entrancelogs | Transcending limitations

Entry tags:

Transcending limitations

Who: Doctor Whale and his ~~victims~~ test subjects or lab assistants
Where: Mainly his laboratory but probably other places too
When: During the science event
Rating: R more than likely
Summary: Doctor Whale doing science things and experimenting on people
The Story: He was always seeking answers, always wanting to push the limits. All this time in Wonderland and he never tried to really push those limits. But something about this particular weekend made him forego any restraint. He wasn't going to stop until he found answers.

If people got hurt in the process, he did happen to have Adam's healing blood. But before he got ahead of himself, he needed to find his subjects... Hopefully Luke wasn't too squemish, because Whale would need his assistant.

[Ed | Vincent | River | Helen and Luke | Fear Gas (OTA) ; If I forgot you or want to make your own section, feel free to tag in anyway]

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"Isn't it?" Whale's eyes moved from Helen to Luke, a smile of delight spreading over his lips. "And we do this through the power of science, not magic! Science has created this incredible ability through genetics and evolution. Science has allowed us this chance to save lives!"

He paused, closing his eyes to relish in this next thought. "With science, my name can truly stand for life." There was triumph and excitement in his eyes when he opened them again. Magic may have beat him before, but now he had a better weapon to fight back.

There was a touch of mood whiplash here, and he wasn't sure who to imitate. Helen had turned distant, Whale was euphoric, and Luke couldn't follow the logic behind either of their reactions.

He almost patted Helen's arm, much like she'd held his shoulder, but held back at the last second out of shyness. It wasn't surprising that she might take issue with the process. Instead, he tried to temper his excitement into a kind smile. One that didn't pry, but acknowledged her reserve.

But nothing the doctor said was inaccurate, except for the fact that magic didn't exist and was never going to be an option. Whale was right, there was a good opportunity to improve quality of life in the mansion, next time an event came around. Luke looked for something to scribble calculations on, so they could all have a reference to work with.

"Repeated blood donations are going to be inefficient," He mused. "Could we synthesise it? And we'll have to test other subjects. Different types of injuries. How long it remains in the blood stream… What if it was, like, functional immortality for a few months? That's mad."

Helen glanced at Luke at the mention of magic, wondering how he felt about that one. She didn't believe it existed, at least not in her world. Here in Wonderland... she might be convinced to give it the benefit of the doubt, but she was fairly certain that whatever other worlds considered "magic" could still be explained as a genetic mutation. They might be magic- or spell-like abilities, but they weren't "magic."

As far as she was concerned, everything could be explained by science.

Dr. Whale's excitement was contagious, however, and soon enough, Helen was grinning as well, her eyes lighting up with the promise of using this new blood for the good of all. "I wonder if we could. If I may have a sample of the sample --" Despite how awkward that sounded. "-- I might be able to create a serum from it. I'm personally familiar with blood injections, so this shouldn't be too difficult, particularly if there's something here that can examine this blood on a genetic level."

Something or someone.

"It may not even be immortality. It may simply be a heightened ability to heal, an antigen that causes skin to regrow more quickly than a normal human."

If they could truly synthesize something even remotely similar, the possibilities would be endless.

Whale directed Helen to the small tube that he had reserved for her. "This is yours," he told her, "to experiment and examine to the best of your ability. I have full confidence that you'll find a way to share all the potential it carries with others."

He of course had no idea that both of his assistants didn't believe in magic. He, unfortunately, had no choice in that matter: magic was real, and his very arm was a permanent reminder that he turned to it instead of science in his time of need. But they were more than welcome to scoff at it if they wished; he certainly did once upon a time.

"I'm afraid that as it stands, the healing powers of this blood extend only as far as we've just seen," Whale told them both. "The one who donated told me as much. It won't grant me a longer life or keep me from being harmed again in the future. It felt no different than any other blood transfusion."

"But I'm sure between the three of us, we'll find a way to make good use of it."

"We definitely will." He beamed when Whale said 'three of us'. Their information and suppositions got factored into his report, Luke's mind already on the next experiment. With a bit of ingenuity, he thought he could put together a basic genetic code extractor. One that skipped all that laborious centrifugal stuff.

This morning, he would have waited for permission. Now, his anxieties ebbed away. Luke wasn't just a lab assistant, he was a genetically engineered genius lab assistant. The other two had experience and knowledge, where Luke only had intuition and an alien database implanted in the dusty crevices of his brain, but he was their equal. The experimenter, not a subject on a table, or an object who shut up and did what he was told. And he could give them tools they'd never dreamed of. They might even become proper friends, the three of them.

He babbled as he sought out odds-and-ends (copper wires, repurposed machinery, oddly shaped tubes, and, most important, a lot of vials with brightly-coloured solutions). It was habit, but also an invitation for criticism and comments.

"Create an electric probe to charge the blood, and an electric field for capillary electrophoresis… we'll need lots of electricity. Degrade the RNA- chemicals are toxic, but that's all right." They had healing blood, after all, should anyone melt some fingers or burn their skin off. "Acrylic glass, some soda-lime, bit of optical fibre... If it goes okay we'll have a biodata matrix in, um, ten minutes, maybe?"

Helen brightened at the sight of the new tube of blood, flattered that he had thought of her for something like this. Blood experiments were something she was quite good at. This just promised good things.

"I shall certainly do my best with it." Whether or not they had the necessary equipment remained to be seen, but oh she was looking forward to it.

Luke's comments caught her attention afterwards and she glanced at him, a look of pleased surprise on her face. He seemed to know a lot more than she'd given him credit for. "You may have to explain some of that," she admitted, smiling in spite of herself. "Regardless, it sounds like a good idea." And she trusts he knows what he's doing.

"Luke, I'm sure that whatever you're saying is very good," Whale said with a hopeless grimace, "but Helen and I are a bit behind the times. I've been trapped in the eighties for almost thirty years, and she's from farther in the past than that. However, there is no better time to learn, I think."

"Earth was barely a level four planet in the eighties," Luke said, a teasing note in his voice, though he didn't look away from his rapid set-up. "And this is gonna be way faster than anything you'll get in the twenty-first century."

But because it was altered human technology, some parts still needed manual operation. An improvised microprobe, pointy strips of metal slotted into plastic handles and wired up to a generator. A small silicone basin with a conductive layer for optimal blood electrocution, and then a complicated system of tubes and vials of mixed toxins to purify the DNA. It should be simpler to use than it looked.

"Electricity can manipulate our bodies right down to the genetic core? So control a high enough voltage, and you can use a probe to pick up DNA molecules like you'd draw on a dot-to-dot game. Someone else washes it to dissolve the bits we don't need… Should take about the same time it does to boil a kettle."

And as long as they did exactly that, didn't touch anything but the plastic, and the thing didn't fall apart as they worked, they wouldn't fry themselves, or short-circuit the machine, or splash themselves with acid, or start a fire... Basically, as long as nothing went wrong, nothing would go wrong.

"This," he said, stepping back from his jerry-rigged creation and clasping his hands in a demure movement, "is alien science."

"Ah!" Helen listened closely to Luke's explanation. It made sense, once he'd taken the time to explain it. With what she already knew, it was perfect. Oh this would have made the lives of the Five so much easier when they made the Source Blood serum. Perhaps then they would have known what they would be getting into and Nikola's transformation would have been less of a problem.

She refused to dwell on the question of whether or not John's could have been altered.

"This 'alien science' is wonderful." Later she would ask where he'd learned it. "All right, since you seem to know the most about it, who would you delegate to what task?"

Helen didn't mind letting him take the lead for a bit. It would do them all some good to change roles for a time.

Whale of course had no idea what being a level four planet even meant, but what he did know was that Luke's explanations were leaving him behind. It wasn't that he couldn't follow or understand; it was just beyond his experience, though he was going to rectify that if it was possible.

Luke was suggesting they send an electric current through a living person's body. Whale might not know anything about alien technology, but he did know about electricity.

"Alien science is still science," Whale said. "What you're suggesting is excellent in theory, Luke, but we must be cautious when putting it into practice. This is more than just a cut arm we have to worry about." But if he used that device on Adam Monroe, then there was no need to worry. The man wouldn't die, no matter what happened.

"All I need is one of those probes." He'd have to find some way to get rid of Helen and Luke, because he intended to do as much as he could with Adam as long as he had the immortal.

Excitement and pride shone through when Helen made him temporary leader. There was trust in that action, and Luke had never been very good at hiding his emotions.

Except Whale wanted the electricity part. Which meant Helen would purify, while Luke did the boring code transcription. He bit the inside of his lip as he readjusted to playing the well-behaved assistant.

"Yes, doctor. It only needs a drop of blood. It's not going to waste much."

If Luke was mentally slipping Whale into the role of the controlling scientist who'd made him, Helen revealed herself to be more like his mother with every new interaction they had. His smile for her was muted, but genuine, and he planned to brief her on the properties of each solution while Whale probed the fluid.

"Probably already know chemistry sets like the back of your hand, Doctor Magnus." Only with more chances to lose that hand, if you weren't careful.

"I hardly think he's suggesting we electrocute anyone," Helen responded to Dr. Whale, understanding where he might have been going with that line of thought. "If he is as knowledgeable about chemistry as he sounds, we may be able to do all this to a simple blood sample." At least... she's hoping so. She understands blood purification -- after all, that's what they did to the Source Blood -- so with a little modification, she sees no reason something similar can't be done here.

"I've certainly used my fair share of them and watched them evolve," she admitted with a smile. Oh yes, if any of them had messed something up with their Source Blood experiment, they could have received a lot more than a simple burn. "I'm assuming you're suggesting we use those to probe a sample of blood to see how it reacts to cleansing?"

The theory of all of this is sound and familiar to her, even if the way of going about it is different and new. She's following the suggestions as best she can.

True Luke wasn't suggesting they do that, but Whale was going to do it anyway once Helen and Luke were gone. He was going to need Adam anyway, with the blood they were using for all these experiments. His supply was already limited at the start and was getting lower. If something went wrong and one of them was hurt, Whale would be forced to use the blood to revive them.

For now Whale would focus on the probe and extracting what he could from Adam's blood. The man told him about mutated genes and the next stage in evolution. How would that reflect in the DNA? Admittedly Whale knew more about anatomy than the genetic structure, but even he knew that what they would see from a nearly four hundred year-old man would be unusual.

"Blood sample taken from Adam Monroe, for the record," he said to them both. "Originally from planet Earth. Physical age estimated at twenty-four, possibly twenty-five. Actual age estimated at four hundred. Now, let's see what his blood has to tell us..."

Four hundred years old. It didn't seem possible, or natural. Earth was mysterious and brilliant, and humanity even more so, but immortality couldn't evolve, could it?

"That's it! And I'll write up the structure when you're done. It's... I can do that from memory."

He was awed when Helen mentioned the history of chemistry in such an offhand fashion. Because she was, wasn't she? Another immortal. And Whale must be at least twice the age he looked. Luke couldn't imagine how time must feel from that perspective, could only picture it as an impossibly endless drag of days, muddled with the confused cloud his mum had been under, back when they thought she had Alzheimer's.

It had been strange enough to realise his eidetic memory was starting to fail due to age. Like going senile, like his four years of existence had been long enough. Crammed with so many experiences that he couldn't instantly recall the sixth line of the two hundredth page of a book he'd skimmed three years ago. He felt so silly and young next to them.

"What's it like?" He blurted out, before he could lose his nerve. "Living so many years."

Helen nodded at Dr. Whale, ready to see what Adam Monroe's blood had to offer. Admittedly, she was impressed with what Luke could do from memory. He seemed young and yet he had the knowledge to give the Five a run for their money. His question, however, caused her smile to fade a bit. How could she explain what it was like, to live and not know when she would die? For a moment, she didn't answer, unable to fully put words to it.

"Tiring," she answered finally, her voice quiet. "Everyone asks me about it if they know, usually with the intent of gaining it for themselves. A lot of it is uncertainty. I've no idea how long my lifespan is. I could die tomorrow, either by a bullet or old age. There's no way of knowing."

She supposes it says a lot that she chooses to focus on the downsides first.

"On the other hand, I've certainly lived through a great deal of good and bad events. They stay with you, once you're my age. It's difficult to forget things, even if you want nothing more."

She could still recall the Titanic, how the icy waters had almost swallowed her up. The wars would stay with her for a very long time and she didn't expect she would ever forget what it was like to watch Korba torture James.

"I suppose, like anything, living as long as I have brings with it both good and bad weights. It's a matter of making of it what you will."

It was a question Whale pondered himself more than once: what it would feel like to taste immortality. But then he met Adam and heard the price of it, and he learned it wasn't nearly as wonderful as people believed. Whale didn't experience immortality, but he was trapped in time for nearly thirty years. That was a bit like immortality in its way. In reality he was reaching sixty, though he looked no older than thirty.

"It comes at a price," he concluded. "That's a saying where I come from. I believe in what we're doing here, but it's only fair that the price of it is understood. That way, no one goes in blind."

A price. He didn't know many immortals, except possibly the Doctor, but he'd seen people half-dead and living empty lives. In those cases, the price was always the same: chaos and disaster. And crying. It sounded like a price Helen might have paid. And Whale... he didn't know. Sometimes he spoke about death like it was something personal, and he'd made a sacrifice, too. And if postponing death did that, what about creating life? Had there been a price someone paid to bring him into the world?

He had destroyed every person involved in making him. Maybe that counted.

"Blood," he said, still assimilating this new information. He picked up the vial, with a glance that asked for the permission he was already taking for granted. A single drop would do, and he measured it out with incredible concentration. An optic fibre hooked up to a screen magnified the liquid until it was all molecules and proteins of different shapes and sizes. Cool, but not, perhaps, completely health and safety compliant.

"If Mister Monroe paid a price, we'll find it." Aware that he'd dragged them all away from science and onto musing about death, he forced some levity into his voice and leaned towards Whale. "Get the little ones."

There was always a price, one she hadn't been aware of when she'd derived the serum and come up with the experiment. They'd simply wanted to see what would happen. The results had changed them forever. Some days -- during moments she would never admit to herself, let alone anyone else -- she wished they hadn't done it. But she immediately shook it off. If they hadn't done it, she wouldn't be the person she was now and that... that she couldn't change. No matter what.

Instead of voicing any of this, however, she merely nodded in response to Dr. Whale's comment. "For his sake... I hope it wasn't too heavy a price."

She knew the fact of losing people would be one such price. Others might exist, but Helen would prefer to figure those out on her own.

"Let's just get this over with, shall we?" He spoke to both of them at once, and neither at the same time. He was growing impatient, wanting them out so he could collect Adam and run his own experiments. He had enough blood from the sample that they could do this several times over, so Luke was more than welcome to do what needed to be done.

Whale had no idea how to work the probe, even though he insisted on having it. He could figure it out, of course, and hopefully he didn't blow anything up when he did.

If Luke had known Whale wanted it over, he would have happily run the entire thing himself. But he was still under the impression it was all scientists together, bonding over cool experiences, and he had more than enough patience to let them play all day, if they wanted. Still, it shouldn't be too hard. Stick the probe in the blood, waggle it around, hand it over to Helen to dunk. Simples. Well, he thought it was simple.

'Right you are,' he said, giving Whale a thumbs up and sparing a grin for Helen. He cranked the generator with slightly flashy aplomb and only some slightly worrying sparkage, and stepped back so he wouldn't get in the way when the other two made the switch.

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Transcending limitations

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Oh god I thought I'd replied to this SORRY EVERYONE