Person #1: Do not worry! I will fix it...
Person #2: You know, [Name], there are certain phrases in our language - such as that one - that simply cannot imply a good outcome. Do you know what I mean?
Person #1: Wow! This really DOES bond skin instantly!
Person #2: Good example. -- RecklessPrudence
Certain phrases imply impending doom. Whenever someone says, "What else can go wrong?" the universe is likely to answer with a supremely painful example.
Whenever a human says, "Hey, watch this," or, "check this out," you know that something spectacular and painful is going to happen to either them or an innocent bystander.
Trader Ax'and'l is known to wince and flinch whenever his human companion Hwell Barrow says, "I have an idea."
And in the case of the Salvage Vessel Numbat, the crew busts out their safety gear whenever Lower Technician Dave Rimmer utters the words, "I've got a tool for that that I've wanted to try..." or, "Oooh! I have a thing for that..."
Certain people join the United Fellowship of Terran Planet's fleet of service vessels with stars in their eyes, dreams in their hearts, and the overall competency of a dead whelk. The UFTP fleet administrators test them for Luck, of course, and then try to put them where they'll do the most good. Or, failing that, where they'll do the least harm.
Such is the fate of the UFTP salvage vessel Numbat. Placed in a stellar sargasso where not even the most incompetent, inept, uncoordinated, or just plain unthinking crewmember could possibly screw up to the point where someone dies.
This is the ship where trainee doctors go, after their ten years' nursing, to see if they can cut it in the big leagues. Because the Numbat is the vessel with the highest rates of the most interesting injuries known to human kind.
And woe betide them if Lower Technician Dave Rimmer is feeling helpful.
Doctor Mame looked down at the mess. LT Rimmer's hand was stuck in the middle of it but, in his words, "at least we stopped the bleeding." She readied the solvents.
"What did I tell you about medicine and the practice thereof?" she chanted.
"Not in an emergency?" guessed Rimmer. "This was an emergency. Tolo's guts were coming out."
"The other thing," Mame prompted.
"...uuuuhhhhh..."
"Ductape and superglue..." she began.
"...uuuuhhhhh..."
"Don't fix everything."
"...oh..." Rimmer looked down at the mess of bloody intestines, his own hand, and patches of ductape. "Ohyeah! Should I have used a thing?"
Given the vast collection of LT Rimmer's things and the damage they could cause, there was only one safe answer. "NO!"
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