Alice looks up from her console when he walks into the Library. "Hi there, I'm Alice. Welcome to whatever this place is. I assume someone's given you the speech about not being on Earth?"

"Zahn did. Sucks. Not much else to say about it. I'm supposed to take a medical test? Oh, the name's Carl."

"Yeah, it does. Are you premed, nursing, or something else? You can sit down next to me and I'll show you how to take the test."

"Chemistry and pharmaceuticals actually. I'm the best guy for 'doctor' who's come through yet though."

"Huh, that makes sense." She stands up and walks him through applying for the job then goes back to her own work.

The Medical technician test has questions on anatomy, cell biology, pharmaceuticals, hormones, surgery, and strangely enough temporal mechanics along with related topics.

He performs: Pretty poorly, rather well, almost perfectly, somewhere in the middle, very badly, and has to guess about temporal mechanics.

At the end the interface pronounces him 'Moderately Competent' and awards him the title of Provisional Medical Technician. It asks that he spend two hours daily on remedial classes and grants him the ability to supervise basic medical operations, approve emergency care, and prescribe medications. It notes that with further training he'll be able to supervise checkups, prenatal care, dental care, non-emergency surgery, and elective procedures.

"Welp, guess I'm gonna be a doctor."

"If we're here for a while it'll be good to have one around and if we're not it won't matter that much. Hopefully it'll be teaching something you can use even if we do go back to Earth. Zahn's Janitor training is quizzing him on how to remove about a thousand varieties of stains."

"Wow. Yeah, this feels like an alien trying to make up human education, like something out of old sci-fi. And the mall is just stupid." He stretches and paces around the library.

"Yeah, even we had all the elevators working, which we need to wait on Zahn for, it would still require biking almost two kilometers to get to the average store. We should probably send some people to make contact with the other home complexes soon. There's just so many things to do."

Carl replies, "I'm just glad we haven't gotten anybody stupid enough to start a fight in our section. Well, yet."

Walta looks up from her studying on nutrition to say, "I can poke the greenhouses into growing just about anything that was commercial back on Earth, so we'll have a nice variety of food. Maybe even a small amount of tobacco and marijuana... I'm very leery of the health effects but it could help keep people calm."

"I don't want to deal with tobacco. Nasty stuff. Weed's almost as bad. But keeping people from them wouldn't really work."

"Yeah, maybe some people might be willing to switch to nicotine patches though? If they aren't in the mall maybe you can prescribe something similar with the clinic?"

"I'll explore what it'll let me do. Getting the med bay to make cough up condoms or progestin would be a real good idea. I don't want to deal with a fuckin' pregnancy, and some of those guys would make it pretty likely."

"Yeah, ouch... Well we've got time to figure this out. Plenty of food."

"I'd expect condoms to be in the mall, I'm less sure about whether there are pharmacies with a 'behind the counter' section. It's probably a good idea to make birth control available to people. I wonder if the clinic can install IUDs."

"I'll figure it out. You managed to get the job of security, yeah? If I say someone doesn't need any more morphine or whatever you'll back me up?"

"Yeah, I really don't want to try to work out a prison, but I can lock and unlock the clinic, there are also combination locks that can close Mall Stores, those don't require a security officer to use though. If it comes to a physical fight I can probably handle that too."

He smiles a bit and unintentionally makes eye contact. Surprise/relief for a moment until he blinks and jokes, "Thanks. Being able to call a cop is an important job benefit for a pharmacist."

She smiles back. "It isn't a job I'm looking forward to but I'll definitely do it if it's needed. I just worry about what sort of deterrent we can realistically offer there isn't a jail here, not do we have the ability to fine people."

"Social pressure? Shutting off privileges? God, I hope this doesn't turn into The Hunger Games."

"I'm hoping that social pressure will be enough, there aren't many privledges that would be easy to restrict, but maybe we'll be able to think of some."

"I think I've studied this enough for now. I'd like to explore outside the wall for a while if you're up for it, Alice? Or maybe I can go find Zahn and ask."

"Sure," she glances out the window, "it's starting to get a little dark outside though, maybe we should see if Radioshack has a couple flashlights first?"

"Sounds like a plan."

The trip to radio-shack is uneventful. Once they're outside, Alice asks "Whereto first?"