white squares, for as long as he could remember, though he knew it had only been two and a half weeks.

He blinked and cursed the action because he knew he would do it again in exactly seven seconds. Struggle as he might he had not managed to blink more often than that for two weeks. He knew it was seven seconds because he had counted them for close to an hour a week ago. He would have cried from boredom if he could have.

Blink.

Blast that machine. I�m beginning to hate it.

Blink.

By now he was used to the tingle of electricity that stimulated the muscles controlling his eyelids. He hardly noticed.

Blink.

Stupid machines. Too many machines, not enough me. He wished again, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that he could sigh, but he could not control his breathing either. Not even the beating of his own heart was under his control.

Lying there, feeling every wrinkle in the sheets, every lump in the mattress, he kept his mind occupied with navigation equations, fuel expenditure scenarios and the drafting techniques allowed in various racing venues. He practiced his skills and waited.

Before he had waited to blink. He had waited to breathe. He had waited for visits from nurses or friends or curious intern doctors. He had waited for them to find a cure, a by-pass, a procedure that might help him. Now, he waited to die.

They told him that the best minds in the galaxy were working on it; that a cure was only just over the horizon. He finally stopped believing them. There was no cure for N.O.D.

Neural-system Output Disintegration.

The doctors and specialists all had long, wordy explanations and statistics about it. He was a very rare case, they were always saying that. Only one in two hundred, fifty million had the tiny genetic weakness that would make them susceptible. Of those, only one in five actually contracted it. Somehow, Alex did not feel very privileged. In spite of all the explanations and statistics, what it boiled down to was this.

Alex could feel everything, from the intrusive wires and tubes that trailed across his body and attached him to the machines, to the faint stirring of the small hairs on his arm caused by the air-conditioned breeze. He just could not do anything about it. He could not blink or wink or sigh or run or good-naturedly throw small, hard objects at irritating friends.

None of the signals his brain sent out reached their destination. The pathways were not there anymore. As the disease progressed it would not stop at just the nerve endings in his extremities or spinal column. Soon it would eat away at the very neurons of his brain and he would die slowly, driven insane, but totally unable to tell anyone or do anything about it.

He was trapped. A physically active young man was trapped in an unresponsive body. A bright and agile mind was trapped behind a small monitor whose programmed vocabulary was too small to allow Alex to express himself as fully as he used to.

He would have shaken his head and sighed at the irony if he could have. He used to love to work on machines. He used to be part of a racing pit-crew. He used to fix the toys for the little kids that lived on his block and kept his neighbor�s vaporator running smoothly. Now the machines worked on him and kept him running.

Running, but not smoothly.

Machines that beeped, machines that clunked or whirred all performed some vital function. One pumped his heart. One worked his lungs.

Too many machines and not enough me.

�Alex?� He hadn�t even heard the door open. �You awake?�

Lupe!!! The monitor hooked to his speech centers blinked emphatically.

He could hear the smile in her voice. �It�s good to see you, too.� He heard her drag the hard plastic chair closer to his bed before seating herself. �We all miss you down at the track, Alex.� She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Miss track. Miss you. Miss lots.

She stood and leaned over him and smiled sadly. �I know, Alex. � Her fingers drifted into view as she rearranged a few of his disheveled locks. �Chip sends his regards along with the rest of the team. They couldn�t come down today, pretrials for the national finals are just next week and there�s so much to do.� He could hear the pleading for understanding in her voice. Yeah, he�d never been comfortable around invalids himself. He knew how uneasy he made some of his friends, now.

That is ok. Damn, no contractions, nothing simple or familiar. I will see them next time.

She sat down, out of his view again, but kept hold of his hand. �There isn�t going to be a next time, Alex.� The half sob as she breathed clued him in. They found it. �Someone thought to look and they found your Living Will. The doctor says it�s pretty explicit in its instructions. Oh, Alex, he wants to do it today. He actually has been putting it off so that we could come see you one last time.�

Fabric rustled against plastic and the chair legs scudded on the floor as she shifted uncomfortably. �I just couldn�t let some impersonal doctor do it. We all owe you so much more than that, Alex, if only because we�re friends. The doctor said I could do it.�

That is ok, Lupe. I have been expecting it for some time now. At least I get to see your face one last time, before I go.

Alex heard a poorly concealed sniffle and felt her hand clutch convulsively at his own. �None of us wanted there to be a last time, Alex. We all thought it would go on forever. We could be friends and race and make bets and tease and joke till the end of time. And then it would be over with no lingering after lost friends. But that�s not the way life is, is it? We�re only immortal for a limited time, then we die or we lose someone.�

Just remember me, Lupe. As long as someone remembers me I will live forever.

�Oh, Alex. I don�t want to have to remember and Chip thinks he�s found a way. Oh, it might not work.� Her words rushed on as if afraid that he might interrupt. �I mean he didn�t tell anyone before he finished it �cuz he didn�t want to get our hopes up, but now that it�s done and Chip has never been wrong before. It just has to work! It has to.�

Lupe, what has he done?

�A possible miracle, Alex. We�ll try it only if you feel comfortable with it. I�ll try to explain as best I can. Chip would be better, but he hasn�t slept the last couple of days, getting it finished. You know how he can be about things, so he was too tired to come. The trick is that we won�t know if it worked till after it�s all over and done and nothing can be changed.� He heard her hand tap lightly on something on the table.

There�s not much that could be worse than where I�m at now. And a hope is better than nothing. Either way, the machines get turned off today. The doctor probably wouldn�t even have told me, just waited till I was asleep and turned them off then. I would never have known and it would have all just ended. Tell me, Lupe. I think I will try it no matter what. Do the doctors know?

He heard the soft swish of her hair as her head shook. �No, Alex, it�s not that kind of hope.� She took a deep breath. �It was explained to me like this . . . .�

*******

Two hours later Lupe O�Reiley took a deep breath, and as she slowly let it out, her finger pushed the button to shut off the machines that had kept one of her best friends in the known universe alive. One hand rested on the small black box in her lap and the other caressed the top of Alex�s communication screen as all the monitors immediately flat lined. She ignored his motionless body as his silent Good-Bye, Lupe slowly faded into black. She stood, wiping angrily at the salty tear trails on her cheeks and slipped out of the room, black box in hand.

She�d done her part and Alex had done his, so now all they could do was hope that it had worked. Lupe clutched the black box to her chest as she nodded and sniffed her way through the doctor�s lame attempt at consolation. As quickly as was polite she eased away and darted through the blank, sterile hallways and out the door.

The sun shone brightly and she cursed with the creativity of one who grew-up around truckers and their like. There should be rain, deafening thunder and slashing lightning, or dark lowering clouds at the very least. Her best friend�s body lay dead in the building behind her and the very elements should reflect that.

She pushed those thoughts away with an effort and rubbed angrily at fresh tears. There was still a chance and it was pressed firmly to her heart. With that to bolster her she flagged down a rent-a-hover, a fully automated one so that she wouldn�t have to listen to a driver�s idle chatter, and directed it to the Riverside Track. The whole crew was waiting for her to come back. They hadn�t been working overtime to prepare the racer for the finals, as she�d told Alex. They�d been breaking their backs and their nerves trying to get all the necessary gear for this technological miracle installed in the vehicle.

The instant that the rent-a-hover shooshed to a stop in front of the Track, a dozen or more people rushed to help her out of the vehicle. The first person opened the door before the hover�s air cushion had subsided enough for the thing to land. Another helped her out and yet a third swiped his own credit slip through the reader to pay the fare. At the front of a great mob, Lupe was ushered through the building and down to the pit area where the racer and her brother waited. No one asked her any questions. The way she clutched at the black box was answer enough for them.

Chip jerked out of the doze he had slipped into as the horde invaded. He wheeled his chair over to his computer. He had overseen the installation of a couple of video cameras, a voice synthesizer and speakers in the racer, along with a massive addition of new interface circuitry and translation software and now all was in readiness. He offered his sister a reassuring smile as she relinquished possession of the black box. His heart pounded. Alex had accepted the risk, now there was only to test and see if it had worked.

Chip pushed the box into the receptor made for it at his computer console. The silence was tense and electrified as the computer queried and was answered by the black box. The crew around them broke into a dozen whispered praises to the young man�s genius when he sagged back into his chair in relief.

�Looks good so far, folks. Now for the real thing.� Lupe pushed her brother�s chair through the crowd and over to the racer, then helped him to climb inside while one of the crew held the box. It was reverently passed from hand to hand, then Chip slid it into a second receptor in the center of the dashboard of the racer. There was almost no delay.

�Hey, I don�t think you got it all right, Squirt, �cuz I can�t see a thing.� Alex�s voice cracked out from the speakers and a roar went up from the crowd. �Hang on, Alex,� Chip smiled hugely in pure joy. �The lens cap is on in the cockpit. There, how�s that?�

�Oh man, Squirt. This is great.� The thrusters under the vehicle and on its sides swivelled back and forth and the engine coughed to life then engine stalled with an embarrassed cough. �It�s also going to take a little getting used to.� The engine restarted with a much more confident sound. �Lupe. Once I get the hang of this, we�ll be the greatest racing team in the history of the sport. I can just see the headlines now: �Dead Man Helps Woman Win Grand Prix.��

Lupe protested with a smile. �But, Alex, you aren�t dead. And besides, that sounds like a tabloid headline, not something we�d be proud of like the Times or the Herald.�

�Hey, I can see a little on the outside, wait. Hey! Someone�s standing in front of my exterior camera.� The offending party moved and the majority of the pit crew came into view. They�re all here. They knew and have been waiting for me all along.

Alex raced the engine, reveling in the feeling of freedom. He blinked the headlights at the irony. Too much machine and it�s all me.