Omega and Alpha & Rest My Brothers Read online

  ***

  Doc was in the galley. He spent all his time there now. The wormhole hadn’t affected his body, the way it did the rest of us—the ones who’d lived through it, anyway, though not many of us had lived for long—but it’d taken a toll on his mind. He spent all his time writing formulas on the walls, using whatever came to hand as ink: ketchup, mustard, grape jelly. Gave the galley an interesting smell; it almost overrode the odors that seeped from the big freezer, which wasn’t working too well. Overloaded, was my guess.

  “Hey, Doc,” I said as I headed for the only microwave that still worked…sometimes.

  “Captain,” he said as he made a square root symbol out of strawberry jam. The jam didn’t want to stay put. I watched as berry-laden juice trickled down the wall. It smelled good; reminded me of spring days, the sun hot on my neck as I bent down to pick bright red berries. One for the basket, one for me. One for the basket, two for me. One for…

  “Captain?”

  I shook my head. “What is it, Doc? Found something new?”

  Doc was always finding something new. Then forgetting it. Then finding it again.

  “The wormhole.”

  I felt his words like an electrical shock. I think I even jerked backwards. I almost—not quite, but almost—pulled my left hand out of its pocket, which would have been a trick, since that pocket was zippered shut.

  This was the first time Doc had mentioned the wormhole. All his calculations, all the numbers and symbols that covered the walls and ceiling and tables and chairs, all the days he’d spent making them—never once had he said anything about the wormhole.

  “It was a temporal anomaly,” Doc said. He set down the empty plastic container which was no longer full of strawberry jam and headed for the pantry.

  I wondered what he’d find to write with next. Maybe some chicken gravy? No, turkey; after all, it was almost Christmas. Turkey would be better; more in keeping of the season.

  I looked at Doc’s formulas. The mustard was holding up better than the ketchup. I flashed on a cartoon I’d seen once: a scientist—you could tell he was a scientist because he had on a white lab coat—had filled a board thick with symbols and algebraic expressions, almost to the end, where he’d written: ‘And then, a miracle occurs.’

  It seemed applicable to our current situation. I wondered if Doc’d ever seen that cartoon.

  He ambled back in from the pantry, a tube of wasabi in his hand. Nice. Green, to go with the red strawberry jam. Christmas colors.

  I heated some soup for Anne and me. This time, the microwave worked just fine.

  ‘And then, a miracle occurs.’