Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #21.

"Dina?"

Dina turned from the window to look at Jack. His flyaway hair had developed some gray over the years, unlike most Androsynth, but they were still lonely strands of silver among all the black. She herself hadn't aged, hadn't even gotten a single "old" hair, like most of those she knew. In some ways she wondered if this was what the Earthlings had gotten upset about, more than the Androsynths' engineered intelligence: eternal youth and long life, all rolled into one.

"Are you planning to go to the Church's festivities?" Jack asked, setting up his microcomputer. The two of them were first to the meeting room, again.

Dina shook her head and walked to the table, away from the window with its view of brown, sleeping fields. "I hadn't planned on it. I don't see the need, and I'm not part of the Church anyway. What about you?"

"Much the same." Jack coughed. "Besides, I want to take a look at this mara-disease that's been going around for the past month. Something doesn't seem right about it, but that's not my field, so I could be paranoid over nothing."

"I looked at it myself," Dina said, sitting at her own microcomputer. "It looks like it's an opportunistic organism. It just got lucky and made the leap to humans. We'll probably encounter more as time goes on. We've just been lucky that, as the invaders on this planet, we haven't found too many things that find us or our foodstuffs edible."

"What kind of organism is it?"

"If anything, it's possibly a symbiont, or maybe two or more organisms working together, like lichens, except on a much smaller scale. But microbiology isn't my strength, either. And we know practically nothing about Eta Vulpeculan micro-organisms – nobody's put any real effort into studying them, except perhaps as a hobby." Dina leaned back in her chair. "It might be worthwhile looking into it now, though."

Jack coughed again. Dina looked more closely at him. "You've got it, then? The mara-disease?"

Jack shrugged. "Not sure if it's that or a cold, though I think we've developed immunity to most of the rhinoviruses we brought with us from Earth. The problem is that the symptoms are... well, wide-ranging, sometimes. Fevers, cough, chills, fatigue, those are all standard, but the 'burning in the bones' feeling, or the insanely swollen lymph nodes, or someone even claimed they'd had demon-visions – the whole thing doesn't make sense. You'd think there would be a consistent set of symptoms. Even back on Earth when a new disease was discovered and first studied, there was consistency." Jack rested his chin in his hands. "I wish we knew more about this. But as you say, nobody's done any work on it at all."

"Let's bring it up when the others get here, then," Dina suggested. "There's got to be microbiologists somewhere on this planet." She smiled. "And you might want to consider getting some rest. I had a bout of that back before we even knew what it was, although mine was pretty mild. I just felt like I couldn't move."

"I remember. You were down for two days," Jack said, and coughed again. "At least there's no fatalities, and it appears that going through it gives you immunity. Kind of like a mild influenza, I suppose. We just have to hope there's no worse bug out there waiting to jump onto us."

"Knock on wood," Dina said, and demonstrated the saying. "I imagine the Consuls will go through with it – with granting permission to call for research. It's the most sensible conclusion."

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com