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Captain's Ready room

Posted Nov. 25, 2022, 10:48 a.m. by Captain John Tiberius Glen (Captain) (David Fergusson)

Posted by Major Stanley Wong (Professor of Psychiatric Medicine) in Captain’s Ready room
It seemed to Stanley that he had come full circle finally. Here he was at the captain’s office again. “All things move in circles.” Stanley muttered to himself before he buzzed the door to the office. Stanley Dressed in a red baseball cap, a white tee-shirt, black jogging pants and white tennis shoes stood there waiting as he contentedly whistled Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

“Please come in and take a seat,” Glen said.

“I expect, after our previous meetings, that you are wondering why I’ve asked you here again? …well, I guess you could say that I may have actually had a slight change of heart. I’ve realised that keeping secrets is never going to end this… But, we’ll come to that in a moment. Before we get to that, I do need yo ask you about a couple of other things, and just have them cleared up first.”

“Well, they both concern your treatment of Doctor Miriam Cross. Can I ask you, professionally, how do you think that is going?”

Glen nodded his head as Stanley replied.

“I have heard from various officers that they think Doctor Cross has improved in both her health and general wellbeing. I’m very pleased if that is the case. However, I need to tell you that earlier today, Doctor Cross called me and made certain allegations about you. Specifically, she said that she has never consented to any treatment by you, but that you made an unauthorised medical emergency site-to-site transport into her quarters, while she was naked in the shower, then injected her with a hypo-spray of some sedative, and then left her sitting on the floor. She also says that you are compiling a dossier of secrets and are ready to leave the ship with it.”

Glen continued, “Now, I am well aware that Doctor Cross has a vivid imagination, and I think I can quickly dismiss most of what she said, but these allegations are so serious that I do need to ask you to tell me you side of the story. I have not been made aware that Doctor Cross required such emergency treatment and I haven’t authorised it, and the covert administration of medicine to a CMO would also require sign off by myself or someone even more senior. Even if you have such permission, I can’t have you gallivanting about my ship without informing me what you are up to first. I am still the Captain of this ship.”

Glen continued, “And the second thing was that Verity Aphelion overheard what Cross said to me. She swore to me to keep what she heard a secret and I ordered her to do so, but I then discovered you were just at her quarters thirty minutes ago, and wondered if that had anything to do with it? I don’t want her spreading this as gossip, even if any of it were true. The idea that there might be a sexual reason for visiting Cross, or that you have an ulterior motive to compile some secret dossier, this kind of gossip must not be spread.”

“As long as we understand each other, that I must be informed and agree to any… er, unusual, nonstandard undertakings aboard my ship, then I’ll close that particular door. Now, the real reason that I called you here was that I am actually impressed with the progress made by Doctor Cross since you arrived. You seem to be able to see the person rather than the patient, and you have observed my requests not to ask about, or to divulge any secrets missions we took part it, and… well quite frankly, I’d like you to treat me too!”

“Now that I am certain that you will keep whatever you are told as confidential, then I am prepared to open up to you a little more. I have been getting treatment from Doctor Cross for the physical symptoms of what happened to me, but I have never had treatment for the mental scars. Those will not heal with some painkillers, and I now don’t believe that they will just get better on their own. I fear that many in this crew are broken people, myself included. Just earlier today, I thought that I remembered that a doppelganger of one of our doctors, a Doctor Kim, came aboard the ship and impersonated him. But that event never took place. I imagined it just like Doctor Cross imagines things. What happened was that a security officer was a spy, but we… well, I accused the perfectly innocent Doctor Kim instead.”

“It is all related, Doctor Wong, the headaches and the missing memories, and the implanted memories of things that never occurred. You see, …an alien creature, let’s call it a Wyrm, entered inside my head and lived there, attached to my brain. It controlled me for a period, making me do things I didn’t want to do, some of them, unspeakable acts of depravity and cruelty. I was tortured, and I tortured others, and I was forced to watch others tortured. And I have great regrets about not being able to do enough to prevent some of the atrocious things that happened under my watch. This is what I carry around every day, and I find it hard to deal with it, especially when I am forbidden to talk about it with most other people. This is why Miriam Cross is so important to me, she knows it all and was subject to worse, and she also saved me, even though I couldn’t… Ah! Well, you get the picture?”

-Glen, CO


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