“Shit,” Jorge whispered, to the orange-brown cat—quiet enough so his new visitor wouldn’t overhear, “I was hoping for that zippy-whistle noise the doors made on the Enterprise.” Jorge put on a relaxed posture and added, “Captain Kirk would be as disappointed as I am.”
Because this was Jorge's first contact with any space station personnel (not counting the cat) he didn't turn around. After waking up, Jorge had deduced where he was and who brought him here; now he needed to appear at ease in order to learn why, and how, the US Government had shipped his stupid ass into space without his knowledge.
Jorge inhaled. A recycled, slightly medicinal, taste probed at a possible memory. A small portion of his mind devoted 83 macro-joules of stored energy in a failed, 4.2 second attempt to find and force a lost hospital memory to bubble up from the depths of all-but-not-forgotten-ÆÐ.
The unidentified door opener had remained outside in the hallway and Jorge let whoever it was watch his back. Still attentive to the game, the cat watched Jorge's hands. Jorge watched the cat and noticed the opening of the door did not concern it. In about the middle of the wall, just to the side of a flush mounted monitor, the cat had anchored it's front claws into the carpet. It's rear legs and the rest of the cat's body floated, patiently waiting for Jorge to continue playing the sock rolling game.
Sensing the unseen, Jorge ran his tongue under his upper lip, across his teeth; tightening his mouth, he brushed the bottom of his mustache with his lower lip. Without really understanding how he did it, Jorge decided it was a woman, a small woman—with nothing in her hands.
Even before entering the service, Jorge used his ability (survival-instinct would be how he referred to it now) to quickly scan his surroundings, (a bar, for example) size up his opponents, (other men and dykes) and select a target (attractive, available, hetero child bearer, interested in "yinging the yang" with a balding soldier, carrying a little more weight than height, for example).
Although he knew less about the cat than his current situation and surroundings, Jorge was enjoying it's company. As he rolled the balled-up sock through the air, the cat shifted it's weight, retracted it’s claws from the wall and pushed it’s hind legs down and away. It used only enough effort to move through space as it pursued his sock. Jorge tugged slightly on his left strap and drifted slightly to the right. He tried to make the movement appear natural while affording him a better view of the doorway in the reflection off the monitor.
After waking, examining the door, and deciding it was not operable from this side, Jorge had learned in a little less than an hour (by watching the cat, mostly) to move around the room and use the straps of his suit, hooked to rings in the walls, to prevent flailing and colliding with the walls or the cat. (Especially the latter, since the beast considered almost everything was for it's amusement and Jorge's acrobatics seemed an invitation to be attacked.) The one-piece suit had two elastic straps on each shoulder; when not used the four straps clipped to rings at his waist, like suspenders. Two outside each knee also clipped at his waist, where four others, two on each side, wrapped around him belt-style. He had woken with all twelve tethering him to the surfaces of the room. At the time, Jorge thought he must have looked like a fly caught in a spider's web.
Although he was confident of his new ability to move in weightlessness, Jorge was afraid. He was certain turning and facing the door would make him bounce and spring against the walls and straps, that the cat would stop playing with the sock and attack him again, and then the first impression he made on his visitor, jailer, doctor, commander, interrogator, executioner…Jorge's brain continued to sort through a list of possibilities, based on lost memory…The failed mission in Brazil (explosions, gunfire, flash of light,-ÆÐ) and his present location (the SS Minnow or some other US-operated space station). Jorge gave up guessing because, regardless, he knew the first impression would be that Chief Warrant Officer Jorge M. Hayden was a fucking idiot.
As Jorge waited for his visitor to make the first move, he thought zero gravity was impossible to simulate for this long (at least the part of his brain previously working on who his visitor could be thought so). He also was almost certain he was on a US station. POW's probably didn't get a familiarization hour, or a cat.
(Part 2)
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