a/n: The small Ma-non doctor gets comfortable but he doesn't get to the point.
Ooops all dialogue.
All the good things (barring Pelias) belong to Monolithsoft.
The Ma-non was starting to stack the treasures he had pulled from his pockets into a tiny, glittering, unstable tower. "But what do I know? Usually my patients are dead, or close to to to it. I'm really not used to patient advocates."
Hope shook her head and frowned. "I think you should leave."
"I like him," Quincy said positively.
"You are on serious pain medication," Hope pointed out.
Quincy struggled to sit up, while his paper garment tried to stay behind, increasing the gap. "So, what's your plan?" he asked Pelias.
Hope reached for the neckline, currently plunging to his navel, and gave it a gentle tug. "Quincy. You need to keep still."
She was right, of course. Her suggestion wasn't out of politeness or an unwillingness to interact with this bizarre alien. His cough was getting stronger, each round shaking him a little harder. He didn't bother to hide the blue film that lingered on his hand when he covered his mouth. He didn't have much fight left in him when Hope pressed him back against the pillows, arranging his gown with a few quick flicks, tucking the blanket around his legs neatly. Hope was fussing, she knew that, but part of her was hoping that he would rally and resist and prove her wrong.
She didn't want to meet his eyes, didn't want to see how wrong they looked when he was drugged like this. She wanted to see his clear and thoughtful eyes, but that chance was probably over. But she couldn't keep ignoring him forever. She readied herself and looked up at him, but not before he had caught her hand in mid tuck.
He looked normal, patient and aware. Maybe his eyes were a little tight with pain, but he returned her gaze clearly. "He could explain," he said, shifting his head a little to indicate the Ma-non, his eyes never leaving hers. "What does he suggest? I'm curious. Humor me. While I still have some curiosity left."
"Oh, Quincy."
"I'll be very quiet. Promise." He opened his eyes wide, pleading.
The exaggerated meekness made her smile. She wanted both to giggle and to cry. Instead, she resumed holding the patient's hand. "I'm sure they won't be able to remove your curiosity."
"You humans like to bet on the worst odds."
She snapped her head up to glare at Pelias. "Excuse me?" she asked, indicating that she was the one expecting an apology.
"He's right about reduced curiosity, but maybe you know what you're doing with the bet. You could get away with it. After the bog-standard op, he won't care that you were wrong."
"And your version?" she asked coldly, or as coldly as her warm nature could manage.
"Look, time is short for this young man," Pelias said. His pronouncement was underscored by a sharp knock on the treatment room door.
"Then now would be a good time to practice clear summation for patients," Hope said primly. A gentle squeeze from Quincy's hand indicated that he was impressed by her official persona.
xcxcxcxcxcx
Pelias sighed so deeply he almost floated off of the stool. The two humans were arranged comfortably, clearly ready to wait for an explanation, tethering themselves together with their hands. Pelias started from the basics. "So, originally, they snipped the emotions to the target person. Just that person, just the offending emotion. You follow?"
"We know this already," Hope interrupted. Quincy coughed in agreement.
"Plus cleaning up the lungs," Pelias added, once Quincy quieted. "I have good news on on on that front too, okay?" He was chattering, and he knew it, but what could he do? Humans scared him, honestly. Big. Angry. Pushy. His special area of study was mechanical organisms and their cultures, but homo mimensis were something else. In his experience, emotions and machines didn't mix well, and yet here was a heavily armed city of them, building a world dominating culture that didn't have any rules. They were a disaster waiting to happen, as well as being the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. "Too bad you need the Lifehold for that," he continued.
"Ahem," Hope said.
Pelias wasn't great at reading alien expressions, but he knew he'd misspoken. What he did or did not know about the status of their Lifehold was best not revealed. "I said nothing. Ignore me," he stuttered quickly. "Point is, under the current climate, the best your guys can do is rip out all emotions. Love, hate, itchy, scratchy, all zeroed out. I'm not saying it's the worst idea, but frankly I'm not impressed. It leaves a sort of vacuum in in in your life, if you get my drift."
He picked up a pair of golden tweezers, not larger than his smallest digit, and scratched a circle into the cover of a medi pac, then added a circle inside that. "Now if you put something new in its place, replacing emotion with something else ..."
The female human sputtered and he dropped the topic. "Ah, well, I haven't dared ask permission for that set of experiments."
"What would you put instead?" asked the young man on the gurney.
Pelias assumed he was young. They all seemed very young, most of the people he treated, young and callous, but there was a spark of something quick in this young person's eyes. Pelias perked up. "Greed works remarkably well. Alternately the desire for balance in all things, very ecologically friendly." He waved a hand in the air, conjuring different social dynamics. "Other robots I've met choose the urge to advance as a technological species as their motivating force. But really, anything to unplug yourself from from from the wall in the morning works, right?"
"Wouldn't there be a problem when societal motivation and finite resources conflict?" asked Quincy.
Pelias leaned over excitedly. "You would think there would be a correlation, but I've noticed that other-focused cultures succeed and as such tend to moderate the impacts of of of..."
"Ahem!"
Quincy and Pelias turned to look at an irrate Hope. "What?" asked Pelias, and only a small round of coughing kept Quincy from echoing him.
a/n: Surprisingly we did not lose power this week. I need another excuse.
Next up: More treatment options.