Aran

The Gray Man

The man covered his mouth, his fingers getting lost in the thick gray whiskers, and tears rolled down his leathery cheeks.  He silenced his huff and sigh as he came to the end of the of the computerized translation of the data disk.  He trembled even more as he held it before letting it fall back to his desk.  Something had gripped him, as he read it he felt as though he experienced every emotion that occurred.  That he could smell everything worth smelling.  It wasn't as if he was anything of what the document had detailed, but something else.

At the edge of his desk was his ashtray with a cigar that had dried and turned to all but ash.  In the silence of his shadowy office he could hear the songs.  The document had grabbed him in a way he had never felt before.  He waved his hand over the data-drive and a beam of light shot from the center and then it spread out to show a green and blue hologram of information.  His hand played around with the hologram, it took a moment extra to account for his constant shaking before it understood the request.

The floating screen vanished for a second and then what seemed to be an array of stars and galactic coils spread out across the entirety of his office.  He waved his hand against it and the stars shot out from the pad and filled the entire room.  Blue and white clusters with green text along everything detailed some galaxy. 

His fingers typed into the air and he pointed to a distant spark against a wall next to an award he had earned over three decades before.  The focus of the star system changed from a distant galaxy as it was pulled from just a splash of starry mist to a vibrant web of spheres.  It was as if they were made of fire and massive explosions of red and blue space-ash. 

Again, his fingers spread across the data and he selected a solar system.  The hologram highlighted the binary system and he pushed his other hand as if to send the star system away.  The entire galaxy fled from his finger tips and more stars and clusters along with voids and booming super novas took over the walls and presence of air before him.  He pointed to a new star system, D5.

The hot gassy orbs paused for a moment as the data-drive seemed to take a moment, for the first time, to concentrate on calculations.  The silence was overwhelming and the man finally stopped shaking and instead he felt his heart pump in his chest as if it were trying to break free of his rib-cage.  In large green text in front of him, swallowing up and blocking out the star systems it read:  12mly.

"Twelve million light years..."  He shook his head, "Impossible."  He felt like he was fading, but a static beeping from his chair notified he was being fed the medicine necessary to stop him from having a stroke.  He let out a long breath and pushed the letters and numbers away from him as he grabbed his chest to calm himself down.

"Doctor?"  A young voice came from the door.

"Allan?"  The gray man called out, "Tom?"  He couldn't identify the voice, one of the younger brats.  One of the interns.  "That you?"

"Macavoy, Doctor."  He replied softly.  "I heard beeping."

He shook his head in the darkness, "Get used to it, Mac."  He coughed and wheezed for a moment, "I'll die in this chair.  Be sure of it.  But the beeping means it ain't time for it yet."  He let out a moaned laugh.

"Can I get you anything, Doctor?"

"Macavoy... macavoy... Mc-Avoy..."  He said it over and over in whispers.

"Doctor?"

"Damnit, boy, enough with the Doctor."

"Sorry."

"Macavoy, what did we hire you for anyways?"

"Just interning, Doctor.  Sorry.  Hired, hopefully, one day.  I'm with Leonard down in Records.  He had kept me late to retrie-"