"(But) that's the thing about this planet. It never lets you stay the same." Alonzo Solace in "Promises, Promises"
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At the moment, there were so many actions and feelings that Dr. Julia Heller should have been experiencing.
She should have been ecstatic. After all, a crisis of monumental proportions had just barely been averted. Despite her many efforts, she'd watched helplessly as Eden Advance had begun to die, inches at a time. Her friend Eben was the first to succumb to the mysterious illness and all of them were well on their way to a slow, painful death. And when it was later learned that the group's deterioration was courtesy of malfunctioning bio-probes which had been implanted into their bodies without their knowledge or permission, the doctor still had been unable to find a way to save her friends or herself.
But, thankfully, Elizabeth had finally agreed to help and they'd successfully eradicated the virus infecting the Eve program. Though Julia had been unable to save Elizabeth and Franklin from the terminal effects of cold sleep poisoning, the rest of Eden Advance's physical health was returning to normal. The searing headaches, loss of motor control and lethargy was gone. Even her lover had returned to his former charming self and, from almost the very moment that the bio-chip threat was neutralized, he'd been intent on making her see that her future on G889 was brighter than ever. Julia should have been able to breathe a sigh of relief and finally permit herself the opportunity to enjoy a few much-needed hours of uninterrupted rest.
However, as she sat firmly ensconced in the med-tent, the doctor was unable to take comfort in their improved circumstances because it turned out that her job was far from over. And in fact, she felt more powerless than ever.
She took a break from analyzing the hundreds of microscopic samples she'd collected and blinked several times in a fruitless effort to clear the haze from her sleep-deprived eyes. Arching backward in her chair, she swung around the eyepiece of the gearset which had taken up permanent residence on her head and touched the keypad above her ear to play the queued video recording.
"Eight days, twelve hours and some odd minutes after we began to die, we started to live again. But we discovered a terrible secret about this planet that may doom all of our efforts to survive here. Our only hope may be my son and his special link with this strange new world. I'm just afraid that I won't live long enough to see if I'm right.
You see, I have a secret of my own. I never had a bio-stat implant. My sickness was different. So while the others recover, I remain sick. My mind is filled with visions of my own death. And I'm scared... scared that Bennett and Elizabeth were right; that I will be the first of our kind to prove that we cannot live here."
Julia sighed as the image went black. It had been three days since Devon's unexpected collapse and the woman had been mere seconds from death when the crew had hurriedly placed her in one of the cryo-crypts on Bennett's ship to prevent her organs from experiencing a complete shutdown. Since then, Julia had practically memorized the final entry in Devon's gear log, yet she continued to listen to it over and over again, desperately searching each word and even the inflection of her voice for any possible missed clues; anything that could possibly help her understand how and why this was happening to an integral member of Eden Advance.
Until she'd listened to Devon's vid-log, Julia had no idea that the leader didn't have a bio-probe. The physician tried to push aside her gnawing questions as to why Devon lacked the implant, as well as to why Devon would hide this detail. Did Devon knowingly keep this vital piece of information to herself from the beginning or did she simply realize it at a later time?
Julia couldn't help but feel the pangs of a guilty conscience. She'd never even considered checking each crewmember to confirm the presence of the Council probe and it certainly had never occurred to her to come right out and ask them. After all, how could they possibly have known whether or not they'd had the apparatus implanted into their bodies if they weren't even aware of its existence in the first place? Plus, it was important to note that Devon had been exhibiting the identical symptoms as everyone else in the group. Or had she?
Julia had been and still was overwhelmed by the events of the past days and she could no longer remember specifics about Devon's illness. Had the doctor even asked her directly or had she just made a general assumption? There had been no doubt in anyone's mind that Devon was sick and she'd been on the same downward curve as the rest of Eden Advance. Julia could remember how pale and exhausted the leader appeared to be just before her first collapse after she'd pleaded with Bennett to use his knowledge of Eve in order to spare their lives. However, Julia honestly couldn't recall how Devon looked once Eve had been cured. Devon had seemed to be improving with the others, yet clearly she wasn't. And Devon had to have known it. So why in heaven's name didn't she say something?
Until that point, Julia was certain that Devon had been truthful about her medical history. In fact, it wasn't long after the doctor had returned from the botched scout to recover Cargo Pod 9 that Devon had approached her with a few mild medical complaints. Julia had run the necessary tests and was surprised to find a medical condition that set the leader apart from the rest of Eden Advance. She had just started Devon on a daily dose of nutritional supplements to help her deal with her chronic symptoms and had just begun to research her proper treatment when Bess and Danziger were suddenly infected by the flower pollen. Because the two latter crewmember's health were in dire straits and required all of her immediate attention, Julia had set aside Devon's less urgent case with the promise to keep a watchful eye on her.
Devon seemed to be doing quite well when Eden Advance had abandoned the winter camp for greener pastures. But almost the very moment they'd entered that cursed valley, the crew began to sicken, prompting Devon's seemingly mild plight to be put on the back burner yet again.
Now after running test after test on the various samples gathered from Devon, Julia continued to be dumbfounded. Clinically, there didn't seem to be a root cause of this current illness and her lack of a neural implant seemed to be irrelevant. This left the doctor to grudgingly hypothesize that Devon's previously diagnosed condition which certainly hadn't been any sort of a threat to her life, had somehow triggered her organ failure. And Julia had no clue as to how or why this would happen.
The physician rubbed at her eyes yet again and checked her chronometer to confirm that it was still indeed morning. As she rotated the eyepiece of her gearset in order to search for answers that were perhaps hidden in a few of the older entries in Devon's archived vid-files, she was shaken back to attention by the rattling of test tubes clanking against one another on her desk. Suddenly, the table, her chair and the ground around her feet began to quake and Julia could feel the whooshing vibration of two Terrians tunneling through the earth just beneath her. She swung her chair around just as the creatures sprouted from the dirt a few feet behind her work station. This prompted the doctor to jump in her chair so high that she was surprised that her head didn't come into direct contact with one of the tent's support poles.
Julia wasn't sure if Alonzo had coincidentally been near the med-quarters at that moment or if he'd simply sensed the Terrians' arrival due to his growing relationship with them and had immediately sprinted to the location. Either way, the pilot suddenly burst through the tent's entrance, joining a still seated Julia who had yet to say a word. Both witnessed the beings as they immediately got down to business by beginning a long series of simultaneous trills which sounded almost mournful to Julia's ears.
Once the creatures' overlapping echoes had ceased, Julia turned to Alonzo for a translation.
"Is this about Devon? Are they here to help us?" she asked.
Having understood every word and feeling that the Terrians had conveyed, the pilot was clearly in a state of shock as he digested what he'd just learned. "Yeah, they need to talk to us about some things," he nodded.
He turned to meet Julia's eyes and grabbed her hand, furthering, "The Terrians know why Devon is dying."
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Story Notes:
Disclaimer: Amblin and Universal owns the characters. I don't. Whatever.
Timeline: Three days after "All About Eve."
Main characters: Julia, Alonzo, Devon and Danziger
Summary: Another "How To Unfreeze Devon" fic. File this fic under the category of "Life isn't easy." In fact, it's often downright messy.
Author's Notes: Thanks so much to Manuela and FCB Kate for their continuing friendship, support and general awesomeness. In fact, it needs to be noted that FCB Kate was a major help in writing the final scene of this story. Several lines of description and dialogue were composed by her and I can't thank her enough for her efforts.
Timeline: Three days after "All About Eve."
Main characters: Julia, Alonzo, Devon and Danziger
Summary: Another "How To Unfreeze Devon" fic. File this fic under the category of "Life isn't easy." In fact, it's often downright messy.
Author's Notes: Thanks so much to Manuela and FCB Kate for their continuing friendship, support and general awesomeness. In fact, it needs to be noted that FCB Kate was a major help in writing the final scene of this story. Several lines of description and dialogue were composed by her and I can't thank her enough for her efforts.