Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

Crazy

Maysie had been premature to think all was well. Björn was a mental facility tied into bringing prisoners to Spitsbergen, in the depths of what had once been the Baltic Sea. Turns out the seed vault of the world sat near the edge of shell, and the former Artic Sea was now called the Armpit of Hell--most that fell off the young turtle's flipper during hatching. Now that the creature had grown for about 14 years, the former distance to the north pole was the shell's leading edge.

"So, you've been hearing voices?" This psychologist wore glasses, which she couldn't stop fidgeting with the whole time she talked to her.

"Why would I hear voices?"

"You believe you spoke to a human on another turtle, miss Susan. How can that happen without hearing voices?"

"No, you're asking if I currently hear voices instead of looking at where I had this event. I was suffering from the edge of the bends for over 2 months intermittently. I am extremely aware that I was placed in a position to naturally have a hallucination and have never exhibited that behavior before or since. So just quit with this whole hearing voices shit--I don't."

"When was the last time you heard from this "Talon"?"

"That was right before an oxygen mask was slipped over my face, alleviating the trigger for hallucinations."

"Why would a young woman who never went diving know about such a state, and how did you get it without water?"

"First, fighter pilots have had the bends at high altitudes. Second, I was basing my situation on what I could remember as I was half passing out. It could just be symptoms of pretty much no atmosphere--but I don't have a word for that, so Bends it is."

"So why do you want to build this chamber you had in your dream if you were hallucinating and cannot prove this "Talon" is real?"

"First, Warlord Édouard André wanted me to tell him something worth protecting me past this green card year, and a suspension chamber of any sort fits that. Second, a ton of similar thoughts exist in science: Proustian moments, mind-pops, eureka effect, brainstorms, all of this touches on what I went through, and I want to know if what I've got in mind works. Worse that happens is it doesn't, Talon was never really real, and I go into being a mechanic. Or I could be right, never find this Talon, and have to accept that my  untrained brain came up with this idea all on its own."

"Why are you avoiding whether Talon is real?"

"Because this is the 6th time you've interrogated me over my answers! Proof of Talon or not is tied up in whether this chamber works! But if it was just about him, I'd never have the chance to even try."

"But he's just a voice in your head. "

"Ok, you either have the answers you want already or you don't. I'm done." Maysie closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Fuck this place. She got her certificate for the guns--which she didn't need if she lived out in the wild. The security at this place was just dumb, they already gave her back the guns and ammo, so they trusted her enough. While the memory of that man still scared her, she had enough skills to take care of herself.

Sitting here, answering questions like she was insane wasn't living her life, especially since no one had bothered to show her she was crazy. Just the same damn questions over and over, trying to trip her up and make her question everything that happened.

A knock sounded on the door behind Mrs. Glasses. The woman never even gave her a name. "Don't interrupt a session, please."

From outside came a muffled but familiar voice. "Open the door Maja, now."

The woman scrambled for the door, not that Maysie fully opened her eyes to see it, as she was just done with reality for a moment. She didn't feel like opening them for Ethan, either--he was the one who left her here.

"Why are you still questioning her? You turned in your assessment 2 days ago."

" I don't think she's mentally stable! "

" No genius is! Your job was to make sure she was being truthful with us. Édouard knows you don't trust crazy 6th sense bullshit, not even after he's correctly guessed when the damn turtle will choke before it does for damn near 15 years! Your job isn't to fix what you don't understand! Our people have been hovering over a collapse ever since it first started, and this kid has a possible way out and you're so focused on your damn skills that you can't even see how dead this world is."

The rant forced Maysie to open her eyes. Thinking back, as they rose through all the landscape, the world held the look of autumn--not that she remembered such a season.  Just how stable was life, here?

"What a hell of a way to put stupid levels of pressure on a mere kid! These things are nothing, and you're going to encourage her fantasy of saving humanity?!"

"Hold up, I never said a thing about saving us. I was trading a possible new technology for protection, lady, not even remotely thinking about salvation. You don't know how many things I built in my life that didn't work--or what worked, for that matter."

Maja cocked her head to the side as she turned away from Ethan. "Don't you care for humanity?"

"I may have come down here because I was alone, but I don't need a nation to survive.  So no, I don't care about the crazy people who run towards death, and if there are so many people still living and humanity hasn't figured out how to thrive in the years since the bird's hatching? We grew more food than two people could eat within a couple of years. There is no excuse for not having basic needs met. Ask me how much I really want to save those who won't save themselves."

"Well, I guess that answers your worries about a savior complex, Maja." Ethan butted in.

"Wait, Mobo--exactly how much do you want to save people, Susan?" The psychiatrist held her hand to his chest while looking at Maysie.

"I want to help them a lot. It's miserable being alone. But you don't have to worry about me sacrificing myself just so people can die anyway. Whatever this savior complex thing is, I ain't got it."

That's what it took to stop the conflict between Maja and Ethan. They seemed to forget that they were touching, and that part fascinated Maysie. Her amused cough caused the tableau to break and Ethan went back to the normal barely-contained rage that he loved to wallow in when he had too much of an audience.

Maysie was glad he left that behind the day he carried her up on the shell.

Once the two in charge of her were on the same page, she was on her way.

It was unexpected. One of the few massive projects that were started after the hatching and resulting wars was a train station from Björn to Spitsbergen underneath much of mainland Finland.

She didn't like running underground like this, having been out in the open most of her childhood. She could remember sitting out near the beak, holding onto the feathers to not float away, and here she was going into a tube where there was no chance of escape.

Even worse, they stopped a couple of times for people getting out on the old mainland. Being stopped and underground makes her breathing sound loud.

She nearly kissed the ground when Ethan escorted her through the elevators to the surface of Spitsbergen.