Profile of I.O. Geiger
At the core of the city lies Mantinea Medical Institute. It is a tall structure, as is necessary to establish its dominance in lieu of a flashy design. This building would be unremarkable if not for the density of its inhabitants. MMI is the storage space for all that remains of humanity’s greatest innovation: abstraction. Robots do have abstract thoughts of course, being constructs of abstraction themselves. Meanwhile, a human's unique way of thinking revolves around a Darwinistic survival instinct. It’s similar, but less straightforward, and more association-based. This is all to say that the MMI serves an important purpose in upholding history.
The institute's insides are a labyrinth at the lower levels. In fact, the uninformed would confuse the monument for an abandoned storage space. No, these rooms weren’t “designed” in any sense of the word. Rather, they exist because they must. They are the base of MMI. But, they are still beautiful. Electroencephalograms desperately tangle themselves with wires, which are now unplugged: they have fallen out of the walls underneath the weight of the EEGs. Massive computer towers cover each wall, sprawling upwards, forever. Wires cross the room from tower to tower like telephone lines. The scene has a flow to it. A balance manages to exist, despite the lack of management.
The top levels are much cleaner. Naturally, this is where the most important of studies and neuro-experiments are done. The mess of the lower levels dissipate, and the rooms take on a much more minimalist appearance. There are hints of a retro-futurist design lingering. The wallpaper, for example: sickly orange diamonds and smooth, tan curves cultivate like mold beneath clean, medical whiteness. But it is in vain. Any major representations of the aesthetic have long faded. The modern, aeroesthetic look weeds itself in between the cracks of the past. Ill-fitting atriums have been constructed wherever they fit (or do not fit) in. Their pointlessness has been punctuated with uncomfortable seating areas, strewn across the makeshift lobbies. Hastily considered windows of varying shapes are common in these higher levels. They take in the light that the bottom floors have been so cruelly deprived of, not that they would need it. The roof has been carved into, creating bold waves overhead. Stylish metal bars, painted white, mimicking industrial pipes sit beneath the ceiling. They are slim and obviously provide no structural support, but that is not their goal. It is to bisect what walks beneath them into neat squares through the shadows they cast. It is a subtle effect, but it breaks up the monotony of the ugly blue carpeting.
Frankly, none of it looks good- but the patients who manage to be at the mercy of MMI’s finest don’t seem to mind.
In this immaterial and cerebral place lives IO Geiger; no one could fault you for forgetting this fact. She tends to spend most of her time at her personal clinic. Some call the modest office building a labor of love, but that isn't entirely accurate. IO Geiger's clinic, known as the Northern Empyrean Health Office, was not made out of love, but out of an unyielding duty to the noble job of an expert anthrotechnician! For duty and love are, in the eyes of the good doctor IO, two separate animals.
The office is curious in how it presents itself. It is an almost childish rejection of modern tastes. MMI and other doctor’s offices follow a typical floorplan: a primary atrium that splits into smaller terminals, each with their own medical goals. IO Geiger’s office has only one terminal and it has been dedicated to cardiology. On one side of this terminal is the operating room. This is where the doctor spends most of her time- she does not perform operations very often. There is something undeniably strange about the decor of this room, and only some of that can be attributed to the doctor’s own tastes. Wooden walls reflect yellow-toned light from low-watt bulbs onto a leather bench lined with paper. The area behind the bench is painted an intense orange, in an attempt to tie the place together. The floor, beige and smooth, is partially covered by a circular rug woven long ago. Boxy mahogany cabinets surround the perimeter of the room. Each contains an assortment of medical tools and other such toys for the doctor’s satisfaction. Shelves of flower pots hang around the room; they contain mushrooms, whose growth is stimulated with the electricity produced through surgery.
The oddities of her vacation home’s design aside, IO Geiger's permanent residence is ultimately MMI. Her living space is on the third floor in a corner she carved out for herself. Being a lower floor, the room is messier than its closer to the clouds counterparts- and Geiger’s neglect of the space doesn't help. However, it is indeed livable. Texts from various religions are haphazardly stacked in between medical textbooks that are reaching their fiftieth anniversary of obscurity. They nicely frame the highly conductive metal bed, sitting pushed up against the western wall. A large collection of comfortable looking pillows cover the bed. Upon closer inspection, feathers prickle from beneath the pillow cases’ thin cotton- like acupuncture. A hanger has been installed into the wall above the bed and keeps track of an assortment of berets. The most brain-shaped hat, she says.
As for IO Geiger herself, there is little to say. She was built nearly 30 years ago. She awoke with an uncanny ability to recite bible verses and DSM entries from something more than memory. A biological urge? Or maybe, this “IO Geiger” does it to be funny. Her face is cold in both appearance and temperature. To ensure the physical integrity of her inheritance, she has installed a series of cryogenic fans beneath her brain. To keep in the cold, she wears a gorgeous angora beret. She explains away the obvious complication of a frozen brain being nonfunctional with “willpower”. She wears rubber gloves that somehow give her hands a rigid edge to them. Some consider this a testament to her ability to obfuscate herself by any means; some consider it an ugly fashion choice. Yes, gloves and a hat. That's all she wears.
She has been an anthrotechnican for as long as she has been alive, and will be until her inevitable brain death- unless, of course, that never happens.
Her medical career is argued to be born from some new-age form of nepotism or eugenics. Brains are one of the more common inherited organs. Humans believed the brain was “them”, and they wanted “them” to persist. Of course, very few people can successfully perform a brain surgery, let alone a brain transplant! So, many robots are victims of what can generously be called “sloppy work”. But IO Geiger is a different case; her brain is perfectly preserved. Its original owner took incredible care of it. So, she chose the noble and pitiful path of a memexoid sort of creature- cataloging all the feelings humans left behind. She rose the ranks quickly.
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