Fiction - Numenera: Awakening to Need

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Garthax awoke from the midnight black of hypersleep. He felt odd. There was a no feeling of mental refreshment as he would gain from normal sleep, but his body felt rejuvenated and ready. The medical systems in the hypersleep chamber had clearly worked as intended, repairing the wounds to his body, and saving his life. Still he wished for real sleep.

The panel before him slowly began to turn translucent allowing the physical darkness of the hypersleep couch to slowly illuminate with soft blue light, and banishing sleep from his mind. As translucency became transparency Garthax became aware that he was being watched. A pair of the primitives were peering at him through the transparent barrier while a third stood at the control panel of his hypersleep chamber. They looked different from the last time he had seen their kind, and that one of them could operate his ship's controls, even those as basic as the hypersleep couch, spoke volumes of their progress during the time he had slept. Garthax wondered just how far this hypersleep had carried him into the future.

As the medi-computer analyzed the ambient atmosphere and adjusted Garthax's lung structure to compensate for compositional drift Garthax tapped the audio sensors and ran the primitive's language through his linguistic cerebral symbiote. To his surprise Garthx found that they spoke a language that had deep roots in Kellax-trall. The symbiote assured Garthax of a 93% comprehensional match.

At last the chamber opened, and the primitives excitedly backed away. Two, wearing metallic armor and wielding crude weaponry took position in front of the third, a thin elderly female. "Careful, Jessita, we don't know what it'll do," the largest of the three, and clearly an alpha male, said.

"No harm will be offered in exception of return in kind," Garthax spoke firmly, unsure if the symbiote had fully mastered the syntax of this strange variant language. "How came your entry to this place?"

The elderly female brusquely pushed her way forward, "We seek aid in defense of our home." She looked Garthax up and down and nodded her head, "We beseech you, oh ancient traveller, to aid us in the defense of the people of Ellomyr."

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