Adjusting to a personal temporal anomaly II
23 Nov 2022CMDR rtimmis
Continuing from part one.It seems incredible to me now, that so much time can have passed, in what seems like a single nights sleep, 38 years! That would make me 52 years old, in Earth years, oh my! ...
I was 14 years old, when the first Injection Portals were released, at the time the experience was incredible; Suddenly we could all be 'The Last Starfighter'. I remember there were a number of different devices that could open a rudimentary portal. The BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. I had the Spectrum, it was a tiny little black box with blue rubber keys and yet with it I was able to access the whole galaxy.
"Good morning commander, how are you feeling" said a young woman as she entered my room
"A little tired, thirsty and I could really do with something to eat" I replied
"Well you're in good fortune commander, we have Provitafibre with lactile extract, or Tensocarbonutrite with Yola fruit" she said
I pondered for a moment, I had absolutely no idea what any of this stuff was. I figured the best thing to do was to go with the first word I recognised
"Lets try the Fruit!" I said
"Sure thing, and perhaps some Coffee?" she replied
"Oh yes, Yes, Coffee would be perfect, thank you" I replied
She smiled, turned and left the room. The glass door automatically sliding open as she approached it, and closing directly behind her. How weird the door makes the same sound as the doors on the Starship Enterprise, from the 1970's classic space adventuring TV series 'Star Trek'. At that moment it suddenly dawned on me, I am not in 1984, neither am I in 2022. I looked back at the service display of my vitals monitor, and realised what the numbers represented, date and time.
Bloody Hell!! I am in 3308, it 07:42 in the morning and I am on a Coriolis space station in the Wolf 359 system, next door to Barnard's Star!
Maybe I am dreaming, but this really is straight out of the script from 'The Last Starfighter'. I am stunned, suddenly feeling giddy and light headed, this can not possibly be real. I grasp at the bed clothes, feeling the soft cloth on my finger tips. I reach for the stand holding the IV drip; It's cold to my touch, but seems to wick away the heat from my fingers quicker than steel, and more so than aluminium. Clearly the stand is made from some form of alloy, because its heat conductivity is high, and it has a light cool feel to it. I pinch the skin on the inside of my thigh, Ouch!!
Swoosh, went the sliding glass door, that sound is uncanny, I half expect Captain Kirk to appear.
"Your breakfast and Coffee Commander" The young woman said, holding out the tray.
"Thank you, you're very kind.." I said, as I reached and took the tray from her
"You are 'most welcome' commander." she responded, and then continued
"You're the temporal anomaly aren't you?" she questioned
"Temporal anomaly!" I replied
"I feel like I might actually be Dr Who" I extended
"Dr Who ?" she replied
"Yes, Dr Who, the Time Lord" I stated
"The Time Lord who is Dr Who" she replied, staring at me with a look of confusion
"Hmmm, I can see this is going to go all 'Abbot & Costello' " I said, with a wry smile
"So Dr Abbot and Dr Costello are Time Lords?" she questioned
"I tell you what, let's stick with 'Temporal Anomaly'" I said, spooning the Yola fruit, and grain shaped nuggets into my mouth
"Good morning Commander, it's good to see you have a healthy appetite this morning" announced Dr Burrows as the door slid closed behind him.
"We are all rather astonished at your arrival, which has been met with great interest by our stations chief science officer." he continued
"Professor Ralph Atkins is amazed by your arrival, and he'd like to meet you, would that be ok?" he asked
"Sure, I think that would be a good idea, I have quite a few questions of my own" I replied
Professor Ralph Atkins was the chief science office on Powell High, a lean man of medium height and build, with a full head of grey hair, which was swept back and tied in a small plat at the back. He watched me with deep consideration as we discussed how and where I had been discovered, and the results of the medical teams findings so far.
My ships flight recorder had my last Hyperspace jump recorded as 3270, fortunately the team aboard the vessel had taken little interest in the details from the service display output of my escape pod, and had simply dropped me off at medical in exchange for a the standard recovery bounty. The medical team had assumed the service display was simply malfunctioning, and thus had prepared my body for resuscitation in the usual way. It was the pathology lab that raised the alert, having discovered an anomaly in my genetics. It was this single finding, that had got my medical case records escalated to the stations Chief Science Officer.
Professor Atkins went on to explain that in the early 2000's on Earth, the home world of our ancestors in the Sol system. A group of research scientists had 'dropped the ball' when experimenting with virology. A modified strain of Bat virus had escaped from a lab in the eastern provinces of what was then communist China. Its spread was rapid and within the year there was a global pandemic.
The global scientific community responded with a number of vaccines, and anti-viral drugs. The vaccine proved effective in reducing symptons, and morbidity. Governments around the world, hasty to contain the virus, mandated the use of the vaccine widely throughout the population. The vaccines used experimental messenger RNA gene technology to trigger an immune response to generate protein anti-bodies designed to attach and marker the virus. Thus alerting the hosts immune system in identifying the infection and deploying the immune systems killer T-Cells early, mitigating the infection severity.
However, unkowingly those that received the vaccine also received a change to their mitochondrial DNA as the mRNA vaccine carried with it a DNA helix editor which targetted the cells mitochondrial DNA, the engines of the human bodies cells.
Around 8 years after the initial pandemic a viral mutation occurred, suddenly the virus morbidity rates sky rocketed, but only in those that had remained unvaccinated. This evolutionary mutation of the virus decimated those left unvaccinated, irradicating them from population, and thus those with unaltered DNA died out from the human species.
Professor Atkins, leaned forward, staring straight at me, and stated
"You have pre-vaccine Mitochondrial DNA Commander!"