The uncertainty of truth

We live in a world where uncertainty has been eliminated. The publication of the Doctrine of Certitude meant that uncertainty was officially forbidden for the first time in history. The passage of this law rendered the phrases ‘I don’t know’, ‘I’m not sure’ and even ‘Huh . . .’ illegal and punishable by life imprisonment. Neoastrophysicists, using chaos theory, have modelled intergalactic maps that predict even the smallest particle of space dust’s coordinates within a half millimeter of its actual location. Cosmometeorologists have derived atmospheric models that predict a planet’s weather patterns with a five-sigma level of confidence. Even in the field of medicine, the uncertainty we once operated under has all but vanished. The latest validation from the Framingham group can predict your death within a month of your passing. And yet the human race cannot help but spit in the face of this certainty. Let us use Mr Wigan as a case in point. He was given a certified Framingham score of 689.27. Simply put, Mr Wigan’s death had been verified with 99.% accuracy to occur at the age of 68 years from the restrictive lung disease known as astropneumoconiosis (or as the miners on Gamma colony jovially call it ‘kettle lung’). His predicted lifespan was actually 5 years beyond the average life expectancy of a standard Gamma Colonist (whose main occupation is the mining of the colony’s one natural resource Detroleum). Mr Wigan was aware of this certified, validated destiny and wanted nothing to do with it. As he lay in front of me on our trauma bay’s hover stretcher, Mr Wigan was trying incredibly hard to die 41 years before his scheduled date. My name is REDACTED. Before the occurrence of the following events, I worked as an emergency physician on the 12th Spoke’s most distant medical hub. We are the only Trauma Center for 100 clicks, which means we see all major space trauma that occurs beyond the reach of the Mallemat Foundation. It was not long ago that the vast majority of space trauma victims perished before reaching medical attention as the unforgiving cold hand of space finished off whatever the initial insult had not taken care of. Since the development of self-insulating body armor and self-expanding short-term ecosystems known as body pods (or bodpods for short), we have experienced an influx in the amount of critically ill space trauma patients reaching our medical port in desperate need of care. Mr Wigan was such a patient, arriving at our facility following a deep space collision involving his Space Duster and a rare uncharted piece of space junk. He was thrown from his makeshift spacecraft and if not for his recently purchased self-deploying bodpod, which on sensing the decompression of his standard suit inflated to protect his body from further injury, we would not be discussing this matter today. The bodpods distress signal was picked up within 5 min of the initial event, and a medijet was deployed. Mr Wigan arrived at my spaceport 20 min later. Though much has changed in medicine over the centuries, initial trauma resuscitation has remained surprisingly consistent. Most of us follow the Damage Control Doctrine that supplanted the antiquated ATLS system of the early 21st century. The original principles can be accessed in the early FOAM archives. Following the primary survey, our ability to identify critically ill patients has changed drastically since the institution of the Doctrine of Certitude. Not surprising, the Framingham Formula holds little predictive value in acute insults, such as intergalactic space trauma and thus we are forced to turn to other modalities to fully stratify these patients. One could argue that no device has changed the management of lifethreatening emergencies more than Schrodinger’s Box, the only piece of time travel technology ever to be Correspondence: Dr Christopher P Nickson, Intensive Care Unit, The Alfred Hospital, Commercial Road, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia. Email: precordial.thump@ gmail.com