As Dagen moved quickly along the corridor he mentally counted out what he needed to do. His existing dilemma was his parents. His father had been a quiet unassuming man who was not as outgoing as his grandfather, Burle, had been. Dagen seemed to have picked up more of those traits and had used that well in his lifetime of diving into different things, sometimes without thinking. Not that marrying Reia was done without thinking; they were planning to but the timing was only the difference there. Now his mother. He didn’t know what to make of this. Every since the death of Dagen’s brother and the decline into a self-destructive lifestyle that his sister had done, not to mention Dagen’s lingering guilt and injury that had taken him into a blackout of communications, all this had caused his mother to descend into a depression. Even now, these years later, she swung on a pendulum of a high or low. Evidently this was a high. But he worried about her; dad had aged a lot in those years and caring for her had weighed on him.

Entering the small room, Dagen sat down before a console that held a replicator booth next to it. It came to life having recognized his facial and retinal scan. “Computer, bring up ring patterns, Terran style wedding bands for a woman.” The resultant massive list nearly knocked him out of his chair. This was going to take up more time than he had budgeted. Glancing at a chrono he saw the time ticking down. Best get at it …
- Dagen, CE