H - "I am... in a bad place right now. I will be ok when we can get back home and this calms down, don't worry. For right now though I might not experience the same reality that you do, and I need help staying... here."
A - "What do you need from me?"
H - "If you see me turn to look at something or listen to a sound, just say either Yes or No if you see/hear something there too. If you see me freeze up, please just call my name a few times and I should snap out of it."
A - "Is there anything else?"
H - "... Please be real?" -- SilverRey
It was at that moment that Companion Ali knew that Human Hyl was in a very bad place indeed. Wild Humans like hir always came with scars in one form or another. When the scars weren't on the outside, they were definitely on the inside. It was Companion Ali's job to help Human Hyl and very little of this had been covered in Orientation.
This was Ali's first day in the field. They didn't know everything they should, but this was the exact kind of trial by fire that would bond a Human with them for life. Therefore, they had to improvise. "Thank you for telling me," Ali began. "I admit this is a tricky conundrum. How may I best prove that I am real?"
"I'm relying on memory and cams. If the cams see what I see, then there's a good chance it's a real thing. That said, I've been in this livesuit long enough that I could be having playback hallucinations. I don't have detail haptics, so that's out. Uuuuh... Oh yeah. I'll point my eyecam at you, and close my eyes, and tell you to do a gesture. Then you do it again after I do playback for verification. I'm never any good at keeping my hallucinations in sync."
The pantomime finished, Hyl breathed a little easier. "Okay. Okay, okay, okay, uhuh, awright, oh yeah... We're all doing our best out here. I'm seeing escape pods all over the place because I really wanna get gone. Home again, home again, get me there John. Any real ones?"
"The shuttle is two kliks[1] sunrise of here."
"Amber sunrise, green sunrise, or purple sunrise?"
This world only had one blue sun. The atmosphere rendered it purple. Human Hyl just needed one orientation point. "Purple sunrise, that way," they pointed. "It is a dangerous journey and fire is raining from the sky."
"That's why I want out. You okay with being carried?"
Ali did the "uppy hands". "Yes please."
"Okay. Okay, okay, okay... I'm going to take some stims to make sure I can do this. Reaction time down, endurance up. Shields at max." Ze nestled Ali under one arm. "Seconds on the clock. Dodge all the tacklers. Twenty-three! Alpha-seven! Forty-two! HUT! HUT! HUT!" And with one final scream, Human Hyn launched hirself towards the shuttle. One arm out in front, Ali held close against hir chest.
After the fact, Ali couldn't remember very much but the dodging and weaving. And leaping free as Human Hyl came to a sliding halt inside the doors. They had, after all, enough knowledge about Deathworlder games to know the inevitable end starting from the war-cry, "Hut! Hut! Hut!" Something was going to get slammed into relative ground, and it wasn't going to be Ali.
Fortunately, Human Hyl was not inclined to do the Goal Dance performance. Ze just lay there on the shuttle floor. Panting. "Are we there yet?"
"Yes. We have arrived. I am checking comms for news of the others."
"Okay. Okay. Okay awright uhuh oh yeah. We good. Wheeeeee..." Human Hyn rolled onto hir side. "IthinkI'mgunnabesick..."
"Deep breaths, Human Hyn. We are nearly home free." Everyone else had fled. Some shuttles went overloaded because it was too risky to reach the assigned one. "We are clear to lift. We are the last ones planetside. All safe. All souls heading home."
"...yaaaayy..." Hyn croaked. "I am going to feel this tomorrow..."
[1] Klik - one thousand Standard Distance Units, and therefore closer to a kilometer.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / nolimit46]
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