She was floating on her front, her slender arms bent at right angles to her torso, her palms turned downwards, her slender legs wide apart, as if she were swimming the breaststroke.
Hatched. Rose’s body was only partially hatched – when she died.
Tiernan prayed she was still vegetative, in her fully hibernated state at her time of death.
Her head was still displaced, twisted to the left. Her eyes were open. Open in all that gel! Her lover cowered, weakened to his core by his inescapable conclusion:
Rose was conscious when she failed to hatch. She had been alive. She’d felt herself die.
He was at a loss at that moment, a loss as to what to think, to do, where to go. Life alone on this alien planet would be insufferable, unbearable without her. He closed her eyes out of respect.
The three thick, corrugated, purple, neoprene tubes that Claire inserted into her orifices, abusing the autodoc, were detached, floating in the cryogenic fluid surrounding her – like dead sea snakes. Otherwise, her condition hadn’t changed. Her lips were still cyan blue…
His Blue Girl.
‘The C.O. is dead,’ CLAIRE confirmed unapologetically, incapable of showing remorse, eliciting any emotions for that matter.
‘She can’t be! She can’t be!’ Tiernan moaned, breaking up.
Had his rash in-the-heat-of-the-moment action, disconnecting her higher brain functions, been a mistake? He began to think so. The changes were irreversible, the switches set, in his conscience at least. He couldn’t risk reinstating CLAIRE’s higher intellect for fear of her reprisals. In the space of an hour, Tiernan had lost his only companions, and couldn’t contact Earth. He contemplated burying Rose in the red sandy beach. The idea of burying her in a beach seemed fitting, reviving cherished memories of when they first made love, twenty-five years ago on their home planet. He was busily planning how best to end his own life when the mesh mechanical voice interrupted him, confirming cause of death:
‘The C.O. died of a heart attack as a result of a catastrophic failure of the LS74 life support system midway through the hatching process.’
Shaken to his senses by CLAIRE’s diagnosis, Tiernan rolled up the sleeves of his fatigues, high above his elbows,
‘Repeat cause of death.’
‘Heart attack.’
Not daring to ask how long his love had been dead, he plunged his arms into the watery gel, hauling her inert body out of its pupa. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he lifted her out of her blue girl bath. He threw her body on the padded floor, he rolled her on her back.
She was beautiful.
He simply had to kiss her.
*****
Kiss:
He wanted to but couldn’t. Her mouth was drooling, a clear blue fluid. Her nose ran with gooey blue snot. She was suffering bluish-gold aural discharge. The horrific extent of her desecration by Claire, AI’s malicious bodily intervention, through her abuse of Carmen, the defunct LS74 series, her maladministration of autodoc, the breaking of its Hippocratic Oath; suddenly became apparent to him. Claire had deliberately flooded Rose’s lungs and stomach with liquid freezing agent, cruelly, poisoning and drowning her at the same time,
‘Bitch!’ Tiernan yelled, loud enough for the whole of Carmen to hear.
CLAIRE paid no attention, no longer capable of feeling guilt or atoning for her sins. He ran his hand over the slight round in Rose’s belly, wondering if she were pregnant, wondering if her foetus could have developed inside her during hibernation, if her baby had survived.
He shook his head, distracted,
If she lived our child would be twenty-four-years old by now. I must focus on saving Rose.
He knelt beside his soulmate, rolling her on her front, placing the flats of his hands in the crease between her shoulder blades, then he pushed down hard, pumping her body like a suction pump, for all his life was worth. Tiernan pumped all that horrible liquid jelly out of her mouth and nostrils. She spewed it all out, ridding herself of her assailant’s curse,
Come on, he told himself, you can do this. You can save her life.
Once she had stopped vomiting the blue gel and her nasal passages were clear, he rolled her limp body onto her back. Tilting her head, he pinched her nostrils, sealing her mouth with his, and gave her his kiss of life. Her chest rose, then fell. He remained calm, resting his head on her chest, listening for her heartbeats, pressing at the side of her neck with his fingertips. She wasn’t showing any vital signs of life. He pushed harder, with both hands compressing her chest, pumping her heart, he kissed her, blowing sweet air into her lungs,
‘C’mon, you can’t just die on me! I love you!’
Desperately, he pumped her heart, kissed her soft lips, blew his life-giving breath into her lungs, loving his sweet woman, willing her to live.
Rose coughed, bringing up jets of blue-tinged mucus. Her eyelids flickered open. She tried to speak, weak from her horrific ordeal. She tried to speak, the loveliest words in the new-born world, content to mouth a whisper,
‘You brought me back, brought me back to life. I’ll always love you.’
She closed her eyes.
Overwhelmed with emotion, her saviour stared up at the cobalt steel ceiling, and prayed,
‘Thanks be to God.’
He lifted her frail body, carrying her to the sunpad, where he dried her of the bluest taint. Once she was dry, he took her to her cabin, tucked her up in bed, all snug and cosy. He reached into his fatigues, drawing out the simple gold wedding band, crying with joy, as he slipped it on her ring finger,
‘I love you Rose, with all my heart,’ he said, eyes awash with tears, ‘Will you marry me?’
She was beautiful.
He admired her sleeping face. The tiniest flicker of a smile teased her lips, telling him all he needed to know.
And then she slept.
