chaotica | session 07 . video

session 07 . video

[ Cambridge lounges, as usual, in his Starfleet uniform and communicator, in his quarters. ]

To all those who, as children, took refuge in my quarters: You're welcome, and if you took any toys, you can keep them.

As Morgana has announced, the Infirmary is once again under the care of one warden doctor (myself), one boy who adamantly denies he is a god of any kind (Dillon), and a quite talented sorceress (Morgana). I'll remind everyone that there is a second actually qualified doctor, the Emperor, who Morgana seems to like quite a bit but who I know nothing about.

For immediate, mortal and life-threatening wounds, as well as minor wounds if you don't mind magic, Morgana or Dylan are best. For diseases, poisons and other damages, the Emperor or myself would be best.

For your counseling needs, please ask Miss Jean Grey if you feel you are in need of gentle treatment or someone very knowledgeable of the Barge, and myself if you would like someone with more than thirty years experience counseling humans and aliens.

To the Infirmary staff: after discussion, we'll be retaining the schedule set by the vanished Dr. Cox with only a few minor modifications, because no one can be bothered to rewrite something that works.

[ Dear Admiral.... ]

Mason: A few pamphlets on drug addiction to emphasize the point that his feelings are not new ones.
Arkin: Something of his daughter’s.
Iris: Some creative new (possibly Risan) oils and lotions and things.
Abigail: A career aptitude test, with the note: This is for you to take, consider, and then utterly disregard. This is not given because of its guidance, but because of the possibilities it may open for you.
Jean: A few higher-level texts along the lines that he’s been tutoring her.
Anya: The recipe for Klingon raktajino, in case she’s interested in a coffee/caffeine alternative. Good, lightweight gloves and boots, a set of tools of further-along technology and a pamphlet on how to use them.
Loki: A three-dimensional chess set, holographic, and a book on rules and basic strategy.
Facilier: A few beautiful original-edition books, science fiction classics published after Facilier’s time.
Mewtwo: One of Cambridge’s personal and somewhat limited databases about non-humans in the Star Trek universe. It contains mostly a study of quite a few obscure aliens, their deep mythology and the beginnings of their reach for technology. Some that may be intriguing for a curious mind. - Cambridge
Ian & Mickey: Anonymously, a pamphlet on bipolar disorder and caring for it. This includes basic medical information as well as treatment options and side effects. No misinformation.
Dillon: An old, lovely rosary.
T’pol: Every major Vulcan philosophy and scientific text of the 22nd century, starting around the time Cambridge thinks that Earth might have conquered Vulcan. More where that came from. - Cambridge
Morgana: Basic medical texts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ He has exam space ready for her when she arrives. Medical tricorder is folded on the bed. ]

[She hops up, sits with her legs crossed, clasps her hands in front of her, keeps her eyes on them. If she speaks evenly and quickly she can pretend it's a mission report, just a litany of facts, words to expel.]

I drowned when I was fifteen. A conglomerate of planetary AIs bought my body off the slab and modified it for their own purposes. I know I have a medical endoframe that promotes advance healing and basic DI - direct interface - neural wiring for communications. I'm pretty sure they put some triggers in my endocrine system but I don't know if any of them are mechanical or if it's all conditioning that I've been made to forget.

I'd like to know if there are modifications I don't know about. And. If I've been sterilized, in particular.

[ He listens, apparently impassively, but inside his mind is whirling. It reminds him of Seven. Only, her struggle for human identity was mostly done by the time he came on the scene.

He wonders, briefly, about Seven's capacity to have children. ]

Depending on the level of technology, I cannot guarantee I will find every modification. But I can vow to you that I will do my utmost.

[ As he says this, he flips the tricorder open and begins to scan her abdomen. He looks for the presence of ovaries, and their health. ]

[The endoframe is clear: a glittering web of carbon tubules and nanocircuitry, woven around and through the major organs, reinforcing the bones. She is from an age where the boundaries of humanity are thoroughly permeable, an estuarial muddle. She never needed a doctor before, but nothing in her would appear out of the ordinary at security scans, or to the all-seeing deep arrays of spaceships, always crafting the perfect customized experience.

Her ovaries are present, though follicular depletion is more advanced than expected in a healthy woman of her age; nodes like dark grains of rice manipulate her hormone cycles to tune her, off mission and on, and ovaries help produce testosterone. They've lain dormant in the year since she's boarded. It's her fallopian tubes that are gone, not merely sealed but removed entirely. The simplest solution.]

[ He finds that easily enough. The fallopian tubes are missing. That can be replaced, he is relatively sure, but he does not have the facilities to do so, as things stand. He can get them. And the invasive technology also can be removed, in a Starfleet facility. But, frankly, he's going to have to study up before that can happen. Surgery was never a specialty of his.

He focuses on the more simple problem first. ]

Genetically, your eggs are fine. You are capable of children. But your fallopian tubes have been removed. Do you know what that means?

[A huge shaky breath out, something that might be a sob if she were less self-possessed, a twisted concoction of terrible confirmation and overwhelming relief.]

Yes. I - yes.

I don't know what to do about that. Undoubtedly the best thing for your body is to remove what's been influencing your hormone cycles and allow your natural one to reassert itself. But I'm not a surgeon, and I'm going to have to research where to go from here.

[Another long breath out, slower and more controlled this time, less emotionally tectonic. She does sway slightly, eyes slipping closed.]

I've been off mission since I arrived.

[Whispered. Talking about the gods in the abstract is one thing; talking about this feels worse, especially with someone so official, someone she doesn't know well.]

[ He levels his eyes at her. ]

Those who did this to you can't reach you here. Your decision goes.

I don't. Like being off.

[Not meeting his eyes, still whispered, a shameful confession. She has chafed at it since she arrived, tried to circumvent it, to trick and trigger and trip outside the borders of her conditioning, but never totally succeeded, not when parts of it are literally hard-wired. And there is a collapsing of distance, a synecdoche that is all too literal: she is her mission status, she is her mission, or its absence.]

[ He sets the scanner aside. ]

I'm not surprised. You've always been on, haven't you? Do you remember anything else?

[She shakes her head.]

No, it wasn't - constant, exactly. There was downtime. Travel, mostly. They must not have had that many like me, because I went all over. Decadent rides between the stars.

It always felt sort of like. Being pressed between planes of glass. Flat, and - untouched, untouching, not part of the world.

But I don't remember any time when I wasn't on mission, or else waiting for the next one.

You were always controlled. Your choices were simple.

Now, you have a riot of choices, each of them spiraling, branching, cascading. You can take any direction, and there is no one to guide you - no one to tell you how it will end.

I do and I don't.

I can wake up and. Do whatever. But I still go where the ship takes me. I'm as real as it makes me. I can tell my secrets now, at least. I came here.

I don't know. I don't care how it ends. I've had a lot of endings that weren't after all. But I want to feel alive in between.

There are mechanisms here to control your hormones. Your emotions. Your body.

Do you want it removed?

[Yes! And no - an initial kneejerk craving for freedom buckling under fear of being stuck the way she is, in its current setting.]

...how would I feel then?

Honestly, I don't know.

By my guess, you would be wildly unstable for a short while, possibly a few months. After that, medical correction of your chemistry can be at your word.

[She mulls it over, breathing shallow-to-deliberate, trying to sort out blind hope from the more sober kind. She has always felt most alive, being volatile, has sought it and then shied away from it in fear that it wouldn't be enough.

At her word.]

Yes. I - yes. Please.

[Quiet, a little choked, but meeting his eyes now. She wants this, so badly. To pull out the last of their strings, still tied strangulation-tight around parts of her heart.]

[ A nod. ]

I'll be open with you about every aspect of the procedure. Which, unfortunately, right now means that I tell you - I'm not prepared to do this yet, and the facilities here are barely adequate. I'm going to request an upgrade from the Admiral, and research what it is I need to know. It'll involve more detailed scans, as well.

[Disappointment, but also relief; it would have been so much, so quickly, possibility and then reality, and although part of her wants to reject it all, to doubt even possibility with everything else held out of reach, she's been here long enough that she's more trusting of the future than she used to be.]

Okay. That's - okay.

And I'll tell you, even if I have to use this bloody primitive place, I can find a way to restore your fallopian tubes.

I'd like to ask that you come in for counseling sessions as well. To help determine what you want to be, even if nothing else.

My warden asked me a question very like that.

[Not quite saying yes; also not at all saying no.]

Whether you'd like to come see me?

Who I wanted to be.

It's an important question.

session 07 . video

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

spam

Re: spam

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)