From the Diary of Roger P. Ashford

She lay there in her hospital whites, happy to see me again after all these years, but angry towards the circumstances which brought me.

"Roger!" she said, moving a hand to the control panel that turned her bed into a crude chair, "I was afraid you wouldn't be able to make it up here to see me!"

It was not easy getting the time off. Actually, at this very moment I was supposed to be traveling across America selling retailers the next generation of useless kitchen ware. But I had turned west on to Highway 20 instead of east. West to Loreen. West to unemployment.

But I figured she did not need to know that. "My boss was understanding. And he can hardly complain, as it is, he can't afford to lose me."

Loreen had been my friend for five years now. I had met her during my last year of college. We had been protesting one thing or another. We became inseparable almost immediately. Only two months into our friendship I had to leave college because of some family issues. Somehow that seemed to draw us closer though.

I thought about asking her how she was, but that was a stupid question.

She could walk, but not run. Wobble, but never dance. So was life with robotic legs. Not matter how good you got at controlling them, no matter how real they looked, they still made you hobble around like some less evolved member or the primate family. A person like Loreen would never say she was good under such circumstances.

God, the universe, or the aliens watching us like some sort of animal planet special, did not care about the little things like this I figured. If they did they would not have let them happen. They thought these things shaped and molded us, caused us to evolve for the better.

That is if anyone was really watching us with any concern at all.
I just sat there wishing this did not happen. I did not know what to say. Why would God give beauty and take grace? I do not mean to sound rude, but there are better people to cripple than her.
The silence was starting to get awkward. I did not know what she was waiting for.

"Instead of backpacking around Germany this year, I think we should go to DC. How long has it been since you have been to the Smithsonian?"

"I need to ask you something," Loreen said. She looked a little out of it. Like she was on drugs or like her accident had not only taken her legs, but a few points off her IQ too.

"Okay," I said, waiting for her to continue. "Ask away."

She turned and looked at one of her walls like it was a window, like she was staring out at some distant object, distracted by some non existent beauty. Finally she began to speak, "Do you really think there are two sides? Or just different shades of gray, and different ways of seeing things?"

"I am not sure. Both I guess?"

"No, you have to pick, is moral law just a matter of which side of the fence you are on, or are there things that are always right or always wrong, No matter the motivation?"

"Isn't it a bit early to start in on this kind of stuff? Why not ask me about my drive here? I swear I got passed by Larry King. Seriously, he isn't dead. I saw him..."

"Shut up! This is important." Loreen said, raising her voice just a little too high.

"Sorry, keep it down though."

"They're planning on leaving us." She spaced every syllable evenly, as if to make herself understood to a young child.

"Who are Loreen? Why? When? Are you feeling well?"

"The thinkers! The inventors! A whole secret society of arrogant snobs who look at themselves as prime specimen!"

She must have been drugged I thought. It was unlike her to be so loud. And to be talking such nonsense. "Calm the hell down Loreen. Mars is still two hundred years from being settled. Talk of the ruling class not allowing people who didn't meet certain criteria to migrate there has always been around. It is just stupid gossip. That is all. And what is the hurry? Why is this so important?"

"Not Mars. Another star system," Loreen said, still voicing her words like she had to treat me like a child. "SETI institute started receiving messages about four months ago from an unmanned, or I guess you would say unaliened, prob heading towards earth. The message says we are to meet them in the Rigil Kentaurus system, something about it being the halfway point."

There was no way this could be true. I knew this must just be a side affect to some medicine she was taking.

"Uh--How could you possibly know this? If it were true, and let's say it is, What reason do I have to believe this?" I asked, waiting to hear "gotcha!".

Loreen only gave me her trademark, the sardonic half smile, and said with a little too much edge, "You should believe me because, in a few minutes, a very persuasive nurse will come in, sedate me, and tell you that the trauma of my accident has caused me to think up alternative versions to how my legs were lost. She will say that nothing like what I told you happened. That really is a funny thing to say because I stuck to the story they will claim as true."

Loreen thought she was being real witty. I had no doubt of that. I was starting to grow concerned though. I began to sweat. What if she was right somehow?

The door to the room opened, my heart jumped up into my throat. I wanted to puke up those cheap "gas station special" white powdered donuts I had this morning on the way here. I started to shake. It was the persuasive nurse! It must be, I told myself.

But in the doorway was not a nurse with a needle and syringe ready to sedate Loreen. I had to laugh to myself. Such foolish thoughts!

I turned back to her to give her my version of the sardonic half smile, but she was still giving me hers. Puzzled I looked back to our guests in the doorway.

And just then it dawned on me, two armed guards dressed in the uniform of the Naval Air Service were really just about as good at proving her point as anything.

Loreen sat there in her hospital whites, happy to have so utterly proven her point, but angry at the point she had so utterly proven.