-6-

Beyond the pale high swirls of worlds that have plenty of water in their atmosphere, specialized hospitals tend to place their orbiting complexes there. Iron and marble, wired as all things of the vast future, so is the windowed bed where Jorj remains idle of mind.

One again, he is inside of a hospital room, this time the place holds a scant scent of ether, mint and burnt silicon. A microdose of heaven and earthly delights remains hovering as such. The scent remains never escaping or becoming tainted by the unnatural contact of minerals and wires inbetween the walls. A place of seals and mystical bindings of material, this is what the foundations of the floors and walls are made out of and the density of these seals and logic circuit bindings depends on the quality of the offered services.

Such seals of silicon, not only around this orbiting hospital for the rich, but wherever man goes, inside the slums and even at that other moon-gypsy and space cativelli infested complex where Varhas and Jorj met.

More of a Claimant's place, Jorj is hospitalized here on a whim. Future-fear, an anxious emotional sway of Varhas right after their latest match, made them both go off-world for care should not be affordable to any Contestants other than champions.

Jorj remains there in the ambient-free room, unbound by any intravenous tubes, drawn to the great patterns outside. Clouds, swirls and magnetic forces, traces of white on streaks of brown in a backdrop of green phasing to orange, Dur-Baqa appears as endless pearl looming near. All vapors pulled into a curve, completely covering the planetary swampland underneath and letting only pure of steel and raw of crystal skyscrapers edges, peek through the ethereal, ill-warm blanket.

Momentary and focused is this peace. The crew of five doctors and Varhas, they manufactured this natural spectacle so that they may monitor Jorj in his peace.

A breath's distance away from their patient, they had been ravaging him with unfelt rays and imperceptive particles for the last two hours, trying to pinpoint chance itself, to record natural anomaly. All, noninvasive procedures, to measure life written in neurons and their random discharge.

Luck, certainty itself had once more been swayed off course, Varhas thinks. Again, when the match was to go a specific way, it went another. Jorj did not die twice and the match ended before the expected outcome. This is what intrigued Varhas and fueled diligence as he was searching for an answer. The course of luck, the intrigues hidden in natural details.

What has happened to Jorj has also happened elsewhere, in different manifestations and this is but a widespread phenomenon that has become interest for study. The doctors came from far and wide across the thirty-three worlds of mankind, directed by peer and Claimant alike, to pass their time and spend their brainpower around this phenomenon. A constant work had begun against an ever-expanding strangeness.

And four heavens later, four nights in that prestigious hospital, the work had been concluded.

-

Jorj's case was one of many irregular happenings that gave hints to Claimants so that they may seek them out.

In a room, somewhere in that orbiting hospital, the work of many coalesces in an auditorium full of Claimants. The kenophobic fashion and the voices of many, make great Noise, meaning and depth of words going out of Claimant mouths and as soon as Varhas enters the auditorium, he turns around to exit.

With a half manifesting migraine, Varhas takes to walking through the tranquil place of healing and he takes to untangle each thoughstream of ease and worry. One by one, he walks along to a path towards Jorj and every step is followed by utterdark memories, the lotus-covered warmth of a healing whore, a growing tumor that should not be and never to be undone and of course the passing worries of everyday needs.

That one last singular and most alarming need, reminded him of exercise and how much he had neglected his body recently.

-

"Awful. You are awful at this!" The tennis ball strikes at the wall bouncing along to planetary gravity. The hand that strikes it, does so with great force and the ball bounces back with speed. The Claimant dashes to hit it with his racket. Forewarned, he is there by mere partials in the seconds and there is always an answer back, even if there is great difference of physical ability inbetween Claimant and Contestant.

The game goes on for a while, until they are both spent. That unordered sound has left them, by way of exertion. Every flex has pounded away at that great ambience of peace witnessed during orbit. Only the two remain now. One, almost half the size of the other and out again they both go, into the planet's wet asphalt streets.

Fog covers the distance. There is a ring of gray that conceals all the roads and pavements, all the shops, glass doors and chokes the lights. As this ring fades into a deep blur far away, above, it turns blackened gold and plastered to the radiating crystal columns. Dawn nears, but only in the high crystal spires above and none so nearby.

"Should we even feel this certain, while everyone around us, you know, is just dying a little?"

Compared to the previous week, where the sun parsed itself through and out and the people went about their ways with ease, it is now a free for all, where every random on the street had speed to their step. Cloaked within the haze, they now run to sell their apartments, to move out and into places of more certainty.

To the two, this looks like hell. A slip, a slide, a fall. A sprained ankle and a curse out into the atmosphere. An everyday heat. Anxious and boring, lukewarm as the bogs that they have both only seen from orbit.

"I don't know. Fuck that. Do you actually feel bad Jorj?"
"No."
"Then you are empty like me and care little for these people. A psycho maybe?"
"Nah. That does not feel right either. What if, we are turned into this, uncaring mess?"
"Turned you say? Odd choice of word."
"Yeah that is how some madman put it. Odd that I think of it now. That madman was always knee deep in sludge. Sludge that stuck to dry earth out of the grounded minerals. Mud that became so and left trails behind him."
"And you followed such a trail?"

Jorj returns to that moment, but only fragments are left there. Chipped of tooth and all in within the clapping industry, the maws of diggers and the gears. Whenever anything moved in that mining world, it left an outline of dust. Stand long in some place and if someone pats your back and pushes you ahead, part of your soul lags behind for a moment, taking shape in the clouds of dust. So said the mud covered man. He also said, that nobody can become more than the sum of the tiny elements that make it.

Varhas understands that this image is a lapse. A fantasy, loosely accurate, mixed with foresight of memories from the Contestant's origin.

How does Jorj put all this together? Varhas thinks it a while they walk in silence. The glistening contrast on the wet and clean asphalt does not help manifest an accurate image within the Claimant.

"He said something about the soul. Patting it out, weaving it back in as it used to be."

It does not matter as the two become one in the Claimant's mind. Dusty outline and sum, Varhas understands that in the long and distant past that mankind has passed through, some machine has pulled flesh and soul apart and then put it back together. Whether it grasped all the ethereal, the moral value therein, it seemed to do so to Varhas, in abstract magical ways that he exploited when bending technology to his will. Bending wires and circuits, but also, measuring that against another Claimant's.

But the Contestant has no worry about that. What he has instead, is but earnest and rare listening to the man besides him, if only for a moment.

"Do you believe that if one could put something as it were, that it is indistinguishable from the original in every way? Morals, ideals, all?" Varhas speaks.
"You are talking about my body and the resurrection pods? Sure I am, myself the very same, every way. Locked in time."

Jorj says that last part with pride. As if small sentence, smart and quick would hit Varhas in all the right spots.

"No. Not just about your flesh things in general."
"I mean. My brain is me. One hundred and two years old with a twenty-six-year-old body. My soul? It is up there in the gray."

Jorj points at his head.

"Truly. Do you not feel lucky?"
"About what?"
"That your brain is invulnerable, unable to be pierced, burned, broken. Enveloped in the Gray Shielding."
"Yeah, I always wondered why that part is just, moved around and the body is grafted on top of it. Lucky? Is it luck? Someone decided that it is better this way, maybe. More humane perhaps?"
"Decide. That is the hard part. Entire nations used to slay eachother on a decision. Morals, versus efficiency. Or just outright never thinking of the very obvious solution and going crooked for a while. Thank chance this resurrection is no crooked deal."

The Contestant thinks of horrible things that might have been made real if it was so. Painful, maddening experiences where time flows in lapses perhaps. Then again, there were three deathmatches he performed before getting gold-layered. Back on that dusty mining planet, new, unsponsored Contestants would just simply fight eachother without such brain protection. Gentle gunpowder weapons would only make a few holes in the body and there was no antimaterial destruction of Lanzas, the explosive force of rocket launchers or the bouncing obliteration of flak cannons. The odd misfortune of a brain injury, would simply make those risky days into a crippling lifetime and as luck would have it, Jorj passed that ordeal, whole of body and unprotected mind.

Twice fortunate, Jorj answers back with a slow, solemn realization. The breath he uses for these words is wet, gratefully making his throat smooth and dripping down his gullet.

"Um. Yeah. You are right. Shuddering to think. The life of a crippled mind." Jorj adds.
"Shuddering indeed. We dodged that horror without even experiencing it."
"You make it sound like it is rare."
"Far from it. We thought more than a thousand years about these things. Thought for that long, then made art, tomes of words, extreme music. Whatever. We have dodged many dystopian pathways of life by mere pondering alone."
"You are getting preachy again."

Ahead of the two men, a tall figure breaks from the mist. In her gray color she is passing by, more a shadow than a person.

"I'll stop. All I am saying is that whatever gray is anyone, that gray is sacred. Within our skulls lies the most precious thing. Thank whatever number and shape God becomes within you."

Jorj goes the other way. Varhas believes him angry for that instance, only to turn around and see him chase after the approaching woman that is hurrying elsewhere. Apart from her shadow, she is all depressed and moving stiff, as if movement itself is pain. He is chasing after the long deep gray coat and the flat heels that give her a mature, elegant sway.

The Claimant leaves him in the mist. Whatever antic he imagines for his companion, it is well earned perhaps. Innocent to his form and within the expected boundaries.

Breaking the bad news was always a slow process and he knew not to rush it.