Dr. Hugov Borschtovsky
Physician. Scientist. Continuity specialist. Probably.
Recorded history
Dr. Hugov Borschtovsky is a travelling physician, scientist and one of the Wasteland's best-known eccentrics. From his caravan he provides emergency medical care, examines strange artefacts, investigates unusual illnesses and exchanges knowledge for knowledge.
Those who have dealt with him generally agree on two things: he is very strange, and he is considerably more useful than first impressions suggest.
Borschtovsky claims to have worked at Facility 862-B before the Fall as a member of its Reclamation Directorate. According to the Doctor, the facility existed to answer a deceptively simple question: when a system fails, how do you make it work again?
Its staff tested equipment, procedures and recovery methods against biological, chemical, environmental and technical failures. The Doctor speaks about that work with the familiarity of someone remembering an old job rather than ancient history.
The cure
He made it in the field, during the fighting for Iron Haven, while the battle that ended the war was still going on around him.
The sickness had been in the region for some time before that. What was new was what it started doing to people. During that engagement the changed appeared in numbers and in the open, and those who were there have called them mutants ever since, for want of a better word and because nobody has since offered one.
The conditions were not adequate and nobody has ever claimed otherwise. He had a caravan, whatever equipment he had managed to gather, and no institution behind him. No programme, no supply chain, no second opinion. One physician working a problem while the shooting continued.
He solved it. The archive states that plainly, because a great deal else about the man is disputed and this is not. The cure was made, it was given out, and the changing stopped.
How it reached people is only partly recorded. The archive knows that settlements passed it between them, and that those who took it had no means of assessing what they were taking. It does not know how many. It has found nobody who counted.
Every source that touches the question agrees that he believed it would save lives. He was right, which is the rarer thing.
He does not discuss the work now. He is not evasive about it so much as finished with it. The archive can at least say which battle it was done during, and that is more than it can say about anything else in his account of himself.
The chronology problem
Facility records, surviving dates and the Doctor's own account do not fit together.
He refers to pre-Fall colleagues as though he saw them recently. He describes corridors, laboratories and procedures in unnecessary detail. He occasionally complains about administrative decisions whose authors should have been dead for centuries. When challenged on this point, he tends either to become distracted or to insist that the calendar is being unreasonable.
Whether this is impossible, a symptom of age, an elaborate private joke, or simply another of Borschtovsky's peculiarities remains unresolved.
He has a term for it. Unprompted and without any apparent doubt, he refers to a continuity delamination, using the phrase as though it named a known and fairly ordinary class of failure, the sort of thing a competent person ought to have allowed for. Asked what it is that delaminated, he has given answers the archive has transcribed and cannot use.
The archive records the term exactly as given. It does not know what it means. It notes only that the Doctor does not appear to consider the matter mysterious, and that he is the sole person on file who has a name for it at all.
More troublingly, fragments of Facility 862-B documentation do contain his name.
In the Wasteland
Whatever the truth of his history, the Doctor has established a practical reputation among travellers and settlements. He treats injuries, investigates unfamiliar contamination and mutation, performs field examinations and has an alarming willingness to poke at objects sensible people prefer to leave alone.
His methods can be improvised. His bedside manner is variable. His paperwork is inexplicably thorough.
He is also, at present, the only person still working the old Dust Market site. The market is abandoned: the traders gone, the Banker's desk moved on, the stalls standing empty. The Doctor's caravan is exactly where it was. He has offered no view on the departure of everyone else, and continues to mark contaminated ground for later remediation as though the site had a future that required organising.
A collection of working songs circulates under his name as collector: Songs for the Long Repair. He did not compose them and has never claimed to.
He is also known to pursue surviving Facility 862-B equipment and documentation. Of particular interest are Continuity systems: field tools designed not to contain a ready-made answer, but to determine what has broken, gather evidence and provide the means to begin repairing it.
If you find yourself injured, afflicted by the Wasteland, or in possession of something you do not understand, you should seek out the Doctor.
Preferably before attempting to open it yourself.
Archive notes
- Offers emergency medical treatment where practical.
- The last occupant of the abandoned Dust Market site. Caravan has not moved.
- Trades information, records and unusual specimens.
- Made the cure in the field during the fighting for Iron Haven. It worked, and the changing stopped.
- The changed appeared in numbers during that engagement. Witnesses call them mutants; no better term has been offered since.
- Does not discuss the work now. Nothing he says about it can be dated, though the battle it was done during is known.
- Uses the term continuity delamination for whatever is wrong with the chronology. The archive has recorded the phrase and cannot interpret it.
- Claims direct pre-Fall employment at Facility 862-B.
- Possesses detailed knowledge that partially corroborates the claim.
- Do not allow him to describe punch cards unless you have several hours available.