FORTUNA

CHAPTER 1

My eyes open to darkness. This is not unusual these days. On the generation ship, New Horizon, the day night cycle is moving towards winter and I am used to waking up early. I lay there requesting a response from my legs and arms but they require me to wait. The implants have not fully integrated. Impulses course down my spine until all parts are ready.

The process of swinging legs off my comfortable bed is slow but I push with my arms and soon I sit on the edge. The shuffle to the head takes me a while but by the time I leave the minuscule bathroom, movement is easier.

Even with the lights off, I know they are watching, although I have not found the sensors. I estimate the knock on the door will come in another five to ten seconds.

"Sharon, are you awake?" Jaime calls through the door. I misjudge. It only took her three seconds.

"Yes, come on in." I switch the small lamp by my bed and it illuminates soft grey walls and rumpled blankets.

Jaime is a big woman, not fat, just tall and well muscled. She fills my cubicle sized room with her favorite scent of jasmine. I find it a bit too sweet, but Jaime is nice to me and I would never tell her to wear less.

"Do you need help getting dressed?" Jaime asks.

"I don't think so, but it's good you're here to watch." Jaime has seen me naked more times than my dead husband and I feel no shame in that vulnerability. I pull on a set of undergarments especially designed for me, meant to support new growing muscles and skin. Once the zippers close, tiny sensors tighten the garment until it looks like skin. Loose blue trousers and an ivory colored shirt follow the high tech long-johns. Jaime thinks I should wear a jumpsuit like everyone else, but I insist on my slacks and I have enough clout to get my way.

The short grey curls I run my comb through do not feel like they belong to me. They settle in alien haphazard waves. "All right, I'm ready."

Jaime holds the door while I shuffle out to the corridor to begin the day with an hour of physical therapy, followed by breakfast, one hour of mental therapy with Doctor Armistadt, another hour of occupational therapy with Andrew, two hours in the lab—they tell me it's an exact duplicate of my lab on Earth, but it's not, lunch, another hour of physical therapy, two hours with any number of doctors , scientists or students, some free time, dinner, the evening entertainment, finally lights out. Sometimes I sleep or sometimes not. The cycle begins again as it has for the past ninety-seven days.

~

Dr. Armistadt scratches his chin. The stubble makes a sound like fingernails on textured upholstery. "Are you remembering anything from that day, Sharon?"

"Nothing I can claim as a true memory," I say.

"But, you're having some thoughts about it? Would you share those with me?"

He wants to hear about the jumble of images that pop through my consciousness periodically. "Lights, red and painful white, a sound like the ocean, chairs fly around me and I pray for forgiveness." I give him this much and have been giving him bits, one item at a time ever since we started these sessions a month ago. I remember more every day but I can't share everything. "There's a bit more today. We were at war with China, yes? They unleashed a mechanized army and we had trouble repelling them."

"Good, good," the white coated doctor says. "You're getting closer. Do you remember who you worked with at GenRealCo?"

"No," I shake my head, "no people, just the chairs and equipment flying around me." It's a lie. I remember Rani Senjay, Arnie Shultz, Bettina, Eddie, Doctor Westford. They all died as I should have when I pushed the button. I ask them to forgive me every night along with the hundreds that no longer exist because of what I did. I'm not sure I can forgive my act of selfishness. "There were many people there, but I can't see their faces now."