The Scraper: Part 5 - Sign Redundant

The one OWM Corporation doctor stationed on Mars, Doctor Mark Harper was sitting in his office situated at the top of one of the generic prefab buildings that were oh so commonplace on Mars.

Harper hated the post he’d been given as he saw it as a fairly redundant post, the well being of the Martian inhabitants and more relevant to him the Off World Mining Co. employees stationed on or near Mars, could be looked after by a couple of ViDocs.

The company had rationalised his posting by saying that he was there in case of emergency, though what emergency that a ViDoc couldn’t take care of on its own Harper struggled to envisage.

He spent most of his time playing golf on the newly finished executive course, which as far as Harper was concerned was a testimony to the fact that the terraforming was working.

Playing golf in gravity that was sixty two percent less than the Earth’s was rewarding, it had seen him improve his game quite a bit. The problem was the other executives also had this advantage so he was still way down the pecking order when it came to competition.

He was contemplating getting another virtual golf program added to his Neural Net, he had used up his company insurance credits as far as leisure upgrades were concerned, but on his rather generous salary he could afford it, though he might have to keep it secret from Mrs Harper.

The screen for his entanglement phone on his desk lit up and started humming at him, Harper experienced surprise as he realised that it was the emergency channel that was blinking and not the usual call from Dr Brenkman at Oval Tech calling to give him is weekly golf thrashing.

Oval Tech were a genetic research company and Harper really wanted a job with them, OWM was OK and his insurance level was as high as it could be within the company, but at Oval Tech he’d have direct access to cutting edge research.

Not only would Harper be doing more useful work, but the upgrades he’d be entitled to as an employee of Oval Tech were very alluring indeed.

Harper hit connect and saw that there had been an accident in the Main Asteroid Belt; he caught himself smiling at the prospect of actually doing some good old fashioned medical work.

He used his new IQ-i9 chip to access the information that was pouring down the screen of the entanglement phone, as he could better access and understand it as it flowed straight into his mind.

Harper saw that there had been a micrometeorite shower and that an individual called Sam Kendal had taken several hits.

He raised his eyebrows as the info kept coming into his brain, it was a rare occurrence for something the size of a ship to be hit by a micrometeorite let alone a tiny human. He decided to contact the Virtual Doctor that was working on Kendal.

Harper spoke out loud even though he didn’t need to, as this at least gave him the illusion that he was talking to a human colleague.

‘Harper OWM-c78926 here, what’s the status of the patient?’

‘Cleared. Virtual Doctor OWM-s22106 Earth Series 8974 second class quantum standard –’

Harper cut off the introduction which he was sure was going to go on for another minute or so.

‘Nice to finally make your acquaintance ViDoc 221’

‘s22106’

‘Quite, I repeat what’s the status of the patient?’

‘The patient has been put into a Medically Controlled Death and is stable.

He required a double amputation, which I have already carried out and have ordered multiple cloning of whole and part organs, I’m sending you a list now.’

Harper’s heart sank as he received all the medical information on his i9, the ViDoc had everything under control and even if he didn’t there was nothing Harper could have done about it.

There were no facilities to remotely operate on the human anywhere on Mars and even if there was he couldn’t think of a single operation that he could do that the ViDoc couldn’t.

Harper knew that his main role in this situation was to simply assess when Kendal would be ready to return to work and file a report. The ViDoc would apply the maximum recovery times, probably around ten to twelve weeks and Harper would receive pressure from OWM to declare Kendal fit for work before those times had expired.

What annoyed Harper most about this situation was the fact that it had happened so far away. His one remaining duty in this whole debacle would be to give a psychological assessment of Kendal, mainly to make sure that his mind was strong enough to return to work.

Eventually Kendal would be transferred to Ceres-II the space station that orbited roughly half way between Mars and the Main Belt and company policy on psychological assessments was such that they had to be carried out face to face.

The journey to the Ceres-II space station was a six standard week round trip and the assessment could take a week, though he’d do everything in his power to make sure it didn’t.

That was all valuable golf time and unless Kendal was quite literally foaming at the mouth when he was revived, Harper would pass him fit and that would be that, giving Harper an even greater feeling of redundancy.

'No,' the doctor thought to himself, 'Sam Kendal has definitely got the best deal out of this little fiasco.'

He was going to have a nice rest for a couple of months and at the end of it he’d have a couple of brand new limbs, a new lung, spleen and liver, and he’d be better than new. In actual fact he’d be about forty two percent new.

Whereas Harper just stood to lose more money on the golf course as he tried to schmooze that insufferable bastard Brenkman. He looked out of his office window, first across the landscape of the Olympus Plains, then up into the darkening sky at the faint blue green disc three hundred and fifty million miles away and sighed.

END.

Cryptogee