Episode 313: Trade Off, Part 4
Tuesday, 03 Dec 2520
Kuiper II class, Summer's Gift
En route to Pericles Station
0700hrs, ship’s time
The next morning the crew gets back to work. Joshua hits the galley and carries out his steward duties. Nika checks her astrogation to see if we’ve veered off course. Arden does not get up for his normal routine but badgers Rina to leave off working.
Arden: Am I going to have to sit on you to get you to heal? In the eleven days between here and Pericles?
Rina: (speculatively) There isn’t much for me to do anymore….
Arden: Good. Don’t. Even if you think about it, don’t.
Joshua: He’s right. Don’t.
Rina: Oh, so you’re ganging up on me now? Fine.
Arden: Where there’s a lack of common sense, we try to fill in the common sense.
Joshua: Regardless of that, you’ve been in a severely wounded state for the past, like, two to three weeks. How are you supposed to do anything if you don’t heal up?
Confronted on two fronts to take it easy, she takes to her cabin to goldbrick with her notes and her backlog of trade journals, grumbling over the inactivity. But she somehow manages to follow orders.
Friday, 13 Dec 2520
Pericles Station
2030hrs, local time
We dock with Pericles and offload our cargo, get paid. Arden calls the lovely Dr. Rava and finds she’s been called back to the Core. When a container gets cleared of cargo, Rick starts experimenting with the unmarked buttons on the sonic device, trying to learn how to operate it safely. He can discern touch sensitive areas and he’s careful not to touch those. They are placed on the device so as to be very easy to trigger and Rick susses there must be a sequence in touching them to actually turn the sonic weapon on, as a precaution to accidentally triggering it through casual handling. Or perhaps the device is specifically geared to activate only in the presence of a specific handler’s DNA. Or perhaps the triggering is completed via something embedded in the blue gloves the Blue Hands wear. For all Rick knows, no one’s supposed to operate the device while touching it with bare skin. Needless to say, he doesn’t experiment very far with it, just enough to ascertain casual handling wouldn’t set it off accidentally. He keeps it on him at all times, the better to keep tabs on it.
And there’s also the coolness factor to it. Rick is rarely above chain yanking and asks Arden if he has any blue nitrile gloves. For the balance of the trip to the Core, he wears the nitrile gloves and gestures with device, waving at passers-by with it: wassup!
Arden remarks that Rick needs to get out more and for the most part, Joshua avoids Rick whenever he pulls that particular stunt with the crew. Besides, Joshua’s got other things to do. Even though we limped into Pericles with 250 credits in our coffers, we’re running empty of food and fuel, and after we finish laying on food and filling our tanks, we’re hurting for cash. We cannot afford to fly empty to the Core. Joshua finds 30 tons destined for Ariel, what seems to be Naval records, for 90 credits payable upon delivery.
We end up staying two days on Pericles getting things off-loaded, getting paid, and stocked up. We leave on the 15th of December for our 16-day voyage to Ariel in White Sun.
Sunday, 15 Dec 2520
Kuiper II class, Summer’s Gift
En route to Ariel
1800hrs, ship’s time
During our voyage, Valerie agrees to tell the others about her headwire. Arden explains it seems to be some sort of interface, but to what, they don’t yet know. Joshua asks if it’s anything like what Gordon was doing to the stitches on Highgate. It turns out it’s similar, though apparently different areas of the brain are involved than in Valerie’s case. The stitches had actual wireless equipment in them, sonic receivers hooked into the ears so as to be activated by sound. Joshua remarks that it looks like Valerie could benefit from a brain scan, but then again, so could the rest of the crew. We’d all been touched by Blue Sun in the past year and there’s no telling what any of us could be carrying unaware. Taking a headcount, Nika announces the total’s up to three needing a scan. Any more takers? Rina counts herself in, raising the total to four.
Nika: Why do you need a brain scan?
Rina: I was unconscious in their hands. God knows what they put in me.
What Rina doesn’t mention to anyone is that they’d had her on an operating table patching up the wounds she’d received at the bridge battle without anesthetic, due to her unconscious state. Her waking up during the procedure took everyone by surprise—not the least Rina herself. They quickly put her under and she remembers nothing more until waking up shortly before the trip out to the refinery. By then, her arm was already in a sling and several other wounds stitched up.
Speculation continues as to the nature of Valerie’s implant and that prompts Joshua to ask her why she took a photo of him and Arden when she fled their first meeting on Meridian, back when they visited her at her clinic a month ago. She doesn’t remember taking that photo.
Oh really?
Arden and Joshua tell her that she did. Well, that’s…very odd.
Valerie: I don’t remember doing that.
Joshua: Okay, well…maybe I misremembered.
Nika: I’m not liking this.
Rick: It’s more than likely that you did send us that email that got us into this.
Valerie: So I actually did things that you…that’s…(thinks)…pity we left….
Nika: That’s disturbing.
Joshua: ‘Pity we left’?
Valerie: Meridian.
Rina: I’m not sorry to say goodbye to Meridian.
Valerie: One of my staff said that I had some unusual behavior but I just didn’t…
Nika: What kind of unusual behavior?
Valerie: Acting strange, things I don’t even remember doing.
Arden: Like this?
Meaning taking pictures of him and Joshua?
Nika: I mean anything in particular that was—you said strange behavior. Strange how?
Valerie: Well, I apparently showed up on some of the MP’s security tapes being in his office when I shouldn’t have been.
Arden: Joy.
Valerie: And just I thought it must be someone else or….
Nika: Yeah.
Valerie: Because I wasn’t there. I don’t remember being there.
Joshua: Blue Sun wants information. Among other things.
Rick: You can be remotely controlled, much like a robot.
Valerie: Okay, well then we definitely need—
Nika: Yeah.
Valerie’s earned her place on the scan list.
Nika: I would say that’s a first priority.
Valerie: If I’m going to find a neurosurgeon who could remove this, who would I choose…?
Rick: You need to figure out what it is first.
Joshua: Could we get a brain scan before we start removing things?
Nika: In her case, I think it would be prudent to go ahead and remove it.
Valerie: I’m not going to just shove a screwdriver in there. This isn’t rocket science. This is brain surgery.
Nika: That’s right.
Rina: I can attest to that.
Joshua: So, do you know somebody? Who could…I mean….
Valerie: I am a doctor. Of course, I know people. Well…I was.
Joshua: Yeah, well, there’s the key word. Sorry.
Rick: Well, make a list. Is there anyone at this hospital that’s a neurosurgeon that you know, that we’re going to?
Valerie: Yeah. I know someone who might.
Rick: Well, maybe they can look over the scans and then decide then and there to do it.
Valerie: I don’t think we should broadcast…
You know, broadcast the fact that the droid they’re looking for is over here.
Nika: Yeah, no. Definitely not.
Rina: Okay, so how many secret neurosurgeons do you know?
Nika: She doesn’t need a secret neurosurgeon, she just needs to know a neurosurgeon who’s not going to talk.
Arden: She’s a neurosurgeon. I’m a neurosurgeon.
Joshua: Bold text So basically we just need to get a hold of…is there equipment we can get a hold of? Like…off-hours? Is that what we’re saying?
Nika: Yeah. That would be preferable, certainly.
Joshua: Can we do that?
Nika: Well, it depends.
We’ll need the equipment, we need to be there off-hours. To say nothing of needing the crew to run it.
Valerie: I must say, as interested as I am for myself, I am slightly hesitant to involve other people in this.
Nika: Yeah.
Valerie: (continuing) …. Having seen what happens to people who do these sorts of affairs. But perhaps there’s a way of doing this that doesn’t endanger people.
Nika: Yeah. Because we don’t need to bring Blue Sun down on anyone else.
Valerie: Perhaps not talking to them directly…How can we do this?
Rick: Is Arden capable of doing the neurosurgery?
Valerie: (sighing) I don’t know.
Arden: It’s possible with some study and some prepwork.
Rick: Joshua?
Arden: No.
Joshua: Actually…I wouldn’t want to do it, but…
Rick: (to Valerie) How about you do neurosurgery on Arden, have Joshua watch and then do neurosurgery on you?
Arden: Hmm….let me see….ummmm… No.
Rick: And could you remove the part of Arden’s brain that lets him talk?
Joshua: I could do it. I could do it but I wouldn’t be a very good neurosurgeon.
Rina: You’re making it too complicated. Just remove his tongue.
Valerie: I don’t think you’d make a good neurosurgeon.
Joshua: And I’m completely on board with that. I’d rather not. Besides the obvious trust issues…
Yeah.
Joshua: I hate to say it.
Rina: (sighing) Oh, just say it.
Joshua: …What’s our plan?
Arden: We’re going to Ariel. Depending on the lay of the land at St. Lucy’s, sneak in and use their facilities.
Joshua: Okay, so let me get the scope of this clear. Are we planning to go in and get scans? Are we going to go in, get scans, and get surgery right then and there? Go in and talk to somebody about giving a scan? Talk to somebody about giving us surgery? What are we looking to accomplish?
Arden: Valerie has friends who might be able to get her scanned.
Nika: But we’re trying not to involve her friends because….
Yeah.
Arden: Well then, I guess we really don’t have a plan.
Tuesday, 31 Dec 2520
Kuiper II class, Summer’s Gift
St. Lucy's Hospital, Ariel
White Sun (Bai Hu) system
We kiss dirt on New Year’s Eve and get our cargo off-loaded and ourselves paid. We have just enough money to fuel up again. Meanwhile we have to trust Valerie to make arrangements with her contacts to get us into St. Lucy’s for the scans. Arden, Valerie, Joshua and Rina are on the scan list. Rick volunteers to get one done—hey, the more the merrier, right?
Valerie makes some calls and concocts a plan with help from Arden and Rick.
To wit: There is a call-in of Prion contamination of the neurological scanning room. It needs to be decontaminated before it can be used again. We’ll have it to ourselves, but there still will be the risk of being discovered by security in the meantime.
And that’s exactly how it happens. Faria stays behind on the ship to hold it for our return. The rest of us go to St. Lucy’s. First up for a scan is Valerie. Sure enough, there is a wetware chip and a connecting system in there. It’s not big. It’s a stereotypical chip system, a centimeter on a side. Based on where it’s connected into her, Arden doesn’t think it’s a controlling device. It appears to be a recording device.
Probably.
Arden doesn’t see anything plugged into her voluntary nervous system. However, Arden can also see Valerie’s had damage similar to Mike Carter and she’s been treated with the same cure as Carter. So that part of her brain is getting rewired. There’s no way Arden can look at that part of her brain and say, ah-ha, there are the code words [that Blue Sun likes to use on its victims] but he can see she’s had similar damage as Carter when he was overdosed with the Chempliant-based drugs. Which might explain some things, even as it brings up the possibility that Mike Carter might still be susceptible to manipulation as Valerie has been.
And that’s basically all Arden can glean from the scan results. It’s possible we might be able to access the material Valerie’s recorded if we can find a compatible connector to the wire in her head. It would be a matter of trial-and-error and time, to say nothing of her cooperation. She may actually have to think of things in order to access the data. She’s also not keen on the idea of having her brain read by anyone and is rather inclined to taking a pair of wire clippers and clipping the wire off at the skin, but the fear of adversely affecting something vital stays her hand.
Arden’s turn is next and he’s about to hop onto the bed when there’s a sound at the door to the scanning room. We’d locked the door when we arrived but they throw to and the door opens right up. Silhouetted against the brightly lit walls beyond the threshold is a figure. Tall and male, it strides in and we see Arden, twenty years hence.
It’s Otto, aka Swordsman, an Operative of Parliament. He sweeps us with his eagle-sharp eyes and asks:
Swordsman: Have you brought my message?
Jump to:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Go back to: Stealing Away Home | Go foward to: Libertas
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