The Airlock - THE ASTRONAUT

The airlock hisses shut behind you, you're half-conscious and barely alive but for now, the void of space is locked out without taking you with it. You collapse onto the cold steel floor in exhaustion. In your fading moments, before the darkness takes you, you hear somebody calling your name.

Many things come to you in your dreams, most of them contrast the magic of your setting with the tedium of your job. The world's first lunar station, mankind living among the stars. Another day at the office, another fucking earnings report. In a world where machines could operate with the precision to give a fly an appendectomy, what need was there for flesh and blood doctors? Turns out, machines don't account for missing paperwork. Machines can't treat a hangover. Machines can't play psychologist.

"Machines don't almost get murdered."

You don't remember anything about the period leading to your near-depressurization. Well, nothing specific. Another day at the office. Filling out forms after an accident in the lower airlock, recording the amount of blood spilled and the exact tile it had dripped onto. There was a push, the sense of propulsion toward the crates of human waste, then weightlessness mere seconds later. Out with the rest of the trash. Hell of a statement to make.

Beep. What did you do to make somebody that angry? You're a doctor, not a heartbreaker. You don't pick fights when you can avoid it, you pay for drinks every now and then.

Beep. Why would somebody want to kill the one person with a medical degree on a station with nothing but problems?

Beep. Why now? Why here? Why out the airlock? Why the doctor?

Beep. What the fuck keeps beeping?

You open your eyes slowly. There's a rim light behind your bed set into the headboard of the medbay cot. The room stinks of poorly mixed medical cleaner. Your vitals beep back in a stable pattern from a computer sitting just out of sight. The ceiling above you is decorated with a picture of a kitten hanging from a tree branch, the phrase "HANG IN THERE BABY" at the bottom in block capitals.

Okay, that might be worth killing somebody for.

You sit up slowly, trying to keep yourself as stable as you can.

"GOOD MORNING DOCTOR JACOBS!" The computer declares, entirely too loudly. Its voice is doing the best synthesis of a popular actor known for romantic comedies. It wheels itself over toward you, your vitals minimizing to picture-in-picture so that the rest of the screen can be occupied by a picture of a smiling cartoon sun.

"Shut up." You moan back.

"OKAY DOCTOR JACOBS!" The computer bleeps as it continues not to shut up.

A computer chair comes rolling backward through the door to medbay. The woman sitting in it kicks it back to get a view of you. She looks you up and down for a moment.

"You look aw-"

"GOOD MORNING ADMINISTRATOR ABDULLAH, WOULD YOU LI-"

"Shut up. You look awful, you brain-damaged?"

"OKAY ADMINISTRATOR ABDULLAH!"

"What? I don't think so." You respond weakly.

"Good, if you die I get stuck with all of your work. Don't do that." She punctuates it by rolling her chair back through the doorway.

You step off of the table laboriously. You're still dressed in the same lab coat and vacuum scrubs that you almost died in. You take a few steps forward, feeling the familiar pressure of walking with your legs again, even in a new body. You realize how noticeable your new package is in your vacuum-sealed scrubs so you fumble for the controls on your waist, loosening them until they're baggy enough to be mistaken for unfashionable harem pants. You stumble another few steps forward and stand in the doorway the extremely curt woman had retreated to. She's turned her back to you and is working at what you recognize to be your terminal. Her black hair is tied up in a pair of afro puffs that she's streaked with blonde. When she turns around to face you you admire how seemingly flawless her mocha skin is, the gold of her lipstick drawing attention right to her lips, which are currently tight with frustration.

"The fuck are you standing around for?"

"That's my desk."

"No shit it's your desk, while you were napping we got a medical request from every major professional on this ship. You better get to work fast if you dream of ever checking your email again. Until then, I'm using it to do your paperwork for you."

She turns back around to close the conversation before you can rebut. You stagger out of the doorway and out of the medbay. It's only when you get outside the medbay door that you realize you don't have a clue where anything or anybody is. You consider going back in and asking the Administrator but you're pretty sure doing so is a quick way to wind up again. Luckily, you find a datapad while fumbling through your pocket. It shows you your active medical requests and will help you find the sender.