Shifting gears for a moment... (original) (raw)

Beatrix sat quietly at her desk, sorting carefully through the readings and the computer's analyses of the patient. Occasionally she would look up at the monitor, watch him turn fitfully in his daze, tied down as he was to his cot. Then she would take a sip of her tea (or what the automatic dispenser *called* tea; in truth it tasted, not quite, but almost exactly unlike tea), and sigh to herself, and look back at her data. Blissitol overdose cases were unpredictable. Any time now he would go into sweats as the drug worked its way out of his system.

"How's the patient?"

Beatrix looked up with a start. Leiutenant Bennis was not usually light enough on his feet to sneak up on anyone. She must have been more absorbed than she realized. She recovered composure and smiled. "Hey, Benny," she said.

"That's "leiutenant" while on duty, Bea," he said, but his grin betrayed him.

Beatrix rolled her eyes. "Right, leiutenant. Grover's doing just how one would expect, given the circumstances. A couple of minutes ago he was talking to the cat."

"Really?" Joel Bennis said nonchallantly. "What were they talking about?"

"I couldn't say," replied Beatrix, "He didn't actually say many words. But the speech centers of his brain were lighting up like Christmas," she said, and she brought up the topographic map of Grover's brain. But now she noticed something strange...

"Yeah?" Joel was grinning playfully. "And what did the cat say?"

The primary auditory cortex in this scan was over-activated. Beatrix pulled up the audio feed from the medical bay and selected the time frame matching the scan. Then she put the headphones to her ears and listened closely.

"Bea?" Beatrix jumped in her seat. She turned around. Oh, right. Joel was still here. The audio from the sound clip revealed no unusual noises.

"What?" replied Beatrix. She could hardly be distracted by Joel's banter right now. The primary auditory cortex was the first passage of audio input to the brain. A hallucination usually manifested in higher brain regions. So why was there activity here?

"I said, what did the cat say?"

Beatrix waved him off in annoyance. "The cat's a cat."

"How do you know?" replied Joel.

"What else would it be?" said Beatrix, but she was thinking, how does the auditory cortex record noise when there is no noise? A localized seizure? External pressure on the auditory nerve? Some neurological damage from prolonged drug exposure?"Maybe an emissary from the Nine?"

"Mmm," Beatrix muttered in agreement, before his words fully registered. "... The what?"

Beatrix turned around in time to catch a glimpse of the fire extinguisher before Leiutenant Bennis bashed her head with it, then everything went black.

"Sorry, Bea," muttered Joel. Then he knealt over Beatrix's unconscious body, raised the extinguisher, and brought it down once again.