Another mellow day. We just need to keep popping poles and dropping a filter every few hours. My reminder goes off to talk to Louise and Evan about the medical bots, so I leave Steph in charge of construction and head over to Louise’s boat where she, Valerie, and Evan are chatting on the deck.
“Got a few minutes to teach me medicine?” I ask. They all respond by laughing at me.
“By that do you mean you want training on the medical bots?” Louise asks once she stops laughing.
“Yeah, what else would you think I meant?”
“Well, medicine is pretty broad. We’ve been talking about medical issues for most of the last week if you haven’t noticed. Valerie studied it for years. I’ve been focused on it almost exclusively since Father died. It’s just funny when you show up and sound like you expect to learn it all in one session.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Let me try that again. Will you show me how to sync with medical bots and do some basic first aid?”
“Yeah,” she says. “That’s something we can do in one afternoon. Evan, you want to get him synced and I’ll teach him wound closure?”
“Sure thing,” Evan says, getting up and leading me into the cabin. He opens the cupboard and pulls out one of the pure white cylinders the size of a tuna can that hold the medical bots.
“The natural state of these guys is dormant in the box,” he explains. “That keeps them sterile and ready for use. They’re not much good if they’re dirty. Introducing infection is about as bad as leaving a wound open, so don’t go flying them around all over. Get them to the patient, then get them back to sleep in their home.”
“Got it.”
He pops open the box.
“The boxes are rigged to give them a wake-up signal when it opens. The bots will start sending out beacon signals, looking for an owner. You just need to issue the console command ‘sync medical’, and any nearby unowned medical bots will sync with your implant.”
SYNC MEDICAL
A set of new feelings open up to me. They’re different from the regular worker bots that I’m used to, but it’s hard to describe how they’re different. Bluer? Saltier? Floral? Velvety? Words aren’t quite getting it for me.
“OK, that’s weird.”
Evan laughs.
“Remember how weird the regular bots were at first?” he says. “It’s not any weirder than that.”
“No, this is totally weirder. The normal bots feel like feels. Does that make sense? Like tactile sensations, extra skin that I can feel through. These are crossing sensory boundaries for me.”
“Yeah, there’s synesthesia involved in using them, I think Father designed it that way. It’s because they have a lot more sensory capabilities than the normal bots. You get used to it pretty quick, though. You can ignore most of it for now and move them around like workers.”
I navigate them into a spherical formation, creating a tiny dot I can barely see. I turn on the overlay and they brighten up. Better. I try to ignore the non-flavor tastes and odorless smells.
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“OK, Louise,” Evan declares. “He’s ready for you.”
Evan heads back out to the deck and Louise comes into the cabin and walks to the sink in the kitchen area. She unbuttons the left sleeve of the flowy red blouse she’s wearing. She picks up a small knife from a drawer and turns her left arm palm up. Without a word, she slices the blade across her forearm, leaving a shallow gash.
I try not to show the internal freak-out I’m having, first from the cut, then as I notice the neat row of thin white scars every millimeter or two going from the middle of her forearm where she just cut all the way down to her wrist. I’ve never seen those before. There must be a hundred at least.
“First one’s on me,” she says. “Any more and you’re going to need to learn the joy of cutting.” Her tone turns serious as she sees my eyes scan down her arm. “And don’t even think about judging me. You don’t have a monopoly on self-loathing. I deal with mine my own way. And I got a useful education in the process.”
She’s right. I’ve got no room to talk. I pull my eyes up from her arm to her face.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Sorry. I’m a jerk. I was so wrapped up in my own issues I didn’t even think about how you were dealing with it.”
“It’s fine,” she says matter-of-factly. “We’re both doing well now, right?”
“Right. Better, anyway.”
The blood slowly oozing up from the cut is starting to bead into droplets.
“Good enough,” she says. “Now, close the wound before I start dripping blood all over. Direct the bots with your eyes like when you’re building and use the suture command.”
SUTURE
I feel the medical bots swarm from their sterile box to the cut where I have my gaze centered.
“Carefully, now. Start at one end of the cut, then move them across to the other.”
“On it,” I say, as I start to work the bots as quickly and carefully as I can across her wound. They close the cut and do something that feels like the static screen on the old television set in Grammy’s basement. I had forgotten about that thing. I used to watch cartoons on it from a box of old plastic tapes that they had. The constantly scrambling field of black and white speckles would come on until you loaded the tape in. I index the memory while the bots continue working.
“Good,” Louise says. “You can go a little faster than that.” I speed up a little. “Perfect, just like that.”
The wound finishes closing as my gaze reaches the far end of the cut. Louise rinses off the blood with a small antiseptic pad, then examines the pink line where the cut was.
“Seems like magic, right? It’s not. The bots can’t actually heal anything. Only the cells themselves can do that. But the bots can get things under control, stop bleeding, and situate things optimally for the body to heal itself. In a day or two that line will be just like the others. Make sure that when you do this for real, whoever’s wound you’re sealing keeps the area clean and bandages, and use some antiseptic if you have it handy.”
“Got it,” I say. “Thanks. You really didn’t have to use your own arm for this.”
“I know. But it’s therapeutic for me.” She rubs some kind of ointment from one of the medical cabinets on her arm, then tapes a small gauze pad over the closed wound. “If it hadn’t been for this teachable moment, I probably would have done it myself some time this week. I was about due.”
“I’d express concern,” I tell her, “but I really have no room to talk.”
“No,” she agrees firmly. “No you don’t.” She rolls her sleeve back down and buttons it at her wrist. “But I’ll tell you this much about it anyway. When I gave up on self-medicating with the implant, I needed something else. This worked for me. There’s something pure about the pain. Something clean. I need that now and then.”
I get it. I get the need to feel the physical pain, to externalize the hurt from the inside, even if I don’t feel the same compulsion anymore since my suicide attempt. Louise is brilliant, channeling that need into something useful like this.
“You’re amazing, Louise,” I tell her. “You know that?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought so for a while,” she says with a smile. “But don’t go telling everyone or I’ll get nothing but praise and end up as cocky as Chad. This goes on the list of things you and I don’t talk to anyone else about. Are we clear?”
“Sure,” I tell her. “Secret keepers forever, you and me.”
I pick up the box for the medical bots and direct them back to their home before I disconnect from them. I feel the warmth in my hands as the sterilizer built into the box does its thing, annihilating any germs they might have carried along with them. Louise nods approvingly as I stow them back in the cupboard.