Holiday high jinks in hyperspace…
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JOY TO THE WORLDS
MIMI RISER
www.mimiriser.com
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by Mimi Riser
(All rights reserved.)
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[Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.]
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Joy to the Worlds
by
Mimi Riser
(With apologies to Mr. Dickens.)
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According to some cleverly manipulated calculations, it is the evening of December twenty-fourth in our homeport on Earth. Not that we are in our homeport. We are deep in hyperspace and, technically speaking, time and dates do not exist in the nebulous void of hyperspace.
Of course, technically speaking, time doesn’t exist out of hyperspace either. Technically speaking, time is nothing at all in and of itself. It’s an abstract concept, a rather muddy means of measuring and correlating intervals. Which is why, technically speaking, it seemed perfectly allowable to set the ship’s clock on a computerized facsimile of Earth-time reckoning. Time is, after all, whatever the general consensus chooses to make it. But since the “general consensus” happened to be snoring away in his berth when I reset the clock, I had chosen on my own to make it Yule-time…technically speaking.
There are only seven of us on board, you see. A skeleton crew of five and myself, under Captain Archibald Hanlin—the stiffest, tightest, most difficult to deal with pain-in-the-protocol who ever piloted a medical research ship out among the stars. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Hanlin and I have served together through thick and thin, and my respect and admiration for his abilities is heartfelt and sincere. However, my respect and admiration for him have yet to stop me from frequent ponderings of what his nose would look like sticking out the back of his head.
Like just recently, for instance. Here I was, innocently piping a little holiday spirit over the ship’s intercom, when he steamed onto the bridge and ordered me to “Stow that racket” in…er, let’s just say an unmentionable part of my anatomy. What a grouch. I admit the volume might have been a tad on the plush side considering the raggedness of his recent rest periods, but I felt that our crew needed the boost. I was certain that I did.
“I’m just trying to brighten things up a bit,” I managed with a smile, even though Hanlin’s characteristic growl had already started my hands clenching. “’Tis the season to be jolly.”
“Jolly?” His brow furrowed.
You could almost see the shutters of his mind slamming down and his guard popping up. Hanlin’s no fool—whatever else he is—and he recognized my smile. It’s the one I use when I’m about to propose one of those, what he terms “ideas for idiots.”
“It’s Christmas.” I jerked a thumb toward the bridge’s date register. “Christmas Eve,” I elaborated as his expression started sinking into black-hole status. “You remember Christmas, don’t you, Captain?… Ho, ho, ho?” I prodded hopefully. “Holly, mistletoe, fun… Good will to all?” I leveled a laser-beam gaze on him.
He ignored it. “You’ve been reading Charles Dickens again, haven’t you?”
I would have taken heart from the fact he’d dropped his growl—except he’d replaced it with his let’s-be-reasonable tone, which always makes me want to break out in hives.
“Listen, Lieutenant…”
Perhaps I should mention here that I’m not officially an officer—just a civilian member of the Allied Worlds’ Med-Corps. What I am, to be specific, is an increasingly harried pathologist with a specialty in exotic viruses, but it makes Hanlin feel more shipshape to call me Lieutenant. He’s a great believer in on-board hierarchy.