The Iris (Gravity, Space, and Time: Book 1) by Patkós Csaba - HTML preview

Chapter 26 - Awakening

Date: June 14, 2856

A searing white light pierced through his closed eyelids, jolting him towards consciousness in a slow, torturous process.

"Time to wake up, Captain." A familiar female voice echoed around him.

"That voice…" he thought, his mental gears grinding painfully slow. Every thought felt like a monstrous effort as questions swirled in his head, never fully coalescing into words.

"What... who... where... how..." His voice was a ragged whisper, each syllable a testament to his struggle.

"One question at a time, Captain," she added gently, "I will answer all of them."

Amidst the confusion, an unexplainable sense of security washed over him, calming the storm within his mind. His thoughts started to untangle, coalescing just slightly. A single one of them rose to the surface, and with a strained voice, he managed to ask, "Dim... the... lights."

"Sure. Is this better?" The female voice replied with soothing warmth.

"Here, some water. It will help with your voice."

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the relentless brightness, Peterson's vision sharpened, revealing unfamiliar shapes and stark contrasts. It was disorienting, none of it resonating with memory.

"Please… dim the lights more," he groaned. "My eyes…" The pain flared behind his skull, throbbing in time with his ragged breaths. It felt like an eternity since he'd last drawn breath.

"There you go," the soothing female voice replied, the light dimming further.

"How long…?" Peterson thought, the words forming with agonizing slowness before emerging as a whispered plea. "How long was I out?"

"Two weeks, Captain," came the gentle reply, laced with the same unflappable calm.

A surge of anger, raw and foreign, washed over Peterson. Fury, like nothing he'd ever experienced, pulsed through his body. An irrational urge to lash out, to strike the woman, the… doctor? A desire to inflict pain, to obliterate her and the cursedly bright lights.

"Fucking turn off those damned lights!" He managed to scream, the expletive wholly uncharacteristic in its primal force.

Instantly, the female voice snapped to attention. "Shut it down. Now!" The previous gentleness was gone, replaced by a steely urgency.

Before Peterson could question who she was speaking to, darkness descended. His world flickered into oblivion. Lights, thoughts, the remnants of his rage – all extinguished.

---

An intense white light pierced through Peterson's eyelids. Not blinding, not hurting, but rather like the morning sun, waking his consciousness.

"Time to wake up, Captain," a familiar female voice echoed around him.

"That voice ..." he thought. His mind seemed slower than usual; he couldn't place it.

It was very familiar, but no face came to mind.

Questions started to whirl in his head, all at once, none of them completely formed.

"What happened ... who are ... where am ... how did..." His voice was a ragged whisper, each syllable a testament to his struggle.

"One question at a time, Captain," she added gently. "I will answer all of them."

Amidst the confusion, an unexplainable sense of security washed over him, calming the storm within his mind. His thoughts started to untangle slightly. A single idea rose to the surface, and with a strained voice, he managed to ask, "Dim... the... lights."

"Sure. Is this better?" the female voice replied with soothing warmth. "Here, some water. It will help with your voice."

His eyes adjusted to the still-bright lights, and his vision sharpened. He recognized the main features of a medical bay. He tried to move his head to the left, toward the source of the soothing, familiar female voice, but his muscles wouldn't budge.

"How long…?" Peterson thought, the words forming with agonizing slowness before emerging as a whispered plea. "How long was I out?"

"17 days, Captain," came the gentle reply, laced with the same unflappable calm.

A tinge of raw, unfamiliar anger washed over Peterson. He tried to understand it, to control it, but its source eluded him. His pulse rose significantly.

"17 days?" Peterson blurted out, his voice edged with agitation. "Where am I? And why is this light still so bright?" His breaths grew faster and more ragged.

"Shut it down," the female voice sighed, resignation and tiredness woven into her tone.

"Are you sure, doctor?" a young male voice questioned. "We have only one attempt remaining after this one..."

"Yes," she said, her voice barely audible.

Peterson listened curiously, his mind suddenly racing and filled with even more unfinished questions. Then, lights, thoughts, the remnant of his rage – all extinguished.

---

A bright light pierced through Peterson's eyelids. Not blinding, not hurting, but rather like the morning sun, waking his consciousness. He could almost feel the light's warmth on his skin, bringing a sense of home, of Earth, of a beach in the morning.

"Time to wake up, Captain," a familiar female voice echoed around him.

"That voice ..." he thought. His mind seemed slower than usual; he couldn't place it.

It was very familiar, but no face came to mind. Was it his wife's voice? Or his daughter's? Maybe someone else?

Questions whirled in his head, all at once. "What happened? Who are you? Where am I? How long was I out?" His voice was a ragged whisper, a testament to his struggle, but he managed to blurt out all his questions in just a few seconds.

"One question at a time, Captain," she replied gently. "I will answer all of them."

An unexplainable sense of security washed over him, calming the storm within his mind. His thoughts started to untangle slightly. A single one of them rose to the surface, and with a somewhat determined voice, he managed to ask, "Dim the lights, please."

"Sure. Is this better?" the female voice replied with soothing warmth. "Here, some water. It will help with your voice."

His eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights, and his vision sharpened. He recognized the main features of a medical bay but the equipment was unfamiliar. He knew the Iris'

medical bay very well, and this was certainly not that place. Some devices had a more modern look, others a vintage one, and some were a complete mystery.

He tried to move his head to the left, toward the source of the soothing, familiar female voice. His muscles complied with severe soreness, almost bordering on pain.

"Where am I?" Peterson asked abruptly as the female voice seemed to reply from the shadows on the far left. In the corner, he saw a shape, tall and slender, like a three-meter human female. "Could it be?" he thought. "Ahh, maybe I was out for a long time, and my perspective is skewed." Ignoring the reply he'd just heard, he repeated his question.

"Sorry. I was thinking... Where did you say I am?" His words flowed naturally now.

His throat still felt somewhat dry and his voice raspy, but each syllable came easier.

"You are on medical station New Hope," the female voice replied calmly, taking a tentative step forward into the light.

"She is definitely not human," Peterson thought, analyzing the alien's tall, slender form. Its face was almost white with a tinge of pink, but most disturbing was its translucent skin, reminding him of a jellyfish. "Now, I should really stop thinking about it as 'her'." He continued to scrutinize the alien's features: two eyes, seemingly the

only non-transparent part of its face, and an elongated head adorned with hundreds of thin tentacles instead of hair. Between its eyes, a vertical protrusion starting at the top of its forehead and ending at where the chin would have been, resembled a nose, but unlike a human nose, it was smooth and lacked any nostrils. It seemed to pulsate faintly, and Peterson wondered if this was how the alien breathed, or if it absorbed gases through its translucent skin like some jellyfish did. There was no obvious mouth, but below the chin were wavy 'collars' ... "Like a jellyfish," he murmured to himself.

"What was that?" the alien asked, still using the same female voice. "She can hear quite well without any obvious ears," Peterson thought.

"Nothing," he replied. "I was just ... taking in the implications of humanity's first contact with an alien race."

"Oh! Don't worry. This is not humanity's first contact with us or other alien races," the alien responded with that voice – far too familiar for Peterson's comfort.

"How so?" he asked.

"Many humans before you have made contact with many alien races in the past.

They just didn't have any chance, or weren't willing, to return home," it replied, the familiar voice now thoroughly annoying Peterson.

He couldn't take it anymore. "Why are you talking to me with a human voice that is very familiar, but I can't place? You sound like a mix of my wife and my child. This is profoundly disturbing, especially now that I can see your physical form."

"We always use a voice identified as the most soothing for our patients. This specific combination was recorded from your brain patterns as your favorite voice and intonation," she explained, still using the same voice.

"Yeah!" Peterson replied sarcastically. "When it's spoken by my family, not an alien."

He paused, trying to gauge the alien's reaction. He couldn't read the expressions of a translucent jellyfish-like head floating two and a half meters above him, but it didn't seem offended. At least the alien had two legs and two hands, and its body was covered in what looked like a high-tech white jumpsuit.

"Could you use your real voice?" Peterson asked.

"I could, but your ears are not suited for those frequencies. Describe how you would like me to sound, and I'll try to reproduce it," she replied patiently, but still in that same familiar voice.

"Make it the human equivalent of your gender and neutral," Peterson requested, hoping this would reveal the answer to his next question: what was this alien's gender? Did they even have genders?

"Is this better, Captain Peterson?" it asked. The voice wasn't identifiably male or female, yet it felt more appropriate to Peterson given the being's appearance.

"Yes. Thank you. This voice fits your appearance much better. At least how I perceive it."

"Hmm... What is that feeling?" the alien doctor asked.

"What are you talking about?" Peterson countered.

"I've personally treated hundreds of humans, and my species thousands. From your brain patterns, we can identify many types of human emotions. Yours is... different,"

the alien doctor explained thoughtfully.

"Resignation? Acceptance?" Peterson suggested. "But how do you know so much about humans? Even if you treated a few hundred of us, surely that can't reveal all our biological secrets."

"Well, you see, Captain Peterson," the alien continued, "our race has a physiology that gave us transparent... skin, I believe you call it? Even our muscles are somewhat transparent. I'm certain you can see the bones in my head and face. Our only non-transparent or translucent soft organs are our eyes." It paused, then continued in its genderless voice with the inflection of a professor: "We can see the interior of our bodies and could analyze and learn about them early in our species'

history. As we evolved, we became excellent doctors, continuously fixing and tweaking what nature provided for us."

The alien paused again, seemingly considering how much to reveal while gazing off into the distance. "The vast majority of species we've met in this galaxy are very similar at a basic level. They have similar sets of organs: lungs to filter useful gases from the air, a digestive system, and so on. Most are bipedal. It seems walking on two legs offers a significant evolutionary advantage on many worlds."

Peterson listened intently, determined to remember every detail. He tried to read between the lines and analyze the doctor's facial expressions, assuming similarities across species. It was astonishing: many alien species, mostly bipedal, and generally similar on a biological level.

"The one thing that can be vastly different between species is their brain patterns,"

the alien doctor continued. "Nature on each habitable planet shaped its dominant species in unique ways, and these species developed their own ways to interact with their environment. Their societies, organization, scope, and function are incredibly diverse. This leads to a wide array of feelings and sentiments among individuals, which in turn results in differing thought patterns within brains that are, on an organic level, quite similar."

"That makes sense," Peterson agreed. "Even among humans there are huge differences in how we perceive society and feelings. Groups of humans who evolved in one part of the planet vary significantly from others elsewhere. What's normal for

some is considered reprehensible by others. We justify our collective power by accepting and embracing our individual and societal differences."

"Please, Captain Peterson," the alien doctor requested with a respectful tone,

"explain to me what you feel."

Peterson pondered for a moment. His own feelings weren't entirely clear to him. He decided to deflect for now and try to extract more information from the alien.

"I feel a mix of frustration and curiosity... and something else. But before we discuss that, I need to satisfy my curiosity and quell my frustration. Tell me: what's your name, and what is your species called?"

"Very well. I will answer your questions first if you promise to answer mine in the end," the alien proposed.

"We have a deal," Peterson confirmed.