Remember what use to be Section 3?
The new tone, voice, and throughline required that section be moved to 4 and edited.
How Jerry and Betty Became the Least Entertaining Couple in the Neighborhood (Section 4 Rewritten from Section 3)
NASA’s publicity tour included receptions at several major art galleries. Tonight’s was Boston’s MFA, but only after a morning at Harvard, an afternoon at MIT, and a rubber-chicken dinner with the Boston-Cambridge CoC.
An advance team guided Jerry through Cambridge, a different team through Boston, with Betty spending the day at several less technical events controlled by yet another team. She gazed out the rear window of their limo and her head slewed back onto the plush leather upholstered passenger seat. “Don’t you ever get tired of it all?”
Jerry watched heavy rain drops crash against the limo. “We still don’t know what the Thorine homeworld is like. I don’t remember any of it. I was there for three months and I remember none of it.”
Her hand slid along the seat and took his.
“Koss says it’s something to do with cryosleep. I don’t think so. I remember earth, I remember you, I remember all the training. Shouldn’t I remember something of it?” Betty slid next to him. “Nothing?”
Jerry looked at her with vacant eyes, seeing but not seeing, wondering and not knowing. He raised his free hand to his window, fingers extended and tips against the window, and pushed.
The driver’s voice overrode the relaxing piano music playing since they left the Park Plaza. “We can’t lower the windows, Commander Fortin. Would you like me to adjust the temperature?”
Jerry paid no attention and continued to press.
The limo slowed. “Commander Fortin?”
The privacy glass lowered and Dr. Koss’ head came through. “There is a problem, Jerry?”
Betty’s head came up sharply and her nostrils flared. “I didn’t know you were here with us, Dr. Koss.”
Koss focused on Jerry. “I had buisness today and my night is free. I came along. Jerry? Jerrold?”
Jerry’s head rotated slowly until his gaze fixed on Koss. His words came slowly, as if in a recently learned foreign tongue. “The Thorines’ don’t have glass. They have a fibrous material. Transparent. Only what is wanted gets in. Only what is not wanted gets out.”
“What else do you remember, Commander Fortin?”
Jerry’s hand came back down. His eyes followed it to his lap, to Betty’s waiting hands. “Nothing. That’s all. I remember nothing.”
Koss nodded. Betty saw him signal the driver to continue. The limo picked up speed as the privacy window closed.
Betty sneered into the low light of the passenger compartment. “Listening to us, Dr. Koss?”
No response. She snorted.
The MFA hosted an exhibit of real and imagined worlds, everything from cave wall reliefs to the latest immersive holograms.
The advance team opened the limo doors for them and guided them in. Jerry obediently nodded, waved, shook hands, answered qestions and made small talk. Betty glanced through the crowd as they moved from room to room and scanned for Dr. Koss or others she knew from Houston and other agencies.
Nothing aside from their advance and support teams. She spotted Koss’ assistant, Dr. Fisher, in a red Versace, her thick, red hair presenting a brilliant contrast to the gown and sweeping down it’s open back. Fisher kept swapping out Jerry’s champagne flute every time he took a sip. Betty stood so close behind her Fisher bumped into her when she turned.
Betty grabbed the flute. “Let him finish his drink. What is this? He takes a sip and you give him a new glass? What are you doing? Collected saliva samples? Didn’t you people do enough of that when he was in quarantine?”
Suddenly a tuxed Dr. Koss stood beside them. His soft-fleshed hand covered Betty’s in a steady grip and he spoke quietly. “You are tired, Ms. Fortin. Let us not make a scene. Let us enjoy ourselves.”
Jerry, oblivious and three heads away in the crowd, stepped over the rope line and into an immersive hologram, The Thorine World (Imagined). Handlers reached for him but their hands fell short as Jerry moved down a street similar to any major Earth city main street. Lights guided traffic, steel, concrete, and glass buildings towered over life-size near-human creatures scurrying to and for.
Jerry burst out laughing. “This is what you think their world is like? Another earth? Buildings and cities like ours because you need them to be like us? For what reason? To feel safe? To believe you’re equal to them, you’re just like them? To convince yourselves you have something to offer them?”
People pulled back, moved a polite but obvious distance away, gave Jerry’s handlers a chance to surround him. He repeatedly evaded their striving hands, his movements a choreographic exhibition among toppling ruins. “They gave us hyperlight drive. They gave us functioning cryosleep. They gave us translight communication.”
Cameras flashed, recorded. People held out their phones, mumbled notes to each other.
Betty struggled against Koss’ grip. “Jerry! Jerry, help me! Make him let me go! Jerry!”
Koss nodded to someone behind her. Strong arms intertwined hers on either side.
Dr. Koss’ smile never wavered. “Dr. Fisher, please help Betty. She’s not feeling well.”
Fisher lifted a small cylinder from her purse and a puff of gas exploded into Betty’s face.
Dr. Koss’ voice rose. “Ms. Fortin. The strain. You’re exhausted, dear woman.” He directed his voice to others moving smoothly through the crowd towards Jerry. “Come, gather Commander Fortin. Our apologies. We have tired our guests. We will do something special once they’ve had a rest.”
Betty’s eyes closed as the arms supporting her turned her towards the exit.
Questions or comments? Bring ’em on. They’ll help me craft a better story.
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