"Sometimes, what do you want to volunteer for?" This person is barely noticing him any more than necessary to see that he doesn't have any major wounds.

"I've been to medical school - far away, and I'm not up on things like implant maintenance or anything, but I know some serviceable pharmacology and surgery."

"-State of Ohio accreditations? We have to have 'em for lots of positions, for legal purposes."

"Sorry, I don't think my credits transfer. Is there some kind of test I can take?"

"Yeah, we can do the tests if you schedule ahead. There's fees. And many volunteer positions don't require it, but surgical and pharmacy absolutely will."

"What positions don't require it?"

"Orderly, warehouse, janitorial, counselor, generally support roles? I think looking at an accreditation is probably the best use of your time if you want to help people with your surgery and pharmaceutical skills. That or go find a less official charity hospital, if a legal presence is a problem for you. There's a few operations like that. We might be able to work something out for the test fees, I wouldn't know, not my department. We're supposed to sort people and send them on quickly up here."

"Legal presence is at least slightly complicated, as are test fees but those I can probably rustle up. Where should I be hitting next?"

"Admin, fourth floor, desk six!"

"Thank you!"

Up and over goes Cam.

Admin is actually kind of empty? It's got a sort of DMV setup to it. Desk six is labelled 'LICENSES AND ACCREDITATIONS'. It doesn't have anyone behind it.

Is there a bell to ring? Anybody at desks five or seven?

No bell. The guy at Five looks up from his papers, sighs, waves him over.

"We're understaffed. What do you need?"

"I was sent here to inquire about licensing tests."

"Oh? Oh, good! Great! Uh... Let me just..." Some device-poking occurs. "Okay, d'you have a medical school diploma or anything like that, or are we working with a badlands education?"

"The lands are so bad you've never even heard of them."

"Right. So what we recommend in this case is that you go down to the Covedale Night School and sign up for 'General Medicine Audit'. Fifty dollars, and that's just to keep the school running. They'll run you through some stuff that goes on the standard tests, give you a course cert with whatever name you give them on it if you know what you're doing, and then you can come right back here for the official Ohio general medicine test, which is two hundred. We get a lot of confused records and still need skilled professionals, so there's a path for it."

"Gotcha. Do you have a minute for some background on the badness of my lands?"

"Yeah, we'll need some of that for the paperwork anyway. Speaking of which, name, place and date of birth? Or I can just print the form."

"I was born in 1987 in Forks, Washington. Is this already really surprising or should I go on?"

"...You're looking mighty healthy for a, what, quadracenturian? I suggest putting down 2087 instead."

"I'm actually only a hundred and seventy-two. I think I may be from an alternate universe. My education is all from a place where," he conjures up a pad of sticky notes in bright colors and drops it on the guy's desk, "everyone can do that. It affects some things."

"It's, uh, 2118... I don't know how to deal with this. I want to declare it a prank..."

Would he like a stapler. A snowglobe with a Martian city in it. A frozen solid ice cream bar Cam definitely didn't have anywhere on him for the last ten minutes.

"So you have some sort of teleportation device?" He asks, sounding kind of faint.