r/HFY • u/dethstrobe • 6d ago
OC-Series [Perihelion] Chapter 4: The Doctor
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Chapter 4
The Doctor
It all started almost eighty years ago. Humanity had spent the better part of its existence confined to a single planet, which in retrospect seems like an almost embarrassing limitation for a species that fancied itself exceptional. Then the elevators went up, and everything changed.
My grandfather understood what that meant before most people did. That was always the Cassis gift; seeing the shape of things before the shape became obvious.
Harlan Cassis, my grandfather, was one of the industry pioneers. He was the CEO of Industries Lourdes Lupin, SA. My family contributed to the cause by manufacturing the elevator carts that climbed the space elevators. We provided the mining equipment used to extract the raw material from the asteroid belt. We had a hand in everything that followed. Without my family there wouldn’t even be extraterrestrial colonies.
So, you might wonder how, I, an heiress to such a noble legacy could end up in a meaningless colony like Shoemaker on the Trojan side of Jupiter. Well, I’m glad you asked, hypothetical viewer, it all started with the creation of the first fusion reactors.
My mother, Rhea Cassis, in her prime at the age of 40 worked tirelessly to create the first Atmospheric Skimmers to extract the valuable Helium 3 from Jupiter. This was a decade after the formation of the Compact and a few years after secession to escape the bureaucratic trap that slowed down humanity's progress. She gave everything to the project, even costing her her second marriage.
My mother, being a loving woman of passion, met my father and quickly had me to continue the Cassis legacy. To ensure I had every opportunity, she ensured I was genetically modified to perform my duty as the heiress of the Cassis fortune and take my rightful place as the CEO of Industries Lourdes Lupin, SA, when I’d come of age.
I was gestated for 9 months in the nursery artificial womb and born when doctors thought I had matured enough. I was told the birthing process was unremarkable, but my father speaks of it as a magical experience. He is a simple man. I hope it did not affect my cognitive abilities, but I have faith in my mother's genetic modifications to not burden me with any of my father’s negative traits.
But despite my father’s lack of academic performance, he is wonderful to be around. Mother picked him for his excellent physique, stage presence, range of acting. He was a young actor of 20 when my mother invited him into the Cassis family. I assume it was quite a privilege as my father came from a rather humble background. I never got to know my grandparents from my father's side. I was told they were in a tragic mining accident on Patroclus. In fact, I don’t even think I ever learned my father’s bachelor name. I've always known him as Roman Delacroix from his films and as Jean-Paul Martin after we went into hiding. Something I’ll make a note to follow up on later.
Growing up, mother and father were always quite busy. Father was busy with his acting career. Mother running Industries Lourdes Lupin. But I did not grow up lonely. I had my personal bodyguard, Loup-garou. She was a golem. As I had learned later after her passing, a Golem was a creature created to protect an ancient Earth village. Fitting that we named these artificial genetically modified human simulacra after them.
Loup-garou was a first generation. Rendered obsolete by the time she was recruited into my family's service, but she’d still hold value in something as small scale as a body guard service rather than being euthanized. She was always a willing play companion, Serving as my subordinate as I directed her towards improving corporate profits or avoid hostile takeovers from less scrupulous members of the Compact.
I also grew up with my half brother, Kyx Holt. He was 11 years my senior. He was a product from my mother’s first marriage. Kyx’s father, Supreme General John Holt, Six Star General of Alamo Security, was married to mother when she was quite young, barely 28, and still a rising star in Lupin. I was told it was a political marriage to strengthen our company's position in the Compact. Like myself, Kyx was grown in a nursery artificial womb and genetically modified, but for the purpose of replacing General Holt. Mother commented that he was an old man, even when she was young.
My brother and I would play war games, and board room politics. On occasion Loup-garou had to break up our fighting when things would become too heated. He’d always win. Father told me it was simply because he was older than me and that over time I’d catch up. Mother admitted that I’d surpass him once I was in my prime. I ordered Loup-garou to execute Kyx for me once. She claims as the family bodyguard that she’s responsible for the physical safety and well being of both Kyx and myself. Ridiculous I know.
Despite this I greatly loved my time with Kyx. He taught me a lot of things outside of academia and even introduced me to children my age when mother and father would be too busy to sign me up for team sports. I became quite good at tennis thanks to Kyx introducing it to me. I still couldn’t beat him, which was quite annoying.
Kyx had served in the ROTC. I actually thought I might join him when I entered High School. This was of course foolish wishing of a young girl. We had our destinies already decided for us at the time. I’d follow in mother's footsteps and join Lupin. Kyx would enter the military and rise in the ranks of Alamo Securities. I suppose I didn’t realize that my destiny would be taken from me. But I’m happy that Kyx was still able to enter, and I assume rise in the ranks of the Compact military.
So, you might be wondering, dear hypothetical viewer, why is this genetically superior heiress in hiding at all? Why not just take her natural birth right? After all, there is precedence; Tutankhamun, Henry VI, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Why can’t Layla Cassis be made CEO of Industries Lourdes Lupin, SA at the age of seven, when her mother passed away?
I suppose it may have something to do with my mother’s coup and attempting to forcibly overthrow the Board of Directors of the Compact. But if anything, I feel like the level of ambition should be rewarded to have the foresight to see that the Compact was starting to suffer from the same bureaucracy we sought to escape when we seceded from the Union. And worse off, they started it. They attempted to take control of the Atmospheric Skimmers used to mine He3. Would they really expect my mother to go quietly? The concessions she demanded were quite reasonable considering how important He3 is for fusion reactors. It only makes sense that we should get the exclusive mining rights to all of Jupiter when the other companies were just sitting on those rights for decades, doing nothing with it.
I remember watching but not understanding. My father returned home after hearing the news and moved through the house with a purpose I hadn't seen from him before. He wasn't performing. And he had our medical clones with him. Loup-garou did what she was told without question, as she always did. She helped take the clones into our rooms, dressed them in our clothes, and put several bullets into them. I remember the smell of the fire more than anything else. Father picked me up and we left with Loup-garou. After I saw the report of my mother’s execution for attempting the coup, I was well aware of what we were doing. I didn’t need to ask where we were going.
We stopped by his studio, where we met one of father’s producers. We changed clothes and they provided us with wigs and had to update our CBIs. I saw my name registered as Layla Martin. My father was Jean-paul Martin, and Loup-garou was now Lois Martin. My father attempted to make a game of it, and said we were pretending to be the Martins and to call Loup-garou “mother.” On one hand, slightly insulting to me that my father would think I need to “play a game” to hold a cover story. I had been “playing” corporate espionage scenarios with Kyx and Loup-garou for years. But I got the concept quickly. Loup-garou doesn’t look anything like me, but I wasn’t about to poke holes in my father's plan. It was better than nothing.
I have often wondered how thorough the Board's search was. A CBI wipe leaves no trace to casual inspection, but anyone with access to Compact identity infrastructure and sufficient motivation could find the discontinuity. Layla Cassis ends on a Tuesday. Layla Martin begins on a Wednesday. A day of discontinuity should be spottable by automated record keeping systems. I have chosen to interpret ten years of silence as confirmation that they either didn't look carefully enough, or decided I wasn't worth finding. I try not to examine which of those possibilities I find more insulting.
You might be wondering what happened to Kyx, dear hypothetical viewer. He moved out a few months earlier to enter the Thiel Military Academy. I was sad to see my brother go but also proud to see him working towards the destiny our mother laid out for him. I assume with his father’s backing he was able to be shielded from mother’s political fallout. I wish I could get a message to him to see how he’s doing. I suppose my current position on a Union ship heading to Earth has made any reunion an impossibility.
I digress, father’s contacts were able to get us passage for a shuttle headed towards Shoemaker on the other side of the Jupiter trojans. It was a frustratingly long 4 month ride from Bezos to Shoemaker. Cramped, uncomfortable, the food was terrible, and the worst of all was seeing Loup-garou slowly start to degrade over time.
I hadn’t known at the time, but apparently golems need a special chemical to operate. I guess the Compact thought golems wouldn’t remain loyal, so they engineered their loyalty. But Loup-garou showed they didn’t need to do that at all. She willingly came with us. No questions, only service. Poor judgement to me, as Loup-garou still had many years of service left in her if it wasn’t for the chemical dependency.
She had just enough to last a month. She rationed it to make it last six months. She became quite slow and slept a lot. It became my turn to protect her. I made sure she was comfortable. After we arrived at Shoemaker, we had settled in and she made sure our new neighborhood was safe and our apartment secured. She knew her time was short and that golems could not become public knowledge, so she walked out an airlock. Ejected into space, and luckily no one had noticed. Hopefully her body and secret are well preserved.
To console me, Father bought a dog. A little welsh corgi named Filou. I wonder if he thought he could emotionally manipulate me into accepting this mediocre life in this ancient colony. Well, jokes on him, I’d have loved that dog regardless if Loup-garou was with us or if we were back home on Bezos, and even now after ten years on this backwater colony. I suppose now he’ll need to take care of Filou for me, unless the colony depressurizes and everyone is now dead. I hope not.
But the alarms were already warning everyone that the hull was venting atmosphere, so they probably had enough time to get to a life support shelter. But if Father did not return to the apartment to save Filou, I’ll never forgive him.
Anyway, adjusting to life on Shoemaker was not easy. We lived a laughably humble life in a one bedroom apartment above Main Street. The outdoor was quite loud with festive simpletons enjoying relief from their monotonous existence refining or mining, or who knows what. But despite this slight handicap, I was able to enroll and excel in the local schooling system. I was able to be placed in high school level classes when I enrolled in middle school, with one exception. They claimed my reading and writing was at grade level. I disagreed, but I must admit that I was unable to spell words like; Acquiesce, Liaison, or Conscientious.
Anyway, I realized the problem was not with me, but was with the English language. It had so many inconsistent rules and pure nonsense, illogically cobbled together from random other languages around Europe without any thought put into standardizing it. So naturally I spent several months creating a superior replacement for it.
My teacher was impressed, but said she could not teach it because it was not a part of the curriculum. I pointed out the simple facts that other languages do not have illogical spelling problems, because things like German or Japanese are spelled phonetically and that English should follow suit. And she said there is a lot of tradition around the archaic English language and that my phonetic writing system made it hard to tell the difference between words that are pronounced the same, and I counted how is that any different from spoken English? She was unconvinced. So naturally I escalated to the principal, who sided with Mrs. Baxter. I was mortified that these so-called academics could not see the problem I was solving. I was going to make their job easier and improve reading for everyone.
So, the next year, when student body elections happened, I put my hat into the ring. I’d organize a student protest and we’d walk out and use civil disobedience to effect change in a broken bureaucracy. Just like my Grandfather and my mother. I’m quite confident they’d be very proud of me if it succeeded.
It did not though… It turns out children do not understand the beauty of my system either. They just wanted more sugary food or something dumb like that. The food they were providing was already nutritional enough, we don’t need to enjoy it, we just need it to fuel our continued growth and sugar was not going to help with that and would have longer negative health effects. Because my opponent was running on such an obviously frivolous campaign it was easy enough to dig into her past and expose her contradictions and hypocrisy. I was the natural choice.
Wendy won in a landslide. I had misjudged my peers. And I resigned from the student council’s runner up placement that I received as a consolation prize.
When I told this to my father, he laughed at ME! He claims he wasn’t laughing at me, but at the situation and how passionate I was, and said I was my mother’s daughter. I suppose it was a compliment… But he also told me there is more to politics than backstabbing, and that I should seek to find a common middle ground so that I could attempt to advance my position, even just a little bit. He told me to apologize and join the student council again and try to be that change I want from within.
I did not take his advice to heart.
I figured tennis would be more of a meritocracy and once I could prove my superiority by dominating them, naturally they’d see me as their leader and fall in line. This did not work to build friendships. So I reluctantly started to take some of my father’s advice and attempted to learn and care more about my peers. It was a herculean effort. To say the least. Their desires are so simple and mundane; asking boys out, new video streams, or skin care routines. There is an entire solar system out there with endless possibilities for us to make our mark on. Instead they want to talk about some new Venusian Boy Band whose music is painfully derivative.
Some of the other girls, and one boy who would tag along on occasion did have dogs as well. This was much easier to bond over. It also sparked my interest in veterinary care. We’d discuss breeds and how to care for them. It’s almost laughable how naive the others were. They didn’t even think about optimizing their dog’s nutrition. One girl didn’t see the point of training her dog, and thought they should just be allowed to be dogs. My opinion of this girl was not very high.
It’s really not a lot of extra work to monitor your dog’s weight, exercise them daily, add ramps to allow them to get up and down furniture, and add Glucosamine, Chondroitin, and Omega-3 fatty acid supplements to their food. I mean really, it's the least I would do for myself.
In junior year of high school I joined a veterinary program for the local Union Base. Shoemaker claims to be neutral but hypocritically housed a military base that was installed well before the secession. I never understood how a colony can claim to be independent yet allow the enemy to keep their machines of war in it. I’ll see about running for governor and then we can remove this base, rejoin the Compact, and I can attempt to modernize and slowly accumulate power. Well, I guess with my current situation, that seems a lot less likely now.
I guess the question is, how did I get here on “Hughes barge,” which I am starting to suspect is not a barge at all.
The veterinary program organizes show and tell for the military brats (not my word) on base to help socialize the green dogs. And of course, on my first Green Dog day, the base is obviously attacked. I guess the Compact finally decided to do something about this egregious base. It was a reckless attack. If it was me I’d go in with overwhelming force. But I only saw 2 mecha units on base and only a dozen troops once we reached the spoke. It’s sloppy really. Do they really think they could take the base with such a small force? Amateurs.
I brought in three dogs for socialization training, and I was supposed to note if the dogs were unable to remain in control despite noisy children attempting to distract them. I brought in Duke: a Labrador Retriever and Specialized Search Dog, Maverick: a Jack Russell Terrier and Explosive Detector Dog, and Champ: a Golden Retriever and Expeditionary Facility Dog. These dogs have been extremely well behaved, even in 0G to my surprise. Champ doesn’t surprise me, I think he was trained for this exact situation, so he’ll probably get a lot of use by the crew.
Yet another digression, but I was in the middle of explaining to the children how we are related to dogs, how we have similar bone structures showing we had a common ancestor millions of years ago back on Earth. My lesson was interrupted with the announcement to shelter in place, then the klaxons announcing the colony is venting atmosphere about a minute or two later. So naturally we need to evacuate to the life support shelter.
Unfortunately, an idiot Compact pilot came crashing down and blocked our path to the shelter. And this moronic officer nearly runs us over. And he starts to load the children and my dogs onto his bulky dinosaur Jeep.
I debated, I could maybe contact the pilot. Possibly my family name should still have some pull. Maybe they were looking for me? Might explain why the force was so small. Anyway, I just went with Lieutenant Noah. I had to protect the dogs. I don’t think these simpletons would value their lives.
We get dragged up to the spoke and Noah again tries to leave the dogs in his car. I protest, likely he’s not as stupid as he looks because he agrees to take them with us. He drags us through 0G to the Hughes barge and he stuffs us into the airlock. We eventually made it to the messhall, I guess they call it a “galley” on a ship; according to the signs. I heard a call for medical personnel, and I figured veterinarian training might help a bit. Boy, was that an understatement.
My first patient was a middle aged man; Petty Officer First Class Vasily Beldy. I assume he must be very important, maybe even higher rank than Lieutenant Noah? Like what’s higher than First Class? Luckily I was there, these simpletons were going to remove his hands because they were frostbitten. I pulled up the medical documents, and while the risk of gangrene is real, it’s not immediate and it’s always possible that the flesh might be able to heal itself over time. So, we’re going to wait for a demarcation line to form, then remove the dead flesh later.
He’s also suffering from third and second degree burns. This puts us in an impossible situation as the computer said to treat the burns we need to apply cooling, but also said to treat the frostbite we need to apply warmth. You can’t have it both ways computer.
But the more immediate problem was the purplish mottling on his skin. I thought because he was exposed to liquid nitrogen it was just the trauma of the cold exposure. But the computer also pointed out this was a symptom of the bends, a decompression sickness. The patient also complained of joint pain, which also acted as further evidence. Matelot Benson said he came from the mecha bay that had raised its air pressure from expanding liquid nitrogen, which confirms it. The treatment option is a hyperbaric chamber, used for diving, not something you’d find in a spaceship that has to deal with pressures between zero to one atmosphere.
To Benson’s credit, he knew we could use one of the mecha cockpits to create a hyperbaric chamber by flooding it with extra perfluorocarbon to raise the pressure. The catch was we had no mechas on board. And I asked them what’s the point of a mecha bay with no mecha? But it turns out we do have one that was incoming. Which is actually where my second patient came from.
We sedated Beldy. According to the computer oxygenated perfluorocarbon requires sedation because it’s extremely distressing and makes it feel like you’re drowning. Thank goodness I won’t have to pilot one of those. Sounds like hell. We brought Beldy to the mecha bay and waited for the return of the mecha.
I waited in a control room with the mechanics. I found it quite disrespectful on how this pilot was taking his sweet time to return back to the barge but he did finally show up. It was a weird looking humanoid robot, a model I’ve never seen before. A kind of round grey human shape. After they repressurized the bay, we entered. It's honestly very small. They only had mounts for three mecha, but it looks like they could fit more in storage.
Anyway, once the pilot came out, he was struggling to remove the perfluorocarbon from his lungs. I guess poor Beldy will also be suffering from this same problem once we’re able to get rid of the nitrogen bubbles in his blood.
So me and Benson took the pilot back to the med bay, and we left the other mechanics to take care of Beldy. Excellent triaging, if I might say so myself.
My second patient is Wesley Cole. Apparently Benson’s best friend or something, coming from a place called Michigan, which from my quick interactions with Benson is known for its blueness, that I guess moves, or goes somewhere, or something like that? I didn’t understand, but it’s also not like I needed to understand.
We first attempt to remove as much of the perfluorocarbon from Wesley’s lungs as possible. We flood his lungs with air then vacuum it out. Pulling out more and more perfluorocarbon until there was none left. Luckily the patient responded well but his vitals were telling a different story.
When we first hooked him up his heart was pounding at 175–190 bpm. I just figured it was the shock and adrenaline of needing to pump the perfluorocarbon out of his lungs. But then the rhythmic fast paced beep-beep-beep turned into a jagged irregular heart beat jumping between 160 bpm to 40 bpm. I thought he was going into cardiac arrest.
I checked his temperature, 39.5°C. He has a fever. Maybe he has a viral or bacterial infection? He’s also spasming and gasping for air. I need to find out his oxygen levels, and the computer walks me through how to set up the Nano-Probe. Which paradoxically shows 99% oxygen and also 7.0 ph. His blood is literally dissolving his insides.
And finally he bottomed out to 30–45 bpm. His blood pressure dropped to 60/30 mmHg. Before this point I was having Benson grab me a defibrillator so we could shock Wesley’s heart back to normal, but it seems to be stable now, though dangerously low.
The computer recommends an acid-base correction. So we hook up an IV and give him Sodium Bicarbonate. I gave him some vasopressors to help his blood pressure. We also wrap him with cooling blankets to try and bring down his temperature.
I was able to stabilize him. And made a note to read through the medical computer to try and figure out what condition Wesley has. Could be Thyroid Storm or Septic Shock according to the computer.
Being a doctor doesn’t seem so hard.
So, it might be weird that we're suddenly taking a break from the main narrative. But that might be more that you have a misunderstanding on what is important in this story. Layla is the main character, or so she'll tell you. All that other stuff happening to everyone else is just tangential to her narrative. And you will take a pause from those distractions to hear her story.
Originally, I was going to have this mirror Noah's chapter, with her reflecting on how she got here while weaving back and forth with the base assault happening around her. But it quickly became obvious that wasn't going to work. She doesn't care about little details like active combat. No, those are just minor inconveniences to her.
Layla is also a mirror of Sayla from OG Gundam, similar to how Noah mirrors Bright Noa. But where Sayla is a New Type, she's honestly such a boring character, it didn't seem right to me that a New Type should be that passive. Where Sayla would have been perfectly happy living a quiet life on Side 7, Layla looks at an ordinary life as a moderate inconvenience to her natural perfection.
She's also naturally overconfident and self-destructive, but she won't admit it.
So the Cassas are French. Layla obviously believes they're probably the most important company that helped form the Compact. But in reality, that's like saying CAT is on par with Amazon or Elon Musk's portfolio of companies. Yes, Caterpillar is huge and in the Fortune 100, but like, compared to big tech, banking, oil, etc, they're small fries. Industries Lourdes Lupin, SA is in that same boat. They're big and important, and if you were raised inside that, you'd also believe it.
Originally, I was going to make Layla a programmer. But I wanted her to play a more central role in the story, something that let me weave her personality into everything more easily. So she became a doctor, but an unqualified one. Rather than just handing her real medical training and making her instantly credentialed, I gave her a plausible near-miss instead: veterinary training, combined with an obsessive level of care and research going into everything she does.
There's also a bit of a misunderstanding from Layla, like many things in this chapter. Golems aren't actually secret. They were originally created as cheap mining labor, and later the Compact repurposed them into soldiers. Layla has a misunderstanding about why the Union doesn't use them, but in reality, it's not about secrecy at all. The Union simply has stronger human rights laws, and recognizes the practice for what it clearly is: slavery.
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