Read Online Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel by Michael D. O'Brien - Free Book Online

colored flowers), to the arboretum (a wide selection of trees from every continent), to chess games in the commons, aerobics tracks around the ship on all four concourses, flights of stairs, sports and exercise rooms, and libraries.
    (Note to myself: I really, really must read the Manual more carefully. I recently discovered that indexed under ship’s services are the libraries, more than I had stumbled upon during my first exploration of the concourses. Taking a peek into one of them, I had assumed they were all the same: digital, “oak”-lined, full of arm chairs and fake fireplaces burning fake logs, visually appealing but lacking any tactile books. Today, however, while roving through deck A, I stumbled upon the single actual library, containing close to twenty thousand volumes, intelligently selected.)
    Despite the myriad choices that lend themselves to keeping one active and interested, this does not consume so much of my day that I am deprived of an opportunity to make voice records in my e-diary. But I notice that I’ve lately been skipping days at a time. This written journal suffers even more from such lapses. Does consciousness change with the alteration of space-time? I would expect so, but it is not really measurable. Maybe the anorexia of the journal entries is no more than a case of my wrist muscles squeaking their little protests. “Stop writing all the time, Neil”, they say. “Just enjoy life.” My ankle hurts more than usual; I’m not sure why. I’ll make an appointment with a doctor. There are plenty on board. Hmmm, now whom should I choose? Or do they choose for us? Guess I’ll find out.
    Day 121 :
    It turns out that they do indeed assign specific lists of potential patients to specific doctors. It would be interesting to check out the lists, to see who got who, and try to figure out why. I think they keep this information confidential since it would encourage musical chairs and create logistical havoc, human beings being what we are. My physician is a young East-Indian lady, Dr. Pia Sidotra. She’s a specialist in tropical medicine, infectious diseases, and toxicity (industrial / chemical accidents). Graduate in General Medicine from Mumbai University, surgery from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, tropical medicine at Djakarta U.
    During our first consultation, I tried to keep my defensive force-field up. I don’t automatically trust doctors. I especially don’t trust young, brilliant, women doctors. First of all, they are professionals in highly prestigious positions, which implies that they have successfully navigated the world we live in, and are almost certainly very pleasant creations of the government, full of clone thoughts regarding basic human questions. In my experience, they have issues to work out. It may be said, to their credit, that they have to strain to be detached, even though practitioners in their field generally treat humans like bio-mechanisms. But ladies can slip into caring too much, and thus they tend to overcompensate by becoming harder than men. They are also so thorough and good at what they do that in the end it’s just easier to die than to endure all the trouble and testing they like to put a person through. Give me liberty or give me death, I say.
    In any event, that was my attitude when we shook hands and began the consultation. She surprised me, however, by initiating a battery of oral health questions, using a pencil on paper on clipboard on knee.
    “That’s antiquarian of you”, I opined. “One might go so far as to say anachronistic. I hope you approve of anesthetic for surgeries.”
    “In extreme cases”, she said, with a small smile.
    “Well, I’m a really extreme case.”
    “I can see you are.” She paused and glanced down at her clipboard. “Dr. Hoyos, we’ve received no transmissions from your HUMVS here at the medical center. Of course, it’s your choice to wear one or not, but according to medical law, I have to inquire