Medical Examiner's Report and Commentary
28 Feb 2023Ember Lacson
The following is a transcription of Dr. Lisa Turnbull’s verbal notebook dated 28 Feb 3309 following the autopsy of Erick Swann, who was shot in self defense on 25 Feb 3309 aboard the Drake-class carrier USS Morningstar [K6M-THZ].———Begin Transcript———
The deceased is a thirty…what was it?…yeah, thirty-five year old white male with heavy body modification in the form of scarifications and tattoos, some amateur and some professional. I would guess sixty-forty, with the larger portion being professional. Most are Thargoid related; there is one of each type of Interceptor, including the Orthrus variant, as well as a rendering of the Merope system map on his chest and a rendering of…looks like Col 70 Sector FY-N C21-3 on his back and a Thargoid glyph on his forehead. These scarifications bear evidence of ink at the edges, suggesting they were originally tattoos.
I sequenced his DNA and ran it through Alliance Interpol, Imperial, and Federal databases. It came back as a partial match to disgraced former CMDR Erick Swann, wanted for the torture and murder of CMDR Dawson Seligmann in 3307. I say partial match for reasons I’ll elaborate on in a moment.
Text note from Dr. Turnbull: The police report stated that Swann and Seligmann got into a verbal altercation at a concourse bar, but after local security removed them, they went their separate ways. One week later, Seligmann disappeared. His Diamondback Explorer and SRV were found at a Thargoid barnacle site. Two months later, his brother Ludwig received an anonymous message with the location of Dawson’s remains. Swann had recorded Seligmann’s captivity and beheading as a warning to any CMDRs who disrespected ‘the Heralds’ to his face, and especially those whom he caught stealing meta alloys. Swann’s Pilots Federation credentials were suspended immediately and all three superpowers filed arrest warrants on him. He was suspected to be a Far God cultist, but they either disavowed him or denied ever having an association. His name was found on old member rosters, but the authorities believe he might have been exiled for his actions. I don’t know if it’s my position to speculate, but I think Swann might have been following CMDR Lacson for a while, at least since the Proteus Wave Incident.
Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the throat, which shattered the C4 and C5 vertebrae and severed the spinal cord. Death was instantaneous. Um…. There are a number of ‘physical abnormalities’ found upon examination. CMDR Lacson ordered a…full scientific assessment, in his words. And while I initially wanted to perform only a standard forensic autopsy, I think it became clear that this more thorough, academic examination was necessary.
First, I noticed a faint scent of ammonia, which strengthened slightly when I removed the deceased’s flight suit. I ran tox before DNA, and the test came back with a toxic level of ammonia despite no signs of poisoning. No damage to the lungs or kidneys, no evidence of respiratory distress on the security recording, and so on. So, I purified his blood sample before attempting to sequence. When I ran his DNA, the sequencer came back saying it was contaminated. I purified the next couple of samples more thoroughly before running them, but they still came back as contaminated. I pushed the sequencing process through on the third sample so that I could at least get a partial, and it turns out it wasn’t chemical contamination. The system found non-human DNA, which came back as unidentified. That’s when I decided to go forward with CMDR Lacson’s request.
The two specific things he requested, other than to see “what made this bastard tick,” were an examination of the deceased’s eyes and a neural pathway analysis. I started with the latter, since I could let the computer do its thing while I looked at the eyes under a microscope. This brings me to the second abnormality. His retinas looked…weird. Further analysis indicates the presence of five types of cone cells. Now, I’ve seen tetrachromacy in humans before, but pentachromacy is…unnatural. At least, it is in every known primate species. I don’t know exactly how this guy saw the world, but postmortem stimulation gave strong nerve signals in both the near infrared and near ultraviolet. According to CMDR Lacson, Swann said, “I can see it in your eyes.” Maybe this has something to do with that. I’ll tell him and see what he thinks.
The neural pathway analysis came back with two hits and a miss. The deceased had markers typical of both schizophrenia and psychopathy, but there was a third pattern that came back as an unknown. My first thought was that it was noise or some other damage, but then I checked the manual. Then I called the manufacturer. They said I shouldn’t be seeing an unknown. I showed them the screen, so they contacted their lead engineer, who also said I shouldn’t be seeing an unknown. Then I showed him the screen. He said the analyzer works only on one species of brain at a time. Unknown means it’s not in the currently loaded database but not anomalous enough to throw an error message. He reiterated that I shouldn’t be seeing both knowns and unknowns because the database was so exhaustive. I asked tongue-in-cheek if he had a Thargoid database I could use, and he said Prof. Tesreau might, but he was fresh out. I said, Well, I’ll call her up then,” and he said he wasn’t being serious. I said I was, then hung up. I’m giving this entire file to Aegis. And I’m sure CMDR Lacson will be fine with me sending them Swann’s body and brain for research.
Text note from Dr. Turnbull: I haven’t spoken to Prof. Tesreau yet, but I talked to a neuroscientist at Aegis who said he recognized the unknown pattern. He called it the “Second Delta pattern” and said, “I’m sure you can do the math on that one.” But I have no idea what he was talking about. Delta waves? I’m not a neuroscientist, but it sounded like some sort of coded language.
Those are currently the things I think are worthy of note. Further analysis is underway, and I’ll be here a couple of weeks. I’ll wait to see what Aegis says, and I’ll let CMDR Lacson handle the publication. This is one hundred percent the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I hope we get to the bottom of this, because if we do, it could mean a lot for the war effort.
———End Transcript———
Second Delta. D-2. Seo Jin-ae. As soon as I heard that, I knew something was horribly wrong. If you remember, she is currently MIA. She took off over a month ago, citing “unfinished business with Salvation.” If Swann showcased the same neural pathways despite his absence of neural implants, then maybe that crap about being “chosen” as some validity after all.
I had Dr. Turnbull do an eye exam and brain scan on both Nicole and me. The eye exam was designed to test for tetrachromacy, and it came back inconclusive. But Nicole did say her night vision has gotten better since July and she thought it was just because she’d been eating better food. I thought back to what Swann had said about “seeing it in our eyes,” so I had Dr. Turnbull take IR and UV images of us. Turns out, our eyes glow. As in, they’re they’re not just reflecting; they’re emissive. And Nicole’s are brighter than mine. That might explain the night vision. We turned all the lights off in the exam room and shuttered the windows, and Dr. Turnbull flashed an IR strobe with a filter on it that blocked all visible light. Nicole could see it faintly, but I couldn’t see anything.
As for the brain scans, I’m baseline. Nicole, on the other hand…. She didn’t come back with the same level of non-human patterns as Swann, but she did have some. I asked her about thought patterns, hearing voices, violent thoughts…. I pressed her too hard. She said, “I’m nothing like him. All I have are those goddamn dreams.” And then I overreacted again, we yelled back and forth…. She’s in the gym right now, and I’m letting her have her space to run it out. Edward went down to check on her a few minutes ago. He said he needs to work out anyway, so he’s using that as a pretext. I hope I didn’t screw this up again.
Months ago I bought a dream catcher for her to use whenever she had these dreams. But she said they had stopped, so I never gave it to her. She said she lied about it because the doctors thought the dreams were a TBI symptom and they would keep her grounded until they stopped coming. But she said deep down she’s always known “they” were trying to communicate with her. I think it’s time to give her that dream catcher. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t giant spiders that woke her up the other night.