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[naismith]

[A man appears on the network of indeterminate age, extremely short-- under five feet tall, easily-- with a slight hunch to his posture and Germanic features. His eyes are sharply alive, bright with challenge. There's no hesitation as he speaks, in a gravelly kind of accent that sounds almost Russian, the words flowing quickly as he makes them up on the spot.

Right now, he desperately needs intel of all kinds, and eventually a spotter to watch him while he uses his seizure inducer. That fact he's assiduously ignoring. He'd checked his neurotransmitter levels this morning, and he has at least three days, even with all the stress of arrival. No, four days, probably. Five. Really, he can go a lot longer without one than the ImpSec medical staff had given him credit for. --Focus, Vorkosigan.]

So. I see you all have quite a neat set up here. Let's not waste time. Who can bring me up to speed, ex tempore? Surely we have more intelligence than "don't say its name" on our bogey man. Since confirmed facts are likely to be scarce, personal accounts would be acceptable.

I'm also taking proposals for getting miserably drunk at the bar, as is traditional in times of drawn out peril. I need someone to drag me home, y'see; alcohol has quite a soporific effect on my constitution. [And Ivan is unfortunately not here to do the dragging. Miles ignores the resulting pang that inspires in him.

Then he hesitates imperceptibly, the memory of his previous catastrophic failure to report his seizures clanging loudly through his brain. No. He can't ignore this, much as he'd like to. The only thing that scares Miles more than never going home is turning into a vegetable, mindless and drooling. He can at least do the preliminary investigation about options.]

Information about local medical facilities would be appreciated as well. They're not all-- er, at this level of technology, are they? [He looks dubious about anyone surviving on that level of medical care, but immediately recovers with a wide, convincing smile.] I'd just like to know preemptively for when I wake up with a skull splitting headache.

Comments

[asoothingvoice]

Honestly?

People- more specifically, people from the 'foreigner' population- have come back after dying. If it's a fiction, it's a very, very realistic one.

[And one that makes for hard questions with potentially problematic answers when it comes to ethics, much less morals, when you're effectively in charge of a medical facility that doesn't have state of the art equipment even by her standards, much less Dr McCoy's. 'Do no harm' and 'Provide the best care possible' take on a drastically different meaning in a place where life-saving treatment for someone won't mean a full recovery and letting them die would instead.]

I can't say anything about what's available on the network [While she knows how to use a computer and isn't dense, she doesn't exactly have the time to look at everything, and she doesn't know how to use anything besides the default encryption if she even bothers] but there's still plenty that we don't know.

[naismith]

What kind of coming back after dying? [he asks promptly, unable to resist that line of inquiry. Miles is a font of questions and he feels positively adrift without more solid information.] It's not unheard of, with certain medical leaps. I've done it myself. Very painful, I don't recommend the experience. [The flippant way he fires that off entirely conceals the very real trauma associated with the event.]

Cloning is one possible way of extending the lifespan, but not the only. My own miraculous resurrection was made possible with cryogenic freezing, for example.

[Ah, another refusal to speak openly on the network. How curious. There must be something more behind that; Miles makes a mental note to look into it later.] But I understand the need for secrecy. If you'd be so kind as to indulge me sometime, Madame, I'd be very grateful if you'd meet with me and brief me in full.

[asoothingvoice]

When I said that, I meant that I don't know everything; I don't use the network very much compared to some people. I can still tell you what I do know if you want.

As far as I can tell, when one of us dies, they're brought back in a cloned body at the palace. I'm not planning on getting myself into a position where I will die, but I'll keep that in mind. It must have been terrible. [Seeing how patients react from near death accidents is one thing. She can't even begin to imagine something like that.]

[naismith]

[He deflates a bit.] Oh. That's disappointing. [Wait, don't be rude, Miles; this lady has been recommended to you by several people, she must be some help.] But I'd like to know everything you can tell me, of course.

[As she goes on, he grows more and more serious, troubled and taking the matter of clones with explicit gravity.] I expect you'll tell me next it's some form of magic and not a brain transplant responsible for it, too. That's how it is-- well, on Jackson's Whole, in my home galaxy. Horrendously murders the poor soul who has the dubious privilege of being the clone.

[And that little fact has been plaguing him assiduously since the second he found on the network that they're all clones themselves. Was there a dead Miles Vorkosigan somewhere? Several dead Miles Vorkosigans? It was hideous to contemplate.]