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The Patient
Nov. 16th, 2018 04:59 pmEnsign Stacy Eun woke up with the chiming of the satellite receiver. Objects approaching or being approached, something too large for the hull of the ship to survive impact with--a surprise considering that the V-Needle was literally designed to survive impact, penetrating all but materials harder than tungsten.
“What do I not know about this mission?” Stacy would ask herself for the fifth time since she signed off on her top space secret paperwork. Why did they assign a fighter pilot to a space mission? Why make her copilot a spaceship she had neither seen nor heard of?
These thoughts and the rest of the sleeping drugs she had been made to take wore off with a sharp series of clanging sounds as a metal canister was loaded and locked into the aft port of the ship. “Who is that?” Stacy slurred as she slowly woke up.
“Come on, Ensign,” Lieutenant Sterling replied. “Time to look alive. We are at the target.”
“Do I get to know what that is yet?”
“See for yourself.” The lieutenant pressed a button on the console to show a virtual display from forward cameras.
“Oh my god.” The moon. It would have looked gorgeous and jaw-dropping with the illuminated side mostly facing away from the Earth, and the Earth distantly lit-up, peeking from the bottom of the display. But the moon was obscured by a giant whose tentacles spread across the entirety of the lit up side.
“What the hell is that!?” Stacy cried. The ambient sounds of the ship, even the continued beeping of the radar which noted the proximity of the moon itself, seemed to drift into nothingness when looking at a being of that size. Ten tentacles aligned at a central point that jutted away from the moon--the protruding body and head were probably five hundred miles long. The body and tentacles were bluish-purple with bright red bumps all over. The head was bulbous like an octopus head, and the only visible eye stared at the craft with a glassy, round lens.
“We call him the Patient,” Lieutenant Sterling answered. “He’s been here probably fifty times over the last twenty years.”
“Are we going to try to kill him by ramming him with this ship?”
“Wouldn’t be wise even if it were possible. Can you imagine the risk to Earth of having a giant octopus floating around in our orbit, limbs all askew? Besides, he’s mostly sweet,” the Lieutenant added.
“Mostly?”
“If he wants to talk to us, he’ll send us images of the things he wants to say and what he wants us to do--it’s like psychic sharing. It pervades what you experience for a few minutes, and then it passes away. His images enabled us to build this space ship as well as a number of other technologies, so it’s not all bad. Also, he learns from us too, taking our own understandings when he trades.”
“So he’s basically a giant, space octopus with psychic abilities and a genuine desire to advance the science of the human race?”
“Yes, basically.”
“How come no one on Earth knows about or talks about this thing? Shouldn’t we be able to see it when we look up?” Stacy asked.
“We have a bit of a contract with it, which we’re about to fulfill for this current visit. Also, it never makes itself visible to the naked eye, moving as the moon moves for cover. It has also made it very clear who we’re allowed to let know about it. He picked you after scanning me when I had read the service records of hundreds of other candidates. He even chose the process of training and the way you needed to be brought here.”
Stacy felt a chill pass through her shoulders. Whatever this entity was, it had acquainted itself with her even though she was less than a bug to it. “Can it read me right now?” she asked.
Lieutenant Sterling gave a short, sharp laugh. “Absolutely,” she replied.
“I take back what I said about ramming you with the ship!” Stacy blurted.
“Actually that’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?!”
“I want you to take a look at the arm in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.”
It took a little squinting, but Stacy could see that a streak of raw flesh was exposed--a reddish canal ran half the width of the arm. From here, it looked small, but it must have been miles long and tall up close.
“What happened to it?”
“We don’t know, but this is why we call it the Patient, and this is why we fly the V-Needle. We are going to use antibiotic thread that I just loaded into the aft port, and we’re going to stitch that wound up.”
“Pardon? So we have to steer this ship into the arm and then cross to the other side and then back? Sorry, it’s been a long time since I had to know how to do a suture.”
“Our canister does the suture for us. On impact, the outer part of the canister dislodges and sticks in the Patient while the rest unspools the thread. On second impact with the opposing side of the wound, the larger portion of the canister remaining also dislodges and sticks in the arm, automatically winding up the remainder of the thread so that the wound closes before the canister cuts off the excess thread.” Lieutenant Sterling’s words were bright with excitement for task, which was what Stacy expected from her, having heard about the Lieutenant before being assigned to her. “There is only a mile of thread in the canister, so we do have to start at the part of the wound with the least wide laceration.”
“Why me, then? Is it my job to fly?”
“Yes. I’ll be loading canisters into the back. It picked you because some of the maneuvers you’ve performed in your career are astonishingly precise. Now you need to do those same maneuvers with a ship that has to crash into squishy octopus flesh to do its job.”
“Will we feel the crash? Have you been doing this for awhile?”
“It’s very smooth. Only the action of the canister is very noticeable. You’ll get the hang of it right away, and I’ll advise you on the first few crossings. I’ve been doing this for ten years, and now I’m training you to do it with me too.”
“Why doesn’t he just grab the ship and pull it through, himself? He’s a big boy,” Stacy said. And then she looked at the view screen and saw the big octopus eye judging her, almost glowering.
“He doesn’t like to feel the pain, I think,” Lieutenant Sterling said, laughing. “Be careful where you put the needle.”
*****
It seemed like grisly work at first, picking the threshold of octopus flesh that could be punctured shallowly enough to damage as little tissue as possible. Sure enough, the V-Needle went right in, tugging only slightly when the canister dislodged.
It took about forty canisters to reach a conclusion to the stitching. Sterling was sweating from constantly loading and Stacy breathed a sigh of relief when the last canister plunked out of the aft of the ship on the last pass.
“You did great!” Sterling exclaimed.
“You too. I hope he agrees.”
“Even though your parents and family back home can’t hear anything about this, I know they’d be happy with what you’ve done. Patient is at least! Look at him.”
Stacy looked up at Patient’s eye, glowering down on her. Suddenly, her head started to feel hot, and she became nauseated.
“What’s happening?” she asked, but the words cut off and she blacked out before she could could fully finish. And then the images started to enter her brain. There was another planet and another dominant species that was given the V-Needle and the tools to help with his wounds. They did help for awhile, and then, after a hundred years or so, they stopped nursing the Patient’s wounds when he came to visit.
Dismayed, he showed himself to their whole planet in a plea for help, and they attempted to use the technology he showed them to kill him, driving a fleet of V-Needles into his body. It didn’t work, however, since he crushed the pilots with his great arms after they popped out of his body. His arms spewed some kind of organic propulsion through the red pock marks, moving with baffling speed and power. Then, he grabbed their moon and tossed it into their planet, wiping out everything that had ever lived there.
Stacy shook off the vision in a cold sweat and looked up at the eye again. Somehow, he winked at her, filling her head suddenly with a vision of them both standing in a flowering field, him being a normal sized octopus, and giving her a daisy with one outstretched tentacle.
“I guess he is a sweetheart. Kind of,” Stacy said, steering the V-Needle back towards Earth.
Whatever he was, destroyer or nice, space octopus, it was almost certainly better to know him than whatever it was that kept giving him those wounds, Stacy thought. Was it predation that kept hurting him or was it a more powerful warring aggressor? Better the octopus than the unknown.
Although one slip up might make him angry enough to destroy the world, perhaps he offered some measure of protection from whatever else lurked out there. She’d take care of him for as long as she could, she swore. As long as humanity could.
“What do I not know about this mission?” Stacy would ask herself for the fifth time since she signed off on her top space secret paperwork. Why did they assign a fighter pilot to a space mission? Why make her copilot a spaceship she had neither seen nor heard of?
These thoughts and the rest of the sleeping drugs she had been made to take wore off with a sharp series of clanging sounds as a metal canister was loaded and locked into the aft port of the ship. “Who is that?” Stacy slurred as she slowly woke up.
“Come on, Ensign,” Lieutenant Sterling replied. “Time to look alive. We are at the target.”
“Do I get to know what that is yet?”
“See for yourself.” The lieutenant pressed a button on the console to show a virtual display from forward cameras.
“Oh my god.” The moon. It would have looked gorgeous and jaw-dropping with the illuminated side mostly facing away from the Earth, and the Earth distantly lit-up, peeking from the bottom of the display. But the moon was obscured by a giant whose tentacles spread across the entirety of the lit up side.
“What the hell is that!?” Stacy cried. The ambient sounds of the ship, even the continued beeping of the radar which noted the proximity of the moon itself, seemed to drift into nothingness when looking at a being of that size. Ten tentacles aligned at a central point that jutted away from the moon--the protruding body and head were probably five hundred miles long. The body and tentacles were bluish-purple with bright red bumps all over. The head was bulbous like an octopus head, and the only visible eye stared at the craft with a glassy, round lens.
“We call him the Patient,” Lieutenant Sterling answered. “He’s been here probably fifty times over the last twenty years.”
“Are we going to try to kill him by ramming him with this ship?”
“Wouldn’t be wise even if it were possible. Can you imagine the risk to Earth of having a giant octopus floating around in our orbit, limbs all askew? Besides, he’s mostly sweet,” the Lieutenant added.
“Mostly?”
“If he wants to talk to us, he’ll send us images of the things he wants to say and what he wants us to do--it’s like psychic sharing. It pervades what you experience for a few minutes, and then it passes away. His images enabled us to build this space ship as well as a number of other technologies, so it’s not all bad. Also, he learns from us too, taking our own understandings when he trades.”
“So he’s basically a giant, space octopus with psychic abilities and a genuine desire to advance the science of the human race?”
“Yes, basically.”
“How come no one on Earth knows about or talks about this thing? Shouldn’t we be able to see it when we look up?” Stacy asked.
“We have a bit of a contract with it, which we’re about to fulfill for this current visit. Also, it never makes itself visible to the naked eye, moving as the moon moves for cover. It has also made it very clear who we’re allowed to let know about it. He picked you after scanning me when I had read the service records of hundreds of other candidates. He even chose the process of training and the way you needed to be brought here.”
Stacy felt a chill pass through her shoulders. Whatever this entity was, it had acquainted itself with her even though she was less than a bug to it. “Can it read me right now?” she asked.
Lieutenant Sterling gave a short, sharp laugh. “Absolutely,” she replied.
“I take back what I said about ramming you with the ship!” Stacy blurted.
“Actually that’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?!”
“I want you to take a look at the arm in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.”
It took a little squinting, but Stacy could see that a streak of raw flesh was exposed--a reddish canal ran half the width of the arm. From here, it looked small, but it must have been miles long and tall up close.
“What happened to it?”
“We don’t know, but this is why we call it the Patient, and this is why we fly the V-Needle. We are going to use antibiotic thread that I just loaded into the aft port, and we’re going to stitch that wound up.”
“Pardon? So we have to steer this ship into the arm and then cross to the other side and then back? Sorry, it’s been a long time since I had to know how to do a suture.”
“Our canister does the suture for us. On impact, the outer part of the canister dislodges and sticks in the Patient while the rest unspools the thread. On second impact with the opposing side of the wound, the larger portion of the canister remaining also dislodges and sticks in the arm, automatically winding up the remainder of the thread so that the wound closes before the canister cuts off the excess thread.” Lieutenant Sterling’s words were bright with excitement for task, which was what Stacy expected from her, having heard about the Lieutenant before being assigned to her. “There is only a mile of thread in the canister, so we do have to start at the part of the wound with the least wide laceration.”
“Why me, then? Is it my job to fly?”
“Yes. I’ll be loading canisters into the back. It picked you because some of the maneuvers you’ve performed in your career are astonishingly precise. Now you need to do those same maneuvers with a ship that has to crash into squishy octopus flesh to do its job.”
“Will we feel the crash? Have you been doing this for awhile?”
“It’s very smooth. Only the action of the canister is very noticeable. You’ll get the hang of it right away, and I’ll advise you on the first few crossings. I’ve been doing this for ten years, and now I’m training you to do it with me too.”
“Why doesn’t he just grab the ship and pull it through, himself? He’s a big boy,” Stacy said. And then she looked at the view screen and saw the big octopus eye judging her, almost glowering.
“He doesn’t like to feel the pain, I think,” Lieutenant Sterling said, laughing. “Be careful where you put the needle.”
*****
It seemed like grisly work at first, picking the threshold of octopus flesh that could be punctured shallowly enough to damage as little tissue as possible. Sure enough, the V-Needle went right in, tugging only slightly when the canister dislodged.
It took about forty canisters to reach a conclusion to the stitching. Sterling was sweating from constantly loading and Stacy breathed a sigh of relief when the last canister plunked out of the aft of the ship on the last pass.
“You did great!” Sterling exclaimed.
“You too. I hope he agrees.”
“Even though your parents and family back home can’t hear anything about this, I know they’d be happy with what you’ve done. Patient is at least! Look at him.”
Stacy looked up at Patient’s eye, glowering down on her. Suddenly, her head started to feel hot, and she became nauseated.
“What’s happening?” she asked, but the words cut off and she blacked out before she could could fully finish. And then the images started to enter her brain. There was another planet and another dominant species that was given the V-Needle and the tools to help with his wounds. They did help for awhile, and then, after a hundred years or so, they stopped nursing the Patient’s wounds when he came to visit.
Dismayed, he showed himself to their whole planet in a plea for help, and they attempted to use the technology he showed them to kill him, driving a fleet of V-Needles into his body. It didn’t work, however, since he crushed the pilots with his great arms after they popped out of his body. His arms spewed some kind of organic propulsion through the red pock marks, moving with baffling speed and power. Then, he grabbed their moon and tossed it into their planet, wiping out everything that had ever lived there.
Stacy shook off the vision in a cold sweat and looked up at the eye again. Somehow, he winked at her, filling her head suddenly with a vision of them both standing in a flowering field, him being a normal sized octopus, and giving her a daisy with one outstretched tentacle.
“I guess he is a sweetheart. Kind of,” Stacy said, steering the V-Needle back towards Earth.
Whatever he was, destroyer or nice, space octopus, it was almost certainly better to know him than whatever it was that kept giving him those wounds, Stacy thought. Was it predation that kept hurting him or was it a more powerful warring aggressor? Better the octopus than the unknown.
Although one slip up might make him angry enough to destroy the world, perhaps he offered some measure of protection from whatever else lurked out there. She’d take care of him for as long as she could, she swore. As long as humanity could.
