1000 YEARS - Book 1 - Awakening

16. The Doctor's Call*

— March 30th, Year 784

"Nakamura called and requested an audience," Cora mentioned without looking up from her work as his long strides pressed through Chambers. Chambers made up the sprawling expanse of rooms and halls in the lower levels of the Crystal Towers that the Council of Ancients used as their work and meeting spaces.
"Nakamura?" the tall, black-hooded figure stopped dead in his tracks. So abrupt was the change in momentum that the gravity space boots he was still wearing suddenly gripped the floor, sending his long arms flailing like windmills to regain his balance.
"Forgot to turn off your boots again, eh?" she smirked with a cocked eyebrow, "getting old in your old age?"

He had just come down from the space observatory and another lengthy session with Nebula. — Earth would pass below the Anomaly again in thirty-one days, on Cataclysm Day. And Remembrance Day would follow two days later. He always dreaded this time of year! He was tired. And he hated the vertigo and nausea the rapid space lift descent always left with him as it passed through the atmospheric shield. — He was in no mood!

"No," he lied, "they are glitching, again."
"Mhmm!" sarcasm dripped as she looked at him sideways, "I am sure it is not you who is 'glitching'." Her eyebrows had raised almost into her hairline.
He shot her a poisonous glare. He should have upgraded his boots eons ago, but he liked the comfort and feel of these old ones.

"Nakamura who?" his deep voice intoned.
"Dr. Nakamura. From Hab-17. It is about the Primal, Alpha 4. — The 'Holy Grail', the one you bled for," she sassed. "Seems she is not responding as desired."
He scowled at her, then gave a barely perceptible nod.
"On my private line if she calls again. I will get back to her later," he snarled and headed onto the lift disk that would take him up to his private quarters. He was not about to step on the slide ramp with those blasted boots still active — and he certainly was not going to turn them off, right there in front of her!

He could have called for his personal run-about, of course, to pick him up from the space lift. It would have dropped him on his private landing pad rather than on the Terrace of the Ancients. But that private all-black thing with its wide blood-red markings identified him, in particular. It stood out like a sore thumb, and he hated this show of status and privilege. He could have used one of the generic black ones designated for the Ancients general use, but even that was too ostentatious for his taste. Instead he had just called one of the public clear ones and simply rendered the hull opaque. He did value anonymity after all.

— ~ — ~ —

Without preamble he had called Dr. Nakamura directly, from the dusky comfort of his recliner in his large circular living hall late that night. He had surprised the doctor in the middle of her evening meal; and the poor woman had tripped all over herself, coughing and sputtering, as she had frantically tried to choke down a mouthful of food while bringing up the appropriate decorum and deference, society prescribed for his 'important persona'.

It always amused him how much the Populus insisted on kowtowing to him. It was not something he had ever sought — or even cared about. On the contrary, it tended to drive him more into seclusion, all this fussing. He tended to prefer opposites who stood upright, stood up to him with their head held high.

Once Nakamura had regained her composure, she bowed her head and avoided his eyes. "Your Eminence, I am terribly sorry to disturb you..." her child-like voice twittered.
He raised an eyebrow. From his vantage point it was he who was disturbing her.
"...I am most confounded to report that we are not making the expected progress with Alpha 4, ...and we seek your guidance on how to proceed." She seemed very contrite, and her implant flashed her nervousness.