"What if it doesn't come back?" Jahn said, absentmindedly fingering the scar on his face again.
"Then you can pick a new name, I guess," she replied, putting her hand on his arm reassuringly. "Let's not worry about that right now; Time enough for that later."
The big man surveyed his body, noting the various bandages and studied the cast on his leg for a moment when he suddenly noticed a bit of metal sticking out from the edge of the blanket covering his other foot. He pulled it back and gaped in horror at the metal appendage which was his other leg and foot, all the way up to just above his knee. "What did you do to me?" he asked in disbelief.
"We didn't do that, but it's amazing, isn't it?" Jael said in wonder. "We don't have the technology to do this kind of work here. We've heard of it, but we're so isolated out here that we're lucky to see the random trade ship or freighter but once or twice a year."
"Speaking of 'here'", Jahn asked, "where exacty is 'here' and just how did I get 'here?'"
"You're on a planet called Vondume, located on the edge of the what the Republic calls the 'Unknown Regions,'" she explained, "and as for how you got here, well, once again we were hoping you could tell us. All we know is that your ship crashed."
"My ship? As in space ship?" the patient asked his nurse. "I need to see it. Maybe there's a clue as to what happened."
"Jahn, the ship was completely destroyed in the crash... I'm sorry."
"There has to be something, ship records, computer memory banks, something... I've got to go," he said urgently, once again trying to sit up.
Jael grabbed his shoulders gently. "No, you don't understand. There's nothing." She let that sink in for a moment. "Your ship... Jahn... let me put it to you this way: It was salvagers who found you and rescued you. It's a miracle that you were even alive. Not a single thing came made it through the crash but molten and twisted metal... and you.
"The only thing we know about you is what I've already told you, and the fact that you were delerious when you were found and you said a few things before slipping into a coma," she continued. "You wanted to destroy a child's play vehicle... you kept saying something like, 'Die, bike, die."
"That makes no sense."
"I know."
"Well, I still need to go through the wreckage myself," Jahn told her. "Maybe there's something that will trigger a memory or something."
The dark-skinned woman shook her head sadly. "It's already been salvaged. You were in a coma for seven weeks," she informed him. "I'm so sorry, Jahn, but when I said there was nothing, I really meant it."
The realization of what all of that meant hit him like a wall of duracrete. It meant that he was on a planet in the middle of nowhere, with no one who knew him, and no way of finding out where he had come from. The best that he could hope for was that someone had known he was coming here and would eventually wonder what had happened to him.
A thought rose unbidden to his mind, and he knew as sure as the night was black, that it was the truth. "My brother will come for me."
"Your brother?" Jael said with surprise. "Oh good, you're starting to remember already!"
Jahn shook his head sadly. "No, I don't remember anything about my brother, but deep down, somehow, someway, I know that that statement is the truth."
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