Project 269 – Exploration 2 -
Synaptic transfer test two.
I can't help but wonder what would happen if the person who came up with the 'Bring Your Child To Work Day' incentive stepped inside our lab here and seen what kind of work we considered kid-friendly. There has to be something decidedly immoral about watching a child's body convulse with each shock treatment and then merely up the voltage and take down notes. His electrically induced seizures are monitored and recorded however, and he is given a heavy dosage of anaesthesia ensuring that he can't even remember such therapies let alone feel them.
NB/ Subject does complain of severe muscle ache afterwards though. **
The subject has a surprisingly low electrical tolerance, rating at 40. So, adjusting the medication, William, but not without Walter's consent, continues to shock him with the car battery. The synaptic transferring of data isn't altogether working. The readings seem almost scrambled.
To alter the experiment or to alter the test subject – our child?
Walter's been complaining that the boy is getting sicker. We'll have to be careful because if a wife or even a teacher starts to recall his rapid deteriorating health and obvious memory lapses and a doctor and/or team of social workers get involved, our work here won't be recognised for what it is. To such intellectuals, it's the collecting of data. To the rest of the world, it's a new form of child abuse.
Sometimes he'll vomit and complain of fatigue, forcing us to abandon the tests and games. Even in the face of progression. His deep-seeded fear of the lab used to be immeasurable but some days when Walter manages to snatch him away from its mother, he'll be led in by the hand and he won't recognise myself or William at all.
Perhaps he's just experiencing the aftermath of too many homemade drug cocktails and his body is rejecting treatment. Or, he really is a naturally sick boy and he isn't the viable test subject that we allowed ourselves to get excited about countless times before after all.
He's supposed to be acting as a live feed so that we may be able to access the thought processes of the animal carcass to further promote our hypothesis that it is possible – if the procedure is recalculated somewhat – to communicate with a corpse if held in suspended animation for any given length of time. At estimation, five hours after death.
But again, the problem with using a test subject so young hinders any would-be progress because just about everything inside the lab itself is irrational to him. To say that he is over-thinking again is an understatement. When conscious, he's trying desperately to make sense of the situation he has yet again found himself in. His thoughts, just as they had with the neuro-stimulator, are colliding and dominating the readings, making him unwilling to listen to what our second subject, the carcass, may or may not be communicating with him.
Pulling thoughts - substantially more difficult than pulling teeth.
Walter posited that besides his son's higher brain function playing the role of the over-active imagination, the merging of species-to-species psyches might be acting as a barrier in itself. Even if he was provoking a response from the carcass he wouldn't know how to translate that information.
Peter is decidedly too human for our experiment to be carried through.