Poor sumbitch gets me pestering him all the time for cool medical stories. Mostly it's a boring parade of people with back pain (and, I discovered, a lot of "back pain"--distinguishable because back pain is actual pain in your back, while "back pain" is more related to wanting Moar Painkillers), but sometimes we get an Oliver Sacks-worthy tale in there. Other times, we meet voice actors.

I have no idea what he'd think of my medical stories. I try to give them a medical feel as well as an alien feel, but it's tough to work out. The stories did seem a natural offshoot of my fascination with the body, how the body goes wrong, and what we do when that happens.

The drill is very badass. It's got a hypersensitive pressure sensor on the end of it so that when it breaks through the skull it stops dead. You don't want that getting away from you, after all.