Episode 617: Contagion, Part 3

Part:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Special Features

You know there's something wrong with you when a figment of your imagination is telling you to anesthetise a crewmate and crack open his head like a coconut. However deep into this psychosis he is, Arden isn't so lost in it as to comply.

Arden: No.
Valerie: Well, it’s got to be something done to his brain.
Arden: I am not going to attack—no. I am not going to do a physical operation.

And Arden is saying all of this without thinking how it’s going to be received by anyone else watching. Like Joshua, thank you. Arden does a double take at Valerie’s suggestion, as does Joshua. Arden tries to explain.

Arden: Valerie says you have interesting things in your head as well and when I asked how we could get in there, she suggested operating on you. Obviously that’s not going to happen.
Joshua: Obviously? You’re beginning to concern me just a little. I know you’re not going to open me up or anything.
Arden: What can you do?
Valerie: You can restrain us.
Arden: He would be restraining me and not you.
Valerie: Yeah but that would restrain me too, right?
Arden: Okay, fine. I’ll hallucinate and ignore you for the rest of the conversation.
Valerie: Oh, yeah, that works out well.
Joshua: Does she have anything else to say?
Arden: I’m sure she does but I’m ignoring her.
Valerie: I could probably talk to him directly.
Arden: Yeah, go ahead.
Joshua: ‘Go ahead’ what?
Arden: I’m sorry. I was trying to ignore her but I … I spoke.
Valerie: That was me. I’m me.
Joshua: (carefully) Okay. Now that I’m here, did you see anything else? This is actually worse than I thought it was, in terms of … I mean, seriously, not speaking to … you’re right. I don’t know what all this is. I’m hearing second thoughts, the whole conversation in your head. The fact that you’re having a conversation doesn’t mean anything but the fact that you’re having them out loud …
Arden: So it’s not crazy to talk to yourself?
Joshua: I talk to myself.
Arden: But when you start answering back?

Good point. Still …

Joshua: If you started to believe that she really is a separate individual, then either she is a separate individual or like … either way, we’re going to have to figure something out.
Arden: That’s what I’m saying.
Joshua: Fair enough. (a beat) And you’re not going to operate on me, right?
Arden: We’re not.
Valerie: Not while you’re awake.
Arden: You might want to get Kiera to come in and change the combination on some of the various locks on the ship and med bay.
Valerie: Oh, hey, I haven’t thought about that. That’s true.
Arden: I’m going to get some coffee now.

Arden leaves the med bay to find that coffee and Joshua leaves to find Kiera.

Joshua: Hi. I need a favor from you.
Kiera: Not with that face on you. I’m sorry but you look vaguely alarmed. What’s wrong?

And Joshua tells her all about that eerie assed interlude in med bay with Arden talking to a woman who’s not there who wants to cut into Joshua’s brain and is telling Arden to change the locks on stuff on the ship. Like stuff in med bay that might be sharp or be powerful drugs.

Joshua: You don’t mind, do you?
Kiera: No. So the conversation with himself when I gave him the gun has gotten more intense, I take it?

Meaning back when LaSalle was trying to take our ship and Mulan Maersk and she’d given him a gun for the firefight that seemed imminent.

Joshua: Hmmmm, maybe a little, since I wasn’t there for that initial conversation, per se, so I can’t say if it’s gotten more intense. However, she—.
Kiera: Oh, it’s a she, now? That other conversation was a rapid “something-something-shh!”.
Joshua: She, yeah. So he’s talking to Valerie.
Kiera: The passenger?
Joshua: No. Ah, the … the former assassin/former lover, like …
Kiera: Oh! The dead one.
Joshua: That’s the one.
Kiera: So was it a pleasant conversation?
Joshua: No. Actually not, really.
Kiera: Oh.
Joshua: If you ever have the opportunity to Read the mind of somebody having a conversation with somebody else who isn’t there or is doing to himself—
Kiera: Oh, now that can’t happen because my mom didn’t genetically modify me.
Joshua: Fair enough. My point is that Valerie suggested it might be a good idea that—
Kiera: Valerie?
Joshua: For the sake of clarity in the argument, let us say that from now on all conversations Arden has with a woman who isn’t there is going to be called Valerie, whether she is or isn’t—
Kiera: Actually she sounds more rational than Arden.
Joshua: Except for that part of it where she suggested it would be a great idea to strap me to a table and open up my brain and figure out what’s inside of it.
Kiera: I would have told her “nothing” and would have ended the argument quite easy.
Joshua: I hate you. (a beat) The locks. Could you go do that for me? Instead of just giving me crap?
Kiera: But it’s more fun to give you crap, Joshua.
Joshua: I know but it’s more important that we—in fact Arden suggested that I do it.
Kiera: That’s vaguely alarming, then.

Kiera trots off to change what locks she can, given our security protocols are still off line given the recent break in. Joshua goes to Nika next to fill her in on this latest happy development. Arden’s asked him to ask Kiera to change all the locks on the scalpels and the drugs in Med bay and Valerie suggested he open up Joshua’s brain. Does that make any sense to her or does he need to go over it again?

Nika: Valerie, the passenger?

No, Valerie the lover, Valerie the assassin.

Joshua: You know—Vivian.
Nika: (grokking now) Oh shiiii….
Joshua: Arden is actually .... He was actually fairly coherent for someone talking to somebody who’s only there in his brain or not there at all.
Nika: So you know Beggar had a conversation with me about this not too long ago. Did you know you was training to be a counselor at one point?
Joshua: I thought he was training to be a priest? He was training to be a priest who was a counselor?
Nika: Sorta, yeah, you know. They kinda go hand-in-hand.
Joshua: Okay, you have to understand, most of the priests I’ve run into have been crazy bad people.
Nika: I kinda blew this off when we were at the table—
Joshua: You’ve been kinda blowing everybody off, lately.
Nika: I didn’t want the rest of the crew to be that concerned about it, because I don’t want to start a panic. But he’s kinda reinforced my concerns over the panic thing. I think before we hit Sihnon, we should take him to see someone. Or maybe get Kiera to find someone who can look at him.
Joshua: There are six of us on board. Of the six of us, five of us now are pretty well informed that Arden is having long involved conversations with Valerie. The only person who has not been told yet is my fiancée, and there’s no way I am not going to end up telling her that. So if there’s going to be a panic, it will happen, but I don’t think it actually will. I think we all trust Arden.
Nika: Beglan says he thinks it’s going to get worse. And the fact that he’s—Valerie told him to do what?
Joshua: You have to understand. I was kinda Reading the conversation mentally which makes it a little harder. It was something to the fact that I am something like him, that I might have something interesting in my head, and that the way to find out would be to strap me down, perform surgery, and find out.
Nika: Okay. This is the part that alarms me greatly.
Joshua: It alarms me too. I—
Nika: No, no. Beggar tells me that in such cases, in general, they might tell you that relatively benign things are being spoken to them. But they won’t tell you when stuff turns dark and bad. Arden on the other hand, I kinda wondered when he said that, that that might actually not be the case because Arden is just … Arden, and he really doesn’t parse in the same way that everybody else does. So the fact that he told you makes me feel good because that means he’s not keeping secrets, but, um … but the fact that his subconscious is telling him to open you up and cut into your brain really alarms me, Joshua.
Joshua: But Arden said it was a bad idea, so I think we’re all good.
Nika: I’m not sure how to respond to this.

Because when has he ever gone along with a bad idea? Oh, god, we’re doomed.

Joshua: I’m 100% on-board with the something’s not quite—something odd is going on with Arden. And I don’t know—
Nika: That is such an understatement.
Joshua: That’s okay. I’m the King of Understatements. But the point being—
Nika: When we hit range of Cortex, I’m going to have Kiera get on and see if she can find us a neurologist, okay? I have … oh, my stars ….
Joshua: Arden was the one who looked into that. Didn’t he just have a brain scan? Not a full brain scan but an x-ray. Looking for foreign objects and things like that.
Nika: So he tells us.
Joshua: I know, I know, I know. I’m not saying that—
Nika: Was Valerie hearing voices?
Joshua: Which Valerie?
Nika: The real one. I can’t remember and now I’m afraid to ask Arden about the whole chip-in-her-brain thing when she was under mind control.
Joshua: As far as I know she never said anything about hearing voices. She just …
Nika: Flipped off.
Joshua: She lost periods of time but when you’re being brain-controlled, that’s natural.
Nika: Joshua, if he gets violent, we’re going to have a problem.

And that’s basically the bottom line, isn’t it?

Joshua: If he gets violent, we’ll worry about that when that happens but lets not go creating trouble. Right now, he’s cogent, coherent, and if Valerie is prompting bad ideas—and I don’t know if she’s him or an actual personality outside of him—either way he seems to be okay, right now.
Nika: From what I can see, she’s a manifestation of bad thoughts.
Joshua: Either way, right now he’s responding well.

After all, he responded just like any other normal person at the thought of opening up someone’s brain.

Joshua: You would say, hell no, you’re a crazy person, and basically that was his reaction. So basically I don’t want to create a panic.
Nika: Make sure that the medicines and the weapons locker are secured from him. You and I are the only ones who can lock it down and lock out his bioscan. Take away his access to every place sensitive.

Good trick, since our security system on the locks is totally munged. We got broken into, remember? And the parts to repair it are beyond us at the moment. Which fact Joshua reminds Nika of.

Nika: Oh, shiii….
Joshua: And that’s why you pay me the big bucks, Captain. Look. We’ll lock them down physically.

We would have bought something to do so since we’re taking passengers on board, at Rina’s twitchy insistence if nothing else. Metal hasps and padlocks would suffice to do the job. All it would cost is a few drilled holes for the screws. Or simpler yet, a hook and eye bold will suffice for those minor doors when there’s nothing but privacy to protect on the other side.

Joshua: My biggest concern is not being too concerned about it. It’s a good example to—
Nika: I’m trying very hard not to be.
Joshua: You’re doing a good job.
Nika: No. I’m not.

Joshua: Yes, you are.

Nika: No I’m really not.
Joshua: You’re creating the illusion that you’re doing a good job. So keep rolling with it, okay? That’s pretty much what being a Captain is. Creating the illusion.
Nika: (whispers) Fake it til you make it.

Joshua checks the weapons locker when he leaves Nika. Sure enough, Rina’s rigged up a physical lock on it. The guns, at least, are safe from unauthorized users like our passengers and any mental stowaways who might be aboard. Kiera meanwhile finds Arden and joins him in the galley over coffee. She quizzes him about this latest development with Valerie.

Kiera: You’re not feeling good. What’s wrong?
Arden: I’m not feeling good?
Kiera: Okay, we’ll say you feel great but you got a visitor?
Arden: She’s not here. I left her in med bay. You were just there and I assume you didn’t see her so I assume things are fine.
Kiera: I didn’t see her before and I don’t reckon I’ll see her now. She’s like the Man on the Stairs.

And she trots out the nursery rhyme about the man who wasn’t there. Arden admits that yes, he had a manifestation or a hallucination or a psychosis or whatever, yeah.

Kiera: Why do you think this is happening?
Arden: I had brain surgery done on me.
Kiera: Yeah, but we had you checked out.
Arden: The brain is still a pretty mysterious organ.
Kiera: Yeah, but they closed you up pretty quick.

And Kiera remembers how … scary … the Urvasi hospital was, especially to someone more accustomed to a higher standard of cleanliness and precision.

Arden: And they were messing a part of the brain that deals with memories, too.
Kiera: I was there, commanding them to close you up. Really fast. Trust me. the question is, how … is it getting worse? Is she appearing more often?
Arden: No, not really.
Kiera: So there is no frequency. Would you tell us if she started showing up more often?
Arden: (slowly) Yeah.
Kiera: Do you mind if we sent you up with a scan while we’re on Sihnon?
Arden: I already told you of my objection to the scan bed.

He doesn’t want medical information on him going back to Blue Sun. No. No way.

Kiera: I know, baby, but there’s not so much we can do about that.
Arden: Sure there is.
Kiera: We can take an axe to the lines. You’re gonna let us look.
Arden: I don’t have to let you do anything.
Kiera: You’re a very logical person and I respect you for it but I’m a sneaky person and you will find yourself waking up someday with me doing it. So—
Arden: Que sera, sera.
Kiera: Okay, so you won’t be upset if you find yourself strapped to a table?
Arden: I never said that. Instead of a brain scan, I would like to talk to a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
Kiera: We can do that too. But you got to remember, and you know this too, if they can’t find the biological seat of it, they’re going to try to find it.
Arden: They’re going to try to find the biological seat of it no matter what.
Kiera: Which is what I’m saying.

A scan may be unavoidable.

Arden: That’s the problem with our society, the soft sciences are way too soft.
Kiera: And the hard sciences are going to try to find a reason.
Arden: But what if there isn’t a reason?
Kiera: If we tell them that you’ve had a recent brain surgery …

She trails off, letting him connect the dots. Arden completes the picture without any effort and takes the argument to the next level.

Arden: They’re going to see the extra organ.
Kiera: Yes?
Arden: And they’re going to remove it.
Kiera: They haven’t wanted to remove it yet.
Arden: That’s not true. They said it was a tumor and it had to come out.

Mind, this was in the hospital where they were frying bologna in the hallways.

Kiera: DO you actually have any idea what size it was when they originally scanned it?
Arden: About the size of the phalanges at the end of my thumb.
Kiera: It could be growing and pushing on parts of your brain. Into …

Again she trails off and tries again. What what was done to him done to every Arden made on Sophie? Or just him?

Arden: What? The organ that grew there naturally? I don’t know. I assume. I’ve only met me and Otto and the 11-03.
Kiera: If we ever find a dead version of you, we are so dissecting. No offense.
Arden: Yeeeeah. I’ll put an ad in the next port we come into.
Kiera: Arden before you’re gone-gone-gone, cuz I’m afraid that this thing is a growth or not, hormonal or not, I need you to tell me what you think is happening. (off his look) You’re the King of the Notes. I’m going to write you notes. Remember when you and I were infected, and you and I kept going over and we stayed up, and I had the adrenaline? And you and I kept doing—
Arden: Uh-huh.
Kiera: You, on the basis of your head, can self-diagnose better than anybody I’ve ever seen. I need to know from you.
Arden: You have the key to the cabinet that has my log books in it.
Kiera: Yeah, I know. Have you been writing things down?
Arden: I always write things down.
Kiera: Oh, why did I even ask that? Oh yeah.

Because his psychosis or whatever it is might not want him to divulge all its secrets? Maybe that’s why?

Arden: While you’re at it, you might want to look up CID.
Kiera: I did and you don’t match the symptoms.

He really doesn’t match the symptoms of Cryo-Immune Deficiency.

Arden: I have the proteins for CID. That’s what the doctor at the hospital said.
Kiera: The little cheesy backwater place that we had?
Arden: Right. One assumes that they can recognize proteins as a general rule.
Kiera: When have you ever been infected with CID?
Arden: I’ve never been infected with CID.

To his knowledge, but it is an infectious disease. You can get it by exchanging bodily fluids, like a blood transfusion during surgery.

Kiera: Or like from the fifty-thousand whores you’ve slept with?
Arden: I haven’t slept with that many people.

Oh fine. Be that way. Kiera gives up and leaves to pile drive through Arden’s notes.

Meanwhile, Joshua checks up on the passengers. He walks in on an argument. His is flooded by the emotions flying hot and thick in the air, as well as the information he’s picking up from the same.

You’re blah-blah-blah! You’re the one to talk, you’re blah-blah-blah! So what?! That’s nothing like what you—Anger. Accusation. Rolling in waves, threatening to drown him.

Joshua slams his shields into place and his head is blessedly his own again. He sees some of that invective is directed at Valerie, who’s looking paler and sweater than when she came aboard earlier today. Joshua clears his throat and raises his voice loud enough to be heard over the uproar.

Joshua: Ladies. Gentlemen. Is there something I can help you with? A Mediator?

Everyone else in the room looks at each other and assumes closed stances. The meaning is clear: No.

Joshua eyes Valerie. Pale and sweaty.

Joshua: Miss Fleming? You don’t look so hot, to be honest.
Fleming: (faintly) I’m fine. It’s just a fight.
Joshua: It would make me feel better if you go to one of our doctors. I would suggest Dr. Sullivan. We are the best medically equipped freighter this side of the Verse.
Fleming: Well … maybe it’s a good idea.

Everyone else looks at her like she’s trying to weasel out of something. That’s the impression Joshua gets as he gives Valerie a hand up from the couch and escorts her up the stairs. Gaining the crew deck, Joshua buzzes Kiera from the nearest wall com.

Joshua: Dr. Sullivan?
Kiera: (from the galley comms) Yes?
Joshua: Could you report to med bay please? One of the passengers is looking off the weather and I’d like you to take a look at her.
Kiera: Absolutely.

He signs off and gets to med bay. Kiera swaps her steward’s coat for her doctor’s coat and meets them there. He hands Valerie up to the exam bed and gives the ladies a little bow, then makes a polite exit. Kiera gives the patient a reassuring a smile.

Kiera: So, what are your symptoms?
Fleming: I don’t know … kinda flu-y.
Kiera: When did they come on?
Fleming: Ah … shortly after we got to the planet we were on. Anvil.
Kiera: (checking her pulse) So have you been taking your immunization packs?
Fleming: Yeah. I’ve been taking a double dose.

Whoa. That’s not standard. Kiera keeps it from her face and continues.

Kiera: Oh?
Fleming: Yeah, some of those places … the glasses didn’t look properly washed, so … It’s better to be safe. It’s not supposed to be bad if you don’t take too many of them.
Kiera: (checks eyes, throat, glands) Any congestion?
Fleming: No. Just feeling weak and … and nauseous.

Kiera checks the woman’s vitals. Blood pressure. Temperature. Fleming is running a fever. A pretty bad one. She’s looking like she’s got a really bad case of the flu. But Kiera doesn’t quite think it’s the flu. Fleming’s chest doesn’t sound great when Kiera listens to it, despite the patient’s assertion that there’s no congestion. Kiera listens again. There’s something definitely in there.

Kiera: So are you having trouble breathing, trouble taking any deep breaths?
Fleming: It hurts. My ribs hurt when I breathe deep. Everything hurts.
Kiera: Your ribs hurt? Does it hurt when I put pressure there?

She’s tender. Hm. Kiera examines Valerie Fleming gently for a few moments more and then puts her on a fluid drip, adding pain reliever and anti-fever meds to bring down her temp. Cortico-steroids are administered to help the woman breathe and also a light sedative to get her to sleep. Kiera wants to see if Fleming’s body can heal up naturally or if other symptoms will come up. Once the patient is asleep and hooked up to the monitors, Kiera finds Arden and Joshua to tell them of Fleming’s status.

Arden tells her that Valerie Samson doesn’t think what Valerie Fleming has is serious. After all, a pharmaceutical rep would take all the standard plus up and coming drugs as a matter of course, having access to them. Kiera mentions that Fleming had doubled up on her immunization packets, which was odd. Arden speculates that perhaps one of the packets had gone bad. Perhaps, Kiera agrees, not that there’s anything we can do about it now. Joshua asks if we can give Fleming a dose from one of ours. Would that help? Joshua adds that he’s not a doctor, nor does he play one. Kiera tells him that no, giving Fleming immunizations on top of whatever she’d contracted despite the immunities would not help.

Arden: You get all the blood work and stuff?
Kiera: Got everything running.

Kiera runs through her treatment again. Congestion without coughing, so was given something to open the patient’s airways up. There is fever, so fever meds. Since it’s a topic on Arden’s mind, he ask if one of the things Fleming could be suffering be CID? Yeah, maybe.

Lovely.

Joshua asks if there’s anything we need to worry about in terms of the crew. If the bug is powerful enough to get past two immunization packs, should we be quarantining or something? Arden says we don’t have enough information yet to make that kind of decision. Joshua thanks him, cuz as XO, he’s going to need to know when it becomes necessary to quarantine the ship.

Besides, we don’t have many areas that are airtight from the rest of the ship. We’re a closed-loop atmo system. What happens in one section of our ship eventually makes its way to all the other sections. If she’s got something communicative, we’re already exposed. We all are.

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