A few seconds later she got a reply.
“This is Dr Subramanian. Please call me Vijay. I am here to help you.”
Kate had no idea who Subramanian was and had no intention of getting friendly.
She typed back: “Great. Please send down a latte and a some coffee cake.”
Nothing came back for a while. She thought that perhaps they were either figuring out a way to get her snack down to her or looking for the right drugs to send. “Whatever. Either will work.” She giggled.
Williams had watched the exchange of messages. He knew Kate quite well and understood her manners of speech and general attitude towards people she thought were idiots. He smiled to himself. Kate was probably doing just fine. So long as Subramanian didn’t upset her too much he thought she’d be OK. In fact, some interaction with the psychologist might be good for her.
Subramanian turned to Williams. “What is coffee cake?”
“Well, it’s cake you eat with coffee. Nothing very special in my opinion.”
“And does Kate like this cake?”
“I have no idea, but I think…” He paused. Should he tell Subramanian that Kate was messing with him? He continued: “Well, I think Kate just misses normal food.”
Subramanian could not decide how to begin Kate’s evaluation. He normally interviewed subjects face to face. That allowed him to judge mood, level of agitation and general disposition. Facial expressions often indicated a response before the subject verbalized them, if they verbalized them at all. He knew nothing about Kate other than she had a PhD in biology, was single, and was apparently in good health and enjoyed athletic sports. He’d gotten all of this from Williams, but it didn’t help much. In his normal line of work he tried to find out what induced stress in the subject. Knowing potential stressors helped him evaluate their potential to cope with other stressful situations. It wasn’t that complicated.
This was all very different. He knew very little about the subject and less about the environment she was in. He knew that Kate was the sole survivor of some kind of accident and that she was stuck in her present environment for at least another week. Did she have issues with being alone? Was she claustrophobic? Even if he could get her to answer these questions, what was he going to do? He normally put people into stressful situations and watched them. Now he was being asked to remove the stress from an environment he had no control over.
Based on what little he knew about her, Kate was probably self motivated and resourceful. Williams indicated she was a mild type-A personality. He would have to try to get some kind of basic evaluation using just the radio. Even if he could do that, it was far from clear how to proceed. He couldn’t prescribe medication. But maybe he could get her engaged in conversation and guide her along the self-help path.
Subramanian had the radio tech explain how to enter his messages and then asked to be left alone. The tech was happy to go back to reading his book and left the shrink to the machine.
Kate was heating water to rehydrate one of the freeze-dried dinners when the next message arrived. She walked over to the control console glancing out the portal to make sure the wall was still moving in the right direction. The message on the ELF radio was simple: “I have sent out for coffee cake. In the mean time, I’d like to get to know you. Could you tell me a little about yourself: what you like, what you don’t like. Where you grew up. What your family life was like. That sort of thing. Please take as much time as you like. You can send me short messages. I don’t want you to write your life story. And please send things in the order you think of them. This is not a test. I just want to know you better. I will also try to answer any questions you want to ask. Vijay.”
Kate read it through twice. “Looks like a psychological interview in sheep’s clothing.” She was going to blow it off with a short reply but decided that doing something was better than doing nothing. It would help to pass the time.
Kate’s initial thought was to just send a few notes and forget about it. But as she was wondering what to say she started to think about what she enjoyed doing. If it hadn’t been for the accident, she’d be enjoying herself right now down on the bottom with the tube worms. She decided to write a list of things she enjoyed doing and an example of each one.
When she looked at the time, she was surprised to see that she had been writing for an hour. She decided not to re-read what she had written and tapped the screen to send the message.
Dr. Subramanian read Kate’s message through slowly. The literal words told a story, but the choice of words, the ordering, the nuance of the phrases told a different one. Kate might be avoiding actually saying it, but it was clear she was very stressed.
He left the comms shack to find Williams who was lying on his bunk reading a journal. When Subramanian appeared in the doorway he sat up and put the journal on the bed beside him.
“Any news Dr. Subramanian?”
“Yes, indeed. And please call me Vijay. My initial evaluation is that Kate is experiencing a very high level of stress. I must say that she is dealing with it very well and in other circumstances I’d be very interested in seeing what it took to make her admit it.”
Williams raised an eyebrow but said nothing. This man was incredible.
“However, since our goal is to get miss Moss to the surface alive, we must find a way to reduce her stress level significantly.”
“And what to you suggest?” Williams asked.
“Since it is not possible to interact face to face and since the writings of the ELF radio may be misinterpreted by Kate, I believe we have only two real courses of action. The first is simply to keep talking to her, which keeps her busy and possibly distracted from the situation. However, miss Moss is a very realistic and pragmatic person. She is fully aware of her situation and I suspect that she rather resents my questions and further communications from me might make her more hostile, which is not constructive.”
Williams thought the word hostile fit rather well with Subramanian. He could well imagine how Subramanian’s subjects could develop hostile feelings towards the man.
Subramanian continued. “And the second choice is to get her to sleep. This, however, is a much more difficult task. Simply telling her she needs sleep is not likely to work. In her current state of awareness of her predicament, and given her evident level of intelligence, her mind will be full of potential problems that may be waiting to emerge before she gets to the surface. What we need is to get her medicated for a while. A period of good sleep should allow her to see things in a fresh light, and if we can communicate with her when she awakes, I think we can have a more productive conversation.”
Williams looked at him. “And how exactly do you think you can get medications down to Kate?”
“That is not necessary. I checked the Pheia’s medical supply list and there is enough zolpidem on board to put a horse to sleep.”
“I see two issues with that.” Williams replied. “First, Kate is in the ops room and the medications are in the storage area which may not be accessible. The second issue is exactly how you are going to get her to take them.”
“I will work on those problems.”
Subramanian, left Williams to his journal and walked back to the comms shack. When he arrived, the technician was writing on a sticky note.
“We have another message. I was just writing you a note.”
Subramanian looked at the radio’s screen. Kate had sent another message and he read through it slowly.
“The Pheia was damaged when we were trying to anchor to the wall. I do not know the sequence of events as I was in the galley when it happened. The two hab cylinders have been pulled partially apart. Both are intact but the tunnels between them are flooded. The store room and moon pool room are flooded to the ceilings. The upper tunnel is damaged but holding the cylinders together. The lower tunnel is pulled away from the ops cylinder but is usable as a passage between the cylinders. I have tied rope around the cylinders to hold them together. Moved some stores into ops room and set up bed in here too. I have food, water and kettle to heat it. Also have dive gear and gas. Crew all sent to the bottom. Only me here now. Gas system seems OK. Hab is ascending at 300 feet per day. Distance from wall seems constant. Drive motors seem to be OK. Temperature is OK. It is damp (duh).”