“I just can’t do it,” you say. The truth is, you’re not sure you understand all this business with paradoxes in the timestream. But it seems like it has the potential to get SERIOUSLY nuts, and you figure if you’re going to draw the line anywhere, it might as well be murdering alternate versions of yourself.

Professor Velociraptor sighs. “I understand. Perhaps I can find someone else for this mission. Sit right here while I make some phone calls—you’re still temporally linked to the original timestream, so I’ll still need you to…”

She keeps talking, but you’re suddenly overcome with an all-too-familiar, gut-wrenching vertigo. Crap! Whatever that peeling-yourself-off-the-fabric-of-reality business was, you’ve opted out. Is this what happens when someone messes with the timestream?

The room spins around you, and Professor V.’s voice is replaced by that of a panicked young man. You open your eyes to discover what looks like an operating room.
“He’s crashing!” the young man says. The first thing you notice is that he’s dressed in green scrubs. The second is that, under his surgical mask, he seems to have the head of a dog. In fact, you realize that everyone in this room is covered in fur as if they had evolved from Labrador retrievers.

“What do we do, Doctor?” another voice asks. Everyone’s looking at you. Are you the doctor? Just a moment ago, you were in an entirely different room with… a talking dinosaur? Eight years of medical school come rushing back. How is it even possible that you had eight years of medical school when you’re only 22? Is this some sort of Doogie Howser thing?

Is it… Doggie Howser?

Perhaps that isn’t what you should focus on right now. You look down and see a patient spread out on a gurney with a gaping hole in his torso. Open heart surgery? No, it’s lower than that. Open liver surgery? Is that even a thing? Wait, now you remember! It’s an appendectomy!

“Doctor!” one of your assistants says with more than a little panic in her voice. You’re not sure why your head is so foggy, but you’re a surgeon, damnit. And if you want to save this patient’s life, you have to act fast.

If you tell them to yank that man’s appendix out of him, pronto, turn to page 266.

If you call for 50 cc of magnesium sulphate, STAT, turn to page 138.