A Science Fiction Adventure Told in Episodes

Captain Clone: The First: A Science Fiction Short Story

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I worked all night trying to find trying to find a quicker, less expensive cure. The colourful boxes of anti-viral agents, tailored bacteria, and antibiotics littered the work surface. In the corner of the sick bay the radiation lamp flickered, blood-coloured light over a tray of discarded Petri dishes.

As the night wore on, my treatments became increasingly experimental. I tried the wilder, alien technologies. I placed the smooth mites of the Pincer world onto the faces of the crew in the hope that the burrowing insects would seek out and consume the infection. I pounded strange aromatic herbs. I concocted desperate combinations.

Until, at last, I found myself chanting. In the sterile lights of the sick bay, I sang a half-remembered prayer to Shimra. I chanted the rituals over the sick women. The words sounded hollow to my ears. Why would the Healing God Shimra hear an unbeliever?

I tried my best to cure them, but only time and patience and expensive drugs would heal them. I failed them.

And I desperately needed a drink.

I dimmed the lights in the sick bay.