More of the Helsing-Dracula situation

    Igor shows me evidence from a succession of hidden camera video feed files demonstrating that Detective Helsing is no longer in residence at Deichtenstein's Inn. Then he shows me some infrared and satellite images indicating that something about the size of a skinny bear or man may be camped on a high ridge across the valley. Bears don't stay in one place like this. The strategic location of it's position keeps us from directly spotting what or who it might be with the telescope or far ranging infrared imager, it is behind a large ridge fold about twelve kilometers away. I forget just enough geology to be able to describe this rock formation accurately by it's given term. I instruct Igor to keep an eye out by a hack into (name of sovereign country)'s surveillance satellites as they pass over to see if whatever or whoever this is ever moves itself into a line of sight position with our castle.

   If this is Helsing himself and he is camping up there with some new manner of surveillance device of his own then he is isolated from the view of other mortals. From where he is if I can't see him then no one in the village can see him. This valley is remarkably picturesque for it's unique rock formations. Even if he moved to where I could see him then still no one in the village could see him, the lower ridges occlude a line of sight from it's location to that high spot. I wonder if he has noticed that he can't see the village from where he is. Further maintained surveillance on our part will reveal if he is in contact with anyone; if anyone is bringing up supplies, etc. If he has a cell phone he would need a solar charger, and would only have about six hours of direct sunlight to charge the batteries, the ridges here are that steep. If he is operating some kind of electronic surveillance device it too would need batteries...but if it was set up on a line of sight to our castle then it would receive about three hours of additional sunlight, and he could be monitoring the device from behind the ridge outcrop wall formation thing, whatever it is called. 

  I summon Igor back to get him to look carefully to see if he can also spot some kind of small device on a line of sight to us situated on the ridge facing us, in front of this hiding spot. I suppose I could laser away part of the occluding rock formation, but there is a sheep farm in the hills below where the many tons of rock debris would fall. That translates into another episode with the torches and sharp farm implements outside our main gate, and rude behavior towards any interns unaccompanied in the village by Igor. Also of late the American intelligence community seems to have a real talent for detecting the use of high energy particle projection devices anywhere on the surface of the earth. Except they call them "weapons" or "your laser cannon" in the explicitly terse communiques I have received from them after some recent test shots aimed at the moon. I'm fairly sure I didn't hit anything with their flag on it, they didn't send me a bill.   

  All current index A4 specimens are all away to various corners of the globe, doing what I designed them to do best. The index A4 specimen server cluster monitors and archives all incoming signals. We are currently out of inventory any kind of organism that I could program to go over there just to watch Helsing from up close without the risk that the same organism would try to eat him.  Had not Dracula asked that I seek some course of action that will inspire Helsing's return to that neck of the woods (heh) in Romania where Dracula lurks and into the waiting fangs of his number two bride I would probably set about the use of that hungry organism forthwith.
 Let's see what the satellites tell us.

Helpful lab hints #4 specimen anesthesia protocols

 Foremost in the maintaining of operative functions for the type of work we do here is to first specify in the long view the most essential of tools to keep ready at hand. Aside from  those such as found on the standard surgical tray in any operating theater scoped in the practice of western invasive procedures are the instruments comprising the anesthesia protocol. A refined art in itself, the application of anesthesia aids greatly whilst in the midst of the practice of many types of procedures. Should the unusual situation arise where more time is needed to complete the task at hand, especially when it is noticed that relied upon assistance is suddenly nowhere to be found, it is considered prudent to have additional implements of anesthesia at the ready.

 A situation arose where the eventual outcome forced me to remind Igor that though I had trouble during the rising drama of the situation seeking the anesthesia tool when it was most needed I found myself recalling quite well where the bullwhip was hanging in it's spot on the wall. 

 I felt ridiculous saying it to him. Over these past two hundred years it has grown fruitless in attempting to instruct Igor by means of corporal discipline. He has obviously grown immune to such a degree that the last time I whipped him I discovered that he was merely engaging in some silly pantomime of agony at each stroke of the lash. Either through excessive scarring or sheer endurance of will he had become immune to the sting of the whip. He was in fact mocking the ritual. He wasn't mocking me, he belittled the ritual of corporal punishment by placing it in the scope of absurdity where it belongs. It made me look foolish instead of feeling guilty.
 We had both become anesthetized within the necessary suspension of dignity required when one person tries to inflict his will upon another by means of disciplinary brutality.

Eyeful for the interns

   When Igor is giving the indoctrination speech to new batches of interns he likes to regale them with stories of previous lab assistants who went on to greater heights and wider avenues of recognition. Nikola Tesla seems to make a big impression, and in the past 30 years his name has received a much larger scope of recognition, as well it should. Heisenberg also seems to raise eyebrows, of all the more recent big names.
  That so many more young people are able to even go to college in the  past thirty years than in the previous centuries prior to WW2 adds significant levels of dilution to the prospects that any of these recent bunches will go on to distinguish themselves, at least to the level of celebrity (or in some cases, infamy) that previous workers have gone on to achieve. That they will go on to be part of a vast workforce divided into small groups all working together precludes the possibility or even the real need for there to be a personality associated with any new technology breakthrough. New breakthroughs or advances are now associated with the labs or organizations where teams of scientists work together. Cern is an excellent example. I have a serious desire to get down into that tunnel and poke around with the innards of that super collider; but they probably have swarms of workers mulling over it 24/7 like frantic bees. My guess is even if I could pull it off I might be disappointed at what I find. Probably if I put my mind to it I could get comparable results much faster merely using bacterial chimeras with model constructs in microscopic media. Except then I wouldn't need to build a circular multi-kilometer tunnel under two countries, so Cern and it's backers do edge me out there in the fun factor.
 Maybe a tour for Igor and the interns could be arranged.. I could implant image collation bacteria in the eyeballs of the interns while they sleep. This bacteria triggers a layered image set banked as phosphor stacks on the back of the eyeball. As different spectra of light comes through the cornea the bacteria is triggered to a cycled emulsion that adds layers. All a person has to do is turn their head or blink to delineate differing spectra of light. If only I could develop a method of retrieving the phosphor stacks without having to replace the eyeball itself. I mean, what if I replaced an intern's eye with a different color eye because I was out of the needed matching color of iris?  Plus some of them might get curious when they all stand around noticing that they all have itchy eyes yet no other symptoms nor subsequent development of conjunctivitis later. And it would be a stretch to drug them all and hurry to complete the procedure on all of them in one night, and that's if everything went smoothly.
 I would try an index A4 specimen, but if they go that far underground I doubt we could maintain contact considering the intensity of the electromagnetic fields they would be immersed in down there.

Castle Newton-Steyn in sunny Bavaria

 Actually, no. This is not a picture of our castle where everything that you read about in this blog takes place. This is Castle Neuschwanstein built by mad King Ludwig in 1869, not Castle Newton-Steyn built by mad Doctor Frank______'s family starting sometime in the 12th century.
 Though shockingly similar in appearance, Castle Newton-Steyn is built of black stone, and that's not really the name. The villagers call it simply 'the castle' and everyone knows where they mean. You won't find it on the map, though on some older maps (those in archives where Igor hasn't gotten in yet with his big bottle of white-out) you will find the humble village of Heidelweiche Constabulary, and then an undefined dark mass just up the mountainside from it's valley. Somewhere near Bavaria and Austria.
 Obviously though, an architect in the employ of mad King Ludwig seemed possessed of a remarkably photographic memory at a time when taking a real photograph was a feat of near magic.

 Satellite imagery? There are some sophisticated light photon disbursement instruments up on top of the keep, aimed upward covering a .24 degree arc. Nobody bothers us about any of it, how on earth would an intelligence agency be able to explain this one without peripheral risk of retreading some extremely sensitive topics? The satellite passes over and takes a picture, and the new guy in the image downlink room looks and sees sheep and maybe a strange barn or two in an alpine meadow. The guy who has been there twenty years supervising this particular download says "next slide, kid; mark this one just as you see it and don't look at it again." The kid who is trusted to work in this room knows what else the weight in his tone of voice implies. 
  It's a good thing the satellite can't look too closely at the sheep.

Piltdown Man vs Newton-Steyn's creatures.

   Did anyone like that movie where the two software engineers built the time machine out of cardboard boxes and duct tape then hid it in a storage facility so their wives wouldn't find out and make them take it apart? Some of the interns and Igor watched this movie the other night after work on the new widescreen. I found out what it was about later after I asked Igor what he was laughing at.

  I used to be fascinated by quantum physics, now it arrives just short of making my eyes glaze over. Grim sinkholes fulla red herrings abound if you deftly posit an unspoken notion of the possibility existing that anything can happen at anytime for any reason. University tenures of every shape and size built on any theoretical construct as long as it contains plethoral plenitude of ten dollar words arranged in ironic or juxtaposed wordplay fascinating enough for the university dons to imagine classrooms full of wide eyed kids mesmerized by not much more than a whole lotta shilly shally and the timely tossing around of reverenced big names. Most of all the dons imagine the kid's parents or some grant shelling out the dough to keep an eye on those kids for four…six…eight+ years…

 Whatever theory results in reliable working hardware renders all theoretical arguments against the theory with the reliable working hardware moot.
  The guy who invented the wheel did it like this: he had no slide rule. He saw some rocks rolling down a hill, a landslide or something. Then he noticed the shape of the full moon and the sun (at sunset when it’s easy to look at). Genius cave man that he is figures: if there was a rock shaped like the sun or the moon…then..but loses the rest of it. Some years later, his grandson, hearing these stories from pop about grandad's sun shaped rock being special for some reason, gets the notion to take a rock and bash it with another harder rock until it IS shaped like the sun or the moon... while HIS son sees him doing it. The great grandson gets the notion to lift it off dad's work slab, turn the thing on it’s side and watch it roll. The invention of the wheel. Too bad great-granddad got et by the panther and missed the historic moment.  
    Or let’s follow our complicated invention-by-way-of-wrangling-the-theory argument. Just reference the achievements of all the proponents of the Piltdown Man during it’s lengthy stretch of academic reverence. Consider the respected scholars of the late 19th century awash in solemn hubris avowing on their pillars of academia that man will never fly. Or those that said the AC motor was a perpetual motion scam. My favorite was the late 19th century academic who said that man should just give up on science because when reflecting on the sheer huge scale of wonders already revealed one can only come to the conclusion there is nothing left to discover. A perfect example of the kind of deductive reasoning plumb from the type of mind that cannot see the forest for all the trees.

  I will say, hidden here in my guise, that within twenty years we will see a working test hardware device that will ultimately result to the creation of a "faster"-than-light-with-no-time-dilation craft in the same way a paper airplane ultimately resulted to the American's SR-71. (using the SR-71 as a metaphor for a flying machine that is quite far up the evolutionary ladder from the paper airplane.)
  And the Big Bang is this generation’s Piltdown Man.

Picture of Igor, back from lunch with interns

I caught this picture of Igor as he was coming back from lunch in the village with the interns. I think the camera adds ten pounds to his hunchback. For this particular photo I had to photoshop out the background as there were objects of a sensitive nature that Igor's hunch did not occlude.

Helpful lab hints #3: electric gridwork safeguard

  If the flames don't get them...I can count on the electrical gridwork. The use of this protocol is the measure of resort following evidence that the flames prove 60% ineffective; mostly indicated if the specimen is still moving. If the subject has not been rendered inert following saturation in what amounts to immersion in about 5000 degrees of chemically induced scorch-plasma, the next step (and in certain conditions this becomes an automated response) the grid will initiate and isolate the ‘out of control’ organism in an arc channeling some 70,000 to 110,000 watts through it's mass.
I have to credit Igor with the implementation of this safeguard. Following a particularly close call with subject E-87a that was only resolved with Igor's deft wielding of a fire axe (a very lucky stroke into E-87a's ganglion brainstem) we discussed the idea of a second 'hands-off' suppression option. Igor's plucky axemanship was partially a success owing to the fact that E-87a was designed to function with no visual reception senses; meaning it had no eyes and couldn't detect Igor lurching quickly towards it with the axe.
What I never expected was that even with all that flame it's scales hardly looked burnt. It had only paused it's thrashing momentarily as the flames engulfed it, but we can't operate the throwers in a spurt longer than 14 seconds without risking structural heat damage to the entire castle. Usually that amount of heat is as destructively effective as the flame booth, depending on the survivability protocol designed into the organism (as unexpectedly observed in the case of E-87a).
Obviously, some subjects are intended to have certain invulnerabilities. As of yet I have nothing in the specimen design library that can withstand an electric arc exceeding 50,000 watts for longer than 17 seconds.
Igor double checked this fact after seeing a movie called "The Thing". He then asked me to watch the 1951 film's final scene where the story's protagonists resolve their problem (which involved an inability to negotiate with an extraterrestrial) by running what looked like a few short thousand watts through the body of this unlucky visitor from another world. Igor, inspired by the cleverly brutal resolve of the movie's heroes, explained to me his idea of implementing the secondary 'electrical gridwork' (his term) lab protocol disposal safeguard. Had this not been a week after the event of E-87a with Igor and his plucky fire axe, I would have poo-poo'd the whole idea. But it made sense, and truth be told I was beginning to get ideas following E-87a's autopsy. This exam focused particular attention on the subject's seemingly flame resistant scales. My muse instructed me in the probability of creating an organism that could survive for a short time while submerged in molten rock. But in case of yet another 'developmental mishap' and this time with a subject largely impervious to intense flame we would need that second protocol. Igor's electrical gridwork idea (inspired by something he saw in a movie, of all things) seemed an acceptable solution.
We did, however, manage to destroy more lab equipment than I anticipated during the tests to determine what gauge of chicken wire could withstand all that power.

Remarkable scientific milestones, #1

This nutritional paste is pretty good. We whipped it up for the growth nubs, makes it easy for feeding within hours of their spawn. Just plop a handful into each maw every two hours for 17 days, then a handful every 6 hours for the next 43 days. I’m pretty sure it’s not much more than baby food, except Igor tripled the growth hormone count to cover the nub’s 60 day spurt to mass index A, when the course DNA can be applied.
We’ve come a heckuva long way from digging up corpses and sewing together the most viable parts to make a whole creature. Got the idea for the nubs reading Darwin’s notes on the sea cucumber. I think it was Darwin with the sea cucumber; that was a long time ago. Of course now, (thanks to the efforts of universities and corporate research servers around the world) extensive data on almost any topic is retrievable within scant seconds thanks to the internet. If we’ve come a long way since raiding graveyards, we’ve come an even longer way from the time when I would spend hours in the library flipping through heavy volumes or bound journals to now where all I need is to tote this laptop with me everywhere. Everything we need comes in via the coaxial cable from either the dish array on top of the tower keep or over the cable TV service provider’s monthly subscription. I prefer using the satellite for more sensitive issues.
Last year a clever intern feeding the nubs suddenly made the sea cucumber connection as she plopped a half cup of nutritional paste into one of the nub's maws. She came running up to me breathless, rambling enthusiastically about my brilliant synthesis of a sea dwelling organism and mammalian metabolic functions into one funny smelling chimera macrophyte. I reminded her that around here we call them 'growth nubs' or just 'nubs' and instructed her to mind the nutritional paste she was about to spill from her bucket. She ran gleefully back to her feeding chore, babbling happily to the floor and ceiling about how everything she was taught in bio 101 would have to be rewritten. A budding biotech engineer for the 21st century. I figure, well what are any of these students gonna tell people: "oh sure, we interned for this mad scientist who managed to impart a mammalian physiogyte onto a plant cellular substrate and got them to grow within 60 days to a humanoid zygote that is able to produce varying percentages (based on alternating metabolization ratios) of the oxygen it requires." They know all the other interns would just laugh at them: “what did he do next, get them to walk and talk? ha ha ha ha!”
Walking and talking takes another four months, from index A to index A2; and sometimes that flamebooth comes in handy when the talking gives indications it’s only gonna resolve to endless shrieks after a week of reaching index A2.
At index A2.2 species interaction starts to become important, and Igor transforms from occasionally helpful/bungling hideous hunchback assistant to (of all things) caring nurturer. At least from the maturing A2-A3 nub’s perspective. Even more shocking is when a fully matured properly functioning A4 organism will still look at Igor the way a child recognizes a beloved parent.
Now that’s the basis for a scary horror movie.

Immortality #2

  I know that all the interns have overheard or snooped around enough in my files to surmise that Igor and I are immortal, but I wonder if they think it's just some personal gallows humor joke between Igor and myself. Wouldn’t be a stretch after what they see in this lab.
  I sometimes toy with the idea of secretly imbuing the interns with the chimera protein, but the procedure isn’t quite as quick as an inoculation or the simple swallowing of a pill. Plus, how would they be able to understand their condition with their own personal health maintenance professionals or even their families when in forty years they still appeared as they did in their early twenties?  

What blunders never cease

Heh, and what hard apples have fallen from my tree. Right now I can hear Igor directing the interns in their wrangling of one of those hard apples. Too often the results of my labors can be said to be more nutty than fruitful as the kids struggle to get G-117 into the flame booth. This time they are all wearing plenty of proper protection. G-117 doesn't know it's going into the flame booth any more than it could be wracked with hunger sitting in front of a bathtub full of nutritional paste and would starve to death before the proper motor neurons sequenced the necessary nerve receptors to immerse it's own hideous maw in the paste. Even more remarkable would be if G-117 extended one of it's nine tentacles into the nutritional paste, swirled up a small mass of it then retracted the paste-coated tentacle into it's maw. At that point I would win the Nobel Prize even if G-117 managed to consume part of the tentacle along with the paste. Then swallowing would be the next miracle, and I think I even heard one of the interns make this very same remark (though I'm not sure if he was referring to lab work).
Do I have high hopes for G-118? I have charts and slides and this laptop. One of the interns is tasked with getting the content of the charts and slides into the server where I can access it, but I don't blame her if that stuff gets backed up. At the moment it's much more of a priority that G-117 goes into the flame booth, for even the newest intern learned what that iodine-sulfurish smell meant. There are always priorities like these popping up in this lab. The interns follow each other's lead, after only about one week they don't need any prodding from me or Igor to recognize it could mean their very lives are in considerable jeopardy if they don't move fast at the proper moment.
At this proper moment Igor flicks the switch and G-117 shows no reaction whatsoever as the flames consume to fine grit every kilogram of it’s smelly hideous writhing mass.
The interns trudge down the passage in their armor to the decontamination shed. By twos they clank through the acid spray, the armor has to lose an external layer of it’s titanium-silvered shelling no less than 6/10ths of a millimeter to be reusable.