I hummed and said, " From first impressions, the genome is smaller by fifteen per cent. That isn't natural, so this has to be a genetic switch that has been tripped, causing it to shed some functionality."
He nodded, " That is what the team working on it said as well. Can you speculate as to the reason?"
I could do a lot more than that, but I decided to pretend as though I was speculating, " Yes, let me take a look at the scans of the before and after of the actual organism. Looking at the genome is pointless, it's better to look at the organism itself under microscope, like this is the nineteenth century again."
I spent several minutes pretending to inspect the algae, occasionally saying something like "Hmm" or "Interesting." Finally, I brought the spook into a shared AR workspace and threw up an image of the algae before and after, right next to each other. I zoomed in and highlighted a very small area, " This organelle is now missing in the algae."
" Do you know what function this organelle has, Hasumi-sensei?" he asked, now quite interested.
I shrugged, " It's somewhat similar if, obviously miniaturised, to a photoreceptor cell. That is all I know for sure; the following is my speculation, yes?"
He nodded, and I continued, " Releasing a self-replicating cyanobacteria that is designed to outcompete nearly everything and spread worldwide is a dangerous activity. What if something happened? I suspect that this is part of a kill-switch. Specifically, I suspect that some specially encoded burst of light would trigger the production of some enzyme that would act as a signal to start apoptosis. The same enzyme would then escape the cell when the cell membrane was destroyed and signal the same behaviour to nearby cells, causing a chain reaction. I suspect that this shedding of parts of the genome is removing this feature so that nobody can use it now that the creator knows that it is safe."
The spook was quiet for a moment and then nodded, " That makes some sense. Hopefully, that is the case. We have shifted our economy to heavily take advantage of the fuel provided by the algae, and if it disappeared suddenly, then we would be in quite the pickle."
He took a sip of his tea and asked, " How would the algae know when to shed this functionality? Did it receive a signal?"
I frowned and shrugged, " It's possible, but I doubt it. The simplest way is a timer, by way of a counter that each generation would iterate as it went through mitotic division. It wouldn't be perfectly accurate, but you could time things to the precision of a few days or a week this way. I'm sure we have some early samples of the algae on ice; you can easily check this by thawing them in a controlled environment next to the new algae and see if any changes occur. If it's a signal, then the new algae would likely convert the old one."
I finished my tea and said, " I don't believe I have anything further to add, though. Was there anything else you needed?"
The nondescript man shook his head and smiled, " No, ma'am. Thank you for the assistance."
He started to stand up, and I raised a hand to stop him and asked, " Can you give me some details on what is happening in the NUSA? Some people are suggesting it's the start of the next Corporate War, and I'm a little concerned."
He frowned and said, " Ma'am, while you have the highest clearance level... you don't really have a need to know— "
I interrupted him again, " You misunderstand; I'm not interested in any secrets. Just information that is publicly available to anyone that could observe it. Say, just what Militech or even the world press might know."
He softened his expression and said, " Ah, I see. I can tell you a few things, then. Close to a week ago, the carrier battle group Amaterasu pulled anchor and began steaming directly towards the west coast of the continental United States. The NUSA Pacific Fleet left the anchorage at Hawaii and attempted to intercept them short of their mainland. There was an exchange of anti-ship guided missiles on each side, causing damage to both sides."
He took the last sip of his tea and said, " However, a task group of Arasaka and JDF submersibles, including the submersible aircraft carrier Ryujin were seen to surface near Pearl Harbour and launched attacks against a couple of NUSA Coast Guard and Navy Air Stations that housed ASW aircraft, destroying many on the ground. Still, some sortied and did significant damage to one of the submersible cruisers. At this point, the escalation stopped. It isn't known publicly what happened, but the majority of the NUSA Pacific Fleet turned around and started returning to Hawaii, and the Ryujin left as well, leaving the Amaterasu and her escorts to continue to the west coast."
He nodded and said, " That's pretty much all that is publicly known, although I think we probably have escaped an escalation that might precipitate conflict or danger here in Tokyo, at least for now. I can't really say anything else."
I stood up, along with him, and internally considered what he had said. It sounded like open warfare for a bit there, except one or both sides had pulled back from the brink there at the end. Were the attacks on Night City just... revenge, then?
July, 2011
Taylor Hebert's Secret Bond Villain Base, Brockton Bay
Earth Bet
Taylor was conflicted. She was finally trusted enough to perform medical procedures on one of the Triumvirate, and it turned out that the only parts she used even a modicum of artistry on were mainly cosmetic.
Also, she had been the one who had to convince him to accept the cosmetic treatments. Personally, she would have made the appointment earlier. Eidolon wasn't... quite... ugly, but he wasn't aesthetically pleasing, either. He looked like an average middle-aged man who didn't get quite enough exercise, balding and developing a second chin and a slight ponch.
He wasn't as narcissistic as she had thought from her first interactions with him earlier. She paused and corrected that because he was every bit as narcissistic as she thought, but he didn't particularly care about his civilian identity. He didn't allow her to turn him into something very artistic, either. Ultimately, he only agreed for her to take some pounds off and help him build some muscles the quick way, as well as minor adjustments such as fixing his balding.
While he was in the tank, she would take care of routine maintenance as well, like the slightly occluded arteries and pre-hypertension, and even correct the first signs of brain damage that were indicative of incipient dementia.
He was shocked when Taylor told him, but he wouldn't have noticed symptoms for decades as long as the progression remained steady. Still, it was better to nip it in the bud now.
She had to sell him on the other cosmetic aspects, such as fixing his male patterned baldness and removing a few wrinkles and crow-feet.
In other words, he was a man who had almost entirely discarded his civilian identity. Being Eidolon was his life.
She thought the main reason he was here was because he was hopeful she could help him with The Problem That Cannot Be Mentioned. No, not ED, but PD. Power disfunction. Specifically, the fact that his power was slowly getting weaker. She had been sworn to secrecy... well, even more secrecy... before he told her about it, and the only reason he had was that they were both in the Illuminati together, even if he was peers with her boss's boss, and she was merely a minion.
Speaking of, Taylor's boss's boss, Dr Mother, had long ago found a stop-gap solution wherein Eidolon could consume some power vials, which seemed to recharge him for lack of a better word, but it wasn't something that did his body a lot of good. He could only do it perhaps once or twice a year without suffering significant sequelae, and it just wasn't quite enough to stem the tide of slow degradation.
"Okay, you can go ahead and consume the vial," she told him after triple-checking that all of her sensors were on and focused on the cape. He was optimistic that she would have some kind of solution for him, but she was much less so. She dealt with biology and science, and this alchemy was something that her power absolutely refused to assist her with.
Still, she was one of the foremost experts on the way powers interacted with the brain. Not only has she done dozens of pathological examinations post-mortem on capes that were provided by her boss, but she routinely had to do brain surgery on Case 53s, as well. Sometimes they had powers that could not be controlled, and she had found ways to adjust the anomalous brain regions to provide relief-most of the time.
While every parahuman's "coronas" were unique in some ways, there were a lot of similarities, too.
Eidolon, here purely in a civilian outfit, nodded and quickly swallowed the vial while Taylor watched readouts of his vitals and real-time medical images of his brain and organs. The process wasn't pleasant for Eidolon. He was too proud to cry out, but she could see the pain and distress in his readouts and made a thoughtful, "Hmmm."
After things plateaued and she decided she would learn no more, she nodded and tapped a couple of keys on her computer, which caused an infusion to begin running into the IV on Eidolon's arm. Within a few seconds, he looked much more at ease and asked, "Did you give me a painkiller? I don't need it."
She clucked her tongue, her disbelief plainly evident. But she waffled her hand, "Not a traditional painkiller, no. But I have begun running an anti-inflammatory infusion, along with nanomachines, which will stop you from continuing to suffer brain damage. It's the anti-inflammatories that are causing the analgesic effect, as your brain was literally swelling and becoming inflamed."
"Brain damage?!" he choked.
Taylor nodded, "Indeed. I thought you were a bit too young for dementia. I think we've discovered the cause of the brain injuries I saw and repaired." She tapped her fingers on her desk and nodded, "After this, we'll just have to use the medical nanomachines to remove the heavy metals and other toxins that these vials contain. They're a cumulative hazard, and every time you ingest one, it does a number on your liver — like you're swallowing a bottle of acetaminophen."
Taylor sighed and looked a little depressed, which he noticed and asked, "What's the problem?"
"It's not really a solution to your problem. It's just a band-aid, but you should be able to drink a vial every few weeks or more often so long as you follow the pre and post-vial directions and take the medicine I'll make up for you," she said while moping. It upset her sense of elegance as a doctor. It was like someone coming in with a complaint of chronic knee pain, and a doctor just prescribed ibuprofen for the pain. A solution, possibly, but not one that actually solved the patient's complaint, merely covered it up.
Eidolon looked amazed, hopeful and invigorated, "What do you mean that's not a solution? That's amazing!"
She sighed and said, "I suppose. I still don't know what process causes your power to degrade, and I suspect it isn't anything biological, so I can't really be expected to solve it."
Taylor helped him to a comfortable chair and sat with him while a second IV that contained nanomachines programmed to find heavy metals and remove them from his body, which she had dissolved in a half litre of saline.
"How is the monster cape?" he asked, seemingly a lot more sociable and affable than when he arrived. Normally, he was all business and never bothered to offer even a little small talk with her at all.
Taylor nodded, "She's in a tank on the floor below us, regrowing everything below her belly button. I followed the boss's directions to the letter, and one of the last steps was bisecting her using Armsmaster's nano-thorns. I administered the second vial to her myself, as well. She survived that, too. I believe her power has changed considerably. At least, I hope so. I don't want to see how she would generate and spawn clones with a normal female body, anyway."
Eidolon shuddered at the thought, "Any idea what her power is? Contessa seemed very interested."
"I've asked Ms Alcott, who has remained here with me. I had to ask her a number of ways over the course of a week, but I'm pretty sure she is going to be a power copier," Taylor said. She then paused and continued, "I'm going to have her test with one of the Travellers first. Normally, I would let her copy my power as it is useless without build-up, but her clone of me had all or most of my memories. It would be very problematic if she got my memories, too, in addition to my power."
He raised an eyebrow, "That would be bad. You're keeping the girl? She has a very powerful Thinker power, I hear."
Taylor let out a breath and said, "Her parents disappeared when Leviathan attacked. I'd prefer to return her to them, but she doesn't want to go into Protectorate custody... so we're at a bit of an impasse."
Privately, she thought that Coil might have been behind her parent's disappearance. She shrugged and said, "Her power is both very powerful and very problematic, as many strong powers are. I've begun teaching her meditation techniques in the hope that she will gain mastery over them. In the worst case, I'll conduct brain surgery and adjust her Gemma to provide more conscious control over when her power is active. I've done this for a half dozen of our guests, which otherwise would have prevented us from releasing them."
Taylor clucked her tongue, "Otherwise, she'd forever be at the mercy of anyone who could incapacitate her by the simple expedient of asking her questions until she faints."
Eidolon rubbed the top of his head, which used to be a bald spot and hedged unsurely, "Maybe that wouldn't be so bad if her power really is as strong as you've reported."
Taylor clucked her tongue, "We all have to get our hands dirty, sir, but that is no reason to go out of our way to do so." Honestly, Taylor didn't have much of a problem with her organisation's activities, as she had learned more of them.
Selling powers in a vial was akin to selling arms in her mind, and she grew up a child of the Militech family, so she didn't have any problem with that. Case 53's were all either volunteers or were so injured that the concept of implied consent would apply to experimental medical procedures. Keeping them captive wasn't a good thing, but she was working through the backlog to release as many as she could. They would never be able to release all of them, but she didn't let the perfect get in the way of the good.
As far as the vast conspiracy business, well, that's just the way the world had always been run.
Eidolon regarded her with steely eyes for a moment before finally nodding, "Perhaps you're right. Besides, I sometimes forget that you get more flies with honey." Wow, he really must be feeling better if he was willing to admit to a fault, even a minor one. Taylor thought it helped a lot that he wasn't in costume right now, as he could play it off as not being Eidolon right now.
