The EMH Back Home

Posted on Sun 8th Mar, 2020 @ 7:39am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran
Edited on Sun 8th Mar, 2020 @ 7:43am

347 words; about a 2 minute read

While exploring Brown Sector with Elizabeth today, I happened to mention our EMH doctor from back home. I spoke the words without thinking, and only after they were said did I wish I hadn't brought him up.

I suspect Elizabeth would feel very disturbed and probably angry about the Alliance EMH. Compared to her, he has had a travesty of an existence. She might consider it no better than slavery and might even think it abuse. If his intelligence has the potential of hers, she would be right.

For one thing, we never allow him to function for very long, unless he's needed for surgery--during which he does everything--blinks on and off and moves all around the operating table at lightning speed. The moment he's not needed, someone switches his program off to conserve power. Eating as Elizabeth does? Never. Why waste food on a holoprogram when the living population needs to eat? It's stretching our resources enough, to allow him to function to the extent that we do; it causes power fluctuations if the surgery takes too long. He is very much a tool to us and not a person, for all we call him 'he.' The energy usage is so great that it was always a controversy whether he ought to be allowed to teach assistants. I think he did take on a student or two, but I only ever saw them do the most basic things. They'd have to know how to read, to learn anything beyond basic first aid.

I hope he's teaching them to read. I hope he's teaching, period. I hope someone back home is wise enough to force the Alliance leadership to instruct the EMH to teach students--to really teach them.

I wonder if he would like to have a real life? Are there things he wants? I don't expect to ever know.

Every time I think about home, I wish I wouldn't. I can't do a thing about home, so worrying about it is a pointless waste of time. Yet I still worry.

 

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