After the last one's blood centrifuge analysis, we sent him off to the showers with the others. "You can scald 'em up good now," said Clay to the shift controller, a white-haired, adolescent female known as Jellice. I made a mental note to inform the Club Madam about her. Later.

Zhen Lee tapped some figures into his handset, then looked up at me with his peculiar air of ironic insouciance, and murmered, "Diagnosis?"

*

Diagnosis: Subpaleoanachrophilia
Symptoms:
Treatment:

*

The lukewarm mist issuing from the ceiling spray nozzles hissed suddenly into pressurized steam. At her post in the control room, Jellice with her stylus carefully drew the system's temperature up to 125 degrees Celsius, her grey eyes flat and unblinking.

The patients, of course, screamed wildly under the deluge.