WHEN REPLICATORS GO ROGUE!!!!
Bones looked crazed, hair askew and teeth gnashing together. "Goddammit! What the hell happened?" Sickbay was filled with more people than when those goddamn alien spores were released and made everyone loopier than curly fries. Only this time they all had strange and exotic diseases! Parasites, viruses, flesh eating bacterium! Alien and Terran!
"And now half off with purchase of matching STI!" the doctor growled irritably.
His whole staff was busy treating people and they had no idea how people who all worked on different decks and lived in different quarters (and some who had never even met) had the same diseases. McCoy had been pushin' hypos since 10h00 and it was already 21h00 and, needless to say, he'd had just about he enough. And the ship's vaccine stores were just about empty, too.
McCoy saw something blue coming in the corner of his eye and glanced over to see Nurse Chapel rushing by. "At least there are more common ones," she reassured in her weird Chapel way. She patted his shoulder and pursed her lips.
McCoy snorted, "Yeah, like the archaic Yellow Fever and Pertussis!"
The Nurse looked pained, "Still, at least they have cures."
McCoy sighed through his nose and turned back to his line of patients. His eyes narrowed. "End'a the line's back there," he gestured to the twenty some crewmen assembled, "or did your Vulcan eyes not see all these people, Spock?"
The First Officer raised an eyebrow, hands behind his back, and twisted his torso to inspect the same line to which McCoy referred. "I am well aware of your patient quantity at the moment, Doctor, I am merely here to inform you we have found the source of the diseases."
The Doctor's own eyebrows wriggled together, "Well, why didn't cha say so first, Spock?" Before allowing Spock to respond, he turned to Nurse Chapel and barked, "Take over my line."
"Yessir," Chapel nodded and moved to the line with a new tray of hypos.
"Com'on Spock, we'll talk in my office."
Spock seemed to pause momentarily before following the doctor.
"Sit," the Georgian commanded from behind his desk.
Spock rather would have stood but he acquiesced, knowing that McCoy would have glared until he did.
"So? What is it?"
"In the Crewman Lounge on Deck Five, Food Replicator four's food processing code was disrupted by an unknown code that would replicate diseases, such as the ones you have been treating throughout the day, into the crew's meals. Mr. Scott is already overseeing the repairs and compiling a list of food and corresponding diseases. The Captain has already been informed as well and has sent out a notice to the crew at large warning them of the corruption."
Bones stared. He leaned back in his chair. He leaned forward, arms crossed on the table and head twisted to the side, face quite comical.
"A food replicator? A food replicator did this?" He gestured wildly to the chaos to which his sickbay turned. "It did that?"
Spock remained passive, "The Captain has set an Engineering team to check all food replicators on the ship but it is doubtful for than one caused this. The otherwise would wield heavy implications of sabotage, do you not agree?"
Bones looked from his sickbay to the Vulcan and back again. "I agree."
Spock nodded and rose to leave but McCoy's voice stalled him, "So, what do you have?"
The Vulcan stilled in the doorway, hands moving to clasp behind his back. He turned slowly, "To what are you referring, Doctor?"
McCoy snorted and stood, leaning on his desk with his knuckles. "The whole bridge crew's been in here already," he straightened and pointed a finger at Spock, "except you."
Spock didn't reply.
"So are you gonna let me scan you or are you gonna come into my sickbay in a week bleeding from the eyes with the skin fallin' off yer face?"
There was a short stand off before Spock released his hands and stepped up to McCoy's desk. Bones reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a medical tricorder and waved it over Spock. Looking at the readout, Bones snorted and set the tricorder on the table corner.
"Congratulations, Spock, you have syphilis!" Bones returned to his desk drawer, missing Spock's widened eyes, and drew out a hypospray. "Which is pretty odd, actually, considering it's only the second case of the day and Jim was the other. So what meal did you both eat that was rare enough not to have more than two cases?" He pressed the hypo into a tense shoulder and listened to it hiss.
"I was under the impression," Spock almost grit out, hands hiding behind his back again, "that doctor-patient confidentiality was still in practice on Federation Starships such as this one."
"Oh," Bones straightened, pulling the hypo from Spock's shoulder. "It's just Jim, not like he hasn't had it before."
Spock nodded stiffly and left, leaving McCoy to stand in his office and ponder what food both could have eaten. …But then again, since there was only two cases, so it was most likely a really rare food, so what really rare food did they both eat recently? Unless… Bones's eyes widened. "No… oh, hell. Not with that Hobgoblin!" Bones rubbed at his eyes and tried to push the thought from his mind but his computer beeped, saying he had a message.
It was the list of foods and their disease. McCoy's eyes scurried down the columns. And froze at three words… "Oh, goddammit."
Plomeek Soup—Syphilis
The End.