outer_divide | [video] Week 55, Thursday

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[video] Week 55, Thursday

[Anders switches on the comm, having either figured it out or asked someone to show him how to make the moving pictures appear.]

Does anyone happen to have any samples or intact specimens of the bone creatures? I understand Dr. Solus was making inquiries? Have you had any luck?

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I'm pretty sure the whole 'slow, agonizing death and transformation' thing is keeping most people from keeping souvenirs.

Well you don't need to be rude!

And you don't need to make wide broadcasts prompting people to collect lethal objects, but here we are.

You're just a bright ray of sunshine aren't you?

...You people come up with the strangest expressions.

I've done some work on some of the samples they first brought in. The stuff's damned nasty, and although it loses its effects in three days, prior to those three days handling it without full biotainer gear's a particularly nasty death sentence.

If you're feeling suicidal, I can recommend much less painful ways to go.

[From personal experience. Bones looks grim, the backdrop behind him a quiet section of the Flop as he's caught off duty.]

Do you know how it spreads? What is it made of? Is it a fungus? Virus? Bacteria? Is it mundane or magical?

It's not made of any substance native to any reality I've been in or heard of -- there's no structures identifiable as anything constant. So it's not what it does to you, it's what you do in response to it -- contact with living tissue induces massive, rapid formation of bony tumours. They... hell, I can't even call it metastasis, it's so fast.

[It's not just garden variety medical superiority that has Bones delivering his explanation in full medical-scientific descriptors despite Anders' coming from another realm, this seems to have rattled him deeply enough that he's fallen back on his training to deal with it. Granted, having to describe the process that's killed you once before would unsettle anyone.]

It reminds me of how prions work -- misfolded protein causes proteins that it contacts to misfold as well. But in this case it seems like any tissue the tumours contact is converted to the same kind of tumour. Breathing in powdered dust's probably one of the faster ways to go, since you'll be dead as soon as your lungs calcify.

I'll have to take your word for it. Breathing the stuff in doesn't seem healthy to begin with. But what you're saying is that the calcification is a protective mechanism? Something the body does in response to the substance?

If it's a protective mechanism, it's gone damn' far off the rails. I don't know if it's just that, though -- the rapid spread's something else. The closest medical condition I've seen to it is fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva -- Stone Man Syndrome. And that takes years for the body to harden on itself. This is hours, a couple days at most.

[It sounded to Anders like Bones needed to start thinking about this outside the box.]

I heard that sometimes it copies people? Or reanimates them, controlling them somehow? Could it be sentient? Some kind of reproductive mechanism?

Reanimates, yes, or at least it's done it in one specific case.

[Bones is nothing if not good at hedging his observations, as a good doctor and medical scientist is prone to.]

The copies, that's the ship's doing, and if you want some existential discomfort I swear that's worse than transporters for it.

"The ship copies us when we die? Really? That's....extraordinarily creepy. I'll try not to die then. What about these transporters?

I don't know if the ones on Salvation work the same as the ones on my ship, but Federation transporter technology dematerializes your entire body, stores a pattern of it, and then rematerializes it some place else. Sure, it lets you travel long distances and skip the middle step of actually covering that ground. Or space. But nobody's been able to really answer to my satisfaction whether or not the original you dies in the process.

It's all philosophy until you're standing on the platform yourself, you know. I'll use the system if I have to, but the possibilities are a good way to keep yourself awake in the middle of the night.

That's.....really? You're not joking with me are you? I'm not sure if I'm horrified or really interested. That would have made escaping from the Circle a whole lot easier.

Think I can take one of these transport things back with me if we get home?

Only if you find a way to bring a few centuries of scientific understanding and engineering design with you. Transporter technology's all tied up in the Prime Directive, and I'm fairly sure your civilization has a way to go before it catches up.

[Certainly Anders' initial fashion sense suggests as much. Or possibly he's just a crazy bird-hobo by their standards too. Bones snorts.]

You can't just let all that slip and hand me one? Do they come pocket sized?

[Bones snorts at that, amused even if he's unyielding.]

Only if you have pockets the size of a house. I think it's up to you and your winning personality... or you could just not go home again.

Hey, me and my winning personality have gotten ourselves out of a ton of trouble. I'm charming remember?

But not going home, that has a certain appeal. There are no templars here. But, the mage underground needs me.

Have obtained some samples. Handling procedures [sniff] delicate.

I don't actually want to touch it. I'm not that stupid. Just....get near it.

Will have to travel to isolation facility.

You say that like it's a problem. You're not going to discourage me.

Not attempting to. Stating situation.

Oh well that's alright then.

Dissuasion much more specific. Also direct.

[The only way Mordin does anything]

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[video] Week 55, Thursday

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If only Bones knew! Crazy bird-hobo indeed!

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