“Understand clinic the is when done/complete, then the patients/victims see heal good better,” Doctor Seventy-Blue said, pointing to the crooked rows of tile, smears of gray grout, and leaning door jams.
The doctor, like most people these days, had almost no idea how old he was. Aho placed him just left of sixty, gaging him by his stooped posture, bulging, bloodshot eyes, massive overbite, and teeth going in all directions, affecting a slight lisp. Spectacles thick enough to double as telescope lenses. Filthy, patched white doctor’s coat. ‘Ratty thing must be from his days as a resident. Hasn’t been a proper medical school this far west in more than forty years.’
“Room/chambers for visitors/tourists and patients down this way/direction,” the doctor said, leading Aho and his troupe down the dim, uneven hallway.
The seven inspectors had long noted the shoddy carpentry of the clinic, bizarre homespun tools in every room made of rusting brass and dripping caulk. The Medieval conditions of the operating room, the clumsy bedside manner of the staff. That Doctor Seventy-Blue, only actual physician the Finnish delegation had met since arriving in North America, was barely capable of linear conversation. That his ‘clinic’ was little more than a sprawl of corrugated steel, PVC piping, duct tape, bent nails, jagged planes, and broken windows, thrown together without even a three-year old’s architectural logic. Their assessment was unanimous, perhaps for the first time since Finland began these international expeditions. Even Aho, jaded veteran, was impressed.
The doctor concluded their tour of the clinic in his office, basically just a closet with an antique desk and a dirt floor, painted red to simulate carpet. The aged physician sat cross-legged on his desk, chest heaving slightly.
‘Must be exhausted, maintaining focus like this,’ Aho thought. ‘Three whole hours showing us this place, giving us a thorough breakdown of clinical duties, his roster, and procedures. And all of it almost completely makes sense. He has actually managed to overcome the effects of the bomb and organize his people in a meaningful, mildly effective manner. Most importantly, he has somehow found a surgical method to counter the effects. This may be the first salvageable domain we’ve come across in years. What a brave, amazing man.’
“Doctor,” he said. “I think it is safe to say you’ve overwhelmed us. I don’t even have to contact Helsinki to tell you with total confidence that we will be leaving representatives and resources to help you marshall this clinic and the surrounding villages. We’ll need you to show us in detail the techniques you’ve been using to re-route Broca’s region, so we can standardize them. But if what you’ve shown us works elsewhere, I can honestly say that you’ll have helped the Effected Regions take an enormous step back to normalcy.”
Seventy-Blue removed his spectacles, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then covered his mouth. His shoulders shook slightly, adams apple bobbing rapidly. “Apple garnet sneaker blueberry chewing gum,” he sobbed.
The delegation closed on him, embracing the old man so devastated by the Semiotic Detonation that he could not communicate even the name his parents gave him, reliant on whatever gibberish he could somehow routinize into a permanent title. He was typical of so much of the world south and east of Scandinavia, which for the past fifty years or so, had fallen completely apart. The parts of the brain that developed symbol association, language, mathematics, and mechanical skills had been blasted apart, the artifacts of their civilizations left useless and alien, basic ability to communicate, form communities, and cooperate–gone, in a series of detonations across the globe. The gene pool was irrevocably warped: the world’s greatest remaining geneticists just couldn’t undo the knot tied by the anonymous attacks. It would take aggressive neurochemical therapy, years of re-education, and plain old bonesaw surgery to repair the generations born since the bombing.
“Bubble cooper baby wheel wheel fire wheel steakum cornmeal,” Doctor Seventy-Blue blubbered, clearly overwhelmed, “I/we must chew baker thank you/make gratitude. We must. Have to. Splatter. Oh God. Oh Muffler. Oh. Oh.”
“You can thank us when we finish your clinic and open the first schools, Doctor. And, of course, by fulfilling your end of the agreement by letting us take the most successful cases from your clinic back east with us, to Helsinki. As proof,” Aho assured him, finishing silently. ‘And free labor, in perpetuity.’
