Author's Note (Monster): Hi guys! Hi guys! I finished the story up until chapter 18, will be posting weekly still and biweekly whenever I can. Enjoy!
Previously on American Tragedy;
Danny meets Charlie and having "Johnny 3 tears" written at the top of his file didn't seem exaggerated.
Danny was relieved to be home. He'd left early again, but he had promised Cain he'd be working from home for the rest of the afternoon. His to-do list had been done for today, sure, but Danny still had to work on his arguments for Cain to approve his decision to bench Da Kurlzz and he wanted to give his interaction with Charlie a second thought maybe. Or maybe go over the schedule for tomorrow. He had time to figure out what to do with his time.
First things first, he set up his home laptop. He had received a plug-in to connect his home computer to the 4C databases. This way, Danny could access all files he could at the 4C but his home computer would be traced by the main computer to keep track of his activity. They didn't want just anyone accessing their confidential information after all. Some of these things could never leak out to the public. If people had been difficult about animals getting tested on decades ago, then they'd be difficult about the circumstances of the 4C as well.
Danny sighed. He felt like his days consisted of sighs at this point. He'd been confident before meeting Funny Man. His confidence had wavered but he'd entered Charlie's cell with renewed determination. He felt like Charlie didn't tear into him completely – which he appreciated – but he could tell Charlie was toying with him and the most difficult patients were those who considered everything to be a joke. Aside from those who didn't speak at all. It was a defence mechanism, obviously, but all of the test subjects became defensive quickly. Who wouldn't after being subjected to a bunch of experiments already and being robbed of their freedom?
Once his computer connected to the main server, Danny opened the document of his arguments for Da Kurlzz. He had uploaded it but would remove it after sending his email to Cain. Danny took a deep breath.
He felt more comfortable in his own house. He sat at the dining table by a large window, overlooking the lawn of his garden surrounded by a white picket fence. He made himself some coffee in the kitchen neighbouring his dining area and grabbed the TV remote off the couch further to the front of the house. He turned it on and put it on some random channel. He didn't like silence. He liked to work with background noise.
He tossed the remote back onto the couch, temporarily froze when it bounced and seemed to launch itself further onto the couch. Glad it didn't hit the floor, Danny walked back to the dining table and sat down with his coffee to start organising his email for doctor Cain.
To: Breccan Cain
Subject: Subject 97, "Da Kurlzz"
Dear doctor Cain
You mentioned you'd reconsider Subject 97's current fitness for experiments if I could provide some valid arguments for benching him.
First of all, Da Kurlzz' behaviour does not only harbour resentment but also a deeper feeling of hopelessness and his wording of the resentment, give me reason to believe he could be spiralling into a depression. Depression is detrimental to the reproducibility and reliability of the results of any experiments performed in vivo as it influences the subject's normal behaviour. In time this approach for subject 97 will keep him from sharing any useful information with the psychiatrists of the 4C and in this case, we could miss more signs of pain and stress and render the results of our test tinkers useless. This goes against the 4R principle's R for reduction of subjects used as unreliable results would mean the experiment has to be repeated with different individuals. As for the minor aches, I did some digging into previously executed experiments on Subject 97 and have found two prime examples in the pile of papers;
Black et al. 2082 Nature. Page 34-35
Subject 97 showed no pain and hid internal haemorrhage; nearly bled to death.
Aquaines et al. 2084 (unpublished due to unreliable results)
Subject 97 lied about symptoms and went into anaphylactic shock due to allergy for the marker's substrate.
He has been found to mask pain fairly often in recent years with the two examples above listing the worst cases, dating back as recent as 2 years ago. In some, he may even refuse to show any pain at all. The fact he tells us he has minor aches, may be an indicator of major pain inflicted by his current modification. As you know, pain is an important factor that disturbs the normal functioning of an organism so any experiments currently conducted on Da Kurlzz could end in aberrant results.
Furthermore, I believe that allowing subject 97 to take a break to recover, could prove to increase long-term productivity because without breaks, he would most likely burn up quickly and become useless for any experimental procedures at all.
This being said, I hope you'll reconsider using Da Kurlzz for more experiments and allow him to regenerate for 2 weeks.
Thanks in advance
Kind regards,
Doctor Danny Murillo
Danny had never felt as fancy as when he used 'furthermore' in an essay-styled email. He remembered to use the subject numbers for Cain to identify him. He figured it was best he followed Cain's advice if he wanted to convince him. He hoped it would be enough to convince Cain. Maybe Da Kurlzz would be grateful enough for the breather that he'd actually cooperate.
Danny took a deep breath after hitting 'send' – but first checking the mail address and email about five more times. Then he opened tomorrow's schedule to see who he'd be meeting up with.
…
Danny blinked, closed the document and re-opened it to check if it were a joke. Nope, it wasn't a joke.
Danny was set to meet Subject 3. He was set to meet Johnny 3 Tears. Danny hit his head against the table and groaned. They really set up his schedule to meet every single one of the fivesome in a single week. What the hell.
Danny grabbed his phone and went over the contact details of all employees until he found Diamond. He dialled her number and called.
"Doctor Diamond."
"Hey Airia", Danny supressed a yawn when he realised just how tired he was. "You busy?"
"No, I was about to head home, what's up?"
"At the start of the week you told me about the troublesome five, remember? The guys who would give me a hard time?" Danny asked.
"I remember", she responded. There was a shuffling sound at the end of the line, sounded like she was putting away paperwork. "What's up with them?"
"I met 98, 99, 97, 4 and tomorrow I'm meeting 3. Why did doctor Cain put them all in the same week? Does he want me to fail?" Danny grumbled.
It was really starting to look like Cain had set Danny up for failure. Maybe he'd hoped Danny would quit.
Airia chuckled. "No, Danny, he just thought things could only get better afterwards. He has faith in you."
"He shouldn't. I mean. I don't have faith in me. This is insane! Every day has been a rollercoaster!" Danny complained.
"He has faith in you because you did your internship here and you know the motions of the 4C."
"It's been a decade!" Danny's voice raised a few tones. "So much has changed. Everything has become so… dehumanised. There were no nicknames back in my days. The department was much much smaller. What the hell changed in 10 years?"
"I don't know", Airia sounded genuine. "I really don't. I've only joined the 4C after the nicknames were entered so I wouldn't know if it's different now."
Danny rubbed his eyes. "Didn't you deal with my patients after doctor Michaels left?"
"Doctor Cain and I shared the appointments of your patients, yes."
Danny raised an eyebrow. Frequent changes in caretakers of a test subject could induce stress, but go off. He kept the comment to himself. "Then why do I get all the mean ones and you get none?"
"Excuse me?" she called out. "I have troublemakers! Amongst my patients there's Deuce, Viral Tiger, Gadjet, The Great Pretender and Dark Soul. Do you need me to go on?"
Danny rolled his eyes and was grateful she couldn't see it. "Fine, you have some difficult people, too, I guess, but they don't form a gang."
"Sometimes they do. Anyway, I'm gonna hang up, Danny, because I'm going home", she said.
"Alright", Danny smiled. "Thanks, though, I was starting to think Cain had no trust in me at all."
"Don't worry about it. Bye, Danny."
"Bye."
He put away his phone with a relieved sigh and furrowed his eyebrows. Now why did the 4C change so much? There had to be something about it online. He googled the 4C and the first results mostly consisted of protestors' arguments against the 4C as well as the papers published by doctors of the 4C and legislation regarding the Crimson Cove Correctional Centre's Department for Experimental Sciences and Test Subjects. He continued to scroll, finding a news article about Cain senior's passing and Breccan Cain taking over as the head of the department.
Danny hummed. It was impossible the 4C had become so cold because of Cain junior. It could not be.
Cain's only the puppet of the masters. As long as they are pulling the strings around here, you won't be able to help us ease our minds. Danny remembered Funny Man's words. Someone was pulling Cain's strings. Unless it had been a lie but he couldn't be sure.
Who was the big boss then?
The owner of the 4C?
Danny quickly googled who owned the 4C and skimmed the results.
THERE!
As a fifth result, came a title; "Correctional Centre of human testing reels in big investor."
Danny clicked the link and quickly read through the text.
Blah blah blah, 4C is a prison with research on 'death-sentenced' inmates blah blah history of petitions lead to animal testing to be illegal blah blah. Oh, there it was.
In 2079 the 4C prison and Department for Experimental Sciences and Test Subjects was sold to Book Technologies to increase the budget for their research.
Danny frowned. Book Technologies?
Please leave a comment, they're our heavy fuel!
OC's featured;
Breccan Cain by Insomnia Monster (me)
Juan Black (mentioned) by Kelkel12
Charles Isaac Aquaines (mentioned) by H.T
Airia Diamond by AiriaMurillo
Viral Tiger (mentioned) by The Coral
The Great Pretender (mentioned) by Kelkel12
Dark Soul (mentioned) by AronKBurns
If you wanna add an OC. Please provide the following (doctors very welcome right now);
name:
age (must be 18+):
gender:
Occupation:
- doctor: There are 3 types of doctors needed in this story; infirmary (treats injured/modified subjects and inmates), test tinker (designs and carries out the experiments performed on the subjects) or psychiatry department (regularly evaluates the mental health of the subjects)
- warden: As a warden, your OC keeps an eye on everyone and everything. They are to keep the doctors safe when a doctor enters the cell, walks the hallway, the courtyard etc.
- special force: The special forces are the snipers surrounding the towers of the courtyard, the heavily armed people to break apart riots and separate fights between inmates, subjects or both.
- inmate: inmates are the preys of test subjects. The Subjects envy their potential freedom once they get out since the Subjects are sentenced for a lifetime. Subjects give the inmates HELL.
(optional) anything you wanna add (personality, appearance, ...):
Thanks again for all the OC's currently present in this story (27! Okay fine, 4 of them are mine)