-6-

Beyond the pale high swirls of worlds that have plenty of water in their atmosphere, 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. The room holds a scant scent of ether, mint and burnt silicon. A microdose of heaven and earthly delights remains as such, but never escapes the unnatural touch of mineral and wires that have been made into seals. Such is the place between the walls and so is the empty space between each solid surface, here and everywhere man goes.

More of a Claimant's place, Jorj is here on a whim. Future-fear, an anxious emotional sway of Varhas made to, off-world and in a care that is not 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. All pulled by their sides 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 gave such moment to Jorj while they toil closely behind the walls. At a breath's distance, they closed in to the Contestant, ravaging him with rays and imperceptive particles, trying to pinpoint chance itself. All non invasive procedures, to see what lies behind skin, to measure life written in neurons and their random discharge.

Luck, certainty itself had once more been swayed off course. 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 how diligently now he is searching for an answer. The course of luck, the intrigues hidden in details.

What has happened to Jorj has happened elsewhere 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 around this phenomenon, wholly contained within the Contestant.

Four heavens later, four nights in that place and all was found, personal irregularities. The constant work of humanity against an everexpanding strangeness.

"Order! Order!" Belches an important Claimant who has mentored thousands of Claimants over the three hundred years that he is alive. The baritone voice is that of a once proud singer breaking via underground routes the crowd's attention and along with it, gathering awe to himself. The Kenophobic room is painful to witness, with its extravagant colors and shapes, symbols and artistic displays of higher functions. The master himself struggles to keep the emotional range in check, when half the audience is a den of snakes, eaters of savage words they have exchanged centuries ago. There are lovers here, honor-bound feuds, friends and conspirators all to their own devices speaking and thinking, trying to impose plans to beings that have their own already.

Loud and chaotic, this is what a room full of Claimants sounds. As for how it appears, one would paint the entire thing only with swirls and whomever was to witness such paint put finely on canvas, they would be forced to imagine the Noise deep within the confines of their mind.

And such sound soon arrives to where it is supposed to be quiet. Luckily before the ambient whispers fold into eachother, Varhas enters the room.

He is angry, but clear enough it becomes to the Contestant that his is anger is not directed at him. First thing out is an invitation to go somewhere quiet. Jorj eagerly jumps off and gown-bound, naked in a straight line from neck to ass, he struts along.

To the flat, fleshy slap of foot in tile, there are but many, hidden noises under the skin of the orbital hospital. Winds and flames, pebbles to sand and dripping such between the wires and roundabout the silicon binding seals, there is infinitesimal but much-folding Noise.

Where one is riled up, the other listens to a language.

-

"Awful. You are awful at this!" The ball strikes at the wall with incredible crudeness. The hand that strikes it, does so with great force and the tennis 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 the two.

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 witnessed in orbit. Only the two remain now. One, half the size of the other and out again into the planet's asphalt.

Fog covers the distance. There is a round place underfoot that is all the roads and pavements, all the shops, glass doors and lights and as this fades into the ring of gray around them, it then turns black high above and radiating columns break it into straight pillars. 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 for more certain times and places.

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. 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 no body 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? He thinks it a while while they walk in silence. The glistening contrast on the wet and clean asphalt does not help.

"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 used 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.

"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?"
"You are talking about my body and the resurrection pods? Sure I am the 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."
"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 mind.

Twice fortunate, Jorj answers back with a slow, solemn realisation. 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."
"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 that long, then made art, tomes of words, extreme music. Whatever. We have dodged many dystopian pathways of life."
"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 shapes God has 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.