Episode 10 - Cross Wires

Date: 621/2/2732
Patient: Captain Adrastos Endora, Adrilaen
Patient ID: 0000000X.
Presenting Complaint: Bionic Update

No matter how tired you are, it’s never a good idea to straight up hack a patient’s limb off.

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To avoid spoilers, content warnings are available at the bottom of this page!

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Transcript:

[MUSIC: The Vesta Clinic Theme] 

FAYE: 

[Yawning] 0400 hours? I hope the team aren't expecting me at breakfast. Can you show me when the first appointment is tomorrow - today - you know, this morning. You know what I mean. . . Sec? 

[Silence ] 

Aw, come on! I said I was sorry, Sec. You know it was an accident! And I cleared it up straight away.

[SOUND: plant rustle]

I know you've decided that putting effort into keeping this thing alive is beneath you, but I like it and I cannot let it die. Imagine how that would come across. [Yawn] So, I did some research of my own, actually, and, if the gentlefrond on the HabiPlantsHabiHome site can be trusted, it's a Fittonia, a nerve plant. Xael bought me a nerve plant, Sec. That's why it keeps wilting when you take your eye off it for half a second. The plant has anxiety . . . Do you think she meant something by that? 

[Silence] 

Se-ec, what can I do? I really need your help to write this letter so you may as well get something out of the bargain.

[SEC: typing on screen]

 [Laugh] Yes, I will take the plant out of the clinic room to water her, deal. 

[SEC: affirmative ping] 

[Yawning again] Right. Let's just do this and then I can go to bed.

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

No, I don't regret accepting the bleep, it's just . . . Some decisions feel different when the rest of the satellite is asleep and Xaelest Adra isn't looking at you. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Yeah, well, what can I say? This is what I get for being good at my job. 

Ready? 

[SEC: affirmative ping]

Date: So, the date is now . . . . 621/2/2732 - right? 

[SEC: affirmative ping]

Thanks. 

Patient: Captain Adrastos Endora, Adrilaen

Patient ID: 0000000X. That should be seven zeroes and an X?

[SEC: questioning ping, typing on screen]

 That's right, this is for our records only. Put in the secret files where you keep your secret things. 

[MUSIC: begins]

 It was an unexpected pleasure to, quite literally, find Captain Adrastos in my clinic room today. I was bleeped at just after 0245 with a message that there was a patient getting ready to board the satellite and I aimed to get to the clinic room first so I could determine how much of a mood you were still in. However, I unscrewed my eyes after a loud yawn to see the Captain wincing unsteadily to her feet, and extending what I thought was a gloved human hand for me to shake. 

'Captain.' I said, spotting the perfectly stitched insignia on her suit. In my freshly awoken state, I couldn't remember if I was meant to salute, or kneel, or kiss some part of her, but she smiled, more with her eyes than anything else, and sank back into her chair with a stiffness that you wouldn't associate with the bulk of her muscle. 

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

Oh, an absolute tank, Sec. She could have picked me up with one arm.

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

 Was I intimidated?

[SEC: questioning ping]

[Amused thinking] No.  [Laughs]. 

The Captain is a 13.6 Vesta Year or a 49 Earth Year old Adrilaen, who was born and raised on Pasiphae, but is currently working around the area of the Belt. She commandeers a specialised unit of some branch of the Intergalactic Military.I didn't ask which branch. She didn't seem particularly inclined to tell me.  

Adrastos, as I was instructed to address her, seemed . . . Almost more familiar with the clinic than I am. When I commented that we have a doctor from her home planet working here, a careful look crossed her face, like a valuable book being gently snapped shut. She said that she'd 'heard that the Professor had taken her in'. Which . . . I dunno. I thought it was an odd thing to say, but I was more concerned with how she knew the Professor. 

Her smile bloomed at some old memory or other, and then withered into something smaller and more composed. I . . . Feel like I should have done more research into my predecessor, I never knew that their brother was High ranking in the Interspecies Military . . . [Pause] Nothing to say, Sec? Not biting? 

[SEC: negative ping, typing on screen] 

[Yawn] Often patients who come to the clinic with a clear list of demands are the ones who can be trusted the least. There are far too many patients with a borderline addiction to antimicrobials. 

[SEC: affirmative ping]

When asked, Adrastos was very forthcoming about her purpose for seeking our help so very early in the morning, and the stealthy way she boarded the satellite. The computer systems inside her bionic limbs required updating. I stared as she rolled up her right sleeve to reveal the blinking lights and chattering wires of a prosthesis underneath. She shifted, and I clocked the metallic glint of an ankle joint over the top of her left boot. 

There were crows' feet at the edges of her dark eyes when I looked back up at her face.

'I will be doing the updating.' She said. 'But I need to switch the spinal stimulators off first, and I need a steady pair of hands for that.'  

Have you ever been around someone whose entire aura just . . . [Yawning] Oozes a capable authority? Captain Endora's was like that. The kind of person whose mistakes turn out to have secretly been the plan all along? She could have told me that she needed me to just straight-up hack her leg off and I'd have been like 'you know what, you know best, Captain’. 

[Mumbled] Maybe it's a Pasiphae thing.

[SEC: questioning ping]

Nothing! Nothing.

Adrastos was very forgiving of my lack of knowledge about her bionics. They were in a league far beyond anything I'd ever encountered before. I'd never heard of a company using spinal stimulation alongside the peripheral nerve conductors and my question about why a block was necessary startled a bark of laughter out of her. Apparently the tech is so enmeshed in her nervous system, the upgrades hurt more than the initial injuries. 

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

I am glad to know that your upgrades don't hurt you. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Oh, Sec. It was 5mls of water and it touched you for half a second.

[SEC: negative ping] 

[Yawn] 

'I need to tell you something that must not leave this room.' Adrastos sat forwards, eyes boring into mine. The slow ache of her movements before had been a well-crafted bluff. She moved so fast, and I was so tired that the silver gleam of her right arm appeared as a jagged arc of light in the air. I advised her, after shuffling back into my chair, that there were a specific set of circumstances in which I might have to breach confidentiality and she tutted at me as though I were deliberately misunderstanding her. 

I also said that we like to put clinically relevant things in the notes, but she declined this - so make sure no mention of this is in the final letter, please, Sec.

[SEC: affirmative ping]

My patient's wife and I are the only people who know that Captain Adrastos Endora is desperately scared of needles. Her main reason for attending the Vesta Clinic at such an unsociable hour was because she doesn't want her ship's doctor or any of the crew to know about this one weakness. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

That's what I thought! I wonder if something happened or if they're just not a very good doctor?  

Where did we get up to? 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Um, oh! Speaking of initial injuries. The lower part of Adrastos' left leg was lost in 2727, during the Great Melting in Calisto. The arm . . . Let's just omit a description of her arm injury, I don't think anyone will benefit from my retelling of the incident. Just -

[SEC: questioning ping]

If we consider Adrastos' leg as 'lost', we could consider her arm 'taken'. 

What is relevant, is that Adrastos had her prosthetics replaced by - ugh, I’m too tired to pronounce this - Medicalacrity,  this time last orbit and they had been working flawlessly until a recent skirmish in which an EM pulse reset the operating systems and whatever fancy mods the military had shelled out for were rendered defunct. 

 Uh, Adrastos denied any other medical or surgical history. It would seem that she is literally fighting fit. 

[SEC: negative ping]

No? 

[SEC: negative ping]

Fine. Adrastos denied any other medical or surgical history. She has no known allergies and does not take any regular medication. All good things to know when you're planning on injecting someone in the spine. 

Examination didn't reveal any previously unsuspected pathology, but I was fascinated by the way her finely crafted limbs interfaced with her body and so I took the opportunity to familiarise myself with this new kind of bionic. 

The finely engraved logo in the spot on the elbow where the olecranon would usually sit announced that both prosthetics were a product of Medicalacrity. Have you heard of them? 

[SEC: affirmative ping, typing on screen]

Well, I'm glad one of us has. What looked like glinting plates of metal from across the room were, on closer inspection, minute links of steel mesh, impossibly fine and bent into a remarkable impression of the muscle bulk of the contralateral limb. The links grew even tighter and finer, until it seemed like the microscopic flow of silver was a continuation of the platinum undertones in her dark brown skin. 

'I don't know, either.' She mumbled at my expression of disbelief. 'All I know is that it's as close to dermatologically intact as any bionic in the known Universe.' 

Every so often, a bead of red light would pulse underneath the mesh, snaking its way up a thick band of wires before blinking twice and retracing its route. Patrolling. I hoped Adrastos was correct in her confidence that she was going to be able to fix this herself. 

The longer I looked, the more I saw. There were hairline fractures in the mesh, most obviously along the lines of where I would expect her radius to be, disguising something secret and mechanical underneath. The leg was similar to the arm, except no attempt had been made to hide the glistening ankle joint in the clever, reactive mesh that covered the rest. Adrastos explained that was much easier to get boots on if she took the foot off and put it in first.  

I then got Adrastos into an open-backed gown and got her to sit on the examination bench, curling forwards over her bent knees to better visualise the implants in her spine. They felt like small, fluid filled nodules, like a cyst but squishier, over the bony prominences of C5 and L1 vertebrae. Adrastos assured me that a standard dose of anaesthetic would shut them off. Just as the computers were seeking to connect with the nerves, so too were the nerves seeking input from the computer. They needed to be switched off before the input they received was interpreted as blistering pain. 

Comfortable that this was going to be a straight-forward procedure, I offered Adrastos the opportunity for my senior to perform it anyway, which she declined, and then I fired off a message to Xael to tell her to go back to sleep. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Yeah, well, she might have physically given me the bleep, but do you really think she's let go of it with her soul?

[SEC: negative ping, typing on screen, affirmative ping]

[Yawn] Me neither. 

Both procedures went smoothly. Adrastos did have quite a vigorous vasovagal response each time the needle touched her skin, but - but I think being unable to see when I was coming helped quite a bit. The aseptic technique was used throughout and there were no obvious complications. Adrastos has been advised to look out for bleeding and signs of infection such as excessive tenderness, swelling and fever. 

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

Ah, yeah. It was at the point that I drew back on the needle and Adrastos' cerebrospinal fluid came out as a pale lilac that I realised she wasn't as human as I’d assumed. Um, however, she was currently mid-faint when it dawned on me and so I had to wait until the drugs were happily swimming around in her nerve roots before I could say: 'So, I didn't actually realise you weren't human'. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Thank stars, right?

[SEC: affirmative ping]

And thank stars the dose of anaesthetic I’d given her still worked, I don't know how funny she would have found it if it meant more needles. 

[SEC: negative ping]

No, like the difficulty moving I had noticed at the start of the consultation, she had taken the shape of a human to better camouflage within her crew. It was another purposeful deception, meant to ensure that Adrastos always had the upper hand. Did you know, Sec, that - well, I'm sure you know that Adrilaen are one of the few species that can change their form at will - I mean, if you count the metamorphosis they have to go through as 'at will' - but, it's been said that it was an evolutionary adaptation for hunting. They could hide within other species' communities and clear them out from the inside. Wild, right? 

[SEC: affirmative ping, typing on screen]

No, obviously not any more, I'm talking like . . .  Thousands of years before humans even got to Mars. 

While the block started to work, I fixed up Adrastos with a cup of Xael's tea.

[SEC: typing on screen]

Yeah, well, she had just fainted like five times so I figured she deserved it. I think one of the most shocking things to occur in the last few hours was the deep, appreciative hum she let out after the first sip. Apparently, I make a good cup of Adrilaen tea. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

I know! I told her I can't stand the stuff and she paused, mid-sip, to shoot me a look that I couldn't quite parse. 'Oh, Earthling.' Was all she said. I was too embarrassed to ask why. 

 It took around 5 minutes for the red lights in Adrastos' arm to halt their ceaseless blinking and glow the warm amber of the Sun on a Martian lake. Her leg quickly followed. Then,  it was time to get to work. I . . . didn't have much of an idea what Adrastos was doing as I hovered uselessly at the side of the bench. A holographic screen projected up from her forearm and out of her shin and, for the first five minutes or so, she typed, single-handed and furious, swiping commands on and off until the air around her was littered with virtual dialogue boxes. 

Right at the point I thought we were about to start swallowing the imperious boxes of light, she tapped the back of her hand twice and they burst out of existence, leaving a single projection of a crawling progress bar in their wake. 

I told her, entirely sincerely, that what she had just done was very cool and she shrugged, observing the rest of the room with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

[SEC: typing on screen]

I do agree with her, from outward appearances alone, it is difficult to believe that the satellite was once the pinnacle of medical innovation. But, at the same time, I wasn't expecting the wave of protectiveness that welled up in me at her disdain. I feel the same way about Earth sometimes. Yeah, it's a shithole, but's it's my shithole.

[SEC: affirmative ping, typing on screen]

Hah. Yeah, that was your last straw wasn't it? What was it she said?

[SEC: typing on screen]

And what did you say? 'I do not belong to Dr Underwood. I belong to myself, Captain.' 

[SEC: negative ping, typing on screen]

Oh, come off it. Everything you say to me is a little bit sarcastic.

[SEC: negative ping]

I couldn't tell if the look on Adrastos' face was shock or affront so I apologised on your behalf, trying to explain the extent of your grumpiness yesterday morning. 

'It's sentient?' She asked, seeming to forget that she didn't have control of half her limbs as she went to shift off the bench. 

'He is, yeah.' I told her. There was an awkward pause when I expected you to be polite and introduce yourself. And you didn't.

[SEC: negative ping]

So I ended up apologising on your behalf again. Adrastos was staring at me like I'd fallen into some kind of sleep-deprived delirium. We're lucky that this part of the consultation happened after I'd put needles into her spine. 

[SEC: affirmative ping]

Did you know that a computer shouldn't be able to choose  whether or not to obey a command, even if it has its own consciousness? [Pause] Hm?  

Did you hear that she offered to 'look at you' for me? 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Yeah, I got the impression that it was for her own curiosity too. But you can't blame her for being curious about you. You are . . . Different. Are you aware of that? How relatively unique you are? 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Fine! No more liquids  on the desk. At all. I'll get rid of this leftover -

[SOUND: clatter, spilled liquid, chair]

- Tea! 

[SEC: multiple questioning pings, typing on screen]

[SOUND: paper towels ripping, cleaning the desk, bin opening and closing, chair]

[Falsely cheerful] All gone! No more fluids on the irreplaceable boy! Happy?

[Pause]

[SEC: affirmative ping]

So: My patient updated her bionic prostheses and regaled me with omission-filled tales from the Belt that were beyond anything I could have imagined when I was a kid on Earth. The moment the updates were complete was marked by a shock of green light 

[SEC: typing on screen]

[Disgruntled] - And a loud yelp from Dr Underwood - 

[SEC: typing on screen]

- And a scream -

[SEC: negative ping, typing on screen]

Uh - I thought you weren’t talking to me? 

[SEC: typing on screen]

The moment the updates were complete was marked by a shock of green light and an entirely reasonable exclamation of . . . Fright from Dr Underwood. Adrastos' arm and leg fragmented into more weapons than one could expect at a bar fight on Gaspra. 

They disappeared within a blink, leaving nothing behind but imperceptible fractures in the metallic mesh and the thunder of my pulse in my ears. It dawned on me why I've never seen Medicalacrity prosthetics before. And why Adrastos performed her own updates. 

[SEC: affirmative ping] 

[Yawn] I offered to run through the pre-flight safety checklist with Adrastos, to save her a trip to a different physician, [Yawn]  but she wished for her trip to the clinic to be as brief and off-record as possible. So . . . I told her that she'd be welcome back anytime and she disappeared from the satellite with as little effort as she had arrived.  

[SEC: typing on screen, questioning ping]

Well, yeah, she gave me her comms ID, but I'm not - I'm not going to take her up on it. 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Is this why you were so annoyed?

[SEC: typing on screen]

Sec, I'm not going anywhere! Stars, Nic should be joining me in the next few Earth weeks. I don't think that conversation would go down a treat. 'Hey, honey . . . Now you're here, we're joining the army.' 

 No. The only place I'm going is to bed. [Yawn] Is that alright with you, boss?

[Pause]  

[SEC: typing on screen, affirmative ping]

Good. Now, please can you encrypt this letter and file it away as sneakily as possible? 

[SEC: negative ping]

Why? 

[SEC: typing on screen]

Oh. Oh. 

Signed, [Yawn] 

Dr Faye Underwood, 

The Vesta Clinic 

CREDITS

This episode of the Vesta Clinic was created by AMC. It starred AMC as Faye Underwood, and Sec as himself. Music by AMC and Ruby Campbell. 

Please check out our show notes for content warnings, transcripts, and your prescription of: stripes! 

If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help the show reach more ears, please tell someone who loves podcasts to check into the Vesta Clinic. You can also follow us on your social media of choice at @vestaclinicpod! We'd love to see you there!

Content warnings: reference to past traumatic injury, needle phobia, military references, references to amputation

Sound effect attributions:

Spaceship compartment door.With pneumatics(8lrs,mltprcssng).wav by newlocknew at Freesound.org

Typing metal plate(reson,rev,DTBlkfx,Eq,Extr,sat,dcmtr)12.wav by newlocknew at Freesound.org

Spilling the water/coffee by CaKon at Freesound.org