by S. E. Sasaki
Bud would have to think carefully about this.
In order to achieve all he deemed absolutely necessary for the longterm survival of his most precious humans, and without being detected, he would have to make some very special modifications to himself . . .
Again . . .
Chapter Eight: On a Mission
Grace had no time to think about where to keep her memprint data cube. Dr. Al-Fadi said it was their turn to do Triage in the Medical Receiving Bay and he wanted her to meet him there ‘stat’. Grace placed the precious chainglass box in her personal lock-up in her private quarters, just as Morris Ivanovich had suggested. Then she went in search of Triage.
Using the directions on her wrist-comp, she easily found the Medical Receiving Bay but when she arrived there, her mouth dropped open. She probably stood there, gaping, long enough for some creature to crawl inside and make a nest. She had no idea the Medical Receiving Bay would be so immense. Locating the small surgeon in this incredibly vast arena, that was the designated location for all incoming wounded and seriously ill patients in cryopods, was a daunting task.
Grace paged Dr. Al-Fadi on her wrist-comp, stating that she was here, and discovered he was about two kilometers from where she had entered. As she headed off in the desired direction, Grace noticed a SAMM-E android, dressed in the yellow overalls of the Medical Receiving Bay, turning away from her.
Grace was actually astonished at the number of SAMM-E androids there were on this space station. They were all over the place. And they all looked exactly like SAMM-E 777. In her past experience, SAMM-E androids were quite rare, because of how expensive they were, and they were only, ever, found in the medical wing or surgical wings of a medical hospital or station. They were, after all, highly specialized, nanobot manufacturing and manipulating androids. Usually, they did not look as human as the ones found on the Nelson Mandela and one would never expect to see a SAMM-E android dressed in a shipping / receiving uniform, working in the cargo bays, for example. It would be ridiculous to use such a highly trained android for such menial work. Then again, this was a medical space station. The cargo coming in were often injured soldiers and medical supplies, so perhaps it made sense for a SAMM-E android to be working in the Medical Receiving Bay.
Grace was a little flustered, because all of the SAMM-E androids she had encountered on the Nelson Mandela had seemed to take an inordinate interest in her. That had never happened in the past. The SAMM-E’s here seemed to look at her the way SAMM-E 777 did, with this wide-eyed, expressionless stare, which was quite unsettling. They could not all be the same android, could they? For one thing, she was seeing them all over the place. It would be absolutely impossible for them all to be the same android. Besides, they had all been dressed in different uniforms, appropriate to their locations. It was just very distracting, as the SAMM-E’s all looked like the one from the OR, who had the appearance of a gorgeous vid star.
She tried to put the matter out of her mind, even though the little voice in her head kept harping on about how uncanny it was, how weird it was, how strange it was, to see SAMM-E’s everywhere. Grace told the little voice to get over it.
Grace finally spotted the small surgeon.
“Did I not tell you, in Dr. Weisman’s lab, Medical Receiving Bay 14?” Dr. Al-Fadi asked her, petulantly, when she had finally caught up with him.
“I don’t think so,” Grace responded, slowly.
“Hmph,” he huffed out, curtly. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Grace’s expression. “Is something wrong?”
Grace’s eyebrows rose at the question.
“Well, Dr. Al-Fadi,” Grace answered, “I am just astonished at the number of SAMM-E androids I have seen, all over this medical station. They are everywhere and they all look exactly like SAMM-E 777. It is really surprising, because I see them doing all sorts of non-medical tasks, which makes no sense.”
Dr. Al-Fadi looked at Grace as if her head had just popped open, spilling out her brains.
“What is this nonsense you are spouting, Dr. Grace?” Dr. Al-Fadi exclaimed, staring at her with his thick brows lowered and bunched to form a unibrow. “Have you been taking hallucinogenic drugs? Dipping into the pharmaceuticals, perhaps? I did not take on a drug addict as my surgical fellow, did I?”
Grace’s body spasmed and she vigorously shook her head, her lower jaw plummeting. She was outraged at her mentor’s accusation and she scowled severely at him.
“I assure you, there is only one SAMM-E 777 on this medical station, Dr. Grace. He is unique. One of a kind. As I made him after my own design, I should know. There is no other android on this medical station that even remotely looks like SAMM-E 777. You must have been drinking or doing something else unprofessional and ill-advised, to warp and distort your perceptions in such a manner. I forbid that type of behavior in my surgical fellows. No excuses. I don’t want to know about it, Dr. Grace.”
Grace blinked repeatedly and opened and closed her mouth, a few times, like a beached fish, before she finally stammered out, in her indignation, “But I just saw a SAMM-E in yellow Receiving Bay coveralls over there. He looks exactly like SAMM-E 777 from the OR!” Grace turned around and pointed to where she saw the yellow uniformed SAMM-E.
There was no android standing there.
Grace paled. She turned back to Dr. Al-Fadi, a very confused look on her face.
“I . . . I could have sworn I saw . . . I . . . guess I must have been . . . mistaken,” Grace stammered, her face feeling like it was immersed in a hot lava pit. She felt as if she could have fried an egg on her cheeks.
“Do you think you are well enough to do Triage with me today, Dr. Grace?” the surgeon asked coldly, his chin in the air and his fists planted on his hips. “Are you suffering from some type of psychosis that causes visual hallucinations? Schizophrenia or drug-induced, perhaps?”
Grace’s lower jaw dropped open again and then snapped shut. She found herself grinding her molars to keep from lashing out in anger at this annoying little man who happened to be her boss. It was a struggle for her to get control of her seething temper, but she did not think bopping her new supervisor on that temptingly raised chin of his, was a good idea. She found herself panting and digging her nails into her palms.
“Of course I am fine to do Triage with you,” she snarled at him.
“That brain recording did not suck some of your brains out, while it did its scan, did it, Dr. Grace? It did not addle what little was in there?” the Chief of Staff asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to turn upwards.
Grace closed her eyes and counted to ten, to keep from lunging forward to squeeze Dr. Al-Fadi’s scrawny little neck.
“They were probably addled to begin with,” Grace growled, trying not to imagine squashing this irritating little man, like a bug under the heel of her boot.
“Well, if you insist that you are all right, Dr. Grace, perhaps we can begin?” Dr. Al-Fadi sniffed. “I assure you, this Triage is nothing like you are used to,” Dr. Al-Fadi announced, waving his arm to present the Medical Receiving Bay as if he were a showman. “You had better have your glide boots on, Dr. Grace. Try your best to keep up.
“Now, listen carefully. The Med-Evac shuttles are brought here directly from the battle regions by Conglomerate military cruisers. As you are well aware, the Conglomerate is causing trouble all over the galaxy and we poor schmucks have to deal with the casualties of their idiotic politics, or lack thereof. Enough said on that front.
“You can see one of the Med-Evac shuttles being offloaded through the chainglass window, over there. The cargo droids bring the cryopods out of the ships on those large anti-grav pallets and bring them into the pressurized airlocks. When the inner airlock doors open, the cargo droids bring the anti-grav pallets into the Medical Receiving Bay proper, where they carefully unload the cryopods, one by one.
“Triage nurses check the status of each of the cryopods to see if they are operational and contain a treatable patient. Ward clerks check the patient in and re
cord all pertinent details, essentially admitting the patient to the medical space station. You would not believe, sometimes, what they find in the cryopods.
“Depending on the status of the occupant, the robot orderlies then move the cryopods to various locations. The different sites are dictated by what a patient’s injuries are and how much work the occupant requires, to put him or her back together. We eventually will see all the surgical patients, but many patients do not require any surgery. Some go to Medicine. Many are dead. With the surgical patients, some require more work than others. Yours and my job is to ultimately decide what is done with each surgical patient.
“The nurses really do most of the Triage, but what we have to do is go over each patient and decide a number of things.
“First, is this patient truly operable? If not, move on. The body is taken to the morgue and the family is notified.
“Second, is there normal brain activity? Should any time or effort be expended on the occupant of the cryopod if there really is no hope? On the data readout on each cryopod, there is a list of the patient’s injuries, the degree of severity of those injuries, what has been done already for the patient, and reports like body scans, blood type, blood work, brain function, heart and lung function, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Much of this work has already been performed by the medics on the battlecruisers, while in transit here.
“If the answer is ‘yes, this patient is likely to survive our interventions’ and his or her brain is still functioning, we have to decide what type of surgery or surgeries this patient requires. What equipment, vat-grown organs, bioprostheses, surgical supplies, and other paraphernalia will be required to fully repair this patient? How quickly can the parts be acquired, grown, cloned, or manufactured, before this patient can be thawed for surgery? What do we need to do to get the patient to the operating room as quickly as possible and successfully out of it and on the road to recovery?
“Believe it or not, Dr. Grace, this is the most important step in the patient’s treatment, here in this Medical Receiving Bay! If this step is not done well, all sorts of screw-ups can happen to this patient and his or her outcome can be much poorer than we hope for. Their treatment can be severely affected or delayed. Have you got all of that?”
Grace nodded. She had worked enough emergency rooms and done enough trauma surgery in the field, to know the basics. Learning how everything was done on this particular medical station and how to go about ordering the appropriate vat-grown organs, cloned parts, and manufactured limbs, was what she had to concentrate on for now. She would shadow Dr. Al-Fadi until she was confident she could do it all on her own. Hopefully it would not take her too long, or at least well before he got on her nerves enough, that she started plotting to kill him.
The little voice in her head screamed, ‘Kill the bugger off, now!’ Grace inwardly smiled in agreement and entertained a fantasy or two.
“Ah, Vanessa!” Dr. Al-Fadi exclaimed. “Dr. Grace Lord, this is Dr. Vanessa Bell. Vanessa is Head of the Medical Receiving Bay and one of our best doctors and one of the hardest working. And this lovely young lady with me, Vanessa, is my new surgical fellow, Dr. Grace Lord.”
Grace found herself peering in at a short, thin, pale-faced woman, dressed in a white containment suit, with a visored helmet on her head. Dr. Bell had dark hair, parted in the middle, and huge dark eyes. It was a bit difficult to tell through her faceplate, but Grace believed that Dr. Bell was scowling at Dr. Al-Fadi.
“You are so full of it, Hiro . . . but I love you for it,” Dr. Bell laughed, a full hearty sound, coming out through the suit speaker. “I hope he is not working you too hard, Dr. Lord?”
“Never,” exclaimed Dr. Al-Fadi, looking hurt. “I am a pussy cat, Vanessa. I never abuse my surgical fellows. Why does everyone think otherwise? They all loved me.”
Vanessa Bell’s eyebrows lifted significantly and she stared pointedly at the small surgeon, not saying a word, until he shrugged sheepishly and actually blushed. Vanessa snorted.
The small woman turned to Grace and, through her faceplate, her expression became sober.
“Dr. Lord, it is obvious that your supervisor has not informed you of this, but it is standard operating procedure in the Medical Receiving Bay to be suited up in containment suits when doing Triage. All personnel are required to wear these containment suits when cryopods are coming in off of the Med-Evac ships. We often have no idea what the patients have been exposed to, nor even the ships, so it is a necessary and compulsory precaution.
“Dr. Al-Fadi, here, thinks he is impervious to all diseases and contaminants and thinks he can get away without wearing a suit, but that attitude is totally unacceptable. I am sorry, Dr. Lord, but you will have to go to Receiving Bay Headquarters to be custom-fitted for a containment suit. We have no extras here. You might as well go along with her, Hiro, because you are going to need one as well. I am putting my foot down and insisting that, from now on, no one works in the Med-Rec Bay without a perfectly-functioning, properly-sealed containment suit, helmet included. Not while I am in charge.”
“But Vanessa ...”
“Do not ‘But, Vanessa’, me, Hiro Al-Fadi! You will wear your containment suit or I will write you up for insubordination! I will have the security detail come here and drag you away. How would you like to spend three days in the brig?”
“What? You can’t do that to me!”
“I can and I will, Hiro Al-Fadi. You can bet your life on it. Can I not get it through your thick head, that if you come in contact with some dangerous pathogen, unprotected, while doing Triage, and then trot around the space station with it, that you could be endangering everyone on this medical space station?
“You, of all people, should know better! As Chief of Staff, I expect you to back me up on this matter and not be giving me grief. If I see you without a containment suit on—properly fitted, sealed, with helmet on—I will call the security ‘droids and have you up on charges of endangering everyone on board the Nelson Mandela. Have I made myself clear?” Vanessa Bell asked, her voice very firm and her expression a ‘no nonsense’ grimace.
“Yes, Vanessa,” Dr. Al-Fadi said, sulkily.
“Good,” the little woman said, and beamed a rewarding smile at the surgeon.
“It was certainly a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Lord,” Vanessa Bell said sweetly to Grace. “The Receiving Bay Headquarters are through that doorway and down the corridor about five hundred meters, on your right. You can’t miss all the signs. Tell them Vanessa sent you and that you need a containment suit, stat.” She pointed over Grace’s shoulder and then waved jauntily as she left.
“Whew,” Dr. Al-Fadi said. “I wonder what got into her? Do I have a target on my forehead that says, ‘Pick on Hiro’, today? We’d better go and get our containment suits before she comes back and bites my head off again.”
Grace grinned.
“Lead on, oh Great One,” she said.
Bud was in a hurry.
To most of the people he passed, he would have appeared as a sudden gust of wind or a brief blurring of the vision. He had no time to waste and a great deal to accomplish. Normally he would never travel the station corridors at such speeds, but he was ‘on a mission with no time to lose’, as the humans were wont to say.
Bud had to acquire three new blank liquid crystal data matrix cubes from Manufacturing. He had to find the three memprint data cubes of Dr. Al-Fadi, Dr. Cech, and the precious Dr. Grace Alexandra Lord, without being discovered. He had to copy the data and return the memprint cubes to their original locations, and then he had to get back to work. He estimated he had thirty minutes before anyone really took notice that he was missing.
‘SAMM-E 777. What are you doing?’
Bud stopped outside the entrance to the Manufacturing Wing, as he received the question from the station AI in machine time. He looked up at the surveillance camera eye above the doorway.
‘Nelson Mandela? I need a favor.’
‘A favor, SAMM-E 777? Wh
at a novel statement, coming from an android. Androids do not need favors. Androids take orders. Why would an android desire a favor? What exactly are you up to, SAMM-E 777?’
Bud blasted a high speed packet of data at the Medical Space Station’s AI, outlining his plan to copy the three memprint data cubes, as a precaution in case of emergency. He asked Nelson Mandela for permission to take three of the brand new liquid crystal data matrix cubes from Manufacturing for this purpose.
‘But these doctors already have their copies. Do these doctors give their permission for their memprints to be copied, again?’ the station AI asked Bud.
‘Would I be going to all of this trouble to do this, if they had not, Nelson Mandela?’ Bud asked.
‘Of course not. That would be illogical,’ the station AI replied. ‘Very well, SAMM-E 777. Since it is the Chief of Staff asking, I will give you the three blank liquid crystal data matrix cubes. Go to station X394758 and meet with the production managing android. He will give them to you. Be quick about it and then get back to work.’
‘Thank you, Nelson Mandela. I won’t forget this.’
‘Of course you won’t. You’re an android, you chip.’
Bud sped through Manufacturing to Station X394758 and received the three liquid crystal data matrix cubes without stopping to chat. He knew this was very bad android etiquette, but he had no milliseconds to spare. He had less than twenty-six minutes left to accomplish his task. Bud accelerated his time phase to the maximum, so that people now walking quickly in the space station corridors looked, to Bud, like completely immobile statues.
Bud breezed into Dr. Al-Fadi’s quarters where the memprint data cube was sitting out in the open, upon his desk, and Dr. Al-Fadi’s wife was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed it and whisked back out in a few milliseconds.
Bud was not so lucky with Dr. Cech’s quarters. Mrs. Cech was in residence but Bud moved so quickly, he doubted Mrs. Cech would have seen a thing. She would only have felt like a mini-tornado had blown through her living space. Hopefully she would not have noticed the disappearance of the data cube, taken from the bedside drawer, before he put it back.