A Study in Violet

[Fairchild]

Professor Nikita Nagrebetskiy walked into the new Vergil lab, the new extension to Atka built with the assistance of Samura logistics teams. His research team, enriched by several new scientists from Ageira, was already there busy furnishing the room with necessary equipment. He looked around himself to judge their efforts.

The lab was divided into two, roughly equally-sized rooms separated with a acrylic glass pane. The main, research room already had several pieces of furniture ready. Four desks in total could accommodate eight people working simultaneously. Along the back wall, two large refrigerators had been placed that would store the Vergil bacteria. In the other room, three Ageira employees had begun setting up their computers.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Er... Good afternoon." The eyes turned towards the professor, as he walked up to the pane and knocked, bringing the attention of the Ageira scientists on the other side. He gestured for them to come.

As everyone gathered in the research room, he began. "Well. I was told that Jera had already talked with our--" he paused for a short moment and looked at the Ageira, "--Zoner friends, and the bacteria shipment will be arriving today or early tomorrow. Meanwhile, I figured we should, er, catch up our friends from Liberty to what we already have in the box."

He walked to one of the desks and put on a diagram of the Vergil bacteria on the screen above.

"You'll excuse my lack of drawing skills. This... well, this is what we call the Vergil bacteria. It's quite, er, similar to everything you should, hopefully, remember from high school biology, however it has two important parts of its cell that we haven't seen before." He pointed to the relevant parts of the diagram. "Luchatelium and ryadelia. So, er, as you might already be aware, the Vergil bacteria is capable of emitting slight static signal when an electric current passes through it. The emission of that signal is coming from the luchatelium. We aren't particularly aware of how and why it would be doing it... but that's, er, a secondary question."

He paused for a second to clear his throat and continued. "The second, er, peculiar thing about this organism is that it seems to be effectively self-sustaining. The only thing it needs external resources for is breeding, and that can, as we concluded, only be done in its natural habitat. This second labeled part here, ryadelium, it uses to circulate a particular type of liquid it produces and absorbs. As we realised rather quickly - that type of liquid is very similar to the human cerebrospinal fluid."

Nagrebetskiy turned the display off. "Any questions?"