The Good Doctor's Tales Folio One Read online

The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio One ~

  Randall Allen Farmer

  Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Randall Allen Farmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio One ~

  Author’s Introduction

  This novella length document is a collection of short pieces, stand-alone and otherwise, related to “Once We Were Human” (Book One of the Commander series). As with the extra features common to DVDs, the various parts of “The Good Doctor’s Tales” are not essential to the story “Once We Were Human” tells; instead, they add to it.

  Hank Meets Stacy Keaton

  (1964)

  Dr. Henry Zielinski swiped off shaving cream, half way through his stubble, when he heard a loud knock. “Enter,” he said, peering around the door jam. His lead post-doc student and current aide, Dr. Frank Kepke, stuck his head into Hank’s small apartment in the onsite housing wing of the Bakersfield Transform Research Complex.

  “Hank, there’s some sort of problem,” Frank said, eyes wide. “They need us in the lab right now.”

  Shit. Hank took a few more quick passes at his face with his razor, splashed water, grabbed a tie and his suit coat, slipped from his slippers into his shoes, and started to run. The lab, a converted Monster pen and the only place secure enough in this research complex to hold a failed Focus suffering from Armenigar’s Syndrome, held Francine Sarles. Building 201.

  Life at the Complex had become routine for Dr. Henry Zielinski during the fourth week of his visit. As one of the staff doctors, he lived in their high security campus and didn’t have to worry about a hotel room or car rental. Now this.

  “What’s the word?” Hank asked, pausing in the lobby for only a moment to prop his feet alternately on the benches and tie his shoes. The scent of pancakes and breakfast sausage floated in from the kitchen down the hall, but breakfast would have to wait.

  “They didn’t say.” ‘They’ was the obnoxious Dr. Dana Reddicks, the local doctor in charge of the Sarles case. Frank considered Dr. Reddicks an idiot and Hank concurred. Experimental Transform research was both dangerous and difficult, especially with newly transformed victims of Transform Sickness. Dr. Reddicks called himself a ‘Transform GP’, though he knew little about new Transforms. If he was an expert on anything at all it was Monster extermination.

  The complex stretched out over a mile and a half, a full quarter mile wide, and the living quarters were nearly a half mile from Building 201. Even in the cool of the morning, Hank worked up a sweat by the time he reached the lab, where a Bakersfield Police Department vehicle crunched to a halt in front of 201. He winced and wondered what Sarles had done now. The woman was nothing but trouble, persnickety and constantly complaining about nearly everything.

  As Hank approached Building 201, he found Dr. White out front, arguing vigorously with one of the local security officers. Dr. White was another call-in, a national expert on Focus transformations based out of the Baylor School of Medicine. Hank didn’t see their third visiting doctor and Transform expert, Riddlehauser. A late riser, he was likely still asleep.

  “Well, if Dr. Reddicks is busy, let’s get hold of Director Johnson,” Dr. White said. The security officer shrugged, stepped back inside 201 to the vacant reception desk and dialed the phone. Dr. White, Frank and Hank followed him, close enough to hear his conversation. The security officer jawboned with the switchboard operator for a moment before turning to mutter into the phone, probably talking to the BTRC Director. Dr. White stood up straighter before he hung up the phone.

  “You doctors can all go in, I guess,” the security officer said. He opened the heavy locked access door for them.

  Hank rushed in and down the wide hall, followed by Doctors White and Kepke. When Hank smelled the stench of blood, ozone and the vaguely burned-lime-smell of altered juice, he stopped and let his two colleagues rush ahead. He knew what happened; viewing the results wouldn’t change a thing. A horrible gripping sadness weighed him down, his eyes almost tearing, the third time he had gone through this particular little ritual. Three points defined a plane, and Hank wasn’t happy to be on it. Up ahead, Dr. Kepke let off a string of curses, and suddenly feeling all of his 47 years, Hank began a slow walk.

  Sarles’ room was a mess, as was Sarles. The new Transform had somehow found some way to kill herself, and blood and other gore spattered across the bed, dresser, and floor, and collected in a pool around the body sprawled by the side of the bed. A couple of detectives poked through the contents of the dresser and Dr. Reddicks squatted next to the fallen Transform, pushing and prodding. When he saw Dr. Zielinski, he stood and walked over, ignoring Kepke and White.

  “As far as I can tell, Zielinski, Francine slit her wrists, slit her throat, and tried to stab herself in the heart. From the looks of it, she didn’t find her heart. In any case, just like with Focuses, those wounds weren’t enough to kill her, so our failed Focus stove her head in,” Dr. Reddicks said, a bit green of face and quite angry at the deceased.

  Hank studied the situation and the limb positions. He knew how tough Focuses were, and after the Rose Desmond episode, he knew the Armenigar’s Syndrome Focuses shared that toughness. Stove her head in, indeed! “If you flip over her body, you’ll find a pistol, my guess a .45 filched from the guards. She pitched forward after she shot herself, that’s what’s confusing you, why some of her brains are on the dresser.” The burnt juice stench overwhelmed the pistol discharge smell.

  Kepke and White turned and walked away, holding their mouths. Dr. Reddicks glared at Dr. Zielinski, did as Hank suggested, and found the weapon. One of the two police detectives gave Hank the stare, which he interpreted as the usual ‘you arrogant SOB’ look. Hank saw that often in his life, and he ignored it and went to work. He had a job to do and would save his grief until later.

  “I think you annoyed Reddicks, Hank, when you refused to stand in front of the cameras and tell the press what went wrong,” Dr. Kepke said. Fully packed and with suitcases at their feet, they waited at the main entrance for the taxi to take them to the Bakersfield airport to catch a puddle jumper to Los Angeles. There they would pick up a transcontinental 707 to take them back to Boston, their home base. The cool morning had been replaced by hot California afternoon, and beads of sweat dripped slowly down Hank’s sides.

  “He made it quite clear he owned the Sarles case,” Hank said. “Let him explain his mistakes.” Hank wasn’t happy with how this case had worked out. He was the national expert in Armenigar’s Syndrome, an expertise bought quite painfully over the last several years. The case he owned, Rose Desmond’s case, had been the one where the patient lasted the longest. Despite his success, he lacked the political pull necessary to take over the Sarles case, much to Sarles’ detriment. Dr. Reddicks had ignored several of his recommendations, and he had implored Dr. Reddicks to restrain Francine after their latest experiment failed. Dr. Reddicks ignored Zielinski’s recommendation, and now Francine was gone.

  The outcome could have been much worse. She could have gone psychotic and tried to kill the lot of them.

  “Do you think Francine would have recovered, given time?” Dr. Krause asked. Krause’s normal youthful ebullience had returned, save for an occasional twitch of the muscles under his left eye, picked up new this trip. He sat down on his largest suitcase and stretched his legs in front of him.

  “These fa
iled Focuses are all juice consumers, Frank,” Dr. Zielinski said. “She would have used up the bad juice she took in time. Francine had agreed that if this attempt didn’t work she would be willing to try another Transform volunteer. The added juice would have fixed her.”

  The Transform volunteers didn’t survive the failed Focus juice draw process, though. Francine had drawn juice once from a volunteer, and afterwards, she said she liked it too much. Whatever that meant. “The pleasure of a juice draw is a danger to my morality,” she had said. “I won’t do it again, unless I have absolutely no other choice.”

  Volunteers. There weren’t enough Focuses to support nine out of ten new Transforms; without a Focus new woman Transforms transformed into Monsters and new male