Leanna O’Regan stood near the entrance to the orange conical life raft, shifting her gaze between the sparkling waves of the ocean outside and the moaning young man inside the life raft with her, laying on his side on the floor of the raft, holding his knees to his chest. “Are you OK, James?” she asked him sternly, “you look pale, like you’re going to get sick, or something.”

James stopped moaning, and indeed looked ashen, despite his dark skin, like all the blood had drained from his face. He stared blankly in the space before him, as if trying to recall a distant memory.

“So, those implants in your mouth and your seizure… what was that all about? They look a lot like some new wireless communications technology, pretty damned advanced for 1977, that…” Leanna paused for a second, filled with doubt about what she was saying, “that transmits what a person sees to another person capable of receiving the transmission.” The young woman in a white t-shirt and shorts look pensively out the life raft’s entrance again, now scanning the bright, mid-morning sky above them. She shot an accusatory look at James, adding, “And I can just bet that you were sending out our location, weren’t you?”

James nodded slightly, and then unfolded his legs and weakly sat up, leaning back onto the fabric wall of the raft. “I… wasn’t going to die out here… with you,” he almost gurgled, and coughed harshly.

“Do you know if anyone was ‘listening’?” Leanna said and continued to glare at him, “Can you receive and transmit at the same time?”

“Yes, and actually-“ James started to say, and then caught himself and stopped talking.

“And what? Do you see what the other person is seeing, too?” she said, shaking her head and putting her hands on her hips. “Did you actually sign up for this little experiment?”

“No. I mean, yes,” James said, now able to refocus and lose the cobwebs fogging his mind. “I signed a waiver to participate in experimental technology testing… I didn’t want to go to the front lines of the SEA War.”

Leanna shook her head and snorted and pointed at his mouth, saying, “You’d rather let the military maim you directly then? This is exactly the kind of thing we’re fighting against! And on that subject, exactly what arm of the US military do you belong to? I don’t recognize the uniform.”

“It’s a new, parallel organization outside of the military, formed by order of the President, and I don’t know why I’m telling you all this…” James said, and then added quietly, “but what does it matter? We’re about to get rescued and we’ll return to the QuadriStar.”

Leanna leaned out of the raft’s entrance and tried to look at the sky around the other side of the raft. As she grasped the exterior wall of the raft, she stopped to listen carefully of the sound of the gentle ocean breeze and the lapping of the waves against the side of the raft. Her eyes widened on picking out the unmistakable thumping sound of an approaching helicopter. She let go of the side of the raft, intending to fall into the water, but a hand grabbed her foot and pulled her back inside the raft. Rolling around on the floor, Leanna struggled against James, who was trying to hold her down.

“Oof! Let go of me!” she shouted, but weakened by a lack of water and food, she was unable to break free of James’s grip on her wrists. He had positioned himself to straddle her across her stomach, pinning her to the undulating floor of the raft. The sound of the approaching helicopter got louder and louder, and in no time the raft was being buffeted by the downdraft from the rotating blades directly above the raft. The sound from the helicopter was deafening, and neither of them could hear the splash of something being dropped in the water outside of the raft.

In a burst of energy, Leanna lifted and slammed her legs down onto the floor to lift her torso upwards, causing James to lose his balance and roll off of Leanna. She twisted her whole body hard, breaking James’s grasp on her arms. Now free, she jumped up and darted towards the entrance, preparing to dive into the ocean. However, she was stopped by a grey uniformed officer who swung into the raft, secured to a line from the helicopter hovering above them.

“You!” Leanna shouted at the pale young man, with a flop of messy blonde hair flipping around in the turbulent air, “I wouldn’t care if I ever saw you again, Lucky!” She tried to step back from Lucretius, but backed into James, who was now standing behind her. She tried to wiggle past the two men to reach the flattened waves outside, screaming, “I’ll let the ocean take me before you bastards!”

“Commander Valderez said you would resist, Silver Princess,” Lucky shouted back and removed a canister from his jacket pocket, pressing down on a button on it’s side, releasing a mist from the nozzle at the end into the struggling woman’s face. Leanna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she went limp, to be caught by the two officers. Lucky let James take the unconscious woman and he stepped back to the entrance of the raft, reaching out to grab a stretcher floating just outside, and pulled it inside the raft. It also had a line going up to the helicopter, and Lucky pulled in the slack so that James was able to easily rest Leanna’s body onto it. Both men quickly strapped her down to the stretcher, and slid it back to the entrance, with Lucky being careful to make sure the line holding it was not tangled with his. He leaned out of the raft to look up at the large helicopter floating above them and gestured to the dark uniformed man leaning out the side of the aircraft to lift the stretcher. The line holding the stretcher went taut, and Lucky and James together helped guide the stretcher out; it started rising up to the helicopter, spinning slowly. Leanna’s long black hair hung out the sides and of the stretcher, and the two men still in the raft watched her rise up to Dante Valderez.

James pulled Lucky back into the raft, and said just loud enough to be heard between them over the thumping helicopter blades above them, “This might be our last chance to talk privately… what did you see while the NSRIs were activated?”

Lucky had a look of panic on his face as he looked around the inside of the raft, saying, “I saw the orange walls of the raft. And the form of a woman,” and he said hesitantly, “And did you-?” 

James nodded, “Yes, I not only saw what you saw from the helicopter, but I could feel your feelings, too! We’re both in love with Leanna!”
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*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***