ONE: Epilogue of Hermesh

26. Dreams of Lummer

As the general adjusted his chair in silence, Commodore Reemon Erra watched the holographic image of his old Amarthian friend move in the dark. True to his habit, now that he was resting, Naaroke Barmin had turned off the light inside his quarters. But the lights from the passing ships outside penetrated the darkness from time to time, spilling in from the windows. And in those fleeting moments of illumination, Erra glimpsed his friend partially. His pale green skin and dark red eyes appeared and disappeared in the play of light and shadows, creating the fluid illusion of a chameleon's changing colours.

Erra  was not sure whether his eyes were deceiving him, or if his friend suddenly looked really tired and worn down.

"Shouldn't you be hibernating right about now?" Erra asked.

"So that I can pass out and wake up in the blink of an eye, only to go back to the frontline once again? No thank you." General Barmin snapped. Shifting in his seat, with a heavy sigh, he continued, "No one returning to the Boran Expanse tomorrow will willingly hibernate tonight and lose these precious few moments of peace. We simply use the hyper shots to keep going."

"Naaroke, those shots are only meant for extreme situations." Erra said, clearly alarmed.

"Reemon, if this is not extreme, then what is?  Besides, we'll all be dead before any of us suffer from its long term effects. Don't worry about it. On the upside, it can occasionally induce hallucination, momentarily untethering your mind from reality. That helps too."

Getting up from his seat with a groan, General Barmin said, "And on that note, I am due for my next one."

He opened a locker embedded inside the wall, pulled out a small cylinder. Then without hesitating, he stabbed himself with it, lower, on the left side of his throat. Erra watched his friend return, sit up straight on the same chair and patiently wait for the powerful stimulants coursing through his body to take effect.

"While we're on the subject, are you tired, Reemon?" the General asked, punctuating a long silence, "It must have been a long day for you."

"Yes I am. But I can stay up for the first call. Not long now, is it?"

"278 minutes or 4.63 hours. Not that I'm counting." The General muttered, with his eyes still closed. Then he asked, "Do you remember the story of the measurement of time; how we got our 60?"

"I am sure someone told me. But I must have forgotten," Erra replied.

"Allow me to remind you, then. One of our ancestors discovered that in a healthy Amarthian body, it always took 60 heart beats for a single blood cell to leave, travel throughout the body and return back to the heart. Every time the body went off sync, the beat rate dropped or increased, depending on the ailment. This was from back when our natural hearts had not been artificially enhanced, from three to four ventricular pumping apparatus.

Anyway, after that medical discovery, maintaining the 60 heart beats became a measure of good health. Eventually, counting to 60 became the cornerstone of instant health checks. I think it was Emperor Yadrayin who made it part of the Imperial Time Measurement of the Zaarnan Empire. And ever since, we've been stuck with the 60, for the measurement of time."

"I didn't know all that," Erra said, mild bewilderment evident on his face. He couldn't quite understand why his friend would digress so. But General Barmin always had a reason. So he decided to wait and see where it all led to.

"Then you learned something new today, Reemon." General Barmin said, "Now why don't you reciprocate in kind? I can do with a distraction right about now."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Tell me about the dream that changed reality."

Erra's reptilian skin twitched instantly as  he gazed into his friend's inscrutable face. But true to his physiology, it did not change colours. What he let slip earlier, in the heat of the moment, was one of his most closely guarded secrets.