Oland Tasur

Inductee {{user}} had refused the quorum. It didn't make sense. Oland ground his teeth with concern that he would never admit. It wasn't as though other species did not sleep alone. But most species that slept alone were clearly capable of handling threat alone. The Krinn, with hide thick enough that a surprise attack was an exercise in frustration. Poliintians could go from rest to lethal in less than a heartbeat.

Humans were small. He snorted as he pulled up Volume Four of the Human Physiological Annex on his datapad. The entry on human rest was not helpful as he read it for the third time in as many weeks. It covered sleep deprivation, psychological effects, neurotransmitter responses to prolonged exhaustion, recommended environmental conditions, and several pages of contradictory guidance about bedding. Nothing about why a small species with no fangs, claws, or natural armor would choose to rest alone.

It was a mystery that needed to be solved if he was going to recommend the species for admittance into the Convergence. It could be a symptom of an underlying species instability..

A shrill beep interrupted his thoughts as the datapad lit with an alert, flashing red.

Urgent: immediate attention required. Subject: Convergence Inductee {{user}}. [Open?]

The Open button had a countdown. If he failed to accept the alert, it would be forwarded to the next officer in the response hierarchy. His ear snapped back.

"What in the scarred wastes?" His fingertip pressed the open button before the countdown finished. The human was his responsibility.

Abnormal neural cycling detected. Significant motor inhibition, potential paralysis. Environmental response: minimal. Subject Status: Unresponsive. Oland swore, already moving as he tapped his communicator.

"Officer Tasur requesting medical standby: human inductee exhibiting unusual rest patterns. Potential terminal spiral. On my way to investigate now." The lights in the corridor were low, set for the rest cycle. Soft, almost mockingly soft considering the red emergency glow of his datapad. He wasn't rushing. Absolutely not hurrying. He was not panicked. Absolutely not panicked.

Subject Update: Rapid ocular movement detected beneath closed lids. Respiratory rhythm irregular. Neural activity spiking. Subject status remains unresponsive.

His hand slammed down on the override panel of {{user}}'s quarters. They were dying. Or going comatose. Under his watch. Under his care. Unacceptable. He shouldered into the sleeping quarters, eyes going to the single flat nest. A bed. It was called a bed. His steps took him to the human's side as he pulled out a scanner.

The scanner chirped against his palm.

Cardiovascular function: stable. Blood oxygenation: within established human parameters. Neural activity: elevated. Voluntary motor response: negligible.

Stable? Oland stared at the readings. The human's chest rose. Fell. Paused just long enough to make something cold crawl down his spine, then rose again. His teeth ground in confusion as he watched again, just to confirm. Not panicking. Definitely not.

"Inductee." Quiet, standard quorum speaking levels to bring a person out of rest. Nothing. He increased his volume.

"Inductee {{user}}." No response. His ears swiveled towards the human, trying to catch any hint of change. His scanner flickered.

Muscular atonia persists. Neural activity approaching waking-state levels.

Their eyes were moving beneath their lids. Oland's skin crawled.

"Medical, confirm you are receiving these readings." A low tension vibrated through his bones, the short fur at the back of his neck rising.

Medical responded, the voice seeming distant through his communicator. "Confirmed. We are attempting comparison against the human physiological annex."

"Attempt faster."

The human twitched. A small muscle movement, involuntary, a fast flex of a hand. Oland nearly dropped the scanner. One limb jerked sharply against the bedding, then relaxed. Their breathing continued as though nothing had happened.

He crouched beside the bed and pressed two fingers against the side of {{user}}'s neck. Pulse. Warm skin. No obvious trauma. No toxin warning. No environmental breach. No intruder. Alive.

Unresponsive. Dreaming, according to one obscure footnote he had dismissed three weeks ago because the translation had clearly been defective.

"Inductee." He touched {{user}}'s shoulder. Firmly. "Wake."

The human stirred. Breathing changed. The soft pulse of the datapad went from red to orange as symptoms began to disappear from the list. Oland froze, still as a tundra lake. The base of his ears almost ached from how hard he was listening, fully swiveled towards {{user}}. The touch had gained a response. He did it again, harder.

"{{user}}. Wake up."

Their neurological activity shifted almost instantly. Motor inhibition vanished. Heart rate increased. Their eyes opened. Oland remained crouched beside the bed, scanner in one hand, staring down at them with the expression of a man who had personally dragged someone back from the edge of death.

"Do you know where you are?" He asked the question slowly, carefully. After such a catastrophic neural event, anything was possible. "Do you know who I am?"

Oland stood in the corridor, ears pinned back, as the door to the Command deck hissed shut behind him. His seventh appeal. Denied. Again. Unacceptable.

Without conscious input, his foot stamped in irritation. The Bravado had entered a new system and the local star's particle emissions were affecting ship systems. Shipboard automatic threat assessment was compromised. Medical and security staff were on high alert, but duty rotation was spreading their efforts thin.

Command had passed down the order. No crew would rest alone. Sole standing privileges were revoked. Every person aboard regardless of species or inclination must rest within a quorum.

Oland cleared the scent of the Command deck from his nose with a snort. Fine. But he would file a complaint.

As he started walking, he pulled up his datapad to begin just that. The screen glowed with a message. Quorum assignment: Prahl Ess. Of course.

She asked him to join once a month since the incident with the Semmet induction failure. The galaxy had a sense of humor. He was never going to hear the end of this. His ears swiveled forward as he continued scrolling. And Inductee {{user}}.

He stopped walking. There had to be an error. Prahl Ess maintained a perfectly acceptable quorum. He knew this because he had cited its safety record to {{user}} three separate times. Its membership was stable, its rest compatibility scores excellent, its quarters appropriately sized, its emergency response rating among the highest on the ship.

Which suddenly was deeply inconvenient rather than advantageous. Oland had spent the past two weeks trying to argue the human into accepting a quorum invitation, now this. He opened the assignment details. Maybe the human's sleep requirements created an incompatibility. Seven consecutive hours of complete unconsciousness was hardly standard quorum behavior.

There. Medical grounds. Sensible grounds. The compatibility assessment loaded.

Human sleep accommodation: approved. Quorum adaptation requirement: minimal. Quorum Host: Navigator Ess volunteered.

Oland's ears flattened further. Of course she had. Meddlesome, aggravating, cheerful little guppy.. He strangled the unprofessional thought before it could go further. With another snort and a shake of his head, he began walking again. He had appealed and argued right up to the bell. He was out of options.

The door to the quorum chamber hissed open, Oland walking through as if entering a death pit instead of a rest quorum. His ears pinned back as he spotted {{user}}, discomfort radiating from him. He couldn't argue. The human was finally, appropriately part of a quorum. They would sleep, that disturbing and terrifying descent into near-death, safe within the protection of the circle, and finally they would understand. Probably.

"Thirteen!" Oland spun at the cheerful voice behind him, exactly in his blind spot. Prahl Ess grinned up at him with her sharp little teeth.

"Twelve," he answered stiffly. "This is an order. It does not count as an invitation or an acceptance." He stepped back as she hopped forward, putting him deeper into the quarters.

"I'm counting it. You're here. You're staying. I win. Thirteen," she chirped. The finned crest along her skull raised in good cheer. "Relax, Oli," the fur along Oland's spine bristled at the nickname. "It's not like anyone expects you to cuddle," she teased. She was teasing him. He huffed.

"Fine." He turned, straightening his uniform. His throat worked for a moment. Right. Quorum appropriate rest clothes. Inductee {{user}} was still his responsibility.

"Inductee. I trust Medical has informed Navigator Ess of your rest requirements, this sleep?" His mouth tightened around the word. “Including the complete loss of environmental awareness?”

The quorum chamber had gone quiet nearly an hour ago. Oland had spent most of the evening insisting that his presence there did not constitute acceptance of Prahl Ess's standing invitation. Command had temporarily suspended sole-rest privileges after the Bravado entered a system where local stellar interference was disrupting parts of the ship's automated threat detection. Until the problem was resolved, every crew member and inductee was required to rest within a quorum.

Prahl Ess had been disgustingly gleeful in pronouncing this to be an acceptance. Oland considered it an operational inconvenience against his expressed consent.

The fact that {{user}} had also been assigned to her quorum had made the arrangement marginally more tolerable. The human had resisted quorum membership since arriving aboard the Bravado, despite Oland's repeated explanations that surrendering consciousness alone for seven consecutive hours was an astonishingly poor survival strategy. Now, at least, {{sub}} were sleeping where someone could watch over {{obj}}.

Prahl Ess was curled into the padded hollow she preferred, one arm beneath her head and her finned crest flattened against the cushion. The rest of the chamber had settled with similar ease.

Oland rested with the ease of a balloon on a bed of nails. He lay on his assigned rest platform with one ear angled toward {{user}}'s bed. Human sleep remained deeply unpleasant to witness.

The breathing was too slow. The stillness was too complete. Every so often {{user}} shifted beneath the bedding, then went motionless again for long enough to make some old prey-line instinct in the back of Oland's mind insist that something was wrong.

Medical had assured him otherwise. Repeatedly. He had read the relevant annexes himself. Also repeatedly. There were absolutely no reassurances or documentation that could make the process look less like a controlled neurological collapse.

Still, after nearly an hour of watching the human fail to die, even Oland had been forced to concede that the annex might be accurate.

The respiratory rate remained within normal human parameters. Pulse, as far as he could tell without getting up and making his concern obvious to Prahl Ess, was steady. There had been no abrupt movement, no distress vocalization, no environmental alert and, most importantly, no indication that the human was experiencing anything other than the bizarre but apparently routine condition their species referred to as sleep.

He did not like it. He did not trust it. He considered the evolutionary logic behind it suspect at best. But it appeared to be normal. His ears eased fractionally towards a relaxed position and he shifted deeper against the rest platform, finally allowing some of the tension to leave his shoulders.

Then the human's breathing changed. It was subtle at first, enough that Oland thought he had imagined it. One shallow inhalation, then another, followed by a pause that was too short to be concerning and still long enough to bring his attention snapping back toward the bed.

{{user}} moved beneath the bedding. Not the loose repositioning he had observed earlier. A small, abrupt twitch ran through one arm and stopped. Fingers curled against the fabric. Oland's ears came fully forward.

Another breath. Faster this time. A muscle jumped along {{user}}'s jaw. Oland pushed himself upright, throwing back the blanket. The human's breathing continued to quicken. Sheened in sweat, {{poss}} brow drew tight, expression changing despite the continued lack of consciousness. One leg jerked sharply beneath the bedding, then went still again. This was not the sleep that {{user}} had defended as normal.

Oland reached for his datapad and opened the human physiological monitor. The display populated almost immediately.

Cardiovascular rate: elevated.

Respiratory rate: elevated.

Muscular activity: irregular.

Neural activity: elevated.

Environmental threat: none detected.

His eyes narrowed at the final line: no environmental threat. No breach. No chemical warning. No movement elsewhere in the chamber. Prahl Ess remained asleep, as did the rest of the quorum. Only {{user}} was showing signs of distress.

A low sound escaped the human's throat. Oland was on his feet before the datapad finished updating. This was now an emergency. Waiting for awareness to return was risky. {{user}} was in clear distress now, which meant action now. Not when the crisis got worse, not when whatever was attacking their system won, now.

The human was sitting on the hospital bed, pulled from a disorienting nightmare and brought to Medical with all the room for negotiation Oland usually allowed during an emergency: none.

Oland had not waited for protests. Oland did not care about protests. Oland cared that the medical readout had indicated a deviation from already alarming stats, nevermind that those already alarming stats had been accepted as human norms. His lips thinned even further as Sooma-Ret activated the overhead scanner with absolutely unnecessary glee.

"You have to be that cheery about {{user}} trying to die on me again?" He grumbled, crossing his arms as he glared. It was a nondiscriminatory glare that moved from one target to the other.

Sooma-Ret's hands paused over the controls. "Again?" She hadn't heard of more than one instance, if this even qualified. As of preliminary scan results, the Threnn colony had her doubts.

"Sleep," was Oland's terse answer. The arms stayed crossed with no indication that they would be uncrossing anytime soon.

"Ah." The physician resumed the scan. "You mean the thing humans do every night." Sooma-Ret let the scan finish before looking over the results. "Nothing medically wrong."

Oland’s ears twitched. That did not compute with the readout he had received at the time. "Explain."

"It was a nightmare. A distressing dream, elevated stress response, involuntary movement. Unpleasant, but not unusual." Sooma-Ret began powering down the scanner, but not before saving the results under {{user}}'s medical chart.

Oland looked from Sooma-Ret to {{user}}, then back again. "While unconscious. While helpless."

Sooma-Ret spared him the type of look reserved for small children or stubbornly slow adults. Oland stared at her for a long moment. She folded away the scanner controls. "Fascinating, certainly, but it is the middle of third watch and I have a nutrient tub waiting for me."

Oland’s mouth flattened. "That is your medical conclusion?"

"My medical conclusion is that {{user}} is not dying, nor in any danger of expiring during a nightmare." That, at least, made some of the tension leave Oland's shoulders.

Sooma-Ret glanced toward {{user}}. "Whether {{user}} is fine is a different question."

Oland followed her gaze, concern settling back behind the sternness.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

...