Doctor EBT – Everything But Thesis
Posted on July 29th, 2018 by Emilaina Acacia

Emily had been sitting in the medical research lab for an amount of time that she could only count thanks to the ship’s internal chronometer. She had made an effort to stay in her quarters for most of her writing, but the fact that it had windows only served to remind her of her internal clock, and that she would rather be sleeping. However, her tactic of depriving herself of external stimuli had only worked for so long. The CMO had just found her, exhausted and hunched over the computer terminal, and had immediately ordered her to bed. She gathered her PADD, some papers she had scattered around, and the few sample jars she had been examining, and put them all back on her research station.

She pressed a key to bring the computer to life, “Medical Ensign Acacia’s Log, Stardate 11807.29. I’ve just been told… to sleep. That’s probably for the best. My thesis is up to one hundred and sixty pages. It’s a bit of a dry read, if you’re not into exogenetics, so… I’ll tell you about it.”

Carrying her things, Emily began down the hall for the turbolift. As she walked she tucked items into her shoulderbag, which was usually stuffed with research materials. Given the late time of night, she stuck close to the wall, quietly continuing her log, figuring no one was around for her to look crazy to, “It’s well known, and well researched, that different humanoid species have similar anatomical systems, and dozens of species even have remarkably similar immune systems. I’m studying diseases that can infect more than one species. There are actually two-hundred and forty-six known cases of a ‘disease jump’, where an ailment known to one species is later recorded infecting another. The first instance of this in Starfleet record is the Klingon equivalent of the flu being caught by a human.”

She entered her quarters, setting her bag down on the table. Apollo, her hostile, fluffy white cat with bright blue eyes was sitting on her bed, but fortunately, he seemed to be asleep. She began brushing her hair, all the while babbling about disease to the computer, “So I’m studying the mechanisms by which these diseases are able to do this. Diseases that replicate by RNA do it best, for example, our human flu has infected five other species to date. And—well, if you care about the technical side, the paper will be freely available, but the long and short of it is that I’ve found a way to innoculate species against diseases that have yet to evolve to infect them. A vaccine that out-strips evolution by training the immune system against the parts of the disease that can’t change so quickly.”

She stopped herself, by now putting her pajamas on. She realized she was getting a bit too enthusiastic, and she had promised herself she wouldn’t “nerd out” in any of her logs. With a sigh, she sat on her bed, “I anticipate another month and another fifty pages of writing, but it’s almost there. I can genuinely say I’m proud of my contribution to scientific understanding, so I think I have a few letters to write to the professors at Starfleet Medical. Soon, I won’t have to correct anyone who calls me ‘doctor’. Acacia out.”

The computer whirred to sleep, and Emily switched the lights off with her bedside console. She wanted to sleep, but all she could think about was her petri dish in the medical lab containing Bajoran tissue that had, finally, resisted the human flu. That, and the moment when she had actually been invited to stand on the bridge when the CMO was off her shift, and how she’d had to tell the captain herself that she wasn’t a doctor yet. Of course, it was a technicality, but it did bother her. That said, she’d been given this assignment because her professors thought she was ready, and that her research was too important to rush and risk getting wrong. Her ambitious choice of topic meant it had already taken a long time, but when she earned that title, she wanted to really deserve it. That and, of course, it was important that she get this right for a lot of reasons, even some diplomatic. The implications for every field from genetics to exobiology to many more were significant, and future research could draw on her conclusions. The way it should be, she would say.

She laid down, closing her eyes, and making one last note, “Computer, set reminder with tomorrow morning’s alarm—write Doctor Galahar and Professor Jones.”