In All My Dreams I Drown

Posted on 08 Dec 2017 @ 3:50pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Raine Ni-ya

565 words; about a 3 minute read

I stand in the lab, the blue light glowing off my skin, the white scrubs covering me. The subject is before me. Alive, I can see that. Alive, breathing. When I look at my co-worker with question, she just shakes her head.

“She cannot produce anymore viable eggs. She has lost her usefulness.”

These are words I have heard many times before. Words that are meant to rationalise what it is we are doing. The subject is still breathing, drugged though. Unaware. I let myself watch her, trying to look as if I am just judging her height and weight. But I am not. I am seeing her face, wondering if she is the one who gave her eggs for me to live. If she is biologically my mother. I always wonder. The notion of family is confined to dreams and aspirations for future generations. But I allow myself to wonder.

“Raine. Any day.”

I blink slowly, my eyes adjusted to these lights easily. I walk over without any hesitation and reach to put the head strap across the subject’s forehead. My hand touch her skin and I can feel how warm it is. She does not react though, none of the instinctive leaning into a gentle touch.

I have learned not to hesitate. The button is on the side of the bed, the device is about five inches long and shaped like a cone. It will enter the back of her head and pierce the brain, ending her…the subject’s life. We do not need her alive. We need her cells, to see what made her so special that she could bring forth eggs that could grow to our next generation. We need to find out how we can get more fertile people, how our species can be saved from extinction.

I know that this is not the way.

I know this is wrong.

I am numbed to these feelings though.

I reach down and press the button.

The scream is surprisingly shrill. For a moment I sit up, jolted, breathing hard. I realise it is my scream. My nightmare. My past.

With shaking legs I get myself out of the bunk and fall to my knees. I crawl to the bathroom and get myself to the sink, turning on the water. A waste of resources. I let the cold water drench my face and skin, feel it glide off the scales of it. I gasp. I try to breathe. I am crying but I don’t know why.

Sometimes, these dreams come to me. These memories. And it sickens me. It sickens me to the core. And I remember the sacrifices they made and the sacrifices I made. I ran away. I escaped that place. I joined Starfleet.

Would they have accepted me if they had known the full extent of my sins?

Maybe. Maybe not. But no one ever asked properly. I was a scientist, not a doctor. So it was never really examined in such details.

All I can do is to do better than those before me did and to atone. And when I return to Dereijan, I will speak of this Federation. I will put my life out there and try to convince them all about what we can be. Better than those that came before us.

Better than I was a few years ago.

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