FLASH FICTION:-- HORROR, SCI-FI, HUMOUR, CRIME, SLICE OF LIFE, ETC.

Friday 17 January 2014

Percentage of life


He rarely dropped below ninety five percent, and was rather alarmed to find that he was under eighty percent and still decreasing.

“Cerebra, run a systems check, there appears to be a malfunction in the life support system, or maybe a fault in the monitoring circuits.”

“All systems functioning at optimum, no faults or malfunctions to report.”

“Cerebra, I am at less than eighty percent, something has to be wrong.”

“Negative, all systems functioning at optimum.”

He squirmed slightly in the confines of the pod, the small movement giving a little more comfort.

All around him the ship hummed and thrummed as it streaked its way through the star system.

“Cerebra, how do you account for the drop in life force?”

“The passage of time is having a melancholy effect on your thought processes, resulting in a lowering of psychological and physical resistance.”

This was a cause for concern, if he dropped below fifty percent he would lapse into deterioration and gradually drain away into non-being.

“Cerebra, do you have any suggestions on how to halt the drain?”

“You need to have less wake time, you need to return to sleep, to recharge.”

His digits flickered over the keypad built into the arm rest, programming in for eighty light years of dreamless hypersleep.

Minute motors came to life, liquids ran through tubes, the catheter twitched slightly as it fed the corrupted juice into his bloodstream.

Sleep came, and with it came dreams.

He dreamt of home, and family. He dreamt of the seven suns and the blue landscape.

With the dreams came sadness, a longing for what he had, for what he would never regain.

As the dreams stretched through the years so his sadness deepened.

His life force trickled down to fifty percent, then below, and continued falling.


©2014 Stephen. J. Green.

24 comments:

  1. Oh noooo soon he'll become nothing - somebody save him!!! Bites nails wants more ^_^

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    1. Yes, sadly, I think you are right Helen.

      Sorry about your nails, I hope you haven't bitten them too severely. :-)

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  2. The life of the average X-Man is not very long. Poor fellow, seems like the fate I'm pushing for.

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    1. John, you are far too valuable to this planet to get yourself drained away in outer space. :-)

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  3. Draining away… poor alien dude, he'll never get there alive.

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    1. 'Fraid not Larry.

      This is another one of those stories that I feel maybe I should have expanded on, but didn't want to alter the look of the original idea.

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  4. Very melancholy. I like it. Nice to read a story where tech isn't necessarily the answer :).

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    1. Thanks Casey, tech isn't one of my strong points, so I tend not to rely on it when writing.

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  5. Oh, the melancholy does creep. Cerebra reminds me a little of Hal, makes you wonder what happens to the onboard intelligence - or what has already happened...

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    1. Yes, Hal would be a good comparison. I leave it to the reader to decide about the corrupted juice though, is Cerebra guilty, or compromised? Or does the blame lie elsewhere?

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  6. The slow creep of depression eventually wins out when there's nothing left to live for. A good story, my friend. Better to live for what you have than to die because your actions caused you to lose everything.

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    1. Thank you Stephen.

      Yes, the spiral into depression for precious things lost or left behind can override many emotions, our MC was fated to suffer this through dreams during a sleep he could not wake from.

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  7. Very sad, he needed to stay awake and snap out of it.

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    1. Hi Sonia. Yes, it is indeed a sad fate, and one that he had no control over either.

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  8. Oh so sad Tim! Very well told in so few words. Maybe he'll bump into someone he thought was gone and regain...hope, or life I should say.

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    1. Hi Deanna. I think it may be too late to save this poor creature, but then again, it is fiction, so who knows? :-)

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  9. I can't believe I just called you Tim, Steve. I am so sorry! I had read Tim's story before yours and I guess still had him in mind...or I need more coffee! :)

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    1. No need to be sorry Deanna, I've done exactly the same thing a couple of times myself, once you press the send button there's no way of editing either is there? :-)

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  10. Poor guy. I was hoping he'd make his way back up to 95%.

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    1. Hi Richard, I fear he may be doomed to die and drift, unless my muse comes up with a part 2 that will get him out of his fix.

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  11. There's a Philip K. Dick sort of like this, "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", where the problem is the traveler gets insomnia and can't go into hypersleep. I liked the hard connection between the percentages and the MC's mood -- something people who plan transportation are not very good at taking into account.

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    1. Hi Katherine. Yes, our moods and psychological state of mind affects us in physical ways too, when we don't feel well emotionally it can certainly sap our physical vigour too.

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    1. Hi Icy. I think he would have just drifted away while in hypersleep, and not even been aware of what was happening to him, which although is sad, is probably better than many ways to go.

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