Open Writing

Caleb Strong discovered, at an unnecessarily early age,
that he was different from most of the other kids in his
school. He was always apart from them; never played
sports, even though he possessed an athletic build, never
socialized, never even dated a girl until he was eighteen
and in college. The reason for this estrangement from his
peers was made cruelly known to him at the mercilessly
tender age of just seven years by one of his classmates at
William Jefferson Clinton Memorial School in Little
Rock, Arkansas.

Caleb was just beginning his third year of school,
having started, like all the other kids, when he was five.
And, like all kids his age, he had not the faintest idea what
poverty was. His parents, like all parents should, had kept
the fact that they were dirt poor from their only child for
as long as they could, but when he came home from
school that day, they knew that he was going to have to
face the facts of life at last.

What Caleb had discovered was that, in a time of
economic plenty, when the country was experiencing an
extended period of prosperity, Caleb’s father was
unemployed. Worse, he had become a drunk. Joshua
Strong had not always been that way. In his younger
years, he had been something of a minor football star, and
had even won a scholarship to college. But his grades had
not been sufficient to maintain the scholarship, and it had
been withdrawn. Unable to pay his tuition, Joshua had
dropped out of college, and had taken the only job he
could get, at the local lumber mill. When that closed
down, during the recession/depression that followed the
crash of 2095, shortly after Joshua had married Cassie
Williams, he had found himself unemployed.

With a baby on the way, and no prospects for
employment, Joshua had been forced to go on Welfare.
Fortunately, such a move no longer carried with it the
stigma it traditionally had. During the hundred years from
the mid-twentieth to the mid-twenty-first centuries,
America had treated its poor and economically
disadvantaged appallingly. Welfare was available as
though it were a fast-food special, for a limited time only.
When it ran out, the unemployed were on their own.
Homeless people had filled the alleys of every city, and
their plight seemed hopeless, with no solution in sight.

Or rather, none that the American government was
prepared to see. In other countries, namely those of the
British Commonwealth and Scandinavia, welfare, or the
dole, was available to all that were prepared to work, if no
work was to be had. And if it was not, those governments
were prepared to admit that fact, and also to acknowledge
that it was they and their policies that were at least partly
responsible for there being unemployed in the first place.

Right-wing politicians, egged on by the big
corporations, still railed against such largesse, promising
to end “free handouts” if they ever became the
government. Thankfully, they never did, chiefly because
the majority of the people recognized that being
unemployed was seldom one’s own fault, that lay-offs
and “downsizing” could happen to anyone at any time.
One day you might be in what you think is a secure job;
the next, you could be on the street, middle-aged, and
with virtually no chance of finding work ahead of the
millions pouring out of the schools and colleges.

So the American Congress had, in a particularly
courageous move, albeit one probably fueled by guilt,
gone even further than any other country had gone, even
the Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Sweden,
which had long recognized the problem and had made
certain that their unemployed did not live in poverty. The

New Democrats had introduced the Welfare Bill, known
popularly as the “Fare Well Bill” by supporters and
detractors alike, which had guaranteed all unemployed,
providing they were prepared to accept work if offered, a
livable wage. Even more courageously, this “American
dole” was to be paid for by a levy on the largest industrial
conglomerates, the ones that had caused much of the
unemployment by laying off staff in the first place.

The President who introduced the Bill had earned the
anger of the right-wingers, and had actually survived two
assassination attempts before it was proven that a secret
group of industrialists was behind them. Then the people,
in a remarkable display of democracy in action, took a
hand. Factories and palatial homes belonging to the men
responsible were attacked and burnt to the ground, and
letters began appearing in newspapers, warning of further
reprisals should any more resistance to the government’s
magnanimous Bill become manifest. Not surprisingly, all
opposition disappeared virtually overnight.

However, there was still a large difference between a
good income and a “livable wage”, and the unemployed
still had it tough. Joshua Strong was one of these, laid off
from his job at the lumber mill during the downsizing
exercise that eventually led to its closure. Although there
was now money coming in each week, there were still
bills to be paid, the mortgage to be met, and the dole was
not what Joshua had been earning before. Also, there was
the question of self-esteem, one of the major casualties of
unemployment.

No matter how much he was told by his wife, his
family and his friends that it was not his fault, Joshua
could not shake off the guilt he felt at being one of the
nation’s jobless. Accepting handouts, however deserved,
was not in his nature, and the more time that went by, the
more it nagged and tore at him, driving him inside
himself, turning him away from his family in his shame.
Almost inevitably, this introversion led him to the solace
of the bottle.

Time went by, and it also passed Joshua as well. Job
opportunities became fewer and fewer as he grew older,
until Joshua was forced to admit that he would never, in
all likelihood, find work. By the time the recession
passed, and things began to improve, he was
unemployable. Young Caleb saw this happening as he
grew up, and he resolved that it would never happen to
him. He studied hard, harder than any of his classmates,
and graduated from high school near the top of his class.

He applied to several colleges, and was accepted into
Columbia in New York city. As he explained to his
parents, he needed to get out of Little Rock, and see what
the rest of the country was like. His mother understood,
and his father appeared to be trying. Just before he left,
Joshua Strong got a job as caretaker at the high school,
much to his and Cassie’s relief. Caleb also was relieved;
now, he could leave town freely, and not have to worry
about his parents.

* * *

Caleb spent three years at Columbia, and graduated
with a degree in logistics. In the interim, his father had
died of cirrhosis, his liver too damaged from his heavy
drinking and a donor unable to be found, and after
graduation Caleb returned to Little Rock to be with his
mother. He had not even found a job when she caught the
influenza bug that was going around and quickly
succumbed.

Caleb was stunned. Who died of the ’flu these days?
he asked their doctor, a friend of the family. The medico
explained that Cassie had been devastated by Joshua’s
death, and it seemed that she was just looking for an
excuse to follow him. The ’flu fit the bill and did the job.

Caleb inherited the house which, thanks to insurance
policies, he found to be mortgage-free, and after a short
interval began to look around for employment. He turned
on the news channel one day, and there was an advert for
the colony mission. In an instant, his mind was made up.
There was nothing for him on earth now, no friends and
no close family. He applied, was accepted, and left the
world of his birth freely, with barely a backward glance.
The prospect of a new world excited him, and he went
into the freezers full of anticipation, never knowing the
third time he went in that he would not come out the same
man.

* * *

A week later there were seven of them, Caleb and six
others, one awoken each day. It had been a long process,
with the Doctor checking and re-checking and cross-
referencing each sleeper, matching the alpha patterns
against Holly’s and Caleb’s, trying to establish a norm,
some middle ground. In the end, however, it had
ultimately been a case of pot luck, and Holly counted
herself very lucky indeed in a couple of her selections, if
not so much in the others.

Krissie van der Merwe were the first to be awakened
after Caleb, a white South African, descendent of
Afrikaners, the Boers of Dutch extraction. Holly had seen
her briefly on earth but had not met her. She had heard
her speak, and had been fascinated by the young woman’s
accent, how she would say things like ‘Seth Efrica’, and
‘chawnce.’

Now, twenty-six year old Chrissie, tall and blonde
after the fashion of her Voortrekker ancestors, had no
accent at all, and the grunts and moans she made were
barely discernible as language.

Next, Yuri Selenkov, a Russian from St. Petersburg,
woke up. He was a friend and colleague of Serge Volkin,
Holly’s former shift leader and sometime object of her
desire, who was now just several shapeless lumps in a
body bag. Selenkov was less affected than Chrissie, only
slightly worse than Caleb, and Holly had hopes for
successful communication there; although she had hoped
not in the same way that the black American had first
reacted. The Russian was short and stocky, and looked
like an ape, covered with a thick pelt of dark hair that
grew on his immensely powerful shoulders and back as
well as on his arms and chest. Oddly, but fortunately, he
had proved able to wash himself, and Holly was spared
having to enter the shower with him. She knew that, if he
had become aroused in any way, she would not have been
able to restrain him. But the former cosmonaut from
Novosibirsk had proved to be nothing more than a gentle
bear of a man, and gave Holly no trouble at all.

After the Russian came two more women; Cathy
Marshall, an Australian Geologist from Melbourne, and
Li Chiang, a computer programmer from Shanghai. Both
were affected to about the same degree as the Russian,
give or take, and Holly could see that the Australian
woman in particular would not be of as much help to her
as she had hoped in her dealings with the Doctor. It would
be a long road back for both of them, and they wouldn’t
travel very far along it before they reached the limit of
their capabilities.

In between their successes, unfortunately, they also
had their failures, rather more than Holly had expected.
For every sleeper they awakened and kept awake, it
seemed that there were several that they returned to
cryosleep, too far gone to suit their needs. At this point,
Holly began to despair. The disappointment of the failures
was having its effect on her. None was more aware than
Caleb, and she was beginning to think that his level was
about as good as it got, that it would only get worse, not
better. She had discussed her disillusionment with the
computer, and the Doctor had only been able to advise her
that their efforts thus far had been totally random, and
were therefore bound to be very much hit and miss.

Holly understood this; she just wished there could be
more hits and fewer misses. In the end, however, there
was nothing they could do but carry on and hope their
luck improved.

As if in answer to her prayers, the sixth sleeper turned
out to be, to Holly’s great relief, considerably more aware
than Caleb. Holly had had very mixed feelings about
awakening him, because he was someone she had not
only known, but had also been very much attracted to.
She had argued against it, but in the end had given in to
the Doctor’s impeccable logic, and the unmistakably
optimistic profile the computer had produced. So, against
her better judgment, and with much uncertainty and
apprehension, they had awakened Jason Kerr.

* * *

As she had expected, seeing him in his diminished
state was difficult for Holly to take, although his
retardation proved to be relatively mild. Caleb sensed her
distress and tried to comfort her, making small sounds
like a child with a sick pet, but it soon became apparent
that Kerr was in better shape than they had dared to hope.
Almost as soon as they had roused him, Kerr had looked
hard at her for what seemed like an age, then had smiled
his familiar crooked smile and mouthed ‘Holly’.

Holly’s relief was so great she had wept, holding the
man of her dreams as they floated together in SC5. If
there was one like this, she thought, there had to be more.
There just had to be.

So they went ahead and awakened one more.
Originally, they had decided that six was the right
number, Caleb and five others, but the success of Jase
Kerr had encouraged her. They still needed someone with
the expertise to help them choose whom to awaken later,
and the profile the computer had produced was too good
to ignore; amazingly so, in fact. So, after some
consultation with the Doctor, and much discussion, Holly
chose the seventh.

* * *

Julian Hoddle’s eyes don’t flutter or blink like any of
the other sleepers awakened. They snap open like a
shutter of an old-fashioned roller blind will when the
locking mechanism weakens and the spring lets go all at
once.

It is only by the merest accident that, of those grouped
around him in his cell in SC-2, only Caleb Strong
happens to be looking at his face when the awakening
actually occurs. The black man holds the Englishman’s
gaze for a moment, then Hoddle looks away, but not
before Caleb sees the flash within, immediately hidden.
What Caleb sees, he does not understand; why it makes
him feel uneasy, he does not know.

* * *

Holly looked intently at the prone form of Julian
Hoddle. She felt the now-familiar desperation that had
attended the other awakenings, and she searched the
smooth, boyish face for some sign of the level of
intelligence lurking behind his pale blue eyes, which she
now saw were, thankfully, open.

The relief she felt when he looked directly at her and
smiled was so great that, had she been in gravity, her
knees would have buckled beneath her. Instead, hanging
in mid-air in the sleep center, she felt a wave of dizziness
wash over her, gone in a moment. Then, with the help of
Caleb and Jase, she set about the task of lifting Hoddle
out of his cell, preparatory to beginning the clean-up
procedure.

Thirty minutes later she was sitting in the canteen with
Hoddle, Kerr, Caleb and the others, sharing a meal and
staring in undisguised fascination at the man they had just
resurrected. Fascination because the only sign that
anything was wrong was a slight slowness of speech, and
the occasional hesitation or stumble over a word or
phrase. Apart from that, the Englishman seemed as
normal as herself.

“So,” he was saying, “as soon as I awoke, I knew
something was not quite k-k-kosher, you know?” He
smiled at Holly as he talked, digging into his third plate of
dried eggs and bacon. Hoddle smiled a lot; a man might
have thought it suspicious, but Holly found him charming.
She was still somewhat in awe of the man and the fact
that he appeared to have suffered so little damage, and the
relief she felt at having someone around of her own
mental capacity was profound.

Holly broke in on Hoddle’s speech to say as much. The
English doctor, a Fellow of the Royal College of
Surgeons, halted in mid-sentence. For just a moment,
Holly thought there was something wrong with his eyes.

Then he was smiling again, the blue pupils twinkling, the
very soul of bonhomie.

Holly watched him while he ate and talked. Hoddle,
one of the most famous Harley Street practitioners, was
an attractive man. Although ordinary in appearance,
medium height, lean, bland features, thinning sandy hair,
his attractiveness came from his personality, his intellect,
and his presence. The man had definite charisma.

A brilliant man, renowned in his fields, Hoddle had
been one of the few doctors to specialize in two fields
simultaneously, surgery and psychiatry. The practice was
still uncommon, and only a handful of physicians felt they
had the intellectual capacity to attempt such an ambitious
workload.

Hoddle, however, was not just any doctor. A child
prodigy who entered medical school at the age of fifteen
after completing his science degree in just one year, Julian
Hoddle had graduated at the top of his class only three
years later, thus becoming the youngest practicing
physician in British medical history.

At that point, the system decided to slow him down,
and insisted he remain an intern in a hospital emergency
room for the customary two years. Then, at the ripe old
age of just twenty, he began training in his first specialty,
surgery, at St. Bartholomew’s hospital in London. After a
two-year residency, he continued working there for
another three years, eventually becoming chief surgical
resident at twenty-five, then began what was to become
his principal specialty. His training in psychiatry took just
another two years, after which he was invited to join the
staff of the newly-opened London Medical Center, a huge
hospital/clinic that catered for those who could not afford
private treatment. Endowed by the British Royal Family
after they had finally decided to put some of their vast
resources to some practical use other than their own self
perpetuation, the center employed some of the top
specialists in the world.

Hoddle had been practicing his dual specialties there
for seven years when the colonization program had begun
casting about for volunteers. The idea of settling a new
world appealed to Hoddle; his massive intellect had
absorbed virtually all there was to know about medicine,
and he had been considering moving to another field
altogether, perhaps engineering or electronics. He had put
his name forward for the mission, and had been snapped
up by its planners. Someone of his capabilities would be
invaluable to them, not only as a doctor, but also as
publicity, an advertisement for further recruitment.

Hoddle had left earth without regrets, looking forward
to the great adventure. He had never married, and both of
his parents were dead; an only child, he had left no one
behind. During the journey, he had volunteered to be
awake longer and more often than the others, in order to
study the effects of cryosleep on the sleepers, and it had
been his misfortune to be asleep himself when the meteor
struck.

Now, as Holly watched him across the table, she still
marveled at how he could be so relatively unaffected. On
the way to the canteen, she had sent the others on ahead
with Jase and had made a side trip to the nearest terminal
where she had asked the computer for its opinion. The
Doctor had expressed the novel idea that, since Hoddle’s
intelligence had been so great, what little brain damage he
had suffered had only served to bring him closer to most
other people in intellect, “kinda down to everyone else’s
level, ya know?”, so that he appeared almost unaffected.

What effect such a come-down in his mental
capabilities would have on a man like Hoddle was
something she would have to keep a close eye on, but she
resolved to treat him at least as an equal. She needed
allies, and there were now only five days until turnover.