Bridgebuilder

Impaired Judgement

Alex had been lonely before, but there had been at least some fleeting reason behind it. He could understood why and could usually see a path through it. This was different. The narcotic effect Carbon had worried about had taken root in his brain, Carbon's decades of self-enforced isolation writ large in his mind now, irrational and inescapable. He felt depressed and perfectly alone, despite Carbon sitting a few feet away curled up with her legs hugged to her chest.

She had pushed him away too late with a whispered apology, just as the connection broke the effect set in. The source of the pained look she wore was clear to Alex, a burst of panic had ripped through the Carbon part of their mind link just before she had severed it. She knew what was going to happen but she didn't want it to happen to him. Now they sat on opposite sides of the couch, temporarily destroyed.

"It's too bad that..." Alex tried to make a joke but just ran out of steam between getting the idea and actually saying it. There really wasn't a point anymore. "I'm going to get something to sleep this off with. Is that safe?"

She looked at him with grief in her eyes, voice feeble. "It should be, but... Please do not. This should not take more than an hour to pass and I do not want to be alone right now."

"Well. Yeah, sure." Alex was pretty sure an hour would feel like an eternity like this, but he was willing to put up with it for her sake. He really didn't want to be alone either, as the very concept of loneliness clawed at his mind. "Is there anything we can do to speed this up?"

"Not specifically." Her eyes narrowed in thought for a moment. She unbuckled the strap she'd looped around her leg to keep herself on the couch and scooted over to him, undid his belt before taking his hand and tugging him up off the couch with her. "There is one thing I have been told... I do not know if it is a true remedy, but it can not hurt to try."

"What are you doing?"

"Bringing you along. It is improper to drink by yourself."

"How is that... How is that different than taking a sleep aid?" Carbon pulled him into the passageway without any trouble. Alex was sure he would have waited on the couch until he had rotted away, and found himself indifferent to being moved around as she towed him behind her towards the aft end of the ship. He could be stuck in this hole anywhere, it didn't matter. "How did you get alcohol on board, anyway? The CPP runs dry ships, didn't they check your gear?"

"It is different because it is not being done alone." She toggled the door controls to her cabin with a shrug. "I moved onto the ship before it left dry dock for the first time. No one checked anything I brought on board with me."

Any other time, Alex would have been surprised at what he saw in Carbon's cabin. In place of the light gray walls and allegedly mood-enhancing blue stripe, it had been covered in a detailed mural. The cabin became a clearing in a strangely colored alien forest, red-purple trees reaching up to the night sky above on the ceiling. He'd have thought it beautiful in its own way, but right now it was just an oddity as she deposited him on her bunk before rummaging through the dresser embedded in the wall.

"They checked mine. Why is your bunk so big? Is this down?" Alex held on to the comforter stretched over the top, squishing it under his fingers with the distinct crunch of feathers. Her bunk was significantly wider than his, though it was welded to the floor, unable to be folded back up into the wall. Even after just ten minutes of space between the onset of the effect, he realized he could feel it start to ease off, the intensity of it reduced though the magnitude was still astronomical. He was starting to understand her reaction to the too-strong memory he'd shown her during their first link. Regaining composure didn't take long, but he'd sure as hell prefer to be stuck with an absurd sense of pride for an hour.