The Genesis Saga

Irric stared blankly at the screen in front of him. It was the same as it always was -- an incomprehensible mess of symbols that made no sense. It was maddening. He had so little to go on that it might as well be guesswork at that point. He stretched. He needed a walk.

Looking at his map of the compound to plot out his route, he noticed three oddly marked symbols. Confused, he pinged Nadi and asked her what their significance was. She was mildly annoyed at being interrupted by him but didn’t let it show as she responded sweetly. It turned out they were believed to be rooms that were inaccessible to anybody as none of the keys they had been able to open the walls.

That stumped Irric, who was under the impression that the entire compound had been explored. He wondered if those symbols had always been there or if he had missed it when they were added. Nadi confirmed for him that he’d simply missed them. Nodding his head and glad he wasn’t slowly going insane, Irric picked up his own badge and inspected it. He looked at the symbols on the map. They were supposedly carved into the wall, and while the military was certain there was something behind it, there was no proof. They didn’t want to risk forcing their way in and damaging whatever may be inside.

He would have to look at it later. As it was, he had made no progress on his most recent orders. The Tribunal wanted to know whether any files pertaining to the purple substance existed or whether they were destroyed. They didn’t say what they would do with that information, but Irric had no choice. If he didn’t do it, somebody else would.

He tried using the video document of Adrian to help him find anything that might be of use. He searched for speech patterns and tried translating them, hoping for a clue on what to call it. To his surprise, there was one word that never translated, no matter how many times he tried. A series of hisses, shrieks and clicks that was not definable in either the gru’ul language or the language he spoke.

He thought about that further. It didn’t make sense for the gru’ul to say something garbled that had no meaning, so it could be a word that simply had no translation yet. Excited at his possible breakthrough, he found a speech to text software that included the gru’ul language. He set the translator to translate into the same language it was hearing and played the recording. He searched for the word in his file directory and navigated the steady stream of data until he located a match. To his surprise, it came up quite a few times. He selected one of the documents.

What appeared in front of Irric was fragmented. Large parts of what looked like writing was displayed before him in neat vertical lines filled with symbols he didn’t recognize. A large majority of them were moving, changing shape erratically as if they couldn’t be constrained to a single form. Irric knew by now that the phenomenon represented corrupted data. Their fluctuating form was impossible to extract any meaningful information from and crashed his systems whenever he tried. Irric had yet to figure out how to handle them.

What he could do, however, was translate the ones that were shifting in time with each other in an even, measured pace in repeated patterns. Irric had learned that each instance of one of these shifting patterns represented the phonetics of a word, making the gru’ul written language incredibly dense. Irric had never seen anything like it.

He read through the scraps he was able to translate, coming very quickly to the conclusion that part of the document was redacted. He pieced together what he could, sometimes managing to get strings of words until finally, he managed to translate an entire series of sentences. By some stroke of luck, they hadn’t been fully corrupted nor were they redacted.

Irric’s eyes greedily tore across the sentences, absorbing any piece of information he could get. What he saw gave him pause. He read it again. And again, just to be sure. “The substance… created to… pain,” Irric read aloud, parsing together what few strings of coherent words he could find. Between the corruption and the redaction, it was difficult to understand what was being said. The rest of what he saw was a jumble of nonsensical words, until finally he came to the part that was fully translated.

“It has been developed to keep the experiments in line should they ever become too much of a threat… Strong reaction… suggests an instinctive reaction to the compound… refused to touch it…behaviour is different than any other displayed so far. After ???, the subject ingested…compound… effects were immediate… screams appear…unique… Further study required. Subject ceased making noise after ???... also ceased movement… study required. Upon further examination, the subject has expired… reanimation procedures taken… reanimation procedures successful… adequate dosing unclear. Further study required.”

That was all that Irric could translate from the document. The rest was a smattering of words that had no meaning given the lack of context. Still, that was the closest he had come to finding any information with regards to the mysterious substance. Irric was certain that what he had found was in fact related to what he was looking for. He copied the translated document and saved it before moving on to the next entry. It appeared to be a log of sorts.

“Experiment #1,” he read, “Subject expired upon ingestion of substance… Note: Subject has been incredibly docile after reanimation. There has been no resistance during other experiments apart from this one.” Irric pondered the implications of the first entry. It matched what he found in the other document, implying that Adrian had most likely died after being exposed to the substance, but had somehow been brought back. The thought was disturbing.

He read the next legible entry. “Experiment #3. Subject recognizes substance by sight and smell… resists ingestion fiercely, contrary to… docile demeanor prior. Fear of substance likely… will be restrained for future experiments.” A knot grew in his chest when Irric found out that the Adrian had been subject to that substance more than once.

He forced himself to read on. “Experiment #13… no longer expires upon contact with substance. Lower dosing successful. Future experiments…attempt to find… upper limit…” By the gods, Irric thought, they did that to him over thirteen times!? He shuddered. There was only one entry left that wasn’t fully corrupted. “Experiment ???. The Highest has ordered the experiments to end… risk of subject permanently expiring is too great… will be exposed to low doses… for obedience purposes should it refuse to cooperate…”

That was the first time that a Highest was mentioned. It clearly referred to a person and Irric assumed for them to be in charge, given the name. It was strange to Irric why the Highest had permitted the experiments on the mysterious substance to continue for so long after how the first one went, according to the logs.

He didn’t fully understand who, or what, the Highest was, nor could he find the chemical formula for the compound used. He was once again stuck. Regardless, he had made some form of progress and would have to report it. Irric sorely hoped that he wouldn’t be the only one working on that part of the project and knew that if he couldn’t make any other headway, he would have to request help. Already, the Elders were breathing down his neck and now that he’d made progress, they were going to expect more.

Irric drummed his fingers. He might have to enlist Tassie’s help. Looking over the rest of the search results that turned up, Irric was unable to salvage any other documents that referenced the strange word he’d found. The best he found was a useless smattering of words. It looked like he had been truly lucky to find anything at all on his first two tries.

Idly, he wondered which number experiment the video they had on Adrian was and how many times he’d been exposed to the substance both before and after that. Reading through the transcript of the video he had of Adrian once more, Irric could not find the answer to his question. He refused to listen to it again with a translator unless absolutely necessary. Even then, he would probably leave the room while the translator did it work.

The gru’ul’s need for control must have outweighed their need for Adrian, Irric postulated as he regarded the documents he’d uncovered. Something about that substance was so vital that they were willing to risk their only test subject over it. Madness. Unless Adrian wasn’t their only test subject. The files had mentioned that it was to be used on experiments. Plural. The facility he was in was a genetics compound and bodies of other strange animals had been found in the non-restricted section. That much he knew. Irric pondered whether or not the substance developed was for use on them as well.

He needed to know how the substance Reya was subject to differed from the one used on Adrian. The files he had made no mention of Reya. Irric assumed that was because the experiments on Adrian happened before they captured Reya. For every answer uncovered, it felt like three more questions took its place.

Knowing what the substances were used for, Irric debated the morality of learning more about them. He shook his head. He had his orders. Resolving himself for anything else he might find, he got back to work.