When James woke up he was confused. The last thing he remembered was blacking out inside an empty, freezing conveyor ramp. That meant certain death. Upon unblacking out he didn’t feel dead, and so had difficulty piecing his facts together in a cohesive pattern. A third fact, which he sought after he came to the conclusion that his first two were not enough, was that he was also soaking wet. This didn’t particularly square with anything in either of the two metaphysical camps competing for his mental commitment. He tried to open his eyes and failed. He tried again, and failed again, and thereafter resigned himself to relaxing on his pillow and waiting. He realized he didn’t have a pillow when he flipped over inside the pool of water suspending him.
Righting himself, he reached up to touch his face and felt the mask over his eyes, mouth, and nose. This answered several questions- not least the one about whether or not his eyes were somehow sealed shut- but didn’t tell him anything worthwhile about his current situation. He shook his head, and as it bobbed uncooperatively he accepted the realization that he was suspended in a fluid of some type. He wondered why. At this point a very strong desire to float made its presence known in the back of his mind, and he pushed through the fluid in what he could only assume was the direction opposite the bottom. His head broke the surface and his involuntary exhale of relief met the forced inhale from a breathing tube. The two stopped for a moment, presumably to say hello and chat about the weather. James, meanwhile, choked. Hard. Someone ripped the mask off, leading James to cough and sputter and lose the tenuous hold he’d managed to barely grasp on not being submerged. Then an arm reached in and pulled him up onto a solid platform. James finally opened his eyes successfully.
“Oy! He’s alive,” a voice shouted. The voice did not receive a response. James looked at the gloved hand he’d been rescued by and followed it up a jacketed arm to a fur-lined collar surrounding either the smallest moon or the largest head he had ever seen on an animal whose diet did not consist of grass. It was shrouded in long brown hair and a voluminous beard which seemed almost to double the ridiculous amount of space occupied by the aforementioned cranium. His first thought was to wonder whether or not the hair was hiding the beast’s horn. His second was that it was probably a person that had somehow saved his life. His third was that whoever it was should get away from him. James did not know this person, and his natural distrust of strangers immediately came into conflict with the reflexive gratefulness he felt at having been rescued from drowning (most recently) and possibly having been saved from being frozen to death… though in all honesty he hadn’t yet figured out how the freezing part resulted in the tank of fluid part, and so was not wholly ready to commit to thankfulness for that quite yet. Some investigation would have to be done, and James decided he might as well start right then.
Leading with what he felt would be the most aggressive tactic, from which he could obviously later back off should the target prove suitably weak or incompetent, he steeled himself mentally, gathered all his faculties, and asked the most vicious question he could muster. “Alkajslskf-doing-oieuoj–”. He trailed off into a fit of coughing as the strange, gigantic, bearded face erupted into a maddening volcano of raucous laughter. James became agitated. When it had finished being amused by his incapacity, the bearded head erupted into a smile (which James found enragingly benign). He swallowed his fury, clenched his teeth so hard he felt a short pop, and tried again.
“What are you doing here?” James shook with fury, but the skull nodded.
“I’s unloading the gas, but instead of a block comin’ outta that belt they was on, you come flyin’ out all frozen. I hit the stop button, figured prob’ly someone’d come find out why… but they just overrided me and kept ’em comin’. Then I yanked ya out the way and kept stackin’.”
James nodded. The story made sense; after all, people had bigger things to worry about than one junior operator hitting the Halt button for no apparent reason. The guys loading had probably shouted down the tunnel, but when no one answered they would have kept going, what with time being money and them not really having any of either to waste. And as far as the corporation they worked for was concerned, if the station had blown up they’d just have made their money through insurance claims and found a new port. It was common and wasn’t complicated. James tried to sit up, and while he found it exceedingly difficult, he had almost succeeded when the insufferably good-natured beardface held out his arm and stopped him from doing so.
“Best stay put there, fella. You had a bit of a rough morning and artificial gravity ain’t exactly steady. Best to have all yer balance when you try to tackle it.” James nodded and laid back. Of course that’s what he should do. Artificial gravity was notoriously bad. No one with any vested interest in using it had the money to develop it further. He was grateful to the furry lump- for the quick advice if nothing else. Laying back down on the cool steel beneath him he began to doze, and could already start to see the faint outlines of a ship exploding on the fringes of his dreamscape. He sighed a happy sigh… then shot bolt upright and, through the inevitable coughing and weakness, managed to regurgitate one word back into his- apparent- savior’s face: “…artificial?!?!”
A laugh again. The man was a font of them and James already knew that he hated both this man and the answer the man would give before the words had spewed from between his underdeveloped spacer chin and the undoubtedly cleft upper lip he hid with his ridiculous skinhair.
“Yep,” the man chuckled. “Made five years ago with the finest TwoKay Gravity Engines money could have bought on clearance fifteen years before that. Welcome, kid: you’re aboard the Gasocorp Reasonable Ship Albright!”
James threw up, but it was mostly the liquid he’d nearly drowned in earlier, so the beard just slapped him on the back and told him the coughing would end soon.
