Chaos and the Aftermath [Page 3]

By J. Rolande, aka Moonlight Sonata 2004

Samus is beyond laughing now, and fresh tears spill over and roll down her cheeks. Her shoulders shake as she tries to hold back her sobs. The shaking causes fresh waves of pain in her wounded hand, but even the sharpness in the appendage can no longer distract her from the ache in her heart. No, there is no way in heaven or hell or any and all of the cosmos that she can bring this child into existence. She would do nothing but bring pain and uncertainty and abnormalcy to this infant. This child, her own flesh and blood, would grow up with a mother who made her living off of premeditated murder. And of course, the child will be her child; there are genetic traits to think of, characteristics that can or will be inherited. It would be a kindness to the galaxy to not bring her own child into being.

But she remembers very quickly that it takes more for a baby to be conceived. She was not alone in this endeavor initially, even if she will be alone in the future. This child may very well resemble his or her father in looks and characteristics. Maybe the galaxy is not doomed, after all. The thought gives her a bit of hope. Maybe, just maybe, she can do this. Very few people know the Samus outside of the suit of armor-what she acts like, let alone what she looks like. And she has several bounties to collect, on which she could live quite comfortably and easily support her child.

Even as optimism begins to give her vestiges of peace, reality rears its head again. She has never had any experience with children; she did not have family growing up. She did not have friends early in life, and does not have any now. She has no reference points for caring for a helpless baby. She is alone now, and will be alone then. From what she's seen on rare occasions, single-motherhood is difficult enough for women with somewhat normal upbringings. And her upbringing is nothing if not abnormal. Deep-rooted fears she never thought she could feel begin to twine around her thoughts like strangling vines. She has only known about her pregnancy for a couple of hours now, and already she fears forgetting to feed or bathe the as-yet-unborn infant. She pictures the baby screaming, refusing to be comforted by anything she does to calm it. She imagines forgetting the baby somewhere. And worst of all, she imagines her temper flaring against the helpless creature.

She crawls over to a wall and leans up against it. She is unfit for human existence-how in the hell does she even think she may be fit for motherhood?

Again her eyes survey the surroundings. The chaos is gone, the mess that remains only a shadow of what it was earlier. For some reason she feels a little more calm now. She has come to terms with the fact that there is no way she can raise her own child. It is a mental and emotional impossibility. Using her one good hand she begins to shuffle the papers into a haphazard pile. Normally she keeps her paper contracts organized by date, but with one good hand and a heavy heart, one must settle for just having them off the floor. She leaves the broken glass for the clean up crew she intends to employ when she makes landing at a city platform on the edges of the Galactic Federation's territories. They will be paid handsomely for repairing and cleaning the inside of her ship, and besides, if she has a broom or dustpan aboard, she has yet to see or use it.

Leaning on the wall for support, she struggles to her feet, pressing her forehead against the coolness of the metal interior for a moment, waiting for the stars to subside. She has come to the very logical conclusion that she cannot raise her child: now she must consider her options. She staggers to the cockpit, her hand paralyzed with pain. She must get to a physician soon. The bones in her hand need to be set and mended, and she has options to discuss, as well as decisions to make.

With a sigh she enters coordinates of the nearest platform system, and commences a scan of the medical resources offered upon it. There are several practicing physicians with varying specialties. She is able to locate a hand surgeon and set up a consultation within the standard day period. It will be a relief, as well as worth the extra credits she'd used to buy her way into an appointment, to get her hand taken care of quickly. While she has not broken her gun hand, she still needs to be at 100% capacity should any worthwhile bounties come up.

And then she searches for the hardest physician of all: the one specializing in gynecological matters. There are three practitioners on the platform, and all are accredited by the Federation Medical Standard. Only one, however, is licensed to perform gynecological surgery.

Inhaling a shaking breath, she laboriously enters her information. Apparently the waiting list to see this doctor is quite long, but she figures it's nothing some well-placed credits can't fix. It's also nothing reputation can't fix, either. All it would take is convincing the office personnel that if she does not have this appointment now, it may jeopardize the future of the galaxy.

And indeed, it may. She realizes if she carries her baby full-term she may break one of her cardinal rules of existence: never attach to anything. But already the idea of motherhood, while more frightening than any criminal she has hunted down, is starting to feel... natural. It is dangerous for her and threatens her very survival. She knows she should never grow attached to anything physical or incorporeal, and yet she slowly grows attached to the mere idea of being a mother.

She also wonders again about the father... where he is, and if he thinks of their one-night-stand. It was efficient, and effective, and it managed to have completely unexpected results. She tries again, to no avail, to remember his face, and wonders which parent the baby will favor, but without recalling what the father looks like, she supposes she'll never know. She also supposes the father will never know. He was most likely a transient like herself, stopped over on Name-the-Platform-Or-Planet for a brief respite from space travel. Like Samus, he never expected anything more than a good night out of their union, and he has now probably gone onto bigger ports and better lovers, or home to a wife and family.

He has no idea his genes are carrying on in the womb of a bounty hunter. He probably didn't realize she was a bounty hunter when he agreed to screw her. Her body was a thing of beauty to him, and he did not see the lethality below the surface. He is light years away by now, remembering her only as a one night stand. Producing a child was not in his thoughts then, and having fathered one is probably not in his thoughts now.

So would he care about the decisions that now weigh upon Samus Aran's newly exposed conscience? Would he want a say in her final choice? What would he say if he knew? This new barrage of questions batters at Samus's exhausted mind, and she closes her eyes in defeat. Since when has the top bounty hunter in the Federation cared what anyone thinks about her? The question is asked in righteous anger, but the answer is very simple and instantly humbling: a baby changes everything.

She shakes her head furiously, and continues filling in the data form, then attaches a money transfer file to ensure that she will receive consideration when appointments are made for the future. The only thing that should be attached to anything is that monetary transfer file; the more she thinks about this, the more attached she gets to the cluster of dividing cells in her uterus.

The files are sent, and still she feels no peace. The only thing she can do is stop thinking about it, but how?

She stumbles from the cockpit, back to the only slightly neatened mess of her habitation quarter. The blood on the buckled plating has dried. The plating itself is crumpled and bent, sharp corners bent upward and outward where rivets popped under the force of her angry, frustrated punching.

Slowly she pulls her hand away from her body, and fresh waves of pain begin their assault. She surveys the purple, swollen thing, observes how it is caked in sticky dried blood. She eyes the wall again, and takes a moment to savor how it feels to be relatively pain-free, reminding herself subconsciously of her appointment with the hand surgeon in the very near future. The damage is done, she tells herself. The damage is undoable. Even if the surgeon can repair her hand, and she's certain he can, she will still remember smashing it into this wall over and over again. Even if the other surgeon can repair the other problem she will still remember having had this problem, having been in a quandary over it. She is not certain which is worse, having the quandary now, or being rid of it and remembering having it.

But now she is tired of thinking about it, and she needs to forget. Drinking would be her first instinct, but something stays her good hand from reaching for the bottle. "Dammit," she whispers softly. She clenches her damaged hand, nearly screaming out at the blinding sheets of pain that slice through her. She focuses on the damaged wall, pulls her throbbing arm back, and smashes her hand into the panels, yet again.

There is no word for the physical and emotional pain that overwhelms her. Perhaps only "chaos" can truly do it justice.