Sunday February 14, 2010
Book 11: Massively Parallel — Part IV: Mallcop Command

Transcript

NARRATOR: Mall-One Emergency Medical Unit, deck 20, 35th south at the 330th...

SHODAN: What happened?  How is he?

BUNNIGUS: He crashed through a restaurant chasing a... ninja shoplifter?  I don't know.  But he ended up with a fork in his eye, two broken ribs, and a dislocated knee.

I had to tranquilize him to prevent him from further injuring himself.

BUNNIGUS: And I've just now learned that with the equipment here, I cannot confidently repair the Captain's right eye while letting him use the left.

BUNNIGUS: This raises an important question...

BUNNIGUS: What will Tagon do when he awakens, and I tell him he has to be blind for two days?

SHODAN: He'll tell you to remove the bad eye completely.  He'll settle for a roguish eye-patch until he can schedule two days of convalescence.

And that won't happen for about a year.

BUNNIGUS: Okay.  How likely is it that a roguishly-patched Captain Tagon will attempt more deck-jumping in spite of his exciting, new monocular lack of depth perception?

SHODAN: Extremely likely.  And he won't stop until he hurts himself again.

You're going to need to assign a corpsman to follow him around full-time.

BUNNIGUS: Thank you.  That's all I need.  I'm going to exercise my authority as Doctor and keep the Captain sedated until I've completed repairs on his eye.

BUNNIGUS: You're now the ranking officer, Lieutenant Commander Shodan.  Enjoy the next two days of command.

SHODAN: Why do I feel like you suckered me into this?

BUNNIGUS: Because that is exactly how this went down.