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William awakens to the computer alert, and runs off to the control deck to see what is going on. Arriving on the deck, he is surprised that Christina isn’t there ahead of him. Pushing the thought away, he hurries over to a console and discovers the ship is only 12 jumps from Roygon Prime, approaching the border of the Roygon System itself. Something nags at the back of his mind while he transmits clearance codes to the system government and is cleared on into the system. Setting the inner-system autopilot, he leaves the bridge and glances into Christina’s quarters to see why she didn’t respond at all to the alarm. Inside her quarters, he sees her tucking into her sheets. Creeping forward slowly, he finds himself beside the bed looking down at Christina’s face, which to his surprise is deeply flushed. Quickly reaching to her forehead he almost burns his hand at her temperature. Placing a moist towel on her forehead, he calls up medical help from her console link to the computer. He spends the next couple hours with her, noticing a steady drop in her temperature and her condition is apparently getting better. Having run some basic scans on her he knew she was having an allergic reaction to something, probably something on the previous station. When her feverish sleep disappears into a calm slumber, he sets the monitoring equipment to alert the ship computer of any major change in her condition and heads to the control deck to get landing clearance from Rygon Prime.
"Rygon Prime Landing Control, this is the Temporal Abyss requesting landing clearance." William radios down.
"Temporal Abyss, you are clear to land on launch pad 7. Please follow the landing beacon," Comes a reply after a few seconds of waiting.
William maneuvers the ship down and lands lightly on pad 7, noticing it's the last pad of the center. William searches the Rygon Prime’s Phone Directory finding a listing for a doctor. He finds one close to the docks and places a call, requesting the doctor’s help with Christina, knowing he should probably get a professional opinion. Returning to Christina’s room, he finds her missing. Looking astonished at the now empty bed, a sound comes from the adjoining room. He slowly turns toward the noise, his mind still mulling over the empty bed. Christina walks into the room, wearing only a towel, and stops short at the sight of William’s uncomprehending look.
"Will, what are you doing in our room?"
"I uh, well, you appeared sick, your temperature was 103 degrees centigrade, you didn’t react to a ship alarm and I was worried." William diverts his gaze toward the floor.
"Were we?" A perplexed look crosses Christina’s face for an instant.
"Excuse me," William mumbles and hastens out into the hallway.
William hurries back to the control deck, his blush slowly fading, and cancels his request for a doctor. Turning at the sound of Christina entering the bridge, William again apologizes for his entering her room without permission.
"It’s ok, Will, we forgive you, its not like it’s the first time you’ve seen us like that. We’ve been together on this small ship for the past 3 years," Christina walks up to William, looking into his green eyes with her deep brown eyes.
William feels her eyes penetrate him, as if she is looking deep inside him at his most personal thoughts. He manages a weak smile and attempts, somewhat successfully, to avoid cringing under her scrutiny. Suddenly, as if she found what she was looking for in his eyes, she gives him a warm smile, a small hug, and says, "We should probably figure out where to deliver that package."
"Yeah, I guess," William takes a calming breath as Christina turns toward her console. "I wonder how we will figure out who wanted this package, the sender didn’t give you a name did he?"
"Aluba isn’t a he, it’s a Flaeioubian."
"Oh, ok, any idea where to find the recipient of the package?"
"No idea, but the population of Rygon Prime is only 958 residents."
"900’s a rather large number," William trails off.
"Better than 90 million." Christina doesn’t miss a beat.
"Too true," William rolls his eyes thinking, "She seems back her normal self."
"Well, we’re going to go wander around the city, ok?"
"Sure, fine, just remember to call ma around noon, I’ll probably go wander around myself in a bit."
"Ok, love ya," she calls as she gracefully dashes toward the airlock.
As soon as Christina is out of the ship, William begins a search of all the information databases the planet has to offer, with the search string of "Christina Belletrix." He reroutes the results to his console in his quarters before setting out to explore the city himself.
Christina begins her wander by visiting every restaurant in the relatively small city. She makes a quick stop at the ship to drop off close to four dozen ‘doggie bags,’ before continuing her exploration. She wanders around the market places, looking for some clue as to the recipient of the package. She grumbles quietly as she again smashes the top of her head trying to pass through the 6’ doorways into the different shops. She spends most of the day in this ineffective search.
When she returns to the Temporal Abyss she immediately gets a wet cloth and collapses on her bed, placing the cloth on her battered forehead. From her current position she notices the still unopened package William had given her back on De-Larn 4. Sitting up to bring it within reach, she gently picks it up and sets it on the bed in front of her. Estimating the size to be about 2 inches on all sides, she can’t seem to decide what it might be. She sits slowly turning it over in her hands pondering its contents yet unwilling to open it as of yet, when she hears William return from his treks about a half-hour after she had returned.
She quickly situates the box back where she had left it originally at the sound of William’s light rap at her chamber door. "Come in," comes her reply after she had lain back down on the bed with her cloth.
"Looks like your height caused you some trouble today," William grins seeing the pale bruises forming under the damp cloth.
"Yeah, we’re three inches taller than the stupid doors in that city," Christina manages a warm smile at William.
"Any luck in finding the recipient of that package?" William is starting to look a bit uncomfortable.
"Nope, why don’t you have a seat?" Christina pats the bed lightly.
"If you wish," William feigns exasperation as he comes over and sits close to her head, which she promptly moves into his lap.
Idly stroking Christina’s long black hair William comments, "You know, I still don’t understand your use of plural pronouns when referring to yourself."
"We’ve never explained it to you," The reply sounds almost like a sigh of contentment.
"Would you explain it?"
"Perhaps; perhaps another," Christina falls asleep before she can finish.
"Perhaps another time, huh Christina?" William whispers softly as he slips out from under her, killing the lights as he silently leaves her room.
Returning to his room, William checks the status of his search. To his surprise, he already had about fifty-seven references and the search hadn’t even started connecting to the Galactic Grid yet. Unfortunately, most of them just relate to restaurants she had spent the day visiting, but one caught his interest, a reference to a ‘Belletrix Project.’ The reference was old, about four years old, dated almost right before he had met Christina. He began a second search, just on the Galactic Grid, on the ‘Belletrix Project.’ He deactivates the monitor and heads off toward the galley where he’s startled to see the tons of ‘doggie bags’ packed in the small refrigerator. Glancing through them quickly he selects an appetizing looking fried fish and pops it in the microwave as a quick dinner.
William wakes to a loud banging on his quarter’s door. "Come in," he carelessly calls out while attempting to rub the sleep from his eyes.
Christina bursts into the room and sits at the edge of his bed almost shouting in her excitement, "He found us!"
"Who?" William tries to lock his mind into the world of the awake.
"The guy who we are supposed to deliver the package to. Aluba had called him after we left dock, so he was expecting us."
"Ok, let me get dressed, and I’ll come help with whatever it is you want," William still hasn’t woken up enough to comprehend what’s going on.
"Opps, I didn’t even notice," Christina’s face flushes as she hops up and disappears out the door.
William lies there another few minutes after Christina left before getting up and heading into his little wash room. He splashes his face to help him wake up and wonders idly how much sleep he truly received. Suddenly he remembers his search and quickly dries his face as he moves over to the console. Powering up the screen, he discovers that the Belletrix Project is classified information, and he is unable to glean any information. Remembering that Christina wanted him to meet someone, he shutdown the console and hurries up to the control deck, stopping short at the sight of a two headed alien, standing patiently beside one of the consoles, a Thrilbian no doubt. William walks up to the short alien and gives a slight bow, which is the polite greeting for Thrilbians. The Thrilbian looks up at William, and returns the bow in kind.
"Hello, I’m Geefle, Aluba called me saying that two humans would bring a package to me. She also sent me a picture of Christina for my reference."
"Well, yes, we do. Christina?"
"Yes, Will, what do you want?"
"Should we have the autobots move the package out of the hold?"
"Ok, why not?" Christina shifts over slightly and types in a few quick keystrokes and returns to what she’s doing.
"So, do you mind telling me what’s in the box?" William turns back to Geefle.
"Hmm? Oh, not at all, there is a device called a dimensional transducer, contained within the box.
"Isn’t that the device that allows dimensional shifts to be created and controlled?" Christina offers from her console, telling William the purpose of the device without making it look like he didn’t already know.
"Yes, you’re right Christina, I didn’t know you knew anything about dimensional science," Geefle turns one of his heads toward Christina.
"We developed the new Synthetic Genius systems for the spaceship jump engines," Christina replies before she can think better of it.
"You? I thought Tina on Golgotha developed that system." Geefle gives Christina a confused look.
Christina looks up startled for a moment, drawing in a quick breath and rushes off the control deck.
"Hu? That’s not like her, I should probably go check on her. Looks like the autobots are finished unloading your crate, why don’t you go check to make sure it's undamaged, while I check on Christina?" William offers before he goes after Christina.
"Ok, here is the rest of your payment," Geefle hands William a half million credit slip.
"Thanks," William takes Geefle to where the autobots are starting to load themselves back into the ship.
"Thanks for making the delivery," Geefle waves as he picks up the box and loads it into his ground car, to the astonishment of William.
After a second, his astonishment fades and he remembers Christina. Rushing back into the ship, he looks for her first in her quarters. Not seeing her immediately, he moves on to the kitchen. He doesn’t see her here either and returns to the control deck thinking she might have returned there. The control deck is abandoned when he reaches it, sighing, he heads back toward his room. As he passes Christina’s door again, he hears the faintest of sniffling coming from inside. Looking in he doesn’t see Christina anywhere. Stepping into the room, he listens intently for a few seconds until another sniffle reaches his ears. He moves around the bed, guessing where the sound came from, to see Christina sitting on the floor, having pulled herself into a tight ball, sobbing silently, her back to William.
Approaching Christina slowly, William places his hands lightly on her shoulders and gently massages her shoulders. He feels Christina flinch initially but almost immediately her shoulders relax from the gentle movement of William’s fingers.
"What’s wrong, Christina?" William whispers softly as he continues to caress her shoulders.
Christina continues to cry, for a few more moments and replies, "It’s begun." She then falls back into her sobbing, light convulsions start to rock her body.
"Christina, try to calm down. You’re going to injure yourself if your not careful," William warns, attempting to calm her ragged breathing.
Christina’s sobbing subsides into sniffles after a few minutes and her breathing becomes more stable. "Christina," William gently commands, "You should get some rest, perhaps you’ll tell me how to help you when you wake up. Ok?"
"Ok," comes the barest of whispers from Christina’s lips.
William helps Christina into her bed, "Would you like something to eat?"
Christina gives a slight shake of her head. William kisses her delicately on her forehead before quietly leaving the room.
William decides to get some rest after he puts Christina to bed. He lies in bed worrying about Christina for almost an hour and a half before falling into a troubled sleep. His dreams are full of odd images, mostly shadows which shift and flow, always just out of sight. He feels a choking pain and awakens suddenly drenched in cold sweat. Looking around his dimly lit room, the dream quickly fades back into his subconscious. He gets up and dresses, heading to the galley for a quick bite to eat. Chewing hungrily on a sweet meat sandwich, he returns to Christina’s room, glad to see her at least fitfully sleeping. Knowing he won’t be able to go back to sleep, he enters the control deck and starts searching for anything that might help him, help Christina. He sends a message to Aluba, requesting any information, and tries to find out what she did before she met him.
After another two hours of fruitless search, he pushes the console away with a angry shove, sending his rolly-chair and himself zipping back into the back wall of the room. He pushes the chair back to the console and turns on some light rock music to help ease his nerves.
Looking around the small control deck, he suddenly realizes how claustrophobic the small ship really is. Having only seven rooms, one being the cargo hold, didn’t offer much change in scenery. He wonders idly if that claustrophobia has started getting to Christina. William drifts off to sleep in the rolly-chair.
William awakens suddenly as a blood curdling scream splits through the ship. William jumps from the chair he’s sitting on, sending it banging into the wall across the room, as he dashes toward Christina’s room. As he reaches the door to her quarters, another scream rips through William’s eardrums. He thinks he picks up a slight echo in the second scream but doesn’t give it any real thought, being too worried about Christina. Reaching her bedside, she doesn’t look well at all, still sleeping, she has gone dead white, appears soaked in sweat, and looks to be in extreme pain, she rolls back and forth across the bed, tangling herself in the sheets. William reaches down to hold her still, and is startled that her skin is ice cold. William thinks its odd that Christina is dry even though she looks drenched. Clutching his ears as Christina releases another scream, he staggers back and fights to resist the feeling he should run. Yet he definitely hears another voice in the scream. Slightly deafened by the scream, William moves back to Christina’s bedside and again resists the urge to flee. To William’s horror, Christina appears to be fracturing into multiple parts.
As the initial startlement fades, he realizes she’s separating into only two parts. However, as the process continues, neither part appears to be lacking. William realizes suddenly that one half is obviously male, the other female. Later William figures the actual process, from her first scream, to the complete separation of the two halves, was around three hours. The two halves of Christina are now both sleeping peacefully, and look well enough. William decides not to leave the bedside until at least one of them wakes up. He spends the next half-hour watching the two new forms. The female looks to be about five foot ten inches or so, the male a good six foot. Both parts are slender, not as slender as Christina, but slender none the less, at least compared to William. William estimates the male at 130 pounds and the female about 125. Neither looks nearly as light as Christina, who was a low 118. William sees Christina’s ebony hair on the female however it is short like William’s. The male has long grayish, white hair, though he looks no older than 26.
The female half wakes first, and looks curiously at the male half and that turns to William. A look of recognition flashes in her hazel eyes as she smiles, "Hi Will, what are you doing here?"
"Hu?" William looks dumbly at the female half of Christina because of her blatantly obvious question.
"Wait a minute! I understand! Hi Will, I’m Tina, pleasure to make your acquaintance." The female half offers her hand.
"Um, hi," William takes the offered hand and Tina shakes it firmly.
Tina climbs out of the bed and heads off into the wash area of Christina’s quarters. A few seconds later, William hears running water, this wakes up the male half of Christina, who looks at William with the same penetrating eyes Christina had and then yells, "Who in the world are you! And what are you doing in my room?"
"I am William Hartz, and I was worried about Christina, whom you appear to be part of." William retorts, unfazed by the guy’s harsh tones.
"Hu? Christina? Oh that’s right, hello, sorry about that. I’m Christopher, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance," Christopher also offers his hand to William.
William shakes Christopher’s hand and then stops him from doing what Tina had just done and asks, "What in the universe is going on, anyway?"
"Oh, sorry, Christina didn’t tell you for a reason, if you can wait a bit longer we’ll explain it to you. Ok?" Chris sits back down on the bed to wait for Tina.
A bit later Tina comes out and Chris goes in. William tries the same question on Tina and gets back an identical response. William sighs, and sits back to wait for Chris.
While waiting for Chris, William decides to fix a meal. Tina tries to help but just gets in the way. William and Tina look up as Chris enters the room. William gawks at Chris’s long silver hair. Now that it had been washed, it no longer looked the dull gray of earlier.
"I’m a quarter Elvish," Chris noticing William’s surprised look, "I get my hair from my grandmother on my father’s side."
"Hmm, interesting, care for something to eat?" William asks after a awkward moment.
"Sure, I’m starved." Chris takes the seat beside Tina as William places the Clathran style burgers on the table.
"Aren’t these like the Clathrans make?" Tina curiously pokes the burger with her finger.
"Yes, Tina, we’ve had them before," Chris grows before taking a large bite of the burger. "Hey! These are great burgers! I’ve never had any like this before!" Chris exclaims after he swallows.
"Well thanks, I do my best," William smiles lightly. "Willing to explain the two of you?"
"Hu? The two of us?" Tina looks perplexes for a moment, an understanding flicker flashes through her eyes, "Oh, of course, I guess. Chris?"
"Yeah, we should probably explain to him," Chris nods slowly, "Will, what do you know about the Belletrix Project?"
"Only that it’s classified information, I don’t have the hacking skills of Christina."
"Ok, I’ll give you a brief explanation, ok?" Chris nods his understanding.
"Sure," William sits back and prepares for what maybe a long story.
"The Belletrix Project was started about seventeen years ago by fifteen scientists under multiple grants from The Federated Human Planets, Clathran War Funding, Elvish Biological Research and Development, and Hadrakian Battle Inc. Oddly enough, the Hadrakians and the Clathrans didn’t realize they were cofunding a project. I doubt the project would’ve received funding from both groups if they knew, as you know they were and still are at war with each other. Anyway, the project had different purposes offered to each of the funders,"
"So the project was funded under false pretenses?" William cuts in.
"You could say that, however, each of the offered purposes does relate to the true purpose of the project. It’s just that no purpose fully encompassed the true one. The true purpose, obviously, was to see if it was possible to merge two living beings, physically and mentally, while being able to separate them at a later date with little or no individual personality loss. Tests were conducted on many different species of animals initially, however, the scientists couldn’t figure out how to test the animal’s personality differences."
"What were the reasons provided to the funders?" William’s question interrupts Chris’s train of thought.
"Hu? Oh, well lets see, the Clathran War Fund was told it was to develop a biological chemical to enhance a fighter’s abilities, the Elvish BR&D just likes supporting biological experiments, they don’t seem to care why and the group didn’t provide them with much of any reason. The Hardrakian Battle Inc. was told the project offered cures for some physical defects that had started showing up more and more often in newborn children during the past couple of years. Does that answer your question?" Chris sounds a bit irritated.
"Yes, please continue your explanation," William nods, ignoring the irritation in Chris’s voice.
"Lets see, oh yes, personality isolation in the test subjects. The group sent out a call for test-subjects, after they acquired the desired number the call was repealed and put under classification. I think there were two other human merges, besides us, one Clathran set, two Elvish sets, and two cross-races. Elvish and Clathran, Hadrakian and Human, I think. Anyway, the cross-races failed miserably, I think the two mergers died after about ten hours of agonizing pain and problems. They feared my quarter of Elvish genes, but Tina insisted she wouldn’t back away. I didn’t really think it would be a problem. Otherwise, most of the mergers were rather expected. Tina and I were the closest to the third failure, we withstood a little more than six hours of the same agonizing pain you saw when we split. From the tests we observed before our joining, we learned that the merge became less and less time consuming with each merge or separation. A few mergeforms were constantly merging and separating until it took only a couple seconds to complete the process. Talk about the ultimate fighter, one instead of two for training and resource consumption.
"Back to my story, we were one of the last groups to be merged together. The project was canceled a bit after we completed our merger. Everyone panicked when they heard the news that the project was canceled. As you know, all test subjects of a canceled project are destroyed, the data gathered is put under the highest classification it can be and all personnel debriefed. Now remember that this isn’t standard military debriefing, mind-wipes, disappearances, and facility destruction is this type of debriefing. Very nasty business. Anyway, Christina escaped with two other mergeforms into space and laid low for a while. The three of us split up to make hunting us down harder. Christina wandered the space stations and planets for about five years before she met you and somehow convinced you to allow her to tag along. I think that brings you up to date." Chris sighs slightly after finishing his speech.
"So why did Christina split back into you two just a bit ago?" William asks oblivious to the obvious curiosity he’s showing toward this project.
"I don’t know, Tina any ideas?"
"Well, it could have something to do it has been exactly ten years from when we were first merged. This process may only have a extended period of that long."
"Are you trying to say I’m never going to see Christina again?!?" William jumps up, startling the other two with the force of the exclamation.
"Well, not exactly. I think that we’ll be able to remerge back into Christina, however, I don’t know, the project only lasted seven years before being disbanded." Tina stammers under William’s harsh glare.
Seeing the fear in Tina’s eyes, looking so much like Christina for a moment, William settles down back into his seat, dispirited.
"Don’t worry Will, we’ll try to remerge tomorrow, ok?" Tina caresses William on the shoulder, easing the taunt muscles.
"Ok, thanks," William sighs, calming down as Tina continues her wonderful massage.