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  Suddenly Warren’s field of view was awash in light and color. It looked nothing like his vague memories from childhood. However, there was a large dark area off to his right surrounded by blurry light. He turned his head and a dark area moved into his field of view from the left. Could that be Mom? Goosebumps tingled on his scalp as he reached out with his left hand and a smudge appeared in front of the blurry object he thought might be his mother. “Mom?”

  “Warren?” she said, her voice sounding choked.

  “I can see!” he paused, tilted his head, then said, “Well, kinda…”

  ***

  Vanessa’s AI reminded her that Zage Kinrais was due in the lab in just a few minutes. She’d been viewing his pending arrival with a mixture of anticipation and dread ever since his dad had called to make another appointment. Talking to the kid had been… arduous at his last visit. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but after some thought she’d decided that it had to do with the great jumps her brain had to make to keep up with the little brainiac’s thought processes. Alternating brilliant intuitive leaps with stupid questions that demonstrated a lack of basic understanding of some of the microbiological processes involved made the runt’s conversations difficult to follow. Not that his questions were really “stupid.” She actually wouldn’t think they were stupid if one of her undergraduate students asked them. However, having those kinds of questions asked in the middle of a conversation where he had demonstrated graduate-level comprehension of other parts of the subject resulted in something of a rollercoaster ride for her brain.

  During the kid’s first visit he had suggested having people swallow ports so that they could get samples of the microbiological flora at different locations in their gut. She had mentioned this idea to Dr. Turner, her professor, and he had been just as stunned as she had been by the concept. They had immediately done a careful search of the literature, finding to their astonishment that no one had yet published on the use of ports to evaluate the gut flora. They had ordered some small ports. As they feared, the standard ports did not survive passing through the acids of the stomach so they had had to apply an enteric coating to protect them until they reached the intestines. However, from the upper intestine on, they had been able to obtain frequent samples of the gut microflora in the different areas. They would be submitting a paper on those results as soon as they could get it written up.

  Ports swallowed before, then another port shortly after various meals were starting to give them data on the effects of certain foods on the intestinal microbiome. Vanessa’s own idea had been to evaluate the effect of pumping oxygen through a swallowed port. The lower parts of the intestine were anaerobic and the oxygen quickly wiped out the obligate anaerobes living there. She expected to learn more interesting things by putting other materials through ports into different portions of the intestine.

  The most astonishing thing to Vanessa was that ordinary people had been able to buy ports for about 3 to 5 years now and she hadn’t yet heard of anyone swallowing ports as a form of intestinal bypass to control their weight. Admittedly, buying ports for that purpose would be pretty expensive unless you recycled them by sifting them out of your stools, washing them off and swallowing them again, but Vanessa was pretty sure someone, somewhere, must have thought of it, and if they’d thought of it, surely someone had tried it. They’d have to build some kind of pumping system to pull stuff out of their intestines and working with the stuff that came out would be pretty disgusting, but surely someone would do it.

  People were going to make themselves sick doing it. It probably wouldn’t be as bad as bulimia, which damaged your teeth and imbalanced your chemistry by throwing up stomach acid that your body had invested in making, but even taking stuff out of the intestines was going to cause some problems. At the very least some people would overuse it and become malnourished. On the other hand, she supposed that, if it was done right, it could be safer and healthier than a surgical bypass.

  Vanessa was once again considering whether there was any way she could get involved in commercializing a product for port-based intestinal bypass when the kid showed up. “Hey Zage, how are you doing today?”

  “I’m fine, have you guys tried using ports to evaluate the microflora in different parts of the intestine yet?

  Vanessa felt her own smile tighten. She’d hoped the kid would have forgotten his suggestion by now; after all, he wasn’t even four yet. She regretted not telling Dr. Turner that the port sampling idea had come from the kid in the first place. Though putting a three-year-old on an academic paper seemed ridiculous on the face of it, it had been the kid’s idea. Trying not to grit her teeth, she said, “We’ve been doing that all right. We’re learning a lot about how the bacterial population of the intestines change in the different regions.”

  “Can we run a set of samples from my intestinal tract? I’d really like to know whether there are any big differences between my microflora and what you found in people who aren’t fat like me.”

  Taken aback again by the kid calling himself “fat,” Vanessa smiled and said, “Oh, come on you’re not that heavy!”

  Zage stared at her with a frown for a moment, “I assume you’re only trying to be ‘polite.’ My weight’s at the 98th percentile for kids my age and I certainly qualify as ‘obese.’ In any case, whether you think I’m fat or not, I think I’m fat and I’d like to do something about it. Could you run some samples on me?”

  Now it was Vanessa’s turn to frown. Tilting her head she said, “That would pose a lot of problems. Our research protocol only covers people over the age of 18. You’ve got to be able to sign consent, and you’re too young to do that. In addition, even if we did have specimens from you we wouldn’t know how they compared to other kids your age. Kids are often a lot different than adults.”

  Zage rolled his eyes expressively to show what he thought of these problems. “What if I got my parents to sign consent?”

  “Sorry, our protocol still only covers people over the age of 18.”

  “So, don’t consider me to be a research subject. We’ll just do it ‘because I’m interested’ not because you’re trying to do an experiment on me.”

  Vanessa shrugged but shook her head, “That’s a slippery slope we don’t want to get onto. Someone might accuse us of trying to go around the research protocols.”

  The kid actually sighed at her. “Okay, let me buy some micro arrays from you guys and I’ll bring them back in a while and pay to have them run.”

  Her eyebrows rose, “You have your own money?”

  He nodded, “But you can talk to my mom and dad to make sure you have their approval.”

  She shook her head again, “Ports don’t do so well passing through the stomach’s acid environment. We have to enteric coat them to protect them until they get to the intestines. If we did that for you it would be pretty obvious that we had supported what you were doing and we could really get in trouble.”

  “My mom works out at D5R. I’ll bet she can find me some ports that are resistant to stomach acid. All I need are some micro arrays, and for you to run them for me when they’re done.”

  “I’ll ask Dr. Turner,” Vanessa said resignedly, already feeling worn out from talking to this kid.

  “Thanks!” He said brightly, “Now let me ask you about a few other things…”

  ***

  Dex was with several of the dalins who normally prepared and preserved meat in the smoking cave . There was far more meat in the cave than there had ever been in anyone’s recollection. Nonetheless, another group had been led out to the meadow by the meteorite to break up and bring back some of the bigger zornits they had left behind on their first trip.

  Before they got a lot more meat from the big zornits however, they would need to clear the smoking cave of all the meat that was already in it. The smoking cave was a particularly good branch of the cave system for smoking because near the top of it, it had a small narrow vent to the outside that acted as a chimney. Not a good en
ough chimney to keep the room from being smoky, but good enough to keep smoke from billowing out of it into the rest of the cave.

  To try to finish the meat quickly they had to come in and turn the meat over frequently, moving it to different places in the cave and trying to balance out how much smoke got to each strip. The meteorite had led them outside on several trips to cut small sticks so they could build frames to suspend the meat over. Nonetheless, it was almost impossible to expose the meat evenly. Some meat was closer to the fire, some closer to the damp walls of the cave, some higher in the smoke, some too close to the floor. The meat needed to be rotated around to different locations and taken out before it became so dry or smoky that it was unpleasant to eat.

  Working in the smoky cave was normally an extremely undesirable task. Your eyes watered and your lungs choked in the smoke. It had been delightful to realize that the see-rocks not only kept dust from getting into your eyes but also prevented smoke from irritating them. The dalins were still having spasms of blowing to clear their lungs, but at least their eyes weren’t watery and itchy.

  Then something else wonderful happened. Four more meteorites had arrived the day before and they had had one of them with them in the smoking cave to provide light while they were rotating the meat. The light from the low smoky fires was quite poor. The meteorite had only been in the room with them a short period of time before it said, “The smoke seems to be making you blow air through your lungs, I assume to try to clear the smoke out of them?”

  Dex dipped hies head for a yes, thinking that it was obvious, but perhaps not to a meteorite.

  The air intake cloths don’t work for the smoke like they do for the dust?”

  Dex waved hies head in negation.

  “You could put one of the ‘fog baskets’ in the opening of the smoking cave while you are working in here. It would blow air through the cave and clear away much of the smoke.”

  “But the fog baskets would get the meat wet. The meat must not only be exposed to the smoke but must be dry or it will spoil.”

  “Oh, we can turn off the water so that the fog basket will only blow air, not make fog.”

  Startled by the idea, Dex sent one of the young dalins to get one of the fog baskets they weren’t currently using. Sure enough, once they set it up in the doorway, it began to blow air without any mist in it. It didn’t completely clear the smoke out of the cave, but it made it enough better that working in there wasn’t difficult.

  Dex heard some shouting and moved the fog basket so hie could step past it into the main cave system. “What’s happening?” the meteorite asked.

  “It’s raining!” Dex shouted back over hies shoulder as hie began to run towards the entrance.

  It soon seemed like everyone in the Yetany tribe was out on the ledge, staring ecstatically up at the falling water. Because it rained almost every day in normal times, rain had never seemed like a miracle before. Now dalins were hooting in delight and leaping up and down.

  Many of them beat their way into the air a little ways, though none went very far. Even though the rain seemed to be clearing the air, you couldn’t really see very far yet. No one wanted to be hurt like Qes.

  Dex heard Syrdian’s voice behind himr. “Is it going to clear the air? Will the plants get their sunshine and live after all?”

  His voice juddery with emotion, Dex said, “I don’t know. I hope so.” Hie paused and looked around, “If it doesn’t, I don’t know if we’ll survive.”

  As if Dex had spoken some kind of curse, the rain stopped falling…

  ***

  Ed Zabrisk stared at his feet, pondering the vicissitudes of life. Just a few days ago, life had been about as good as it could get. He was up for promotion to general, his daughter, in addition to holding down a great job, was pregnant with his first grandchild, and his son was one of the first six astronauts on Mars.

  Now, he was sitting in an ICU waiting room, waiting for his son to be brought out of a coma. Ed’s brother and Phil’s sister were still on their way to North Carolina. If Phil woke from this coma with some kind of mental impairment, as it seemed had happened to the animals sent through ports, then in a single stroke, all the good things in his life would be as ash.

  Distantly, he recognized that a pair of women’s shoes had stopped right in front of him. Whoever it was appeared to be waiting for him to look up, probably to ask some inane question. Ed didn’t want to be disturbed, so he kept looking at his shoes.

  His wife’s hand stole over to grab his as the woman spoke, “Colonel and Mrs. Zabrisk, I wonder if I might sit with you while we’re waiting?”

  Ed’s temperature started to boil. The gall of these people. Just because Phil was a well-known astronaut, it seemed like they all felt like they had the right to push their way into his family’s life. He took a breath to say, “Go away!” but then Brenda jerked at his hand to get his attention. “Ed! It’s Ell Donsaii! You remember, she and Phil used to be friends at the Academy.”

  Ed’s eyes snapped up. It was indeed Ell Donsaii, and she looked just as haggard as Ed felt. Brenda said, “Yes Dr. Donsaii, we’d be delighted if you sat with us. Do you have a relative in the hospital here as well?”

  “No ma’am,” the young woman tilted her head a moment as if considering. “Just Phil, but then, he and I have been through so much together it’s kind of like he’s the big brother I never had. So I guess I do feel like I have a relative here.”

  Ed had risen to his feet. He found himself somewhat choked up. He remembered the young woman from when she had come to Phil’s graduation at the Air Force Academy. He’d been proud enough to meet her then, simply because of her medal of honor and the fact that she’d saved his son’s life. Her Olympic gold medals were icing on the cake. But at that time, he’d had no idea of the role she had played in stopping the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Shortly thereafter though, he had developed the “need to know” when he had taken a role in determining how to use her PGR chips in linking the Air Force together. Then she’d taken Phil on his first flight into space, saved the planet from a comet and turned everyone’s lives upside down with her port technology. To say that he respected her above all others would be the understatement of the century. Eyes welling, he made a slight bow and said, “We would be honored to have you sit with us Dr. Donsaii.”

  Before they could sit back down though, a nurse stepped up beside them and said brightly, “Okay, Phil’s awake, I can take you in to see him two at a time. Who’d like to go first?”

  Ed assumed that he and Brenda would go in first, but Brenda got a stricken look on her face, clasped a hand to her chest, and said, “You two go ahead. I’ve got to steel my nerves for a minute or two. I’ll be able to take it better Ed, if you’ll tell me how it turned out before I have to face him.”

  Thus Ed found himself walking into the ICU with the nurse and Ell Donsaii. He felt his heart thumping harder than it had when he’d been in combat as a young man. Why didn’t I ask this nurse how he was doing? Then I wouldn’t have to go into this completely unprepared!

  The nurse stepped over to the bed first and said, “Phil, your father and Ms. Donsaii are here to see you.”

  Ed stepped up to the bed next to the nurse as Dr. Donsaii stepped around to the other side. He looked down at his son and saw Phil, a vacuous expression on his face, unsteady gaze wavering about the room, mouth open with drool dribbling out of the corner of it, apparently unable to recognize his own father.

  Ed’s heart plummeted.

  The nurse said uncertainly, “Phil?”

  Phil’s hand lifted off the bed covers and quested unsteadily towards his father. “Daddy?” he slurred.

  The nurse said, “Phil!”

  Phil slurped the drool back up out of the corner of his mouth, and, suddenly alert, looked back and forth from Ed to Donsaii. He grinned, “Sheeit! You should’ve seen the expressions on you guys’ faces!”

  Ell snorted, “Once again I find myself wondering just why I think of you as
a friend?!”

  Knees suddenly weak, Ed reached out and grabbed onto Phil’s bed rail. After a moment his strength recovered and he glared at his son. “Only the fact that it might injure your broken hip is keeping me from shaking you!” he growled.

  Phil put his hands up in mock surrender, “Let me have my surgery, and give me a few weeks to recover. Then you can shake me as much as you want. I could go for a gentle hug right now though?”

  Ed glowered a moment longer, then leaned down and gave his son a little hug. He stood and wiped at an eye, “When are they planning your surgery? Do you know yet?”

  Phil looked up at the nurse. She responded, “What I heard was that they have you on the schedule for tomorrow, as long as everything checks out now that you’re out of anesthesia.”

  Phil reached his hands up towards Ell, “Do I get a hug from my old ‘almost’ girlfriend?”

  Ell wiped at an eye, “You shouldn’t, in view of the crap you just tried to pull!” She paused a moment to glare at him herself, then relented “But in view of our old friendship…” She leaned down and gave him a fierce hug, trying not to shake his body enough to wiggle his hip. She stood back up and stared at him pensively for a moment, “So, I’ve been worrying about your brain ever since we agreed to do this. How do you feel mentally? Any stupider than you were before?”

  Phil grinned at her, “Well, when you’re dumb as a post to begin with, it’s kinda hard to tell if you’re now dumber than a post.” He shrugged, “I hear they’re going to come by and do a battery of tests on me this afternoon. Maybe they’ll be able to tell?”

  Joining the banter, Ed turned to the nurse and said, “Do you think their IQ tests go down low enough?”

  She grinned, “I don’t know, I’ve heard they think they might have to have him run some mazes like they do rats.”

  ***

  Dex looked around the large room of the cave where most of the dalins were living. It had been days now since that brief rain, with no further rain. Normally, if the weather had been abnormally dry, the dalins would have been outside on the ledge speculating to one another about the appearance of the clouds and their portents. However, there was still so much dust in the air that they couldn’t even see a body length, much less up to the clouds.