un: Bachelor | text

[thantagonist]

Attention Fellow People of Etraya,

I am Doctor Daniil Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine. As I understand it, few of you have seen a doctor lately. That simply won’t do! Please, don’t wait to get sick to establish care. I am situated in the hospital, ready to take consent forms and make updated medical histories. At least a few of you have unaddressed concerns, I just know it. The average person comes to see the doctor when it’s too late! Though we cannot die here, there is no reason to suffer unduly.

And if you are otherwise healthy, perhaps think of it as helping me out. In the event of an outbreak, it is far more helpful to have complete clinical pictures of the inhabitants. Especially, as I understand it, there are many biological differences in this population.

Please come visit me during my clinic hours, every day from 10am to 6pm.


[What Daniil really wants is to meet more of the unusual inhabitants of Etraya more quickly as well as conduct casual interviews of the sort of people who are slated to save the universe. But he can’t just say that completely outright.]

Comments

text; un: romano

[badlydisarmed]

Are you regretting this yet?

[thantagonist]

Why should I? It’s indistinguishable from regular hospital work. Besides, no one is actively protesting my work with a sign yet, which is a positive.

[badlydisarmed]

Has anyone actually signed up?

[thantagonist]

Two young women. One man showed up just to harass me, though “man” is sort of an understatement. I think he was a god? He teleported into my office.

I think I met your Superman. But when I asked if he was a god he stopped talking to me. And then his son showed up and someone who I believe was also a child threatened me.

Again, apart from the gods, this is very average. And the cat, but I refuse to commit that debacle to memory. I used to have assistants to bring patients to the hospital for me. I miss them dearly.

[badlydisarmed]

Superman is from a different planet, he's not a god. The ones who are gods or god-like, will probably be happy to let you know, though really, the fact that they're trapped here at all should prove they're not that powerful.

The threatening child is a kid genius. He's fun if you can ignore the really bad attitude.

[thantagonist]

Some of them are not meaningfully distinguishable from gods. I think this perhaps speaks less of their weakness and more of our captor’s relative power, don’t you think?

It’s sweet that he’s so protective of the other child and his father. In what manner is he fun? I’m not sure if we have different ideas of fun yet.

[badlydisarmed]

He's clever and proactive, generally willing to help, also willing to destroy people kneecaps but I'm sure they had it coming.

He probably thinks the Super family is too polite to stand up for themselves, which isn't quite correct in my experience, but I haven't talked to the boy much.

[thantagonist]

Duly noted.

They seemed to have no issue speaking their minds to me. The strangest experience so far is being anonymous here. I was actually quite famous. Now I feel like I’m begging people to let me work.

Imagine if I was a dentist. I could really inspire some loathing.

[badlydisarmed]

We've all been there. I had a great reputation back home, and here I'm the only regular human.

At least I have the arm to make me feel a little special.

[thantagonist]

Now I see why you don’t take many patients. I could spend the entire day drunk and it probably wouldn’t make a differnce.

Ah, actually, I have a question for you I’d rather not ask here. Are you in your room?

[badlydisarmed]

Yeah, come on in. I got chips.

→action

[thantagonist]

[It is late evening by now. Daniil walks down the hallway in a pair of slippers. He’s removed his cravat, vest and coat, replaced with a smoking jacket and softer trousers.]

What are chips?

[Daniil holds a bottle of wine by the neck with a couple glasses pilfered from downstairs.]

[badlydisarmed]

[ Robert is in sweatpants, eating Doritos. He got himself one of the fancy rooms that has a little sitting room, and in the time he's been here, he's redecorated so he has a normal twin bed, a desk, and a little fridge.

It looks a lot like a dorm room.

He's in his little living room, reading case studies on PTSD treatments. ]

Thinly sliced fried potatoes. Or in this case, tortillas, but I have the potato kind too.

[ This man gets his dinners from the Kwiktrip so there is a wide selection of junk food. ]

[thantagonist]

Oh, that sounds good. [He doesn’t know what a tortilla was, but he figured he could just try one.] What’s that you’re reading?

[He sets down the glasses and then looks at his corked bottle.]

Do you have a cork screw?

[Daniil looks around. His own space also looked like a dorm, but one for a grad student with no friends. There was no sitting room to speak of, just a desk and the hospital bed. Daniil did enjoy the remote controls on the bed, though once he found them.]

[Daniil seems to have put aside his questions to nose about in Romano’s life.]

[badlydisarmed]

Effective treatments for post-traumatic stress.

[ He offers the paper to Daniil as he grabs a corkscrew from the fridge— it has a magnet! Which goes from sticking to the fridge to sticking to his arm. Very useful. ]

Here.

[thantagonist]

[Daniil skims the abstracts.]

Ah, they’ve renamed War Neurosis.

[Daniil glances at that magnetic arm.]

Have you seen combat, doctor?

[This is getting closer to what he wanted to talk about, at least. But they could afford to be sidetracked. Daniil opens the wine and pours each of them a generous glass.]

[badlydisarmed]

Sort of. But this isn't for me, there's a couple of veterans that could use a break.

[ He accepts a wine glass. ]

I'm not a psychiatrist. It's one of the few specialties I had absolutely no interest in.

[thantagonist]

Likewise. It only serves to complicate things when I’m trying to make a diagnosis. Oh, your heart hurts? Oh, no, of course. A break up. Thank you for wasting my finite time and resources.

[Daniil takes a sip.] That’s kind of you.

…Speaking of expanding our horizons and gaining new knowledge, I tell this to you in confidence. I fear I may not be able to gain the trust of the people here as I am now. I’m not sure I can take one more joke about being a Bachelor, a title I wore very proudly for the past four years.

What’s worse is that my practice feels antiquated to everyone. There are so many new machines here, and I’m learning all of them as quickly as I can.

[badlydisarmed]

People are gonna be distrustful by nature. Did you see the kid trying to get people's middle names and birthdays? I can show you how the machines work and update you on the past 70 years of medical advancements, but if you want tips on how to make friends and influence people I'm no use.

[ Robert treats people who want help and he has no interest in research beyond what's relevant for his handful of patients. ]

There should be an ice-breaker on the network in a few days though. It usually reveals information about people that they'd rather not have out there, it's a good excuse to make new friends.

[thantagonist]

I’ve been making friends well enough. A few enemies too, though I’ve changed the minds of people who disliked me more than any of them do.

[He had his secrets, after all. And he couldn’t stand whistle blowers. ]

I believe the superboy warned me about this. Chirper? What do you mean it reveals information about us? Like what?

[badlydisarmed]

It's hard to predict. It can be something harmless like your favorite color, or something more personal like your greatest fear. You can usually offset it by answering the questions yourself.

Maybe we'll get lucky some time and get people's blood types.

[thantagonist]

With our luck they would all be incompatible gibberish. Or all the impervious men have typo O- and could incubate and safely fight off anything in the known universe if we could only tap a vein.

[Daniil takes a deep drink of his wine before settling into the seat beside Romano at last.]

Still, I’ll take your advice. It always is better to answer questions rather than have someone answer them for you.

Speaking of- who are some good people to stay on the right side of? It’s hard to tell who the prominent people are. Obviously the little boy guarding the Supermen. I angered a little dog person the other day. I’m trying to figure out how concerned I should be about that.

[badlydisarmed]

Ah. I don't know, I haven't tried to stay on anyone's good side and no one's stabbed me yet. The masked kid is volatile, but I don't think he'd hurt a civilian for no reason.

[ He's trying to think of people he knows who might be dangerous, but the thing is most Etrayans are potentially dangerous. ]

The man who goes by Joss Sweden on the network is some kind of god-like being with special magic powers and he's a bit of a shit, but for the most part he thinks regular mortals aren't worth his time. You already met Superman and kid, the older one is one of those frustratingly nice people, if you managed to get on his bad side I'd probably be afraid of you.

Finch is worth getting to know, he's been here for a while and he cares about keeping records, unlike me. He's about my age, wears glasses and fancy suits, very proper, usually found at the library.

[thantagonist]

Joss Sweden, Finch, noted. …I think I did already get on his bad side. I wasn’t even trying to. He’s so senstive. As if an impenetrable man has anything to fear.

[Turns out he and Robert had quite a lot of things in common, down to the poor record keeping.]

[Unfortunately, his memory was excellent. His mind young and agile, his hubris waiting to drown him at its nearest convenience. ]

[badlydisarmed]

Yeah, well, you handled that conversation poorly.

[ He's drinking his wine, not mad or anything, just matter-of-fact. ]

He grew up on Earth, aware he wasn't human. Safe to assume he grew up with some fears of being experimented on. The god thing was probably another hot button. First step to not pissing people off is understanding people don't owe you answers.