Doctor Thornby's eyes widened at that news.
“Oh, not raping a female human, raping or in most cases, seducing a male human. For their seed,” he explained. Slowly she nodded.
“How do you... no, I'm not sure I want the details,” she said, holding up a restraining hand.
“From the records, they didn't use aphrodisiacs, or at least not often. The simplest method was to get the victim rip roaring drunk, take their seed in hopes of propagation, then leave them.”
“I... see. Quite the hangover.”
“Right.”
“I'd hate to wake up in their shoes, confused about what happened, sore, sick,” the doctor mused, rubbing her chin. She was fairly certain he was leaving out things like possible date rape drug use. She decided she didn't want to know.
“Yes, it was most likely not pleasant. They survived, with minimum wear. Of course, we don't do that anymore though,” he added hastily.
Doctor Thornby locked eyes with the Chimerian. “I see.”
“It was before my time doctor,” he said, holding up his gloved hands. “I don't know the success rate, you'll have to be judge of that. You or your doctor Martel. We are a desperate people doctor.”
Thornby nodded. “Moving on.”
...*...*...*...*...
After several hours of discussion her stomach rumbling and a growing headache due to low blood sugar and high stress told her it was time to eat.
She exited with the Chimerian leader to find the lobby filled with his people. They spilled out into the area outside her hospital. Station security was in force to discreetly monitor the situation she noted with approval.
“Trenton, you all came?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I am not the only doctor here,” Trenton said. That was the first time he had informed her that he was a trained medical professional. That raised her eyebrows. Now she understood how he knew some of the more technical procedures. “I and a few others of the clan learned medical teachings in order to aid in our change... since very few trained outsiders were willing to help us.”
Slowly Thornby nodded. She could understand that, and by keeping the medics in house, they obviously didn't charge for it. She also now understood part of why he was so okay with it if something went wrong. Obviously, from time to time, something did no matter how hard they tried to avoid it. “I see. Do you have accommodations Trenton? Doctor?”
Trenton shrugged. He noted a few Neos nearby and blinked in surprise. A Veraxin also surprised him. “My this is a different place,” he murmured. The Veraxin paused to interact with a Gashg. A Naga nearby leaned his head out of a stall, nearly tipping himself off the stool he had seated himself on. A judicious use of his tail kept him upright. He waved a hand leg to the other two aliens who turned and waved back.
“Very different for you, for us this is normal,” Thornby replied.
“Indeed,” he said and turned back to the doctor. “To answer your question, no, We were going to look into that next.”
Thornby frowned. Why he hadn't delegated that task was a question she wished to ask, but privacy was possibly involved so she bit her tongue. “Well, there is a newly restored hotel a few decks down near the college. It's not full yet, I think they can put your people up.”
“I will endeavor to look into it,” Trenton said diplomatically.
Thornby rapidly came to a decision. She sent a request through her implants to Smithy who connected her to the hotel front desk. A quick text exchange reserved forty rooms for her guests. “It's the end of semester, so they have rooms available. I just booked you the remaining forty rooms. You'll have until Old Nelly leaves to use them, though you'll have to arrange to pay for your own food if they have functional food replicators.”
“Food replicators? We have two,” a woman said.
“Good for you,” Thornby said, nodding to the Chimerian woman. The woman looked away.
“I tell you what, you can charge me for food for the day while I and my people go over your proposal,” she said smiling. Trenton and his fellow delegates had laid out what their people wanted, which was essentially a total body make over. The list of equipment had her salivating though. She couldn't wait to get her hands on it, which was why she was even entertaining this in the first place.
Trenton frowned. “I thank you doctor, but we will not be indebted to your generosity. We have some credit with the ship and station, and we can find work for ourselves.”
“That remains to be seen. We have a very high tech society here, robots usually do menial tasks. Middle class jobs are hard to come by with the college. Students usually snap up service jobs within hours to help pay for their own expenses.”
“I... see.”
“Look into it and get back to me. I can always use a hand in the hospital or medical clinics on the station or abroad, and of course the college is always interested in guest speakers.”
“Thank you doctor for the pointers.”
“As I said, look into it. For now, why don't we go eat?” she asked, smiling politely.
“I thank you doctor, but we are wearied and not comfortable with eating in public. We shall retire,” Trenton said.
Thornby blinked at him and then nodded. She watched him put his mask on and then wave his people out. One had a tablet, he consulted with that person then pointed to the lifts.
“First time I've been stood up in a while,” the doctor murmured, watching the gaggle of people milling about the lifts. She turned and headed to the coffee shop. It had half way decent sandwiches. She needed to eat and then wrap her head around this project.
...*...*...*...*...
The next morning Doctor Thornby entered her office early and sat down. She'd been up a lot, most of the night, tossing and turning, unable to shake the problem. Now she faced it head on as she nibbled on her baguette and sipped her morning coffee. She put the chip into her E-reader and started going through the files, first focusing on their journal.
It was a self pitying thing, going on and on how they had been born bad and wanted to change. She shook her head and scanned on.
The clan's history in Horathian space had created an inferiority complex, that much was obvious. No matter what they did to fit in to society, they always stood out. They may have even tried too hard, making the situation worse. They had ended up rejected a lot, moving away from a system when the population became hostile to them. They settled for breeding with humans who have altered themselves to be more animal like at one point three centuries ago. Apparently they had taken the long view, deciding that if they couldn't better themselves they would try to better their children. That at least was a more normal outlook, all species wanted to better things for the next generation.
They shaved their bodies, used plastic surgery to look more human, that however was a bit off.
It all boiled down to... They wanted a cure to the Neo scourge that they thought they were. Self flagellation on a grand scale. Masochists, she thought, to have gone through that, generation after generation? The clan was highly educated, insulated against others by their appearance. A few of the engineers had civilian ident implants, something they used to help them gain work. Apparently they passed them on from one person to the next when one aged or sickened. She winced, imagining the horror of that sort of surgery.
They would be put out by the competition in Pyrax, nearly half the working population had implants, many a much better grade than the ones the Chimerians boasted. Their implants were good, but they still couldn't use them to access the machinery on the level that the engineers could now.
The doctor however could, she could at the very least fix that for them. She also has medical nanites, so some basic fixes and changes were a given. She turned her attention to the equipment inventory. Was it really worth it? Right off the top she knew it was.
There were over thirty pieces of equipment, all rare. The four pieces of Ynari equipment she could hardly guess at. But the others
, even the more common ones were vital. Uterine replicators, and other equipment, some used in artificial gene synthesis to repair genetic damage in a fetus. Two of the pieces of equipment were regen capsules, only one was functional from the report. One of the machines was a nano therapy tube and another was a nano factory used for medicine. The industrial nanofactory was used by a pharmaceutical company and was itself precious, it could make blank medical nanites in quantity, not just for basic medicine or to stock regen tanks, but also to repair damage and to generate anti aging therapies. Vast quantities she needed since people all over the system were clamoring for it now, her own systems were having trouble keeping up. To the clan it was next to useless, only medical officers with implants could use the machine. She had that.
She took another sip of coffee and then set the mug down. Did she have the right? She was pretty sure she did but did she really?
She didn't regret getting involved with the admiral, becoming a reserve officer. Sure the training was a pain in the ass, it took her away from medicine, but it gave her a sense of belonging, a sense of actually making a difference, far beyond anything she had done before. Even her charity efforts paled in comparison to what she was accomplishing now, even with the admiral gone.
She resented his absence, but she didn't resent the man. Sure, she'd like to think she would have handled it differently, but she hadn't been there, and besides, she wasn't him. She was a specialist, she admitted it. Up until the admiral's departure Thornby had kept to medicine. Since he had left she'd been forced to take an interest in how her equipment came to her, as well as politics and the large view.
She frowned, remembering how it had been before Admiral Irons arrival. How she'd had to put up with rich folks wanting to use the precious regen tanks to change their hair, grow goatees, change their skin color, or shed a pound without exercising, all because they overindulged. Ninety percent of it had been petty crap, stuff that they could do in a beauty salon if they'd bothered to look into it. All before a party. She frowned, remembering other things, darker things. She'd eventually had enough, she'd been forced to go to the fat port admiral, put up with his presence and use reverse psychology to get him to limit the regen tanks usage. That of course had inhibited her use to aide others more worthy, like Horatio when he had needed it the most.
Before the admiral's arrival she had just had a few regen tubes to do the therapy and only the ultra rich could afford it. Now it was a basic right of everyone in the military and the civilians were resenting that. She was trying to keep an open mind about opening it up to the public, but the processes still took up her time and resources.
With the consent of Enrique the Governor of the station and Commander Logan she now offered free basic Ident implants for anyone at the college, and then last year they expanded it to the entire population of Anvil. It had certainly changed simple things like logging into places as well as more complex things like banking.
Governor Walker had been on her case about expanding the program system wide. She had people coming to her now from across the system, some with legitimate needs, since they were engineers managing equipment. Others were not so legitimate of course, or at least not so critical. A few were again, rich people wanting to show off a new toy, which annoyed her. Implants weren't fashion accessories, or at least shouldn't be. The new scam was to register for a semester at the college, get the implant, then drop out of the college. That was playing havoc with the college attendance staff.
Spacers who came through on ships were paying for the privilege of getting implants. Some just wanted the basic implant, not realizing there were levels of implants available. Some like those on Destiny had done their research, they put their money into full implants, pushing her civilian medics as far as possible. A few had signed on as reservists, which brought all sorts of issues into the picture. According to Horatio one person had gotten military implants and then had immediately resigned. Of course they weren't happy when the implants shut down. Too bad for them.
She was caught in a vice, she couldn't use the military technology and resources for civilian use. However the admiral had created the resurrection project, and the equipment would go a long way to service those ends. This offered her a way out, or at least a polite fiction for charging the Navy if needed.
The price however was steep, she wasn't at all certain if it was even possible to pull off. Not completely, no way. Not even the Ynari could have done it. At least not without cloning some human bodies, dumping the minds of the Chimerian's into them, and then washing their hands of the entire thing and leaving them to their own after care without support. Ynari could be shifty like that, or so the stories went.
She shook her head. No, that wouldn't work. The price, change the Chimera family to human, something that tangled all sorts of ethical and legal quandaries up in knots. She wrestled with her conscience and the Hippocratic oath. Finally she determined that she wasn't playing god like the Ynari, she was going to correct the damage and try to mitigate it for future generations. She would take it step by step and try to do her best. She would have to make certain they understood there was no quick fix. Hopefully their leader understood that.
The doctor was appalled at how self destructive the family was. How they went to such great lengths for beauty and cut themselves and maimed themselves, the desperate measures they went through to change who they were. The simple things like plastic surgery on their tails, ears, eyes, facial features, fingers, declaw or mangle their finger tips, reform their feet... The works. What would happen to those who's surgeries failed for whatever reason? Infection? She shivered at the very idea. To be maimed for life? Now she understood the masks and robes.
Hair removal was easy, though an entire body? She didn't envy the laser surgeons who did it. According to the journal, at one point when they had been stuck on a planet with no laser surgeons, an entire generation had to do it by hand. The family had been reduced to plucking each hair out with tweezers or shaving themselves. They had even tried acids. What kind of thing would that do to a child? Mentally scaring them and then carrying it on to the next generation and on and on? She shuddered at such lengths they had gone through.
And for what? Why? Was Horathian space so terrible? Apparently so, if they kept this up for generation after generation, unwavering in this. Something external reinforced the desire to change. She frowned and then shook her head. That was something she'd have to ask the intel shop... if she really had the stomach to hear the answer. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear it at this point. If this was going on with one Neo clan, what happened to the others who flat out refused to conform? Sometimes ignorance really was bliss.
She realized they weren't interested in accepting it, any attempt to talk them out of it had fallen on deaf ears. They'd heard it all before, the 'accept yourself and how you are' speech, they tuned it out. She decided to do what she could for them. The Chimeran family was considered obsessive compulsive and destructive. An inferiority complex that was practically a self destructive psychosis. They expected failure, expected to be mistreated, that bothered her almost as much as the other mental issues. She wasn't sure if they taught it to themselves or if they were exposed to it on various worlds and it had become self reinforcing.
...*...*...*...*...
After going through the journal she called Trenton back in to consult. He answered with a video conference request.
“Trenton... are you sure you want all of it? I think Doctor Martel and I can work around, find a fix for your following generations but the entire package?”
"What is the expression? Go big or go home?” he asked, smiling. He'd slowly come to relax in her presence, even over the video conference. She'd expected his call, dreaded it when it had come in. She still didn't have an answer for him, but she was leaning heavily towards going for it. At the very least she could ease their pain and give them a straight answer.
“But still...”
“Perfection doctor.”
&n
bsp; She blushed. “We humans are far from perfect you know. If I do this, I'm saying if,” she emphasized, holding up a finger. “It wouldn't be because I think you are right. It would be because I need that equipment for the greater good of many people. It may save billions of lives.”
“I see.”
“I hope you do. We're trying to bring back the lost.”
“We are moving to the light as well. We each do so in our own way.”
“You aren't nearly as lost as the Ssilli are, or... you know what, never mind for now. I wish you could see, things are different here on Anvil, and in Pyrax in general. You could fit in without the robes or masks. I don't think anyone would think twice about what you look like. Here it's what you can do that matters,” she said with some authority.
“What about Briev doctor?”
“Briev? I heard...” She frowned ferociously. Briev was a regressed medieval cesspool, the experience of the Destiny landing party had only confirmed it. Now the news of it was propagating throughout the sector. Hopefully ships would stop going there for a few decades until they cleaned up their act. “That's there, not here, they are pretty backwards. We are different.”
“My people have recently been looking into events in the station and the system. I see the same thing happening here as it did in Horath and on other worlds, one after another.”
“You're kidding me!” she said, eyes wide. She shook her head vehemently no. “No, not going to happen!”
“The Neo tax doctor?” Trenton asked softly, blue eyes staring into hers.
Thornby scowled, freezing in her tracks. The Neo tax was an ugly bit of bigotry she and a lot of people didn't like, but it had gotten in anyway. A case of being asleep at the switch, no one had been paying close enough attention when the bill had been proposed and rammed through the community. But unfortunately there had been enough pressure to get it through both houses of the newly reformed system congress. Governor Walker had made a show of signing it into law, stating it was 'only fair for Neo's and large aliens to pay their fair share'. What a load of bull.
13 Degrees of Separation Page 10