Doctor's Journal 1: A Surprise Trip

[Victor Adelai]

Have you ever stopped to consider what the world would be like without control? Living like ants? Or other colony like insect. Maybe people already were. So irrelevant.

I am being sent to Seattle. They couldn't be bothered to tell me why. Or if they did, it couldn't have been interesting enough for me to remember. I'm sure there's a reason, of course; there's always a reason. Hopefully, it's an interesting one.

A new city full of test subjects. I don't recall having ever been to Seattle before. Maybe once on a layover to Alaska. There was that incident with the Wendigo. Or fellow who really wished he was one. Either way, cannibalism is a fascinating study.

Cultural taboos and moral taboos and scientific taboos all have interesting intersections. I hadn't considered that before. Why do we have some revulsion at the idea of consuming the flesh of a fellow thinking creature? Is it because we can hear them asking us not to? Certainly didn't stop Teddy. Such a polite fellow.

Where was I?

Ah yes, Seattle. I'll need to have my notes shipped over as soon as possible. I think here, I'll start a new round of research. Perhaps play with the impact of psychological torture and subjective reality. Physical torture, as we know, isn't an effective method of information acquisition. Eventually a subject will say just about anything to stop the pain, even things they think you want to know. Everyone breaks eventually. But psychological pain might be different. Inflicting an idea on a person, and then reenforcing it with positive and negative stimuli. Conditioning a given response has been done for years, but I'd like to experience this first hand.

The Syndicate rarely minds these things, so long as I'm liberal about turning over my research and don't cause too much of a stir. I imagine my skills aren't easily acquired, so they don't wish to risk displeasing me, but not a small part of me hopes that they find genuine use out of the things I find.

This reminds me of a professor I had in my youth who espoused the use of prisoners as test subjects. Of course, he also marveled at the advances the Nazi's had uncovered. I suppose not all of his ideas had to be winners.

I digress.