Thousand+ Words for Nov. 21, 2025

"Doctor! Seven or Eight Seconds is all I can Manage!" the ship's Seventh-Degree....

"Doctor! Seven or eight seconds is all I can manage!" the ship's Seventh-Degree Fragmenter said with alarm.

"That will be fine, Clyde," the ship's surgeon responded calmly. The doctor stood next to a table in the middle of the room; the Fragmenter floated in a round container of water about the size of a beach ball. It had a small base at the bottom and looked for all the world like one of the snow globes that Dr. Petersen's wife had collected, one for every Christmas, since they were first married. The collection had stopped three years ago when she was killed in a vacuum accident on the Exeter. The Fragmenter's bowl floated above the table with no visible means of support, and in fact, the means of support certainly was not visible. "No need to get excited, I need no more than four seconds, tops, I promise."

The Fragmenter didn't look reassured, but he flipped over in his bowl. "I won't be able to talk or move while I'm holding him open for you, either," he said.

"I know, Clyde, and we really appreciate what you're doing here, you know that," the doctor said smoothly. The humans standing in the room smiled slightly; some actually rolled their eyes. "I say, we really appreciate what you're doing here, you know that!" the doctor said more insistently.

The others picked up on it. "Oh, yes," Captain O'Neal's baritone sounded from the back. "We sure do appreciate it, Clyde. Don't we, everybody?"

A chorus of Oh, yes and Sure do and Thanks, Clyde went around the room. It went on for some time as the Fragmenter swam around his bowl and made that sound they make when they're nervous--the kind of sound a hungry cat makes when someone opens a can of tuna.

Finally, the Fragmenter stopped circumnavigating his "All right, then, Doctor," Clyde said. He floated up to the top of the bowl and extended an eyestalk warily. Clyde's eyes were on stalks, but below them, on a spherical part of his body which humans naturally registered as a face were two organs that we easily interpret as eyes, although they were actually organs of temperature sensation. Below that was a protrusion that looked something like a nose; it was his means of producing vibrations in the water, when needed, and below that was the Fragmenter's reproductive slot. These anatomical details combined into what humans in close association with Fragmenters came to regard as a face.

The Fragmenters, for their part, understood the importance of a face as the focus for human interaction and communication, and so they took the small effort to reflect on these bits and pieces movements that would maintain the illusion for the benefit of the human crew when Fragmenters served on ships--and nearly all of them had at least one Fragmenter nowadays.

Clyde curled the ends of his reproductive slot down and changed the shape of his temperature spots into something consistent with the look of a human frown, and moved up close to the glass of his container. His eyestalk scanned the room.

"Clyde, you ready to get started?" the doctor asked.

"Yes," he said. He descended and curled up flat on the bottom of his container. The doctor moved into position above the form, a young bare-chested man, that was lying on the table in the middle of the room.

The man on the table looked up at the doctor, uncertain. "Now, doc, you sure this isn't going to hurt, right?" he asked.

"Not a bit, Phil," the doctor responded. "You won't feel a thing, I promise. Lie still and don't tense up, okay?" Petersen put his hand on the man's bare shoulder and smiled at him. "Really. I've done this a hundred times, you understand? And Clyde's done it thousands of times, right Clyde?"

"This will be my four thousand and seventieth medical procedure," Clyde responded from the bottom on his bowl. "And this will be my four thousand six hundred and seventeenth fold," he said.

"See?" the doctor smiled again. "Clyde really knows what he's doing, and he's going to be doing most of the work. We really appreciate him."

There was a moment of silence, and then the others understood.

"Yeah, we sure do."

"Clyde's the greatest."

"Couldn't do it without him."

Various other bits and pieces of praise went around the room. There was no response from Clyde, but at least there was also no complaint. "One moment, please," Clyde said. "I'll signal when I'm ready, and then you can get ready, Doctor, and then I'll signal for a two-second countdown."

"Signal when ready, then signal for two-second count," the doctor repeated, following human-Fragmenter coordination protocol. It was automatic with him; he'd been working with Fragmenters almost since first contact with them thirty years ago.

The crew members who had come to watch the procedure crept a little closer, wanting to catch a glimpse of the strange sight that would be visible when the Fragmenter turned the space that the man's chest occupied through the fourth dimension and exposed his interior.

The Fragmenter mewed again, this time it was something between a purr and a yelp--that was the ready signal. The doctor put his hands over the man's chest. After a few seconds, there was another mew, this one a little bit different, more contented-sounding, and the doctor's lips moved. "One...two...."

And then it happened. There was a blurring of the circumference around the man's chest, and inside the blurring, a distorted view of intestines and organs could be seen. It was like looking at the inside of a butchered animal through old-fashioned window glass, the kind made before techniques were available to standardize the thickness and parallelism of the sides. There was a blue-white illumination coming from the edges of the blurriness, but it was impossible to tell where the light was coming from. A wobbly, watery sort of haze hung over the man's chest.

Without hesitation, the doctor reached his gloved hands into the wobbly, watery sort of haze that hung over the man's chest, moved his hands this way and that, and came out with a walnut-sized round smooth dark-green mass, which he deposited into a stainless steel pan sitting on a tray to his right. "I'm out," he said.

The watery wobbliness began to shrink, and with it the blurry edges, and then the man's chest was visible again, whole, unmarked, as if the whole thing had been imagination. And yet, the lump lay in the pan.

The captain and crew in the room started applauding; the doctor placed a towel over the top of the pan, stepped back, and joined in the applause. Then the man on whom the procedure had been done reached up to feel his chest and, finding it whole and himself no worse for the wear, sat up and also started applauding. This was for the Fragmenter's benefit.

After a few moments, Clyde uncurled himself and swam up to the top of the bowl. The room erupted in Clyde, you did it! and Amazing!and Wonderful job! and other acknowledgements and affirmations.

Clyde's reproductive slot remained flat, but as the applause and the praise continued, his slot slowly curled up at the ends and his eyestalks receded into their tunnels. "Better, doctor?" Clyde said over the slowly declining applause.

"Yes, much better," the doctor said.

"Phil, how do you feel?"

"I feel fine, doc," he said. "Clyde, thank you very much."

The Fragmenter floated in the water effortlessly, his sides undulating gently. "I will rest now," he said as he very slowly sank to the bottom of his bowl. At the same time, the bowl, under its own power, drifted over to the column where Clyde liked to pass the time when he was not on duty and came to rest there.

Captain O'Neal moved past the crew members watching as Phil hopped off the table and wormed his way back into his shirt. "Doctor, may I see you in your office in a few minutes?"

"Sure, Captain," the doctor responded.

"You too, Phil," he said.

"Yes sir. Five minutes?"

"No, let's make it ten," the captain said and he strode purposefully out of the medical suite.

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