Induction

Arthur's induction went well. After he woke up of course - he did faint at the sight of me and Alastor. Wedge didn't show him her natural form until later on, once he had absorbed the fact that there were what he called 'anthropomorphised tigers' running the secret organisation underneath England. We had to correct him that it was actually the entire world, and not just tigers. Originally, well by that I mean before the war, there was a great variety of us. But predominantly tigers and wolves were used as the base of the genetic testing since it was their brain patterns that most resembled those creating them. And dolphins, but they were abandoned early on because of their marine habitat...but I'm getting sidetracked.

He seemed amazed at the storage warehouse, and at the underground transport network we have. The Port is both national and international - but as we said to Arthur, international underground connections only run between the Sectors.

I took him in for his neuroscan, and that completed fairly nicely. He seemed actually enthusiastic to become Bicorporal like us...and he kept asking us if we were joking or if he was in some comedy movie. I'm glad he was excited. The computer took a few hours to find the right match for him, and I had to explain that he will have to 'grow into' his new body - that the body would be only 10 weeks old. I can't accelerate the growth artificially beyond that point, because the body needs to be physically conditioned to grow properly. He watched the options that it ran through for a while - the computer uses the information it has to narrow down the search to a single body from a wide range of species available depending on the most appropriate DNA sequence to match Arthur and to produce a brain that would be most able to contain Arthur's mind. But as I said, he will need to grow into it and allow for the right neural pathways to form.

His new body was Canine. An image that was a prediction of the outcome for that particular gene sequence was generated, and Arthur loved it. I'm glad he did - but it did surprise us a little. We thought it looked too scary and 'evil' for someone who worked here on our side of the divide - but Wedge pointed out how handy it would be. And I guess she's right, black and white aren't inherantly good and bad - the values are arbitrarily assigned to the tones. Simply, light is the presence of photons and darkness is the absence. I forget sometimes, considering what we have to deal with all the time.

So yes, Arthur is now a canine. We felines won't hold it against him. Alastor doesn't really care - teeth, claws, tail - it's all the same. His genetically altered body is that of a large black wolf, with strategically placed muscles for exeptional phsyical abilities. He also will have a large mane that runs down his neck, starting on his forehead and finishing near his shoulders. Gives the appearance of a hyena in my opinion at certain angles. He was a cute puppy however.
Crazy thing was though - his eyes can change colour. I don't know how exactly - but they definitely changed colour. One moment they were a bright piercing yellow/orange, the next they were a light blue.

Wedge has taken him into the TDAR for two year's training. Wedge will be with him for one year, and he will be on his own for the other. For us, it will only be about 2 weeks, so he'll be gone for a fortnight. But he might come back an entirely different person. Two years was the minimum I could have him conditioning the new body - it had to grow at a fairly normal rate to develop properly. It's not like we've done it before.

Alastor and I are taking over for now, while Wedge is away. Not much has happened, just looking into the murder cases a little more. Alastor has gone back out along the truck route to try and find any radioactive signatures that might be where the packages were delivered, and I'm just here trying to find a link. The man was killed by a poison, but not one humans could detect, so we removed Methias' mark and returned the body to the local police.

More updates soon no doubt.

Pre Induction

Ok so before Wedge gives Arthur the tour of the whole facility (well I say whole, but really just looking at all the rooms since there is so much stuff in the storage warehouse that they couldn't walk through it all), I'm going to map the neurological activity of Arthur's brain. Because finding a match could take a while, he can ask all his questions and be completely mind blown (not from me) while the computer searches.
I'm debating whether or not to show him our true identies before or after the scan. Before would have more normal patterns, but after would include a new neural pathway that would be actively used from then on which could influence the selection as well. I will think about it, but since we're going to get started tomorrow I'm going to have to do it quickly.

I've spent most the time so far just building this equipent - hooking the neural mapping machine into the transferer. Mainly also just adjusting the settings for an adult brain. I don't know if this can be done - since I don't know if we can transfer activity into a different housing that has a different chronological signature. We'll explain the risks - but they are minimal, since if a transfer can't be conducted then there is no harm done, no transfer. If it can, then it will completely. I have a nagging feeling though that the new body will have to undergo physical conditioning to match Arthur's age...it will begin as all do, as an infant. I've gotten Alastor to begin looking into an artificial reality in an altered time stream, and it looks promising.

I'll have to look into growth acceleration once I finish this mapping program. Probably going to be a long night.

Post Mortem

Ok so now I've completed a the post mortem on the body we brought back. Very little to say, actually. What intrigues me is that he died without much cause - the evidence demonstrates a sudden stop of the heart, perhaps by electricity. The injuries he sustained were in fact caused after death - good call Wedge. Well actually not all of them, it appears that the marks around his wrists happened just before death but because the timing is so close it is hard to tell without any penatrative wounds. The lack of bruising does seem strange since it is normally associated with the redness present. My assumption is that he was bound and brought there to that abandoned room where he died. Murdered, since the binds weren't found there, and any means of suicide (or murder) weren't present.
And of course there was the mark across the chest.

Quick summary, as I still have much to do. I am running a DNA test at the moment but I doubt anything will turn up - since DNA testing is rather useless to identify people without a registry or database of all DNA profiles.

Slow

Today passed pretty slowly. Not the boring kind, but the kind where you realise that it's almost as if time was moving at half the speed. I know that's not scientifically correct, since time doesn't really have a speed - can't explain it, but just know that it doesn't.

Sultan and Ramah are about to leave, though. I've missed them, and it's been great seeing them again...even if it was under such circumstances. The debrief went well, but Wedge will go into more detail when she gets a chance -she's off investigating something with Arthur right now.

So that leaves me just here alone - which is probably why everything is moving so slowly! Alastor should be returning home soon, he messaged me a few hours ago saying he was having trouble locating the last device.

During the debrief we discussed Arthur's position among us. It was decided to induct him completely - as far as anyone was concerned, he'd proven his worth and loyalty. It's not exactly like we advertise positions here or require any qualifications. So once we're all back together, we'll begin. Should be quite the shock for him, but I would imagine the greatest thing to become part of.

Amputation

Hello everyone.

So today, I was in my office just reading over some things. Alastor was off at all the cities that had power failures, looking for a cause of it. Wedge and Arthur were moving things from Arthur's place to here, and having dinner together at that ...Thai? Indian? Eh, doesn't matter... place that they used to love (the food there is quite excellent, actually; Alastor and I enjoy it whenever we go as a group). Technically I was on call for all of Nine, but since things rarely happen I stayed in my office and focused on being the on call Doctor.

Then I get a call from Sultan, who is posted in Asia. He and Ramah had been working in a uranium mine, and a machine collapsed while they were preventing a critical mass explosion. He was bringing Ramah in who was seriously wounded - he had been exposed to high levels of beta and gamma radiation and the large machine had fallen on him, aputating his left leg. They were at least 20 minutes out, and Ramah was still bleeding a lot.

I sprang to action and got the gear ready in the medical recieving bay, taking it to the Port. I activated the surgery and got some medications ready. I called Wedge in - she was a skilled surgery nurse and helped me out a lot when I needed it - and I could tell I would be needing it. Then, as quickly as I had gotten the message, the incoming traveller alert rang through the complex.

He was in a bad way, the majority of the leg had been severed. Sultan dragged him out of the shuttle and carried the leg behind him in a bag with stasis gel. I took him to the surgery and anesthetized him. Wedge arrived at this moment, and looked after him while I scrubbed up. Can't say too much about what we actually did, but it was quite intricate. I had to align all of the blood vessels, nerves and such in the severed limb to the stump while Wedge covered the join with Revital. I had to stitch together certain parts to keep them aligned properly for the Revital to work correctly. Surprizingly, he only needed two blood transfusions after all that bleeding.

After hours of work, and Wedge stepping out to put Sultan in a bed to treat for shock, we were finished. Wedge took Ramah to post-op while I cleaned up. He should be fine in a few days, but I'm admitting him into recovery for six just to be sure. I'm really tired now - that really took it out of me. I think I'll leave the Lab and bid the others goodnight. Try to sleep a little, perhaps.

Empty Corridors

So Arthur's going to be moving in with us, I don't know why we didn't consider it before. As I told him, there are many dorms available since we used to have many people living here. But no longer. And that got me thinking.

This place really is quiet. I never noticed how much until right now. The silence roams the corridors, haunted by the abscence of its residents. Nine is filled with rooms that once were busy, but now lay silent and dark. Have we really lost so many? I went for a walk throughout the halls and looked into the rooms. So much that lay unfinshed, waiting. Waiting for those who will never return. How could I not have noticed it before? Is our demise really that inevitable? I spend my whole life trying to extend life itself, for all that I see, but as I heard the echoes of my footsteps rebounding off the longing walls I began to wonder.

I placed my hand on an image upon the wall, of children smiling out into the darkness, and asked myself - was it worth it? Of course it was, I told myself, that can't be in question. I exhaled and walked back through the complex that now lay abandoned, back to my lab.

Perhaps I am getting too old.

Dorleigh Case

So I've concluded the Dorleigh case. Turns out that the marrow transplant that they got was actually rejected by the bone itself as well as their own marrow, but of course they got the strengthened lymphocytes so that caused an immune war. So it was then just a matter of recalling the strengthened cells (this is one reason why I like to leave a radioactive signature in the introduced material) and replacing them with cells that had the correct protein marker for her body. Interesting case to look at really.

I will try to limit the medical journals, since I do already have the reports to fill out about it (and my brother has been complaining). Just quick notes I think.
The time difference between here where I work and the outer world does get to me at times. Particularly when we're all separated. You see, time passes differently here than outside of the base. Nine's outside of the normal stream of time, so that we could spend a week there and only a day will have passed outside (where this is found, thus many days may have passed for us but the next entry may be mere hours). Or we could spend a day here and a month pass outside - depends on the settings. Usually time passes more slowly outside.

I saw Arthur again a day or so ago. I think he's really looking forward to seeing Wedge again. Sure, he hasn't known her for that long - only like a year or two maybe (keeping track of time really is an issue here) but great friendship doesn't take long to bloom. He was Wedge's first friend in England when we came here and stayed for a while. He of course had no idea about us, or the real Wedge, but they got on all the same. Wedge used to leave and go spend time with him in her normal person alias. He took it really well, finding out about the secret service. He's been in Sector Nine a fair bit. He by no means knows all of it, or the crazy part. We were just about ready to induct him, show him, when Wedge left. It's a little funny to think how he used to join us so often to help with cases without knowing much at all about us. He still thinks we're just average people doing secret things. We'll have to tell him soon.

Ending thoughts: How did the wrong protein markers get left on the cells programmed for Dorleigh?

Opening Title

I am Dr. Julian. Medical Doctor.

I've been considering joining here after making the suggestion that Wedge do it, but I've been a little busy up until now to do it. That, and my brother Alastor has been nagging me to sign up already.

Personally I think he's excited by it. You should have seen the amount of time he spent choosing the design for his page.

I do wish that there was a messaging system available so that I could send messages through here as well...but I guess that's what our intenal email is for. I just ... I don't know. I want everything in one spot. It's strange - I'm talking to an arbitraty 'you' when I know the people who are going to be reading this. And referencing those people in the third person. I guess that's what a blog's all about though, isn't it?

Another upside - if I update this enough, then some of the people chasing me will know where I am and what I'm doing at a certain point in time so that they can understand why I can't see them straight away. Sometimes people and patients get very impatient. As I understand this blog is reasonably restricted, but it doesn't really matter if it's not. We just can't divulge many details.

As you may have noticed, I'm back in the UK. Had to come back from visiting Wedge early, can't say why really. But Alastor's still there and those two will be arriving within the next couple of weeks.

I did catch up with Arthur too when I got back - he's excited that Wedge is coming back. I guess 18 months is a long time for him, being that much younger than us. He wanted to know if there was a way to find out what she had been up to, and I mentioned our shift towards this blog world to keep track of things. He's probably gone off to get one too. Considering the reports we have to write, and the secrecy of our emails, it's nice to have a more casual writing forum.

I don't know if Al's going to update his very much, but expect to see a little from me.