Endeavors Run: Chapter Two

Alexus, the protagonist is now a young man, and an officer aboard a star ship. He is also its pilot, and the only human presently awake on its 4 year mission. Today is his workout in the gym day.

Chapter Two: 3189 AD �" ESS Endeavor - Training Day 

 

Pain. It was his companion, his competitor, and sometimes his friend. It kept him focused and molded his strength of character. It was the force behind the drive that pushed him, and it was the pure essence of that pain that kept him coming back again and again. Even more so, it was overcoming the pain that helped to forge his special ability, which had been handed down to him by his family for over a score of generations. Pain was the catalyst and a means to an end: an end that he utilized with the utmost limpidity to access this special ability.

    Since pain equaled adversity, and adversity equaled the opportunity to succeed, pain thus equaled success, or rather, the successful navigation of the path to reach his goal.  As his mother, a doctor of neurological surgery, had so often, so successfully, and so deeply implanted in his character from the time he was a small boy, it was all about navigating the path that his family had forged for most of their long history.

    And right at the moment, that path demanded its required pain quota to be filled, as it did almost every day, during a strenuous mountain climb. His mountain climbing however, was only accomplished via running, where every footfall, every labored breath, every beat of his pounding heart, and every meter of every trail on every mountain ascent added to the sum total, where pain was the constant, the catalyst, and the quotient for reaching his goal. It was also his well worn, but oh-so required companion. When it became too intense, when he couldn’t seem to draw another breath and when his legs felt on fire due to the buildup of the hydrogen ions in the lactic acid setting them on fire, he simply reached down deep inside to where the beast laid buried and found another gear.

     The extreme physical exertion that caused that pain also allowed him to access his true pathway goal. A goal achieved by mentally eliminating all the physical elements of the pain screaming through his body.  In fact, it was to this end that he pushed his body to the limits of its physical endurance

    It was the pure essence of this clarity that he craved more than anything. It brought deliverance to that place in his soul where he could excel physically, emotionally, and expand the limits of self-control, both in body and spirit, creating a psychological equilibrium, beyond anything the human species had ever known before. It was a total disciplined regimen of both physical and spiritual control, and it completely absorbed his entire being. He would become so absorbed that he could actually separate the two and become two entities, each with their own separate and unique cognizant abilities. Each with the ability think, feel, and act autonomous of the other.

    He had to beat yesterday’s time, or he wasn’t satisfied; he had to get a negative split, or he wasn’t satisfied; his heart rate had to decline quicker than the day before, or he wasn’t satisfied. This was because his goal was always the same: complete and unilateral mind control, which enabled him to achieve that state of total cognizant mind and body separation that was his paths ultimate destination. Otherwise known as astral projection, and to attain this state of mind he had to push harder each and every time he ran.

 

***

 

1^st Lieutenant Alexus Porter was presently a runner first, a star ship pilot second, and the sole human crew member awake on an interstellar deep space mission who wasn’t presently in suspended animation for the extended period of time it was taking to get to their mission destination: a class M Exo-planet in a small two planet solar system of a red dwarf star called Kepler-3211, in the constellation Draco. That planet was Kepler-3211a, more commonly known as Aqueous.

    The second of the two planets in the solar system was called Kepler-3211b, and had no other distinctions. It was simply a dead rock about half the size of  Earth’s moon.

    Presently however, all thoughts of the mission directive, and these two planets were the furthest thing from his mind, because he was running through an alpine forest about fifty meters below timberline.

     At this exact moment, he was splashing across a small freezing brook which then turned into a larger Alpine creek, then into a torrential stream that cascaded down from the jagged mountains before ending up in the future Bavarian River Inn, where they then added their ice cold effluent to that of other rivers, and finally dumped into the mighty Danube that eventually flowed out into the Black Sea. That he was also 978.53 light years away from Earth hurtling through the galaxy on the starship ESS Endeavor was absolutely immaterial.

    All that mattered was that his being was completely attuned to the run through this uninhabited primeval forest in what would one day, both far in the future, and far in the past at the same time, become the nation of Austria, and relegating the accompanied pain to inconsequence, thus elevating his mind to an astral projected state where he could look down, as if on the wings of an eagle, and gaze upon his body as it navigated along its predestined path. At the time period of this virtual run it was approximately 10,000 BCE, practically uninhabited by even primordial man. The solitude and exhilaration of this running path and the simultaneous freedom of flight were all that mattered.

   He knew he was approaching the end of his run when he heard the slightly electrical feminine warbling of SADI accompanied by a blinking red light appearing in the sky near the midday sun, warning him that he had only 90 seconds to go before reaching his goal. This prompted a signal in his mind, and he came hurtling back to earth, as if in a dive of a raptor, and reentered his exhausted but still running body. As soon as he regained complete cognitive control of his body, he once again heard SADI’s soft warning, which meant that it was time that he pushed hard to pick up the pace for the end of the run kick in order to hurdle his body to its absolute physical limit in an all-out sprint to the final goal: timberline in the Berchtesgaden Alps.

   With mere seconds to go, he broke out of the twisted firs of timberline and into the pristine clearing of a high alpine meadow just as the voice of SADI announced, “Time, Alexus. You’ve managed to make it to your goal at the top of the Übergossene Alm glacier in one hour, five minutes, and sixteen seconds. You’ve covered 14.68 kilometers, with a vertical rise of 615.6 meters, expending 2217 calories, achieving a maximum heart rate of 177 beats per minute, while losing 3.36 liters of body fluids. Congratulations Alexus, you beat yesterday’s run up Long’s Peak in Estes Park, Colorado by 87.5 meters in the same length of time. However, as usual, you need to replenish those body fluids immediately, or you will dehydrate, cramp, and possibly come down with hypoxemia. I’ve already prepared the electrolyte hydration drink in the galley. Please proceed there post haste.”

   “Hypo what…?”

   “Altitude sickness, Alexus. You remember: uncontrolled vomiting, severe headaches, and an inability to function beyond self-pity, and crying for your mommy.”

    “As if,” thought Alexus, barely able to catch his breath and he began winding down his sprint to a brisk walk. He held his hands high above his head in an attempt to increase lung capacity and breathed in huge gulps of the high altitude air in order to get the oxygen that his body so desperately needed at the moment.  He knew that his white blood cell count had more than tripled during the run, but would drop just as fast as he recovered. But resting and recovery weren’t in his plans. They never were, and the second even more grueling phase of his workout was about to begin, and nothing was going to deter him from reaching his goal.

    Not for the first time did Alexus wonder just who it was that saw fit to equip SADI’s interaction protocol programming as something akin to treating him like he was a five-year-old crossing the street by himself. As in all of Alexus’ workouts SADI’s constant imploration of rest and rehydrating were simply ignored.

    “My mother was a neural surgeon, SADI.  So, it would only be natural for me to elicit her help while in a state of hypoxi…what you said. Remind me to remove the exaggeration bug from your protocol program. I wasn’t crying. I was simply requesting some aspirin.”

    “And your mother.”

    “Whatever, it hurt, and you came to my rescue. So, consider yourself my surrogate mother.” Wanting to quickly change the subject he asked, “Have you spooled up the holographic program so I can finish my daily workout and take a shower?”

   Having finally achieved the desired oxygen levels, he lowered his hands and set them on his hips as he walked, still taking in huge gulps of air, and began the daily ritual of finagling to get his way with the ship’s mothering central computer.

    “Come on SADI, you know the drill. No recovery ‘til after the fight.” 

    Alexus was beginning to feel heady as the endorphins began to dominate his thought process, but despite the euphoria brought on by this runner’s high, he was in no mood to spend this short but precious time arguing with SADI today. Their arguments had become their daily ritual test of wills after his every run. He knew that it was only her programming, which was to keep the only member of the crew, who wasn’t in an induced dormant sleeping state, safe from harm�"especially considering his penchant for the self-inflicted type of harm that he had a daily addiction to, looked forward to, and was patently stubborn about.

    Alexus was a competitor in the extreme, and had been since boyhood. He had achieved black belts in several martial art disciples, but was most proficient in the use of lethal instrumental fighting. This almost always meant swords. That he had not actually killed anybody was not the point. His training dictated that he could, and it was this intense, competitive nature that actually drove him to this extreme post run workout.

    In an age where conflict resolution was settled by killing from a distance with a target sensor acquisition and a push of a button, Alexus was an absolute anomalous anachronism.  A throwback to an ancient age where men needed to be physically face to face with an adversary, breathing in the fear from each other’s breath, in order to inflict their lethal intent. He was an artist in the discipline of the gladius, encompassing all manner of swords, but far and away his special interest in swords lay in his own personal sword, the incomparable Katana. 

 

***

   

Finally getting most of his wind back, and completely ignoring SADI’s entreaty about replenishing body fluids, resting, and forgoing his intended martial fight, Alexus instructed the Endeavor’s mainframe computer, officially known as the Systems Artificial Directive Intelligence, to ready his next workout holograph.

    SADI was an advanced operating system, which integrated artificial intelligence with the responsibility of aiding the human crew, and was tasked with complete operational and diagnostic control to run the ship without the need of human help. SADI’s human-like female emotional response system made her assimilation with the human members of the crew easier to deal with, and thus an essential element of her command protocols.

   Alexus had often found it difficult for him to argue with her. He found it was like arguing with his mother, with whom he rarely won an argument, and which also meant that he rarely got his way entirely with SADI. Except, of course, on his anxiously anticipated post-run martial training bouts where nothing would deter him. It’s what he lived for during his six-month shifts. It’s what kept his entire being, both physical and mental, honed to efficiency unmatched by any of the other crewmembers. Alexus was, simply put, a one of a kind killer in the physical sense only, because his character was one of total empathy, a paradox in the extreme.

 

***

  

As if he hadn’t heard her and without acknowledging a thing SADI had just said to him concerning his physical well being, Alexus calmly made his request an absolute order to his one and only conscious deep space companion.

     “SADI, please set up the program for today’s opponent, and please make him more of a contest than the last one. I need to be able to hone my skill set, not just slaughter some poor palooka without breaking a sweat.”

   With that exasperated feminine tone that always left Alexus wondering who actually slipped the mothering inclination into SADI’s software, she asked, “Why do you always finish an exhausting run and go straight into a potential lethal fight without any recovery time whatsoever?”

   With an exaggerated sigh, Alexus asked, “Why is it that you always ask me the same question every day at the same time, knowing you’ll always get the same response?”

    “It’s probably because of your stubborn habit to never answer my question, and besides that, Lieutenant Porter, this program was not developed for the type of training you insist on. While not technically against regulations, it will raise a probable undesirable interest about your psychological profile once the rest of the officer corps are brought out of suspended animation.”

    “Look, SADI. I’m the sole human member of the crew who is awake right now. I have no one to talk to but you. Not that I’m complaining, but in order to for me to stay at both peak physical and mental cognizance, I need to keep the edge sharp, so to speak.  And in order to do that, I engage in these harmless combat programs. If they were forbidden, they wouldn’t be in your program bank would they?”

    “They were not developed for what you use them for, Alexus. However, since I cannot refuse access, then we will, as usual, proceed.”   

    “Fair enough.  So, what have you got for me today?”

   After getting no response from SADI for several moments, Alexus impatiently pushed her a little harder. He was cooling off, and his endorphins were beginning to slip away, and he really needed to get to the next phase of his work out.

    “Soooo…?”

    SADI then simply gave the monotone answer that typically signaled her frustration at having lost yet another test of wills with Alexus on this daily point of contention.

    “He’ll be waiting for you in a moment.”

 

***

  

Alexus seemed oblivious of her shift from a nurturing mother to an indifferent perturbed schoolmarm as the large twenty by thirty meter virtual reality holographic deck, which had just previously been his high mountain running trail program, suddenly blur, and then vanish altogether. The familiar grey steel bulkheads of the Endeavor’s interior began to re-materialize.  Almost any landscape on earth could be replicated from a huge virtual database, complete with the sensations of altitude, temperature change, and weather states. During the run it looked, smelled, and felt like a running trail anywhere on Earth.

   The virtual holograph created not only a visual illusion of the desired scene, but could actually create a physical illusion as well, so much so, that the human participant could completely interact with the program, and while everything in the holographic deck was virtual, all sensations of touch felt perfectly real. This was achieved by the instantaneous transmutation of the molecules at the exact point of physical human contact. While walking or running, each footfall hit something solid, whether running on a mountain path or splashing through seaside surf, the sensations looked and felt very real.

    This was especially useful while martial training, where if the virtual combatant struck the human, the punch was felt. This was the main attraction for Alexus, and he took this training mode to the extreme. Fortunately for the trainees, any wound was strictly a virtual projection, and although it felt real for extremely brief periods of time, there was no chance of a real injury.

     Alexus stood to one side of the large virtual holographic deck, and said, “SADI, along with my Katana Samurai sword, I want an M48 combat tomahawk as back up, if you please.  Oh, and give me an easily accessible baldric as well”. 

   Almost immediately the weapons and holster appeared next to Alexus’ left. He picked up the tomahawk and placed it into the baldric, slipped the baldric over his left shoulder, then slid the Katana into its scabbard.

    The tomahawk was simply a backup weapon in case the Katana was wrenched from his grip, and if the combatants began to physically grapple with one another, the tomahawk was incomparable.

   Turning to the center of the room Alexus casually asked, “So, who, and what do you have for me today SADI?” His gaze was, however, anything but casual, and more akin to that of a predator as he mentally prepared himself for the hand-to-hand battle to come.

    SADI’s now emotionless voice described the program scene she was spooling up, “Today you face a single Spartan hoplite from around 450 BC. He is 182 centimeters tall, weighs eighty-three kilograms, and is twenty-seven years old. He is armed with his primary weapon: an 8-kilogram, 2.7-meter dory with a very sharp bronze spear point, an iron .6-meter long xiphos short sword, and an 11-kilogram wood and bronze aspis shield. He will be protected by light armor to enable quicker mobility. This will consist of a hardened leather cuirass and leather greaves, protecting both his lower legs and his forearms, and he has a full bronze helmet with side face shields. I gather you will be armored in your usual tee shirt and track shoes?”

    With a slight smile Alexus answered, “Absolutely not! I’m also gonna be wearing these wraparound sunglasses to help cut down on the sun’s glare,” In a far more serious tone he then asked, “where is the fight to take place?”

    “At the Hellenic shrine on the Peloponnesian peninsula called the Menelaion, atop Therapne Mountain, about twenty-five kilometers southwest of Sparta. Your adversary is the shrine’s guard and he will be protecting the shrine with his life. Try not to lose yours this time.”

    Acting nonchalant but feeling anything but, Alexus mused, “Why SADI, you do care about me?”

   Adopting the most indifferent tone her program could manage, SADI brushed off his obvious bait with a response bordering on the flip, “It’s not what you think, lieutenant. If you bleed out all over everything, I’ll need to wake 1^st Lieutenant Hartley three weeks early to come clean up the mess, and he will be less than pleased.”

    While checking his equipment, Alexus distractedly mumbled, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

   “Yes, lets…” The A-I responded.

   This ritualistic discourse about injury and death were completely useless since there was no chance of serious injury to the human combatant, and they both knew it. However, in the heat of battle, with blood and body parts flying around, it was difficult to not maintain the illusion of lethality. It was precisely this reason why Alexus used this method of training to hone his martial skill set. He was, in fact, a twenty-eight year old, 186-centimeter, 81-kilogram killing machine, and no holographic opponent had ever bested him. Not even close.

 

***

   

 The holographic deck then began to blur, and changed from an internal compartment of the star ship to a seemingly serene scene of a warm Hellenic era summer day.

   Alexus adjusted the weapon’s baldric to a secure and accessible position and began to reconnoiter his field of battle. It seemed to be a very warm cloudless summer day, about 35° C, with a slight wind that did nothing but stir the dead golden grass on the slopes of the hill and kick up small dust devils far down in the valley below. Somewhere in the distance the low cooing of a dove broke the tense silence.

   Seemingly about 100 meters away from where he stood, even though the room was only twenty meters wide, he spotted the Hellenic era building�"a small shrine of some sort about ten by ten meters in size. It’s construction of limestone and travertine made it an aesthetically appealing center point of the plateau, and it stood out in total contrast to the semi-arid surrounding landscape. The shrine had stairs ascending about a meter to a raised main deck, with fluted columns holding up a flat roof. Inside he could see a three-meter statue of a woman, whom he presumed to be Athena or possibly Aphrodite. A 1.5 meter granite wall ran along the ground on both sides of the structure about one meter from the edge of the building, and standing on the dais of the statue stood a very fit looking warrior, whose rapt attention was now focused directly on Alexus.

    Alexus began to make his way to the shrine. He felt no need to use subterfuge in his approach, because he knew how Spartans viewed their martial responsibility as a paramount honor bound duty and would protect his charge to the death. There would be no quarter given and no end, save one: one of the combatants would not leave here alive.

   The Spartan jumped down from the dais and stood at the top of the stairs, placing his feet a half a meter apart with the left foot slightly ahead of the right.  He set his aspis, the bronze shield, into what amounted to both a defensive and attack position, with the more than two-and-a-half-meter dory placed slightly to the right side near the top of the shield. This spear could extend his reach far beyond that of a soldier armed with only a sword. At the moment, the Spartan was using his dory to only track his opponent. The Spartan’s two darkly intense eyes stared out unblinking at Alexus’ approach from beneath the bronze helmet like a bird of prey, and followed his enemy’s every move. It didn’t seem to Alexus that the Spartan had any inclination to move from his advantageous high ground position atop the stairs.

    Instead of charging up the stairs to meet the Spartan head on, Alexus turned to his right, began running to gain momentum, then effortlessly leapt up on top of the wall, ran along its top parallel to the building’s main deck, and easily made the leap from the wall to the raised deck of the shrine.  His lack of armor allowed him to make these jumps quickly and effortlessly. He agilely landed on the edge of the raised deck behind one of the columns, and out of the immediate sight of the Spartan.

    He then leapt up on the shrine deck and simultaneously, in one fluid movement, pulled the Katana Samurai sword from its scabbard and positioned in front of him.  He had it slightly raised in the classic fighting stance by the time he had landed, but had only a couple seconds before the Spartan, who had followed the sound of his movement, slipped around the side of the column and confronted him head-on. Unexpectedly to Alexus, however, the Spartan did not stop, did not hesitate, or even slow to take the measure of his opponent, but instead immediately launched into a determined attack with his dory, his aspis held up as protection. It was almost an invulnerable fighting position. Sparta taught their soldiers from the early age of seven years old to attack without relent, and to not give their enemy any time to form a proper defense.

    With his shield raised and the dory protruding out from the top, the Spartan charged forward making a precisely timed and well practiced lunge towards Alexus’ exposed upper mid torso. A successful thrust to the heart would have ended the fight before it had gone on more than a few seconds. Only a lightning fast parry with the Katana deflected the bronze spearhead away from it’s intended target. Alexus simultaneously twisted his body and was just able to elude the initial thrust of the dory, but the aspis; designed to be used as an offensive weapon as well as defensive one, slammed into Alexus’ chest and momentarily knocked him off balance. While the Spartan was bringing his dory back into thrust position, Alexus shifted tactics and changed from a defensive parry to one of instant evasion. In order to regroup, he quickly recovered from the body slam and distanced himself by leaping back across the shrine deck to the top of the wall.  He ran along this narrow raised pathway towards the rear of the shrine. The Spartan quickly recovered and followed with a surprising speed for one encumbered with even light armor.

   When Alexus reached the end of the building, he leapt back across the gap between the wall and the deck, just a few meters ahead of the hard-charging Spartan who now held the dory above his head in a throwing position. But, instead of throwing his primary weapon, he tracked Alexus’ leap back up to the deck and waited for the exact moment to attack. Lightning fast he then made an extended lunge to where he had anticipated Alexus would land.

    However, Alexus had no intention of making it easy for the Spartan to find his target, and had planned his leap to intersect one of the fluted columns where the column’s base stuck out about ten centimeters, which provided enough of a foothold to plant his foot. Using his considerable upward momentum, he instantaneously thrust his body forward, and upward from the column, launching up in a gymnastic type of mid-flight tumble. While at the apex of his leap, Alexus twisted his body, and in a well-practiced acrobatic move, changed his flight into a somersault over the now slightly startled Spartan. As he flew over the Spartan’s head, he held the Kanata extended in his right hand, and made a quick cut downward at his adversary. The razor sharp curved blade sliced through the hardened leather protecting the Spartan’s shoulder and easily cut through the shoulder strap of his cuirass deep into the flesh between the left shoulder and neck. Although the Katana’s cut was deep, it did not hit bone, nor did it hit its intended target: the carotid artery.

   Alexus gracefully landed on his feet two meters away.  Blood now poured out, flowing copiously down the Spartan’s left arm, and spilled out onto the tiled floor. However, the Spartan was right handed, and in spite of his obvious pain, he accurately swung his dory in a wide arc. The sharp, heavy bronze blade caught Alexus across his forehead with a bone-jarring impact that opened a four-inch gash that spewed blood across his face, and even more ominously, knocked him from his feet crushing his new wrap around glasses. It also partially blinded him as the blood ran into his eyes, obscuring his vision. As he fell heavily against one of the columns, his arm went wide as wrist hit the column base, and the Kanata flew out of his hand, skittering across the floor of the shrine, and out of reach several meters away.

   Now both combatants took a brief moment to assess their respective situations. While the Spartan had the more serious wound, he had also retained possession of his primary weapon, and soon recovered enough to make another thrust.  Alexus quickly scrambled to get the combat tomahawk out of its holster. As he freed the tomahawk, he simultaneously dove into a tumble roll away from the Spartan’s renewed lunge that missed him by mere millimeters. Sparks flew as the dory clanged against the granite floor.

    Alexus rolled to an upright position and found himself behind the Spartan.  With all his strength, he swept the tomahawk into a leveraged arc, catching the Spartan while he was still recovering from his lung in the unprotected back of his right calf, severing muscles, tendons and the fibula, before deeply lodging itself in the back of the tibia. The Spartan hit the ground with a heavy thud, as his shield was wrenched free and bounced away.  Even so traumatically injured, the Spartan spun away quick as a cat, and crab walked away from Alexus with the tomahawk still embedded in the bone of his lower leg.  A quick tug on the tomahawk proved that he was unable to wrench it free. The tomahawk’s wound had severed the lower femoral artery, and his life’s blood began to squirt across the floor of the shrine. Even though the Spartan was now quickly bleeding out, at an extreme disadvantage, and seemingly unable to plant his feet, or even walk, he had yet again still managed to retain the deadly dory.

   At this point, Alexus was weaponless and extremely wary of his opponent.  Even in his extreme wounded state, for the time being anyway, Spartan was still very much in the fight and was still armed with his primary weapon.  The blood flow across Alexus’ forehead was now beginning to seriously hamper his ability to see and gauge distance. He couldn’t close in for a kill without a weapon, especially if he couldn’t make a precise judgment of the distance needed to travel.

   The Spartan, now seemingly immobile, and quickly losing precious blood, knew he only had just one slim recourse left to him, and he didn’t hesitate to use it. As Alexus began to move to his left, the Spartan’s right, in order to flank him and gain some sort of tactical advantage, the Spartan used the dory as a crutch with which to make one heroic effort to stand and did the impossible by planting his ruined leg for leverage. In extreme pain, the Spartan stepped into his throw and flung the eight kilogram dory as a spear with pin point accuracy, hitting Alexus in the upper right hand side of his chest just below the shoulder socket, where the bronze spear tip completely penetrated his torso, with the bloody tip of the spear head now sticking out of the back of Alexus’ shoulder.

   The impact of the hit threw Alexus back, and he crashed against the dais. Intense pain shot up his whole body, and he screamed as he grabbed the dory with both hands.  He managed to wrench it free since it was not lodged into any bone. He had little strength left, and he dropped the now seemingly heavy dory beside him as he clutched his severely wounded shoulder.

   The Spartan had by this time pulled out his last weapon, the iron xiphos, from its scabbard, and dragging his useless right leg behind him, closed the distance between them as he lurched towards where Alexus was laying writhing in pain. Fortunately, Alexus had landed close to where the Katana was laying, and he managed to pick it up with his left hand and swing it into position just as the Spartan made a final desperate diving lunge to bury his short sword into Alexus for the killing blow. As the Spartan descended from his leap, Alexus barely managed to position the Katana in front of him at the exact instant the Spartan fell on top of him. It penetrated the Spartan through his upper chest as the momentum from his lunge buried it to the hilt. The blade sliced into the Spartans thorax, through his heart, and severed the spinal cord, killing him instantly. A primeval scream briefly filled the shrine as the Spartan died. That was the only sound that the brave Spartan warrior had uttered throughout their entire battle.

     The dead warrior’s weight landed on Alexus with a crushing impact, causing the wound in his shoulder to scream in excruciating pain. Alexus screamed out and pushed the now dead Spartan off him just as the holographic computer switched off the battle sequence. In an instant, everything disappeared, leaving Alexus lying alone on the floor of the holographic deck, still gasping in pain, but the wound to his shoulder, and his forehead had disappeared along with the rest of the projections of the program. The memory and emotional impact of the wounds, however, still lingered.

   Instantly the concerned voice of SADI was the next thing that Alexus could discern through the fog of pain in the aftermath of the battle. He could hear her calling his name, but it seemed far away.

   “Alexus! Alexus, can you hear me? Please make some indication that you’re hearing me.”  SADI was pushing her frantic program to the extreme.

    Alexus rolled over on his back, grimaced, and said, “Where in the world did you find that guy? He almost killed me.”

   A contrite SADI replied in a voice steeped in anxious sympathy. “You told me to find you a worthy opponent, and I simply picked the one with the highest level of difficulty. I’m so sorry, Alexus. I never would have uploaded that program if I had known the severity of the outcome.”

   Alexus’ face inexplicably seemed to brighten a bit as he realized what this really meant. “You mean to tell me I just beat the baddest a*s badass of them all?”   

    A now less than contrite voice answered him. “Yes, Alexus, you managed to beat the most difficult level in the program.” After a pause, she added, “Alexus, you absolutely must adjust the way you use these martial training programs. I’ve repeatedly told you, so you are already fully aware that these combat programs weren’t developed for use in the manner with which you use them. They were designed to train teams of ground troops in covert tactics and survival skills that included the total loss of modern weaponry. They were never designed for a one-on-one, hand-to-hand street brawl, and certainly not for a man who has just expended a tremendous amount of energy running up a high altitude mountain.”

    Suddenly feeling very tired, Alexus took SADI’s gentle admonishment in stride and decided to not push things any further. He grinned, and jokingly said, “Maybe tomorrow you could put me up against the old lady in the wheelchair again.”

   That flip comment garnered no verbal response except an exasperated electronic warbling sound that seemed to Alexus like the computer equivalent of rolling the eyes.  Alexus had had enough of causing SADI so much consternation for the day, with her futile attempt in trying to keep him from what she viewed as a senseless unnecessary risk, just so he could become more proficient with a weapon that hadn’t been used in combat for almost 1500 years. So, in a sudden mood of circumspective reflection, he decided she finally deserved the answer to that question that she daily asked, and that he daily avoided answering.

   Alexus stood up; sweating profusely, with his shoulders slightly slumped and leaned against a bulkhead. “SADI, the reason why I always immediately launch into the hand-to-hand battle program after running for at least an hour is because in a real combat situation, there is no respite from fatigue. There is only getting to the battle as fast as you can, then joining in the fight without hesitation. The better physically prepared you are to do that, the better your chances of survival.”

    Adopting her stern schoolmarm voice, SADI said, “I understand all that Alexus, but just what battle do you think that you’re preparing for? We’re heading for a possible Class M habitable planet 1187 light years from Earth to hopefully find a marooned star ship. Even if we do find hostile indigenous inhabitants, we will try to avoid them.  And if things get really bad, we will simply use our particle beam laser pulse weapons from our asteroid defense system, and only to defend ourselves. Under no circumstance are we to initiate an engagement with any indigenous species. Ever. You are completely aware of all these rules of engagement protocols. So, why is it necessary to remind you of this?”

    When no answer came from the exhausted human, SADI simply refused to be ignored this time. “Alexus, answer me!  In light of everything that I’ve, yet again, just said to you, tell me: just what do you have say for yourself?”

  “Um…I say that I’m probably gonna need to fix the hilts grip and keep my Kanata extremely sharp from now on…”

    With that bit of sarcasm, the electronic warble practically screamed in frustration and then went silent. Alexus wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he needed a shower, and truth be told, he knew that he needed to seriously consider stop pissing off his only companion, even if she was just a computer.

    As he made his way back to his cabin, he softly muttered an apology. “I’m sorry, SADI. I truly am.” He knew SADI could hear him because she was literally everywhere on the ship.

    A soft electronic warbling was her only response, and he decided to lighten the mood a little more. “Will you scrub my back while I shower?”

    The soft warbling suddenly stopped, and Alexus was once again left alone with his thoughts.

Author's Note

This is a set up chapter for what comes much later in the story. The battle scene is graphic, and all virtual reality.