The Mind's Eye

Posted on 18 Jan 2014 @ 11:14pm by Lieutenant Teth Miir & Lieutenant Olsam Mott

2,692 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 05 - Solstice
Location: Starfleet Medical, San Francisco
Timeline: MD 11 0345

ON:

Counselor Teth materialized on the transporter pad in the San Francisco Transport Station. With him a small bag containing several PADDs, mostly containing his recent Borg research. Though he wasn't a physician or an engineer and it seemed that both might be needed to make sense of Borg technology and physiology.

He left quietly, still in civilian clothing. Though one couldn't walk a block in San Francisco without bumping into a Starfleet officer, he still felt quite conspicuous in his uniform.

Olsam spared a glance at the chronometer on the wall and then focused his attention back on the computer terminal in front of him. The fourteenth floor of Starfleet Medical was given over almost entirely to medical imaging and housed some of the most sophisticated sensor technology in the Federation. He was familiar with most of the equipment, but he was accompanied by an Ardanan doctor named Laxun who was both an old friend and colleague from his time aboard the Tranquility.

The room itself was one of many on this floor, though the sensor suite housed in a rounded device on the ceiling at the center of the room was specially calculated for neurological scans. Once Teth arrived, it would give them a better understanding of what was happening with the implants.

Teth did arrive several minutes later, only after getting slightly misdirected. After all of his time at the expansive medical facility, he still found himself wandering into new parts he had never seen before.

He pressed the chime on the large bay door and it receded into the wall, exposing an large room containing many fragile looking machines. The doorway itself seemed to be designed to accommodate large objects like self contained biobeds, and the bright whiteness of all the surfaces inside gave it a distinctively sterile atmosphere. It was quite different from the soothing mint green and taupe and softly padded offices of Starfleet Psychiatric.

"This place is very.... white." the caitian said, "You know I've never been up here."

"Then you are quite lucky, my friend. Only sick people are generally up here," Dr. Laxun said, offering a bright smile and crossing the room to shove his hand out to Teth. "Dr. Laxun, pleased to meet you, lieutenant. Dr. Olsam and I attended the Academy and served together aboard the Tranquility. I understand we're going to be taking some scans today. It's quick and painless, I promise."

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Laxun, and I am happy to hear that." Teth said as he accepted the doctor's hand.

"So where do we begin?"

Laxun smiled and bowed his head while making to turn away toward the largest and most complex looking computer interface, likely the one that controlled the primary scanning equipment. "I'll leave that to Dr. Olsam, as you're his patient." With a twinkle in his eye, Laxun lowered his voice to a whisper. "Doctors are a very territorial people."

"I think the color has something to do with a Terran notion about white being sterile," Olsam said almost absent-mindedly as he worked behind a computer terminal, not really hearing anything after the comment about the room's color.

In the center of the room was a wide circular space with a biobed directly under the sensor suite on the ceiling. He seemed to finally finish programming something into the computer and then rounded the terminal to approach the biobed. Unexpectedly, he hopped up on it and patted the space next to him. "Up here with me, if you please."

Teth felt bemused as he decided whether he felt ready to snuggle up next to his new friend. But after a moment of consideration, he decided to trust the doctor and join him on the biobed.

Olsam's legs dangled off the edge of the biobed, and he began to swing them slowly like a child on a swing. "So, Dr. Laxun is a very accomplished neurologist, and he's going to be guiding the scans from the computer terminal over there. He's quite good at it, so it should only take about 5 minutes. Most of the sensor equipment is in that dome looking thing above us, and you won't feel a thing during the entire procedure.

"The scan will give us all sorts of information about your brain - its topography, cerebrovascular circulation hemodynamics, cerebrospinal fluid analysis, neural energy assessments...so on and so forth. It will also give us a better idea of whether the implants might be causing some trouble, and the scans will be the baseline for their removal during surgery."

"So, out of curiosity... why are you sitting with me?"

"Well, I've got to sit somewhere, right? These biobeds aren't really all that uncomfortable, despite what some people say. On the Tranquility, we stopped to treat the royal family of Watan III near the Romulan Neutral Zone. Dr. Laxun and I had the esteemed privilege of seeing to the needs of Her Royal Highness Princess Amina, who was about sixteen at the time and experiencing an hereditary hormonal imbalance.

"Anyway, the first biobed we placed her on wasn't to her liking. She said it was too hard. Then the next one was too soft. Then the next one had some sort of instrument poking her in the back. We went through five different biobeds until Dr. Laxun here just slipped up behind her and hypo'ed her with a sedative."

Olsam grinned, as if that was particularly amusing.

"I see..." Teth said with a mildly concerned tone. Suddenly he wasn't enjoying Olsam's witty banter as much as he usually did. Perhaps it was the harsh lighting or the fact that he was about to have his insides digitally splayed open for a stranger to pick apart and analyze, but he really wasn't in a joking mood.

"I guess the point being, sometimes we have to go to unusual lengths for the sake of the patient. Like right now," Olsam said as he patted Teth's hand in a gesture of comfort, "we've been scanning you this whole time and finished up about...47 seconds ago. I thought you might be nervous about the scans, so I decided to sit with you and talk instead of making you lie down and stare at that sensor suite up there."

"Well that was quite clever." Teth said feeling somewhat foolish. He was familiar with these sorts of distraction techniques for other procedures. When he had trained as a field medic early in his Starfleet career, he learned to manually take vital signs and would count a patient's respiration while he pretended to take their pulse. When they became aware that their breathing was being observed, they would almost always change it in some way.

He stared up at the sensors above him and then back at Olsam, "So how long will the results take to analyze?"

Olsam hopped down from the biobed, looking a little sheepish about his deception. "Not very long. Dr. Laxun and I can make some preliminary assessments, but the neurosurgeon will be the one making the final determinations." He paused next to the bed and cut his eyes to Dr. Laxun then back to Teth. "Would you like to see it? The results, I mean. We'll be projecting them holographically."

"Yes." Teth agreed without hesitation, "Yes I would like to see it. I never got to see any of the scans at the time they were implanted since I was in a coma at the time."

"All right, we'll bring it up over here?" Olsam directed to Dr. Laxun, as much a question as a statement. While Teth wasn't looking, Dr. Laxun shared an uncomfortable look with Olsam that said much about the results of the scans. Olsam returned a blank look; better not to make any judgments before seeing the scan himself.

"Yes, just gather around this contraption," Dr. Laxun said cheerily - too cheerily - before accessing the control panel attached to the holoprojector.

After entering a few commands, a holographic version of Teth's brain abruptly appeared. At first blush, it didn't seem to deviate at all from standard caitian anatomy. In fact, it wasn't altogether dissimilar from other humanoid brains. It had two cerebral hemispheres, and the brain was covered in ridges and crevices. Dr. Laxun cut his eyes across at Dr. Olsam and then adjusted the opacity of the outer layer of the brain, revealing one large Borg implant in the midbrain with a bridge that seemed to connect the motor cortices with the visual cortex. At the base of the brain was a smaller one controlling some of Teth's autonomic functions.

Dr. Olsam tried not to move, breath, or even say anything. Both physicians in the room were suddenly morose and silent.

And at that moment Teth felt as if he was standing in a morgue and staring over his own corpse. At first he was too distracted by the holoprojection in front of him to fully notice that the room had gone silent. But as seconds inched by the lack of conversation, particularly from Olsam, was quite telling. He hadn't known the Bolian for long, but he knew at this point, he would normally be chattering on random facts about neurology mixed with colorful anecdotes.

He was afraid to ask what was wrong even though on some level he was sure he already knew the answer.

"I didn't realize the implants took up so much space." was all he could manage in small and uncertain voice, "I must have lost a lot more than I thought."

Olsam snapped out of his own thoughts as Teth spoke, and then he was back to his nodding and happy self. "Yes, they're quite large. No larger than what was there before, really, but I guess when we say 'implants' we think of some very small sub-dermal sort of a thing. Your case file indicated they actually removed healthy tissue in the motor cortices in particular in order to accommodate the implant. Which sounds more drastic than it actually is, mind you."

The Bolian reached up to the holoprojection and with some cryptic hand motions called up the midbrain in much higher magnification and detail.

"The areas around here and here," Olsam said, gesturing to different areas now taken up by the implant, "were relatively healthy, but not sufficient to give you any sort of acceptable motor function on their own. At the time, the implants presented the best opportunity to restore full control for you."

Dr. Laxun had distractedly and silently excused himself from the conversation, moving back to the larger computer terminal and furiously recording notes on something. Olsam watched him shuffle off and actually frowned.

"Now," he said, taking a deep breath. "The scans have revealed some...interesting...data. Have you been experiencing sensitivity to light, blurred vision, dizziness, shortness of breath or headaches?"

At that, Teth could only think of the events a few night previously that lead him to sickbay in his pajamas, only after frightening some poor human crewman. This was not a detail he wished to divulge, as he found the incident to be quite humiliating.

"Yes, actually." he answered, "That's is in large part one of the reasons I initially sought to try to have the implants removed. Ever since they were put in, I've had persistent problems with headaches. But recently it's been much worse."

Olsam nodded and moved to the console controlling the holoprojector. A few swipes of his hand and the hologram lit up in a dazzling array of lights. The overwhelming majority of them were centered around the two implants.

"It's not entirely accurate to say your body is rejecting the implants, but I wouldn't say it's accepting them, either," the Bolian explained. "There's a great deal of...hmm, irritation, for lack of a better word...around the implants. When the implants were initially being used in the 70's, there wasn't a strong body of research on the long-term consequences. Now we have a slightly better understanding, and the results are not encouraging."

The image expanded a bit more as Olsam increased the magnification around the primary implant.

"Borg implants were designed to work in...the Borg. Not living, breathing, evolving humanoids like you and I. They are supposed to operate in a static system, essentially maintaining the status quo and repairing damage. The problem being, of course, that you are not a drone. The ecology of your brain changes, and the implants seem to be adapting poorly to those changes. It's a bit ironic, really...Borg implants not adapting properly. They're trying, and they might be more successful in their efforts in a drone. But here, it's just causing problems for you."

"That seems like an understatement, doctor." Teth said, carefully analyzing the image in front of him.

The image decreased in magnification until the whole brain was seen again; then the patterns changed into a moving highway system stretching to all parts of the cerebral tissue.

"This is your neural energy," Olsam said before motioning to the areas around the implants. "This, here, is abnormal and the cause of your recent episodes."

"A lot of people have been freed from the collective at this point, does this ever happen to them?"

"Not that I'm aware of, but the reasons aren't fully understood. There are no lack of theories. Some postulate that even where many implants are removed, a sufficient number of interdependent portions remain to regulate one another. Others believe it has something to do with the assimilation process itself. I tend to subscribe to the latter; those implants become part of the assimilation process, during which a person is transformed from a person to a drone. For you, integrating the implants with your physiology was, in effect, a half measure."

Olsam thought for a moment and shrugged, smiling.

"And, too, neuroscience is still not fully explored. It's an incredibly complex system, and introducing 'foreign' objects into it can sometimes cause unanticipated reactions."

Teth frowned, "So what can we do about it?"

"Well that is the good news," Olsam said, becoming his jovial self again. "I believe we can make a very good attempt at removing the implants almost in their entirety. Replacing entire portions of the brain isn't generally feasible so we may have to leave a very small amount of the implant in place to serve as a sort of processor but but I feel confident that we can eliminate upwards of 80% of the Borg technology in your body."

"Really?" the caitian asked in surprise. After seeing the implants they seemed too impossibly entangled with his own biological matter. "That's better news than I was expecting." he over to Dr. Laxun and then back at Olsam. "When can we do that?"

"Probably tomorrow," Olsam replied, sparing a look at the chronometer. "The biggest part is lining up a neurosurgeon. I'm not such a good surgeon, I'm afraid, so best I not go poking around in your head, hm? But my friend, Dr. Choka, has preliminarily agreed. I'll speak with him further once he's out of surgery, so it'll be a few hours before I hear back from him. Unless you have some other business back home, I think it would be wise to go ahead and admit you, though."

Teth briefly considered returning home to spend time with his sister, but then he remembered his uncle A'theo was visiting, and that was never pleasant, even at the best of times.

"No." he smiled "I had no plans. The sooner we start, the better."

"Good, good," Olsam said, nodding. He gestured toward Dr. Laxun with a questioning look; the Ardanan nodded his consent. "Teth, Dr. Laxun here will take you to a room, get you admitted, do some initial lab work, so on and so forth. I'm going to go follow up with Dr. Choka, and I'll see you again within the hour, okay?"

"I look forward to it, Doctor." Teth said, uncertain if he should feel elated or terrified.

OFF:


Lt. JG Olsam Mott M.D.
Assistant Chief of Medicine
USS Galileo

&

Lt. JG Teth Miir
Counselor
USS Galileo

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