A Study in Violet

[Fairchild]

A woman calling herself Jera had just landed on Atka Research Station and was directing her steps towards research labs. Her long, auburn hair was waving in the artificial atmosphere of the station as she strode through the corridors, as she passed by other members of the installation's personnel - scientists, mercenaries, even janitors. The closer she was to the Wisp Innovations' research labs, the less sure her steps were and the fewer people she saw.

After a while, she found herself in front of the lab 8F - her destination. There, under the keen eye of professor Nikita Nagrebetskiy, the alien organisms delivered by the O'Rhu were kept and studied. After a moment, she slid her card through the terminal and the door opened.

She was greeted with a few suspicious glances from scientists working at some of the tables. She noted that everything in the lab was perfectly organised and remembered that Nagrebetskiy was unhealthily pedantic. Every workstation had the most vital microbiology equipment readily available and may God save whoever wouldn't clean up after their work.

In the back she noticed the familiar face of the professor. She walked closer and patiently waited until he finished whatever he was doing. After a few boring minutes, the professor stood up from the microscope, typed something into the terminal beside and turned off the equipment. Only then she greeted him. "Hello, Nick."

"Ah, Jera. It's... er... good to see you here again." He walked to a sink nearby, washed his hands and wiped his hands into the labcoat he was wearing. "What can I do for you?"

"I've come to inspect the state of those bacteria you got the other day. Have you figured out anything about them yet?"

Professor's expression suddenly brightened. "Yes, yes! Let me show you... Come, come," he walked towards a small door to their left. "Might want to put something on, it's cold in there."

They walked down the steps in the cooler room, having put thicker labcoats on. Even with that, Jera still felt cold. She breathed out, observing the faint, white cloud of air and smiled slightly. Meanwhile, Nikita opened one of the containers and scooped a bit of strange, slightly fluorescent, dark teal goo into a smaller, polymer box.

"I always thought these organisms are invisible for the naked eye," Jera said with a twinge of surprise.

"And they are," Nikita replied. "What you see here is the environment those bacteria produce for themselves. They seem to, er, operate in something that strangely resembles human cerebrospinal fluid..."

"Cere-what?"

"It's a type of body fluid that... well, it's something in your brain and spinal cord. It does not look like that," the professor pointed at the box, "but the chemical, er, composition of it is surprisingly similar. I'll show you what that means. Let's, er, go back to the lab. It's a bit chilly here, hm?"

As they went back up the steps, Jera felt slight sting of pain in her right knee. That horrible fight a few days back against the GC. Something had crushed her knee. Now it was regenerating slowly, augmented with a med-stasis band and a prosthesis. It could've been a lot worse, but still was uncomfortable.

A few moments later they both were in the lab. Professor Nagrebetskiy put the goo into a different container again and connected it to some sort of apparatus. Jera was curiously observing him, looking at the monitor lighting up as Nikita turned on the measurement equipment.

"What we've, er, discovered is that those organisms naturally produce sound waves...." he scratches his head and adjusted his glasses. "Which in itself is not, er, strange. But the waves are, first, incredibly high-frequency and, second, incredibly low-intensity. Not possible to hear by the human ear..." he put in some instructions into the computer. "However, we can, er, measure them."

Jera observed the spectrum that showed up on the monitor. "What does that mean, Nick?"

"It doesn't matter." He looked back at Jera, who gave him a suspicious look. "What matters is, by passing low-intensity electric current through, er, those bacteria... The sound changes! This is genius, this is revolutionary!" he exclaimed and continued. "We might be on the brink of discovering something great!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Still not sure how that helps us." She watched the professor tapping a button, presumably to close the electric circuit.

"Combine the facts. Bacteria that could, theoretically, er, exist in human brain. It responds to electric impulses, which, as you probably know, is what our, er, nervous system uses," he pointed at the screen, on which the spectrum lines were changing as he was pressing the button repeatedly. "This requires more research, more of these organisms. But if we could figure out a way... a way to read those signals on a small enough scale, it could open numerous possibilities!"

"Nanobots?" she asked with a vibe of curiosity.

"Maybe," he responded. "But I have to look more into it. Might need more of these though, so, er, it would be good if you could secure a bigger shipment. Not gonna ask where you got them, but, er, a steady supply line would be wonderful."

"Will do. Though, board will probably want a report on this as soon as possible."

"I can't, yet. Not until we have anything, er, solid. But I will... I will write one soon." He smiled to her awkwardly.

"Very well. It was nice talking to you again, Nick," she smiled back. "I'm not going to take up any more of your time. Good bye." Jera directed her steps towards the exit.

"Ah, of course. Do svidaniya."

She walked down the corridors again, this time in the opposite direction, towards the personnel quarters. Pondering about what Nikita told her, she almost bumped into someone carrying a large tray of phials, test-tubes, beakers and other glassware. After mumbling a curt apology, she moved on.

This could, indeed, open possibilities. It was also dangerous. If Nagrebetskiy was to indeed discover something, she would be given the first taste as the prime human test subject in Wisp, i, just after animal testing. It had its advantages and disadvantages, but she was curious to what the research department can reach.

As she stood in front of her quarters door, she sighed. It was a long, exhausting day. She locked the door and fell on the bunkbed, descending into dark sleep without dreams.

[Fairchild]

Jera was lying on her bed. She was thinking of the possibilities the bacteria Nagrebetskiy was researching could provide.

The becteria themselves weren't that useful. Engineering a proper nanobot prototype that would be able to measure and communicate the information would take a lot of time and money, maybe outsourcing that to Ageira... Nevertheless, if those bacteria could be controlled, it could even allow for such things as launching an operating system and writing programs inside the human brain.

Jera turned to the other side. She had too little knowledge to ponder that. But she remembered various things that happened before. Los Angeles Convention that prohibited research on mind control. New Berlin incident with "neoaryans" a hundred years ago. Foster Virus on Cambridge even before that. And...

She shivered. The Black Sun on Crete. She remembered every minute of that horror. An artifact that had been found, surprisingly not inert and actually active, very close to her village. One woman, Lunara, someone who used to be her childhood friend, managed to control it. Everyone in her village lost their minds, mind-controlled into a religious sect.

Jera remembered her family, killing each other for a wicked sacrifice, in the name of a false prophet of the Nomads. Her shaky hands, holding the knife, as Lunara was bleeding out in front of her. The madness in her eyes as Jera threw the Black Sun against the wall, shattering it and setting alight the entire building.

She trusted Nagrebetskiy, though. He was the one who set the foundation for AlderFluid research and did the last theoretical analysis before animal and human testing. Indirectly, he saved her life several times and she hoped he could make this project safe.

Maybe... This technology could be available to everyone. After all, computers, neural net, spaceships and other things could be accessed by almost every person in Sirius. And while many things done with them are bad, most of them are good for humanity, good for development of everyone. Maybe it would be the right choice. Give it out to the people and see what they could do.

Maybe that's what should happen.

[Fairchild]

Jera walked a corridor on Atka. For anyone being here for the first time, the station would be unpleasant. Metres of cold, metal corridors with only the noise of oxygen conduits breaking the silence. On breaks and after the work hours this place would be filled with scientists and interns rushing to the cafeterias, bedrooms or hangars. Now they all were asleep, working or away with very few people actually roaming the corridors. For anyone else this would be unsettling. But this was her home for the past three years. It felt comforting and cozy. Besides, she liked the silence that ruled these tunnels during work hours.

She had just returned from Kusari, not seeing anything to eat but Synth Paste for several weeks. She longed for something tastier - even the Gel would do, not to dream of a plate with a proper, organic food. She was born a Corsair, true, but even Cretans had to eat a balanced meal every once in a while. She turned the corner. There were several privately owned bars on Atka. If any of them served food, it was either synthetic or cooked by chefs that hadn't got hired on Hawaii and hadn't had enough money to return to the Houses. So they stayed on the Cryer station, without anything better to do. But even that terrible grub was good enough for her.

After a moment she reached one of those bars. Walking into the almost empty hall she noticed just one older man sitting in the corner. She smirked, recognising the brown hair that refused to grey after so many years of stress. She admired him in a way. Professor Nagrebetskiy was an incredibly brilliant man, however she would not ever want to be in his place.

She walked closer. "Afternoon, Nick."

The professor raised his head and looked at Jera. "Oh... welcome. You're not in the field?"

"I've just returned," she replied. "I could ask the same question, though? Are you not working on those bacteria?"

He scratched the remnants of his beard. "There is nothing to work on. The, er, little sample we've had has already run out. My team is working on something else, AlderFluid probably."

She remembered what she had been thinking a few weeks before. Verigl. She would normally not be very afraid of what the research departments were doing, but the fact that she would be first to test a new invention filled her with slight discomfort. "About that..." She knew of Nikita's obsession over the subject, so she picked her words carefully. "What do you make out of it, yourself?"

The professor looked into her eyes, she immediately felt a shiver running down her spine. "What do you mean?" She immediately regretted asking the question. It was her job, she signed up for this. Nothing could change what she was. A guinea pig, essentially.

"Nothing..." she looked down. "I... just wanted to know..." Her eyes wandered aimlessly around the cafeteria, finally focusing on the professor. "Could this be used for mind control?"

Nikita smiled slightly. "Ah, so that's what worries you." He stabbed his food several times with the fork. "Brutally speaking, yes. Of course. Everything can be used to mind control people. No technology is required for that. Just someone with enough skill, either in programming or, er, rhetoric. But it's our job to make it unbreakable and idiotproof. Will we manage? Remains to be seen."

The events of the Black Sun came back to her. "You don't know why I ask," she said halfway between a question and a statement.

He raised his eyebrows. "No, I don't. And I, er, don't wish to hear." Jera stayed quiet. Seeing her like that, the professor spoke. "If my word means anything to you, I will make sure this is not released until we are sure it is... moral to do so."

She looked back at him. "It does. And... thank you."

He nodded, stood up and took his empty tray. "I have to go. The students are probably screwing something up as we speak. Goodbye, for now."

[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?"

[Ageira]

After six weeks of intense research and development, the small team of scientists sent by Ageira Innovations has finally been through with all steps required before human trials can start. Making good progress in short time due to excellent setup on Atka, the lead scientist was ready to sent a report on the project to their CEO. Per contract terms, Nikita Nagrebetskiy wanted to make sure everything of importance was in it to inform John White about outstanding results of this cooperation between two corporations.

Ageira's lead scientists was approaching him in the laboratory filled with noise from wildlife subjects and shouted "Sir, here's the report you requested. I hope you find everything in order. And if I may add, I really enjoyed working here. Your laboratories and equipment are of highest quality even in such a remote location as Sigmas."

---

Research log: Project Vergil

---

Entry #823-01-03
We have been introduced to the facility by the Cryer representatives. The tour around labs was refreshing. Completely different layout and setup than on Leduc. Though taking into account different fields of research it's no surprise.

Entry #823-01-06
We have reviewed the progress made by Wisp Innovations and were pleasantly surprised by their level of dedication. Every small step of research was documented and met the ideal requirements. It is impressive.

Entry #823-01-09
We started working on simulations for injecting nanomachine into the bacteria based on all factors that we were presented with. Lack of bacteria samples is a setback however our supercomputers are doing wonders. Early simulations shows prospect of using microphone in the nanomachine to collect sound waves and apply signal transduction.

Entry #823-01-12
First prototype for nanomachine was just printed by our NanoPrinter that we brought to Atka. First setback hit us. We did not expect and our supercomputer did not calculate the intensity of neural signals within bacteria that led to nanomachine being fried.

Entry #823-01-15
We have changed the materials within prototype nanomachine and it can withstand the intense electricity. Successful injection and functionality. We named it appropriately - Vergil Node.

Entry #823-01-18
Further advances were made in developing signal transduction that made it possibly to safely collect signals and transmit them towards external microcomputer. Once again, dull but fitting name was chosen - Vergil Core. This is promising due to ability to interface with many nodes and create a web of connections.

Entry #823-01-21
Without experimenting with humans, we are uncertain about the optimal and maximum distance between Vergil Nodes and Core. In theory, it could be installed in a watch, however prolonged periods of time when Vergil Nodes are not interacting with Core is leading to bacteria excreting nanomachine as foreign-body.

Entry #823-01-24
We made a change in the hardware to prevent bacteria from excreting it by adding low-intensity sound emitter. It doesn't change the way Vergil functions, however it stops recognizing nanomachine as foreign-body. We have revisited basic functions to adapt to this new addition. "Sleep mode" now turns off the program, not nanomachine. "Excrete" turns off sound emitter and Vergil bacteria will excrete nanomachine in under an hour.

Entry #823-01-27
Due to sound emitter, Vergil Nodes has 0.196% probability to desynchronize. We added automatic resynchronization function that has 0.007% probability of failure. We added manual desynchronization notification to the interface. Combining these factors, probability of complete desynchronization is 0.001372%. Unlikely scenario, but that is the best we can achieve with current technology.

Entry #823-01-30
We have stepped away from working on software and observed Cryer researching best ways to introduce Vergil Node into human body. I would have never guessed that simply drinking fluid with Vergil Nodes would be most practical and safest method. Not that much of a science.

Entry #823-02-03
We received some wildlife to start experimenting in live conditions. First tests yielded good results. We had to change our sound emmiter to compensate for slightly different brain fluid in the test subjects. This change will be reversed for human subjects.

Entry #823-02-06
We are working on improving and minimizing our operating program. I have to say that this is the simplest task and one that we are most experienced in. Even though Vergil is nothing like organisms we use for Bio-Neural Processors, previous experience is allowing development to be faster.

Entry #823-02-09
Last week was intense. We had to observe subjects and Vergil Nodes. So far no side effects were observed. Due to Atka's location, we are not bound by conventional research protocols. As soon as we are 100% sure about proper functions by Vergil Nodes and Vergil Core, we are moving to human trials.

Entry #823-02-12
One of the subjects started acting wild. We contacted Planetform to see if the behavior is observed in their natural habitat. They assured us it is simply mating season for these subjects and alpha male is showing off.

Entry #823-02-15
Animal trials came to conclusion. Results are outstanding. Only one failed experiment out of 50 subjects. Alpha male was the only failure due to excessive nerve system stimulation. To counter this concurrence, we added "Hibernation" mode to Vergil Node. This lowers the frequency of signal transduction once it reaches certain threshold and completely eliminated the problem.

Entry #823-02-16
I am handing my research summary notes to lead scientist.

---

Information • Recruitment • Flight Logs • Bounty Board • Mission Board

[Fairchild]

The lab was populated with Ageira employees and just a few Wisp quantum programmers that seemed to be more invested in the project that their microbiologist colleagues. Nagrebetskiy was sitting by himself in the other room, looking over the rough flowchart of the Vergil way of operation.

He had previously read the development notes. The top level was be running on software suite called NexOS. It was an open-source operating system started by some non-profit company called Armitage Software, designed for consumer-grade quantum chips and consoles, targeted at people that couldn't afford expensive Ageira and Kishiro software. According to some, probably out-of-the-hat as he thought, statistical estimates, about 40% of the Neural Net ran on NexOS.

The foundation of Vergil ran on custom code that was at all times protected from any outside tinkering. It contained configurations for the four Critical Calls (resynchronise, sleep, hibernate, excrete), each could be called only by the user, completely bypassing the operating system.

The professor slowly started tapping on the display, in the area of the flowchart that troubled him the most - the arrow between the "Neural Map Interface" and "Critical Calls". The fact that it could only take requests from the user went against the underlying idea of those calls, which was to prevent a third party from gaining full control over the system and thus, the user.

They had to map some emergency brain patterns to invoke those emergency calls... but that would mean a test case. Mind control just to prevent more mind control. He rested his chin on his hand. Immoral. Again. The grey area of ethics he had hoped not to thread into. But the end justified the means - it would be a trauma of one person to prevent traumas or even more horrible things for millions of people.

And he knew just the person who could do this.

[Fairchild]

"Oh, you're here. Great. We can start then," professor Nagrebetskiy spoke as Jera walked into the room. The lucky seventh level of Atka, where all the medical bays had been. She looked around the chamber. Unlike the corridors and labs, this room's interior was covered with matte silver plates which gave everything a strange, eerie even, look. To the right there were some instruments, a portable console as well as a phial rack with three glass containers filled with Vergil nodes. Nagrebetskiy was standing there, whispering something to the two medical staff members.

In the centre of the room there were two beds. Nauthiz had already been sitting on one of them. Jera winked towards the Gallic woman and turned towards the professor.

"Nick, how is this going to work?"

Nagrebetskiy turned towards her. "Well, you're going to lay down and we'll do everything ourselves. You don't need to worry." He smirked slightly. "Out of curiosity, have you ever had any experience with, er, psychoactive drugs?"

Jera raised her eyebrow. "You what?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Never mind. It's just that... the synchronisation process might be, er, quite interesting for you, if that's the case. That is, if you don't black out."

She moved towards the empty bed. "I'm going to trust you just this one time."

"Very well." Nagrebetskiy rubbed his hands. "We'll first have to implant you with the core chips. Those are going to go under the skin on your neck. Then you can take the nodes and the synchronisation process will begin. You're ready?" Both of the women mumbled in confirmation. "Let's begin then."

One of the medics approached Jera. She turned on her stomach and pulled her hair away from the neck. The medic's gloved hand spread some kind of fluid on her neck which instantly started giving her comfortable chills. After a few seconds, she realised she could not feel her nape at all. The medic instructed her not to move. She closed her eyes and heard a metal instrument being picked up from the little table to her right.

To her surprise, she almost didn't feel the scalpel cutting into her skin. The medic worked quickly but carefully. After the chip had already been implanted under her skin. he applied another type of liquid, this one was burning her skin slightly. After a few moments he put a band-aid on the cut. "We're done."

She touched her neck and felt the little piece of material. Her back still felt numb. She sat up again. The other medic finished working on Nauthiz and Nagrebetskiy was sitting in the corner with his console open. He touched the holoscreen a few times. "All right, the cores are in place and they're working. Polt, Vasquez, give them the nodes."

The two medics each took a phial from the rack and gave it to the women. Jera stared at the grey liquid for a moment.

"Well, bottoms up." Nagrebetskiy hurried them. The Corsair sighed, opened the phial and drank its contents.

The liquid tasted metallic and oily. Just after she swallowed, something strange started happening. Her body expected the little nanobots to get flushed down like everything else, but the liquid refused. Her stomach immediately turned but Jera kept herself from vomiting. She laid down and the last thing she remembered before calm, comforting darkness wrapped her mind was the feeling of a stuffed nose.