Merrin is having a pretty good day!

(Or, rather, she is having a meta-level pretty good day, despite the fact that all of her object-level recent experiences have been mostly unpleasant and terrible! The air temperature is well below 0 C, which she is definitely aware of despite all her cold-weather gear, and also she's now been awake for like twenty hours straight.)

Her next objective for this wilderness-survival-and-rescue sim is to reach that mountain peak, over there, which she has been trying to do for at least six hours, and in that time period she has slipped or fallen in really embarrassing ways at least three times. But she's getting closer! Wilderness-survival-and-rescue sims are great! 

Okay this sim is mildly unfair! There was literally zero foreshadowing about the random potential casualty on that other mountain face! Who is now, apparently, falling a - really long way, actually, aaah -? 

(Merrin is not actually very panicked about this, because obviously it's still a sim, just an unexpectedly mean one.) 

(...Also the person - woman, probably? - is maybe...naked...? Merrin doesn't actually have a great view, it doesn't take that long for someone to fall 600 ft and she is already sprinting toward the landing site.) 

This sim is incredibly unfair! There is an entire slope of loose rocks which are themselves covered in ice, and Merrin slips and falls TWICE on her way there.

But she does, in fact, reach the site within 40 seconds, and flings herself down beside the casualty.

(Who she is presumably supposed to end up emergency-cryopreserving, since, you know, falling from that height is not really survivable - which would be fine and not even interesting in a more normal sim, Merrin has totally run the standard solo emergency cryo sim 500-plus times at this point in her Exception Handling career. But this was supposed to be a no-backup limited-resources sim, and she's...not even actually sure what she's supposed to do here?? She has some improvised medical supplies on her person, but not the ones she would need to start the cryo protocol, let alone finish it??

...Maybe the entire point, the thing they're testing her on here, is that the almost-certainly-dead casualty is already, like, in a snowbank, and Merrin is supposed to assume that will cool their brain adequately, and so she's supposed to move on and rescue the next person...? If so she HATES this sim ALREADY–)

- Merrin is thinking ahead, if not in maximally useful ways, but she is also checking for a pulse, just in case. 

This person is unconscious and bleeding but has a pulse! And is also an actual human rather than a medical-sim human-body-model, if Merrin is inclined to notice that twenty hours into a sim.

... also, even splayed on the ground with multiple compound fractures, she's somehow ridiculously hot. Infohazardously hot, in a way that makes even people who don't quite get dath ilani faceblanding understand the meaning of that phrase. It's something about her that isn't entirely inferable from just looking at her face and body (which are not actually looking all that great relative to their set-point); one gets the sense that a picture of her would convey a smaller than usual portion of her attractiveness.

Oh, and yeah, she's super naked.

- wow. Okay. This is maybe the first time in Merrin's entire life that she has found someone distractingly attractive?? Is this what neurotypical people have to deal with all the time, because if so it's amazing they get anything done

She has in fact managed to notice that this is an actual human presumably-actor rather than a human-body-model, and...is flagging some confusion, but not quite stridently enough to call out an Exception on her radio and check if this is actually supposed to be part of the sim. (It would be so embarrassing if she did that and was wrong.) 

Well. She has the basic equipment on her to take a manual blood pressure reading, on this person who is conveniently naked (which she should maybe prioritize doing something about, given the below freezing air temperature) - but she's going to get a blood pressure reading first, and also check for signs of obvious external bleeding. 

- and start repeating saying, out loud, "My name is Merrin, Exception Handling EMT, you just fell from a mountain but everything's okay just hold still, open your eyes if you can hear me?" because maybe she was actually totally wrong about how far the woman fell? Maybe that's something you can be wrong about when you've been awake too long? 

External bleeding: she has a lot of broken bones, several of which have pierced the skin. The largest amount of blood is coming from her upper leg, where her femoral artery appears to have been severed, but the more concerning thing is that several of her ribs are sticking out at an angle that implies the other ends are probably in her lung.

Blood pressure: approximately normal! Somehow.

Abrogail has permanent Tongues and can in theory speak and understand Baseline, but she is too unconscious to be doing that right now.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH????!!!!!!

- okay this doesn't make any sense?

(Merrin may not be well-equipped, in this superheated sewage dump of a sim, but she at least has bandages on her, and her hands are already moving to deal with the most concerning source of bleeding!)

....no, actually, though, this doesn't make sense???

Merrin has a number of very deeply trained mental habits, for both sims - designed to be as realistic as possible, though it's pretty hard to avoid medtechs falling into sim-trope-based reasoning sometimes - and also real actual situations. 

She has some trained habits on flagging if an event is happening, in what is supposed to be a sim, that seems like maybe it doesn't make sense and is possibly a random unexpected real medical emergency (or other emergency) that happened to coincide with her sim. This is vanishingly unlikely and so Merrin has never dealt with it in real life - she's run a few sims that included this, but of course, in a sim it's still a sim trope. 

- And so it's not really something anyone can judge Merrin on, that it takes her an entire 25 seconds after reaching the casualty, before she - while sort of sitting on the free end of the bandage that she just wrapped around the woman's leg - toggles on her radio and numbly declares a suspected Exception, using the legally regulated real-life tune, and then -

"- is she supposed to be a patient in the sim? if yes I have so many questions and if not I– if not I, I need help right now actually–" 

The rest of Merrin's team, 'out of range' for sim purposes but in fact on standby in a nearby medicopter, also have no idea if this is supposed to be part of the sim! It would hardly be good training for them if they did know exactly what was going to happen! 

...They were also kind of confused, though, and Merrin's announcement is all they need. They relay her comment back to the Exception Handling admin office running the sim, which should in fact know what is or isn't supposed to be happening in it. 

.......Yeah no that was not part of the plan! They are escalating this immediately!

Merrin's support team should head over to pick up Merrin and the ??casualty who fell off a mountain for real?? immediately. Further instructions incoming, they'll boot up the standard medical markets right away, but getting an ID on the patient is a really really high priority - 

They were super not expecting this either! But they do, in fact, all work for Exception Handling, and can cope with the unexpected. They head in - ETA 150 seconds, they weren't far - and confirm with Merrin by radio that this is NOT supposed to be part of the sim, they'll be right there, actual treatment priorities obviously pending an ID on the patient and more info on their advance directives and insurance, but in the meantime Merrin should - well, do all the obvious things that she's presumably already doing to keep the patient alive?? 

Merrin is doing the obvious things!!! She thinks she has the really-scary bleeding under control, and she's currently trying to gently shift the unconscious, naked and DISTRACTINGLY ATTRACTIVE somehow despite all the BONES STICKING OUT woman onto the thermal blanket from her supplies. Other than that, she....can get a really unreliable attempt at an O2 saturation measurement with her low-power portable sensor? Not that she can do anything about it if the result is bad. 

(The result is, like the blood pressure, also somehow fine?) 

"...I think this patient might be literally an alien," Merrin mutters into her radio. 

That seems low-probability but this concern is, of course, immediately passed on! They'll be there within 45 seconds, fingerprint scanner and retinal scanner are both ready, is the patient urgently in trouble? 

No!!! All the vital signs Merrin can actually measure are okay, pulse rate is a little elevated, blood pressure is totally normal, and...the patient doesn't look like she's dying? Or even like she's seriously injured and in shock, honestly?? She looks basically fine!! Until you notice the fact that it sure seems like her femoral artery was at least clipped by the fall-related trauma, and also probably both of her lungs are punctured by broken ribs! 

The medicopter lands.

.....That is super distracting!!!?? Merrin had not said anything about the 'infohazardously attractive' part!! Although, knowing Merrin, she maybe thought that was covered under 'this patient might be an alien' and/or calling an Exception within the sim scenario at all. 

They have a gurney and equipment to gently move the unconscious woman onto it, and all the medical sensors that Merrin has been desperately craving for the last couple of minutes. And they also have a fingerprint scanner to ID the patient, and a retinal scanner (tested literally this morning and definitely fully functional) to use if that doesn't work! 

Her colleague sort of slightly jostled her patient's arm and Merrin does not scream at him but she WANTS to! She is at this point ATTACHED! Even though she doesn't have the slightest idea who this woman is or what she was doing falling off a mountain and interrupting what was supposed to be a sim. 

(Merrin has been awake for more than twenty hours, at this point, and she's still basically functional but her emotional regulation is, perhaps, not at its usual baseline.) 

....All right that's enough suspense, ID should be going in now, who the flaming waste dump is her patient? 

Fingerprints: no match.

Retinae: no match.

... on the other hand that sure does look like a subcutaneous tracker-tag of the kind that's used on CRYOPRESERVED PEOPLE.

Within a half-minute of the fingerprints going into the system, there's a ping on the medicopter's loudspeaker.

"Exception," says the singsong voice. "Tick five."

(The database that the ordinary medical ID machines check against doesn't have Abrogail's fingerprints, but someone does, and after the Harkanam disaster they now get a quiet copy of every print read anywhere in dath ilan.)

UM

now Merrin is again feeling like this is probably a sim? Because - just, how, why - because that's too surreal to not be a sim, mostly.

(Except she still doesn't have any idea how they set up a human actor to be bleeding that much and not actually be in danger...) 

- while her emotions are busy running off in multiple directions, most of her attention is still turned toward listening for the announcement. That training dates back to well before she was even working as a nurse at all, let alone in Exception Handling.   

"This team has been exposed to a grade-six infohazard and is now under emergency quarantine. Please proceed to the following coordinates for debrief." The coordinates are several hundred miles away and, if one pulls up a civilian-grade satellite photo of the area, there appears to be nothing there.

Interim patient directives/info:

- Keep the patient alive even at the risk of moderate permanent damage. If it looks like there's a risk of severe brain damage they should go to cryo.

- Patient physiology is human, but suspected to be anomalously resilient.

- DO NOT ALLOW THE PATIENT TO REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS. This patient is believed to be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS for secret reasons.

Resources: unlimited. There is not even a number on the screen this time. (No one has any idea how to calculate what the number should be, and they don't just make numbers up.)

There are no prediction markets. There are not in fact enough people read in on this situation for prediction markets to be useful. Instead the screen displays a videoconference panel of high-rank Keepers with medical specialties. They're using a non-market prediction-aggregation mechanism but even they are (though they don't show it) winging this.

One of the Keepers swears, with the really serious wording that is never ever used for any purpose but Real Serious Oaths, even in movies, that this is not a sim.

(Some small quiet voice in the back of Merrin's mind does, in fact, relax and step back after the Keeper swears the very serious oath that this isn't a sim.)

....What the radioactive salmonella poisoning is a grade six infohazard? Why is that even a thing?? What does it mean???

It means she will almost certainly never ever be able to tell her mom