Per 
Her Body, Electric
Epilogue
Dr. Koehler wrote me a prescription to write.
I'm told that having a personal journal can help deal with some of the stresses of the job.
In the Foundation, mandatory psychological and psychiatric "maintenance" is just part and parcel of the job.
Nobody is exempt.
I've never done this before. Where should I start? It's strange having a written soliloquy with myself. I suppose Koehler will probably end up reading this, as well as my superiors. In this line of work your privacy dies when you sign the contract. I suppose there's no point in censoring anything here because if you're reading this you're probably above my paygrade and have been read-in above my clearance level anyway.
I've been with the Foundation for a little over six years. I was hired into Administration and I was groomed specifically for the position I have now. I cannot lie. The money is good. Real good. You just don't get much time to spend any of it. There is a running inside joke that while we Secure, Contain, and Protect the world from all the stuff that goes bump in the night, it's the humans that are the prisoners in the end. Shifts here are three weeks on two weeks off. Holidays don't really exist. Interdimentional threats to the human population don't take Christmas off.
I was initially thrilled getting this assignment at the Mayo-3M joint division of the Foundation. Next to some of the extraplanetary assignments it's probably in the top ten of prestigious duty posts. Couldn't ask for a better facility, or cover. We basically all pass ourselves off as clinic employees, complete wih name badges and everything. The clinic itself is the main entrance to the Foundation subterrainean facilities. Everybody just walks in and takes the same twenty minute elevator ride down.
I digress.
I came on board here about six months ago. I've been getting the grand treatment. Hours of daily briefings, training sessions, and tours of every nook and cranny of this immense facility.
This week. So here I am. In the weeds with this ABE we just pulled in from the field. The Retrieval Team brought it in last Saturday. We got the guys off the choppers and pulled the can in off the skycrane. Seven of the paramilitary guys had gotten injured just securing the ABE for transport. Nothing major. Mostly minor electrical burns. Two others had taken some fire from conventional small arms. The body armor we have is state of the art and those involved walked away with a few bruises. Sergeant Major Roush is good man. From what I hear, he hasn't had a single fatality on his Retrieval Missions. That's unheard of elsewhere in the Foundation. Pretty much a legend.
I came down to the helipads to watch the transport of the containment vessel to Intake Ward. Ward is a misnomer. It's a thirty meter cube shaped blast bunker. The whole thing is reinforced concrete several meters thick and is studded with all kinds of sensors, cameras, metering equipment, and containment failsafes. If whatever we catch gets too nasty with us, I'll order the ABE terminated sight on scene. The forklift operator drops the can off onto the cradle and I tell them to crack it open and take the intial telemetry. The "cork" is popped and out slides an absolute mess. My first thought was they had got the target wrong and they scooped some poor refugee kid.
Then the arcs and the sparks started. Nope. Most kids don't start light shows all by themselves. The ABE starts screaming and crying. From my vantage point on the mezzanine, it was tied or chained down to what looked like rusty bits of an old mattress or box spring. Thing was so caked with dirt and god knows what else, you couldn't tell if it was wearing any clothes or not. Thermal came back nominal. Not much ionizing radiation detected. EMF and Gauss detectors were going nuts on the other hand. There's some specialized detectors to pick up on any psychic, temporal, or perception altering affects. Those were all essentially flat on the scopes. CSM Roush joined me on the mezzanine and gave me the quick and dirty on how the retrieval OP went. Bumpy in parts, but the scoop was flawless, and everyone came home. The ABE is able to generate electricity of some type. Shocked the shit out of a couple of his men. I told him we'd do a full debrief after we got the ABE cleaned up and transferred to Triage Containment. We saluted and he went to disposition his troops.
Other than some mild electrical phenomenon, I waited to send a Containment Specialist Team. I've learned that it's good to just wait a few minutes and see what happenwanted to monitor the ABE for a bit to make sure it didn't surprise us with something unpleasant that it hadn't demonstrated yet. They went in with the standard NBC MOPP, and some new electrothermal gear. Pretty quick and efficient, the CST went in, cut the ABE off the mattress and were able to get it onto a gurney. The ABE had been chained and wired down with some pretty heavy gauge copper wire and steel anchor chain. I made a note of that to pass it along to Fabrication and Engineering. I had a hunch that I'd likely need to come up with some custom containment equipment. Basic deduction being whoever we just rescued this kid from, they had probably tried everything else anyway and tying the kid down with copper to a rusty old mattress was the most effective means for them to control this ABE.
The ABE was a quivvering, sobbing, wreck as they wheeled it out on the gurney to Triage. Basically the same type of setup as Intake, just on a smaller scale. Without digressing into needless detail, it's a medical emergency room with extra security and containment failsafes. CST team transferred the simpering ABE to the procedure table. It curled up in the fetal position, still heaving and sobbing. Mumbling something in it's native tongue. Serbian? Croatian? Estonian? Not a linguist expert. I'd get a transcript from the translator later on that day.
CST stepped aside and Medical came in, two staff doctors, two RN's, a psychiatrist and psychologist. Full biological containment gear, I wasn't having them take any risks. Didn't take long for them to ask for a translator. Turns out the kid was either raised in Serbia, or grew up around there. They don't tell me specifics on where they scoop these ABE's up from. Only if it's totally relevant to something the Foundation wants me to know. The compartmentalization can get pretty ridiculous at times, and is as much of a hinderance as a help in most of what I have to do.
I sat for the full hour and something while they cleaned the ABE up. The translator was able to calm the ABE down some, enough to get the grime off. Shit hit the fan when they went to take a blood sample. All I saw was a bright blue flash of light, a loud crack like a gunshot, and then spots in my vision because I was watching directly through the one-way optical partition. One of the nurses was laying on the floor rolling around clutching their arm or hand. The biohazard suit was smoking and torn, I could see blood. The rest of the team all backed off in near unison, and the CST swooped in like hawks to hold the ABE down to the table.
Those folks are like a well-oiled machine, they had the kid strapped down to the procedure table in 15 or 20 seconds flat. Of course the ABE starts crying and freaking out nearly immediately. The other Medical staff pulled the injured nurse out of Triage. I left Observation and went down to check on the nurse. I don't like looking at blood and stuff, but from what I saw, it looked like some pretty bad flash burns. Fingers were bloody and lacerated pretty bad, some blackened skin on the wrist and forearm. The plastic material of the suit was shredded and melted. The Medical staff that were just working on the kid got to work on their collegue immediately. CST Sergeant Campbell burst in a second or two later. He wasn't frantic, but I could tell from the tone of his voice, he was concerned and unsure of what to do next.
I pulled him into the adjoining hallway leading back to OPS and talked to him there. Had him take his mask and helmet and stuff off. Got him to slow down for a second and just breathe. I didn't need him adding anything further to the situation the doctors and nurses were dealing with. I asked him if the ABE was secured. Affirmative. Asked him if the psych, shrink, and translator were safe. Affirmative. Asked him if his team was unharmed. Affirmative. Just startled by the flash. I reassured him that he was doing fine, and he needed to get back to his team and wait for further instructions. I was going back up to OPS and would direct him and the rest of the team from there.
I didn't realize at that time just how long of a day we were all about to have.
The best term I have for then next couple of hours is what some have called "The Chaos Rollercoaster". You figure one thing out, and then the ride drops out from under you and there's another loop that is thrown at you. Repeat ad, nauseum. That
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