A quote: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” ~~ Abraham Lincoln
I’ll start with a story …
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They killed mom, you know. Not just that bitch in scrubs who told me she was too old and she could die at home or take the needle.
Yep, just die. But I knew better … I made sure they saw me as a drooler unable to wipe his own chin. Smug city quacks.
See them mules out there? Took years, but I’ve been stealing from every uni library around. Those packs are filled with dead-tree medical textbooks. You need them to train real docs out here in Free Territories.
I wanna join up and this is my opening bid.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Navig8r says: Magic again holds its rightful place in the world. Most tantalizing are the ancient book troves once tended by nuns, who claimed they could transport you to different lands, times, or even planets, so powerful they allowed only whispers near them. But the language is lost. We cannot do the incantations. An obscure tale told of something called audio books that utter the incantations by themselves. At great cost I acquired a listening device from that era. Now I search for such a book. Power and glory if I succeed, bitter years of servitude to the moneylenders if I fail.
Cameron says: I stopped being surprised at the rejection letters from med schools. They talked a good game at being inclusive but people like me were no longer welcome in those kind of jobs.
The one acceptance letter was a surprise. I found myself sitting in a library with three doctors and a collection of books. All they cared about was my school work.
“You understand we study medicine the old way? Through books and actual work.”
“That’s what I wanted.”
I started that fall. And ten years later, we’d be getting called in to correct the errors of the “correct” doctors.
School’s different up here on the High Frontier. Back on Earth, the teachers droned their way through their lessons and you read the textbooks to figure out what would be on the test.
Up here in Shepardsport, we have so many specialists in technical subjects that they’re even teaching the basic courses. Last year I had an intro to astronomy course taught by a radio astronomer who has her name on thousands of papers as a contributing author. I still remember the day she had us all helping her with the number-crunching to verify data that some of her colleagues were very excited about.
Right now I’m getting ready to do field work on the lunar surface. That means an emergency medicine course, so we’ll be able to take care of injuries when a trained physician is hours or even days away, depending on whether spacelift to the accident location is possible or rescuers have to go overland by rover. To the surprise of everyone in the class, it’s being taught by the Chief Flight Surgeon, who’s in charge of all of Medlab.
Dupin says: Amber’s paper was on obsolete medical terms, her dusty research books itching her nose.
A card fell from the latest, a taped key with a non-medical Dewey number on it. Her search found an older room, the number matching only one bulky tome on the top shelf.
It almost crashed down. So heavy. Once on the floor, she opened it. A lockbox lay within. The key turned—bright gems and gold coins gleamed in the light.
She smiled. Checkout time, either to fund next semester or maybe open the art studio she really wanted. Screw her parents’ dreams.
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