We’re going to the clinic.” He started leading us down the hall. Fortunately, the clinic was in the next building and we didn’t have to walk to the other side of campus. Doctor D said, “There were no alien fanatics in Alexander Sevik’s life, at least not in the simulation. I’ll take out a ticket to report it.”
Frustration and rage boiled up in me -- Alex’s emotions. This bureaucrat is just not getting it. I stepped in front of him, a bold action that I wouldn’t have done but Alexander Sevik would have. “No, sir. This isn’t just a glitch or a prank. Someone has broken into Vantu Primary and is leveraging the university’s computers. I believe it’s a Harshan anarchist.”
Now you’re scaring me, love, Muna cast. She squeezed my side.
Doctor D took a step back for comfort. “That’s quite a leap of logic,” he said. “A glitch in the simulation does not mean terrorists are hacking the Primary.”
I shook my head. “Remember the last Harshan attack? They tried using university simulations to indoctrinate an entire generation.”
“Yes, and security is so tight now that they can’t alter the teaching programs or jump into a simulation.”
Haji laughed, “And what will the virus do, change the grades? Oh no, they all failed Humanity Studies. It’s the end of the free world as we know it.”
“The staring man told me he would kill all the Vantu aliens with a virus. How would a homeless man in the 20th Century know about the Vantu nation hundreds of years in the future?”
Haji laughed. “He was a psychic wino.”
Muna signed. “Please, this is serious.”
Haji stopped laughing. “Serious about Tenbu failing the 20th Century or about his conspiracy theory?”
She didn’t answer him out loud, but in a couple of heartbeats he glanced at me and gave one long, “Oh.” She must have cast something too him like, My poor baby is nuts.
No one believed me. So much for Alexander’s boldness. I stepped aside and followed Doctor D to the clinic. I rubbed my hands. No tingling. No holes.
The clinic was a two story building with a clean, spacious lobby, mostly maintained by medical bots, and frequented by students with alcohol or caffeine hangovers. Service was handled on a walk-in basis: find a clinic room with a green light above it, establish your ID, and treatment would begin.
“Okay,” Haji said as we walked up to the clinic. “Here we are. You’ll soon get your mind back, Tenbu, if they find it.” Muna elbowed him.
Three examination rooms had red lights above them and their sliding glass doors were closed. One was opaque for privacy. We followed Doctor D towards the one with a green light above it. The glass door slid open and we stepped into the brightly lit but small room. It had the antiseptic odor I expected to smell earlier when I woke from the Alexander Sevik simulation. I sat down on the examination bed, and the others gathered around.
When Doctor D stepped up to the medical bot, it activated. It was a standard, late model device with a round face that had only two features: glowing eyes under drooping brows and a small oval hole for a mouth with a hint of a smile. Not having legs to walk on, only a torso, arms and head, it hung from the ceiling on a brace secured in an oval track, its many cables drooping from the track like tethers. It spoke with an unhurried maternal voice, which reminded me of my spinster aunt with her chubby cheeks and quick wit. “Good morning, Dr. Danjuma. I am physician’s assistant RN45. Records show that one of your students had a medical complication during a simulation.”
“That’s right,” Doctor D said. “He was...”
The physician rushed into the room, all a-fluster with excuses. She appeared to be in her late-twenties, only about ten years older than the rest of us. It was hard to tell since it looked like she spent all her spare time in cosmetic surgery -- not as a surgeon, but as a patient. “Oh, Dr. Danjuma, I’m so sorry we didn’t send a medical unit to escort you. This morning’s been a handful, packed with meetings.” She glanced at me and then at the medical bot. “You’re recording?”
“Always,” the bot answered.
The physician flicked back her hair and regarded me. Her expression softened immediately and she took both my hands in hers. She cocked her head to one side and said softly, “What’s your name?”
“Ale... Tenbu.”
“Aletenbu, honey,” she said.
“Tenbu,” everyone said.
“Tenbu,” she corrected, “you had a very, very trying experience, and we, the medical staff at Bono Manso University, will make every effort to ensure that you are cared for. You are aware that this conversation is being recorded, are you not? Good. You acknowledge that any injury you may or may not have sustained is not as a result of the Bono Manso University or its representatives and that you in no way hold the university at fault for current or future injuries. Is this correct?”
“Ah, I guess so.”
“Good. And do you also relinquish any right you may have to law suits?”
“Um...I don’t have insurance. I was going to fill out the form at the unemployment office, but the...” Alex again. I am Tenbu, not Alex. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ If ...” She looked up at the ceiling and pressed a finger to her right earlobe. “I’m with patient.” She sucked on her lower lip and rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’ll be right there.” She lowered her hand and her expression softened. “If there is anything else you need, please ask RN45.” She squeezed my hands, nodded to Doctor D, and left the room.
Doctor D shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “Mindless corporations,” he said. “That’s what’s killing humanity.” He regarded us and spoke as if giving a personal lecture. “What threatens to make us inhuman? Is it the machines we put into us or the machines that we become?”
The bot turned on its brace toward me and with its two gentle arms, helped me lay back on the examination table.
Doctor D said, “It’s not bio-circuitry but corporations that dehumanize us. This medical bot has more humanity than that so-called physician who is nothing more than an extension of the insurance companies.”
A blue beam of light panned over me twice from head to toe, and the bot said, “Tenbu, for an unknown reason your hypothalamus implant isn’t secreting enough pseudo-melatonin. People your age typically secrete about five to twenty-five micrograms of melatonin per day. I’m reading only two. You’ve been experiencing sleep deprivation. During the simulation, your implants are supposed to speed up your circadian clock. They do this to keep up with the simulation’s six hundred thousand fold temporal acceleration. Your subconscious knows it’s in a simulation. It attempted to disengage, and one of the side effects was hallucinations. It weakens the brain’s ability to discriminate between reality and simulation.”
“Hallucinations during a simulation,” Haji chuckled, “it sounds like an oxymoron.”
The bot’s head tilted slightly. “It can be easily corrected with a twenty-minute brain surgery.”
Muna put her arm around me again and gave me a squeeze. “At least it’s not something serious.”
“Brain surgery sounds pretty serious, and I’d rather the bot take two hours.”
The bot’s eyes flickered. “Oh no, honey,” it said. “It’s not invasive or even painful. You inhale a nasal spray filled with nanobots, I guide them to the right location, and it will be done before you realize it.”
“And,” Haji said, “he’ll stop hallucinating?”
“I wasn’t hallucinating.”
“Yes,” the bot answered, “and we will restore his memories as they were before the class session.”
“I’ll forget it all, including the staring man and the hole, the hole he’s using to get into the system?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to do it. He was real.”
“You have to get the surgery,” Doctor D said. “You keep thinking you’re Alex.”
I regarded him and answered with Alexander-boldness, “Really? Or w
hat? You can’t keep me from class. It’s not contagious.” I looked at the medical bot, “Is it?”
“No.”
Doctor D shook his head. “It’s for your own good.”
“Can we force him?” Muna asked.
“Of course not, he needs to give consent.”
I hopped off the table. “Look,” I said, “I’m going to report this first, and then once National Security or whoever has what they need, then I’ll get the surgery.”
Doctor D pulled his pad out of his back pocket and unfolded it. He tapped the translucent screen several times before handing it to me. “Here. The National Security link is on top.”
As we walked out of the exam room and into the lobby, a form appeared on the pad with the title: “Report a Cyber Threat” and together we filled it out. When we got to the line requesting identity of the source, I hesitated. “Should we say it was the class, or me,” I asked.
“You,” Haji said.
“If I put me, they may not believe it.”
“Why not?” Haji asked. “You think they’ll look up your medical records and say, ‘We can’t trust this guy, ‘cause he’s crazy’?”
“Let the government worry about that,” Doctor D said.
I filled my name in, finished the form, and submitted it. A message popped up stating that the form had been received and I would be contacted within ten minutes.
“That’s fast,” Haji said. “We might as well wait. The only thing we have to look forward to is that calc midterm.”
“I have to get ready for my