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[oom: The family get ready for Christmas.]

Guppy is sitting by the fireplace, attempting to wrap a number of very pink items. Coral insisted on wanting Peppa Pig stuff, and wrapping a cuddly pig in paper is proving a little bit challenging.

Come join him, there's hot chocolate.

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Karkat has been doing a lot of thinking in the last few weeks, without acting on it; this is unusual for him. He tends to act as soon as an idea crosses his mind. But this is important.

"HEY. YOU'RE THE DOCTOR GUY I MET BEFORE, RIGHT? CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING?"

"Go ahead." Guppy says, wrapping some very pink wrapping paper around the snout of Peppa Pig.

He is briefly distracted from his important business by goggling at the very pink object being wrapped in very pink paper. What is going on here? "I WAS JUST WONDERING ABOUT HOW MUCH TIME AND TRAINING IT TAKES TO BECOME A DOCTOR."

"Well, after you finish school, between five and nine years depending on which country you live in." Guppy says. "If you have a degree then you can do it in four."

"OKAY," he says.

"MY SPECIES DOESN'T REALLY HAVE A TRADITION OF DOCTORS. I MEAN, NOT REAL DOCTORS. AND WE ARE DOWN TO THE LAST FIVE OF US, AND I FIGURE IF WE ARE GOING TO NOT GO EXTINCT, MAYBE THE BEST THING I CAN DO AS OUR LEADER IS LEARN HOW TO PATCH PEOPLE UP."

"I don't know a huge amount about your physiology." Guppy says. "But there may be books about your species in the infirmary medical library."

"YEAH, AND I THINK THAT KIND OF STUFF IS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET," he says. "I WAS JUST WONDERING IF I DECIDED TO TAKE IT ON HOW BIG OF A PROJECT I WAS BITING OFF, AND MAYBE YOU COULD GIVE ME AN OUTLINE OF HOW YOU STUDIED IT."

"Well, if you just want to learn how to patch people up, that sounds like basic first aid. Which means a fairly short course of learning and practicing things like how to stop your species from suffocating or leaking.

But learning the full subject involves many years of learning from people already skilled in it, learning anatomy and physiology, what diseases occur, how they occur, and how to fix them. We don't even start learning about unhealthy humans until you learn everything you need to know about healthy ones."

Mun didn't do any real practical work with patients for the first three years, but it varies from one med school to the next.

"OKAY, WELL, THERE ISN'T ANYONE ALREADY SKILLED IN IT STILL ALIVE. I PROBABLY COULD HAVE LEARNED FROM IATROCISIONISTS BACK IN THE DAY, BUT I DON'T THINK THEY WOULD HAVE TOLD ME ANYTHING UNTIL I PROVED MY BLOOD PURITY."

And Equius, he realizes now, knew quite a bit--enough to build prosthetics--but Equius is just as dead as the iatrocisionists.

"Did your species make detailed notes about itself from studying the ill and the dead?"

"YEAH, WE HAVE ALL THAT STUFF. IT'S JUST THAT THE IATROCISIONISTS WERE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT CULLING THE WEAK AND REWARDING THE USEFUL THAN... I DON'T KNOW, HOWEVER IT IS YOU CHARACTERIZE YOUR DOCTORING STUFF. EXTRAVAGANT BROADBAND ALTRUISM."

"Then you could probably learn from the people who documented it, but it'll be harder without examples. I suppose if there's only five of you, it's easier in that you're less likely to have any disease rarer than affecting one in five people."

"YEAH, AND HUMANS SEEM REALLY BREAKABLE AND PRONE TO MALFUNCTION COMPARED TO TROLLS."

"Two things are amazing about humans. The first, is the number of ways they can break. The second, is the number of things they can survive." Guppy says.

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