Ranma chose the latter mainly because he thought this an emergency.
Locating.
Subject found.
Benjamin 'Hawkeye' Pierce.
Location Acquired: Crabapple Cove, Maine
Age: 74
Location: Dome #2, row 47, column 14
Termination: Homeworld uninhabitable due to military action between political factions.
Alterations? Y/N
Ranma put in a 'Y'. Seventy four was kinda old. Maybe if he was Doctor Tofu's age.
Altering physiological age to 24.
More? Y/N_
Ranma asked if this guy with the weird name could speak Japanese. Since he couldn't, that was something else to change.
Loading Japanese language, kanji, hiragana, katakana, basic customs. Done
Once he'd been in the M.A.S.H. 4077th during the Korean War. He had served, there had come a peace, and he'd returned to Crabapple Cove in Maine to be an old-fashioned country doctor.
In time he'd gotten older, still the wise-cracking and sarcastic physician, but also dissatisfied with many things in his life and not sure why.
Things had changed over the years, and he had watched as technology even reached a backwards little place like Crabapple Cove. Still, the place tried to remain as it had been. All good things must come to an end, however. War had returned to his life.
Oddly enough, the war hadn't been with the Russians versus the United States. That was what everyone had expected back then, that if anyone was going to start a major war it would be those two coming to blows.
No, but then who started it wasn't really important. Eventually it all ended up being the same result. He had gone outside to look and see for his own eyes what the cable news company was reporting. One last chance to exchange greetings with your neighbors, to see what the idiots of the world had unleashed upon him.
Bright flashes on the horizon. Soon would come the fallout, but by then everything would be in motion towards the end anyway.
Eyes fluttered open. He was in a tube from which liquid was draining into vents on the floor, with the tube slowly retracting as well.
Hawkeye Pierce frowned, wondering what and how and other things.
"(Do you understand me?)" asked some Japanese kid standing nearby.
"(Why wouldn't I?)" asked Hawkeye, wondering if this was a bizarre dream. He felt cold as the tube finished retracting.
"(Because I'm speaking Japanese,)" said the kid.
"(Huh?)" asked Hawkeye. He thought about it and realized he was fluent in Japanese. He could imagine writing and picture the words shifting to Japanese script. That was nearly as weird as waking up naked in a tube in a room full of tubes. "(Where and what the hell?!)"
"(I don't know all the details. What is going on is I need some help.)"
"(Well, I need some clothes, and some answers. In that order,)" responded the doctor.
Doctor Pierce had seem some technology but what he was seeing now was several orders above anything he'd seen. Just the clothes popping out of a chute in the wall. The mirror showing him as young as he had looked back at the 4077th back when Trapper had been his roomie. The rows and rows of tubes with naked people.
"(So let me get this straight,)" said Hawkeye. "(Each of these domes has a few thousand people. Each dome represents a different Earth where everyone died. I remember getting radiation sickness a week after the attacks so that isn't as hard to believe as it might have been.)"
"(I don't really know a lot of this stuff,)" admitted Ranma. "(I know martial arts, but this sci-fi junk is way outside what I'm used to.)"
"You and me both," muttered Hawkeye in English. "I feel like I've been dropped into an episode of the Twilight Zone."
"(My world died - a plague with cancer. I have a cancer that the machines missed, otherwise I'd be a robot. I think,)" said Ranma. "(Anyway, I've got to get to this 'Automed' place but I don't know anything about medicine beyond some pressure points and sports medicine and stuff.)"
"(Right, and you turned me young and gave me the ability to speak Japanese?)" asked Hawkeye. "(See what happens if you look for someone.)"
Ranma listened and input the name.
Locating.
Subject found.
Margaret Houlihan.
Location Acquired: Staten Island, NY
Age: 71
Location: Dome #2, row 49, column 38
Termination: Homeworld uninhabitable due to military action between political factions.
Alterations? Y/N
Hawkeye blinked. She'd made it too? Though was she actually Hotlips or was she just a robot? Though if the latter, that made him just a robot that thought he was Benjamin Pierce, aka Hawkeye. He didn't feel like a robot, though the machines indicated he was a 'transferred soul technorganic humaniform' which didn't sound exactly normal.
"(Wait a minute! What about this cancer?)"
Hawkeye tuned the kid out, following the path lit into the floor. Finally he found it. A tube with an old woman who looked as if she had good days but they had been long in the past.
Hawkeye returned along the same path, heading towards the console on the wall. "(Try putting this in,)" he instructed the kid.
"(What about me?)"
"(We'll deal with you later, this is something I have to do,)" explained Hawkeye. "(Now put this in.)"
Accessing.
Subject physiological age reset to 21.
Breast size increased to 150%.
Hair length increased by 200%.
Process will take 250 seconds.
By the time he'd gotten back to the tube it was done. She was still naked, still suspended in fluid, still apparently asleep, but it was the same Major Houlihan as he'd seen her back in Korea except for the changes added in. Hawkeye found himself pressed up against the tube and ogling, and with some effort forced himself to back away.
He was more thoughtful as he returned to the console. If what the kid had told him there was true, and it looked like it was, then this place was built by some aliens. Maybe they had collected humans the way some humans collected butterflies. Maybe they were more like some international relief agency like 'Doctors Without Borders' and rescuing people. Maybe he couldn't even come up with an answer because they'd be too alien.
Whatever the case, this kid had awakened him to oversee this automed stuff and clearly had no clue what to do with the power he'd been handed.
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(Posted Wed, 22 Feb 2006 06:34)
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