Dr. Arn Logus was breathing softly, his eyes closed. At least, from what Brooks could see of his face, that was how it appeared.

The lower half of the man’s face was covered completely by a soft membrane that was slowly regrowing his lower jaw.

The semi-organic cocoon covered his upper torso as well, a thick, slightly yellowish clear substance forming the shape of the arm that would, over the next few months, hopefully regrow and allow him to become whole.

Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy, Brooks knew. For as much as medical science had progressed, the events that led to the moment of disaster for Logus would not be so easily forgotten.

They had ways of altering the mind, of healing damage – but it was not the sort of thing that was as simple as it seemed.

No matter how well they could understand the pathways of a human mind, how they could map out every neuron and model them on advanced computers, there were ethical questions that no machine could answer for them.

If a person is even just partially the sum of their experiences, then what did messing with those experiences mean for them? Sometimes people opted to have the worst memories of their lives excised, to truly forget them – at least consciously. Yet the body did not forget. In other spaces, something akin to memory could be triggered, causing even more trauma as the individual could be sent into a flashback episode without even knowing why or what the connection was.

They could try to hunt down those memories in the brain, too. But as soon as you found some you might find others, and soon more might need to be excised than many people – even those severely traumatized – might be comfortable with.

There was no easy fix. And the cost for any fix at all was high.

After Terris had come a heavy spate of research into the field, Brooks recalled. At the time, some experts had even spoken to him, as if he was some sort of expert in the subject of trauma.

They argued that his own apparent success in life after surviving the Ring Collapse for ten years made him suited.

He didn’t have answers for them, though. He did not know how to put into words what he’d done after Terris. It hadn’t been, in hindsight, the wisest or most responsible life choices. He’d fled the Sapient Union entirely, going to the fringe frontier of human space. Even today, sixty years after first contact with the Bicet and other aliens, in some places they were all still struggling to exist alongside each other. Harmless misunderstandings could lead to violence if that was the real desire of one side. Different customs, different outlooks, and different goals, with not enough infrastructure or resources to go around exacerbated it all still further.

But he’d thrived out there. The same skills that had let him survive in Antarctica during the ten-year winter gave him the self-reliance – and sometimes ruthlessness – to prosper.

But it had never been easy. Literally and mentally.

Dr. Y shifted in his strap-seat, sitting on the other side of Logus. The doctor had been unusually quiet, his attention on his friend.

Brooks was unsure if Y would have appreciated dialogue. As Captain, Brooks should try to work for his crew’s morale, and with other people he had always had a knack for it. But Y was a super-intelligent AI, far beyond him, and anything he might say felt like it would be cheap.

Dr. Y unhooked from his seat and moved over to a control panel, setting minute adjustments to Logus’s regrowth chamber.

Brooks decided that it was better to let the doctor busy himself for right now, rather than talk. He would speak to him – he would have to – but he would do it later.

For now, he simply looked back down on Logus, wondering just how aware the man was. Sometimes he seemed like he might have been slightly awake, his eyes cracked open and moving. But even if he was aware, most likely he would not remember such incidents. For him, it would be like they never happened at all.

Brooks wondered on Iago Caraval. The man was having his own battle, all of it in his head, and Brooks did not know which way it would go.

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He knew there was a chance that Iago might simply leave the ship. There were clues that it might happen . . .

And if he did, Brooks wondered if he should let him.

It was what he had done, after all, wasn’t it?

Lt. Commander Pirra’s concern for him came to mind, and he felt uncertain again, wondering if he should have intervened sooner.

But he still felt, in his gut, that to confront the man would have made it all worse. For all the size of the Craton, its population was around the size of a small town. To feel confronted in such a small space could lead people to feeling trapped, not loved.

And if that happened with Iago . . . it would make it all so much worse.

At least he did feel confident that the man was not a danger to himself or others around him. Every psych exam of the man had showed that he had too strong a moral compass and concept of duty to enact violence against himself or others. Despite that, Brooks had made sure that all of Iago’s armory codes had been taken away. They’d been brought back only after he’d joined his Volunteer unit, but he hadn’t gone to any meetings of it since the battle.

Of course, someone of Iago’s training could weaponize a lot of ordinary things, if he wanted. Brooks just didn’t think that he ever would.

Please, he thought, let his intuition be right on that.

----------------------------------------

The ship began its automated docking procedure, and Dr. Y performed a cursory check of all the algorithms, sensors, and math involved in the process.

Normally, he took a delight in running the numbers himself; agonizing over the tiniest of fractions, wondering if he could perhaps squeeze a slight time save here or there, or increase safety margins without impacting anything else. Usually, even on the incredibly advanced systems of Sapient Union ships, he could. Human code made lots of little neat shortcuts that worked, but often made rounding errors or minor truncations that were not as precise as possible.

But today he did not have the desire to seek those out to solve. His mind was focused on many things always, but right now there was a much more important concern.

Keeping a constant eye on all of the diagnostics of Logus’s medical system, he communicated to the medical station, sorting out docking clearances in microseconds.

There were other injured of the Craton that had come over before Logus. Seriously injured, triage dictated that they be given priority due to the likelihood of Arn Logus dying in transit.

It was not a high possibility, not under his care. Already he’d caught seventeen minor bleeds and fixed them with micro-drones without a thought. As well as two potential clots, and several times sent out chemical signals to prevent his body from going into shock from each movement.

A human in his condition should be dead a dozen times over, he thought. It was only through the most advanced of technology that he clung to life.

It was better if he was here. The Gohhi Medical Station was not the best the Sapient Union had to offer, but its Extreme Care Unit was very good. His own checks on the staff had reassured him.

They docked, the ship moving gently, and Y preventing Logus from bleeding twice more. It was constant work, and he would be well-pleased when the man was in the stabilized ECU.

The airlock opened, and they floated over. Y counted the cosmic rays that passed through them in the less-shielded tunnel, finding that they were a trifle high for his liking. He made a note in Logus’s file to his future doctors. Only more damage to repair, this at the molecular level. It was doable.

Three doctors and a team of drones met them, taking charge of Logus. It was safer moving him through the air, to prevent vibrations and bumps, and a series of thrusters on the bed floated him gently down the hall.

“Captain Brooks, you should wait here,” one of the doctors said. The Captain had come across with them in silence, and remained that way, only nodding to them.

His eyes tracked Logus, though.

Y went through with the others, and watched as Logus was put into their care in the ECU room. Machines were connected, drones monitoring him, along with dozens of sensors.

“His condition is quite serious,” Dr. Ghaelj told him, the Qlerning blinking slowly and out of synch. “Our system estimates a one-in-three chance of him not surviving.”

“His odds are better here than anywhere else we can reasonably reach,” Y noted. “If he does not live, I know that you will have done your best.”

“Of course,” Ghaelj said. “You may stay however long you like, to observe, Dr. Y.”

Y thanked him, and Ghaelj left to go confer with the rest of the medical team.

Building a human was easy. Parts could be cloned or replaced with cybernetics or the body modified to survive without.

But saving one already alive? It was so much harder than even the organics had ever thought.

Y knew that he was free to leave any time. Logus would not know that he was on the other side of the glass, and he could not go in. But he did not wish to leave yet.

He calculated that three hours passed, his systems working at overtime so it felt more akin to weeks. He continued to parse his data as best he could, but where emotions came in, even he could be . . .

Lost.

There was an eternal war to accept that a being he interacted with often, who he found unique and interesting, who lived a full and complex mental life of their own could – in a heartbeat – simply cease to exist. Their uniqueness gone forever.

It made it all almost feel futile.

He could back up his memories, his states. If his current form was destroyed, it would experience something akin to death, but his last backup could carry on. For the totality of him, only a gap of time would be lost.

“Goodbye, Doctor Logus,” he said softly. “I will hope that I encounter your uniqueness again.”

And if he did not – he would at least remember him.