#i lowkey want to draw our trio of scientists for this

[goodfish-bowl]

What Little Remains

Chapter 2: Cooking by the Book

Ectoberhaunt 2024 Day 15: Science Fiction

AO3 Link (to be updated) Chapter 1 Link (read for context)

Summary: Dr. Reeden is considered a specialist in the technology for many reasons. The investors really should've expected this when they allowed them to join T.Z.A.P

Warnings: gore, human experimentation

Words: 3,045

After compiling the research and finally reading the papers they had obtained from the laboratory, Reeden needed a new pack of smokes. Those papers had been some of the most unscientific research papers Reeden had ever encountered, which was saying a lot considering their past working experience. But these papers in particular made them determined to create physical copies of the papers just to burn them with. They weren’t even an archaeologist like the other four people left on this team, but a geneticist who specialized in researching the humanoid genome throughout the past millennia and the resulting variation in humanoids and the occasional tangentials across the galaxy. Not quite archeology, in their opinion, but a type of genetic tracking a bit closer to the ancient discipline of paleontology instead. They had just wanted to get a good look at a pre-nuclear human genome for their latest paper, the original template would be invaluable for perspective. It was the only reason they had agreed to be on the T.Z.A.P team in the first place. 

What had ended up in Reeden’s lap instead was a variation of tangential DNA sequence from before that branch of humanity even existed. Void of space, that would make the kid the first tangential, the first variation and deviation. Now they only wished they could figure out what the actual fuck was going on with the kid’s DNA sequence. There were at least two different sets, impossible in and of itself, with holes in each, where the other filled in, like some paradoxical basket weaving. But there were more holes, which neither set of DNA contained the answers to. 

With the Head Doctor’s approval, Reeden had free access to most of the samples, not the core for obvious reasons, but the other genetic and biological ones were all they needed. They think the Doctor had put the intern on the unfortunate project of inspecting the core. From the other samples, they were able to reconstruct most of the boy’s DNA sequences with the D.R.C.R.A. (that Reeden was specially trained in) at the expense of only one of the intact vials. There were red blood cells mixed in with the… ectoplasm(?) the kid possessed. Each set contained the complete recipe for an entire being with only pieces of each actually being used. One was closer to what Reeden imagined the original human genome was like and the other was similar but based on ectoplasm instead of carbon. There was no transition between the two and no way the kid should’ve been able to switch between them… unless they were secretly hiding a form in-between. 

Reeden practically leaped from their seat and pulled up that awful video, the final one of the set, and scrubbed through it, finding the exact timestamp where the kid switched forms. Then, writing it down on their hand, went back to the vials, intact and otherwise, any of the samples really. The in-between. That was where the missing DNA must be. 

Reeden found one sample, ripped it open, and tossed the entire sample into the D.R.C.R.A. It was that ectoplasmic-isotopic solution that made their life that much easier, as it seemed to prevent the degradation of DNA unlike any other preservative Reeden had ever encountered. They powered up the machine and let it record the entire transition as the sample suddenly started to degrade after being removed from the solution. It switched from ectoplasmic to carbon and Reeden almost lost focus watching the visible reaction take place through the viewing window of the D.R.C.R.A. The machine slowly but surely began piecing the DNA sequences together, along with that they had already fed it. It would take a while, but Reeden could already see the third DNA sequence filling in the final gaps. They now had the complete recipe, as mixed up and convoluted as it was. It was an interesting challenge just putting it together, it made Reeden almost excited for the next part. 

Reeden left their lab, intent to grab something with a resemblance to food and to see if the final piece was in place. They needed a break anyway. With the hiss of the door, Reeden entered the cafeteria and put in the code for their order. Just their luck, that one intern, Zavier(?) was sitting with his head on the table. The Head Doctor had taken a liking to the intern. She wouldn’t have let him work on this project otherwise. The kid wasn’t leaving her supervision any time soon. 

Reeden dropped their tray with a metallic slap to the table, and the intern snapped his head up. 

“Greetings. How goes it go with the glowy orb?” Reeden asked casually. 

Zavier slowly lowered his head back to the table, shoulders shaking and muttering quietly to the point Reeden couldn’t make sense of it. That hadn’t been the reaction they’d been expecting. They’d intended to tease the intern a bit, but he already seemed ready to cry. That wouldn’t do at all. 

“What is it? I can’t hear you.”

“It’s a brain in a jar,” Zavier whimpered, and Reeden stopped dead. “And that’s not even the worst part.” 

Reeden blinked, slowly wrapping their head around what the intern had said. It made sense based on the ectoplasmic DNA sequence and the horrible papers, but actually facing the fact was a different matter.

“And what would be the ‘worst part’?”

“They're still alive in there. Dreaming, or some other kind of deep comatose, unconscious state, but they're still there, after over 3,000 Terran years.” 

Reeden whistled under their breath, “Fattest nap of the ages, right there. Can’t imagine it’s been good for their mental state though,” they commented, “But that’s good, in its own way. Means we’ve got all the pieces to toss in the D.R.C.R.A.”

“What is that anyway? A D.R.C.R.A.?” Zavier asked. 

“DNA Reader and Cellular Reconstruction Apparatus. It’s normally a piece of medical technology used to regrow limbs and organs, but with a talented geneticist like myself, it has other uses as well,” Reeden explained. 

Sure, there were a few gray areas with the tech, especially with what the apparatus was originally designed for, and this was coming pretty damn close to its original use. Cloning was a messy and frankly pointless business overall. They weren’t particularly worried about the moral obligations of things. Was never their style. 

“No way… that… you can’t use it to bring people back to life. That’s just-”

“Nope, you can’t make a complete person. It’s a body sure, but no one’s home. Basically a living corpse. That’s why it’s a good thing that the core is intact. Can’t really recreate something that’s built up over time. But with the core being a ‘brain in a jar’, we have all of the ingredients to cook by the book.” 

“We’re really reviving them” Zavier gasped, stuck somewhere between awe and shock. 

“Yep.”

Reeden wanted a smoke. 

All five of the researchers on project “Phantom”, as it had been unofficially dubbed, were shoved into the operating room of the D.R.C.R.A. staring intently at the main chamber of the machine, the orb suspended in position. 

“You know, this might be the first time an entire being has been reconstructed in this thing, right?” Someone commented. Reeden didn’t correct them.

“Then let’s make sure this event is properly recorded so that when I report it, our success will cushion the consequences,” the Head Doctor stated. Reeden grinned, they had figured as much. 

“Wait, are we not approved to be doing this?” Zavier asked, a panicked expression on his face.

Reeden laughed, “I think this is more of a ‘forgiveness than permission’ sort of situation. Besides, they let us use the D.R.C.R.A. in the first place knowing I was here. With an opportunity like this, it would be a waste to do otherwise, approval or not.”

Reeden double-checked, making sure that everything was being recorded before beginning. 

“My name is Doctor Reeden del Orcutus, lead geneticist of the Terra Zero Archeology Project. We are currently attempting to reconstruct an individual from circa 2000 AD Terra Zero after finding a complete and viable DNA sequence. However, the individual being reconstructed is not only a tangential, but possesses three separate DNA sequences, only one of which is carbon-based, while the others are ectoplasmically-based. This is the energy source of interest to the Terra Zero project. An attempt at ‘revival’ is being made after the discovery of an additional organ, functioning as a secondary brain, shown to contain the subject’s intact consciousness. Reviving and communicating with this individual aligns with the majority of T.Z.A.P’s goals and is now considered tantamount to the project.” Reeden stated for the recording, sure to include just enough logical evidence for if they were to get investigated later. 

Their investors really shouldn’t have included this much wiggle room in the statement of T.Z.A.P's mission. Now they had a legal loophole to escape culpability. The Head Doctor kept them around for a reason, and it wasn’t just for their specialty or to steal their smokes every now and again.

“Beginning calibration for cellular reconstruction now.” 

The D.R.C.R.A. gave a low thrum and the chamber inside slowly filled with light, sterilizing it in preparation for the initial regeneration. Reeden gave a cursory glance over to the supply tanks, checking to make sure that there were enough materials to make a full person. It wasn’t good to run out mid-way after all. It took forever to clean blood out of a machine this complicated. Luckily, everything was there, even the additional elements that had to be added for the multiple DNA sequences. 

The machine pinged and Reeden gave a wide grin. 

“Sanitation and calibration complete, beginning reconstruction.”

Danny awoke slowly. His entire body felt heavy, and his head clouded. There was a disconnect between what he was experiencing and what he expected. Something in his head denied it all, like this couldn’t be real. Danny couldn’t find it in himself to really care if it was real or not, just that he had a body, and heavy or not, he could move it. The experience seemed both novel and extremely foreign for reasons he couldn’t remember or palace.

Danny began slowly, twitching a finger, stretching his toes, and slowly readjusting each limb, until he built up to opening his eyes. He immediately closed them. Pins-and-needles spread to every part of Danny’s body and Danny let out a sharp breath. This caused him to start coughing. Everything hurt. Everything was so sensitive. He felt raw and exposed. 

Danny squinted his eyes, shielding them behind a hand, struggling just to hold his hand up. The light wasn’t that bright but his eyes struggled to adjust to it either way. With his other arm, Danny forced himself to sit up with a groan before placing his arm in his lap as he leaned against the headboard. Blurry eyes caught on his right hand in his lap. Something seemed… not right with that. He couldn’t remember what. 

It took several more minutes for his eyes to finally allow him to see, and Danny glanced around the room. It was weird in a way he couldn't really place. ‘It was like if a hospital room was a furniture store display’, was the only way he could describe it. At least, Danny figured it was a hospital room, if one with a really weird feel to it. The gray color of the walls instead of the standard white or off-yellow didn’t help. It made the whole thing seem like a Twilight Zone episode with the monochrome pallet. Here Danny was, sitting in a strange hospital room, in a place he had no idea where, feeling really bugged out in his own skin, all by himself. 

Danny took an additional moment to check himself over, something like panic causing him to sputter. He was fine. Not a single scratch or scar on him. He didn’t know why he expected any in the first place, or that the fact there were none at all weirded him out so much. He wasn’t supposed to be covered in scars. This was fine. He was okay. 

There was a sound, a hydraulic kind of hiss, and Danny snapped to it, practically jumping in fright. The doorway was now open, the door sliding cleanly into the wall all on its own, a person standing behind it. 

Danny would like to say he was the strangest person he had ever encountered, but somehow, he couldn’t seem to. He didn’t think he had encountered anyone weirder than the person with gray skin with matching ashy hair in front of him, but his lack of reaction left him uncertain. He felt like he was missing a lot of things, really. 

The gray-skinned person blinked owlishly at him, leading to something of a staring contest before the stranger became flustered, digging through the pockets of a patch-covered lab coat and pulling out a handheld device before shoving it back into the coat pockets. 

“Sorry!” He apologized. “We didn’t think you would be awake this early. We expected you’d be comatose for a week at least before waking up.” 

Danny continued staring. He wasn’t shocked by the stranger's appearance and he decided that was the weirdest part. He couldn’t remember. 

“How’d I get here?” Danny blurted. 

The stranger paused, apparently not expecting the question. “Umm, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to tell you, so it might be better to save questions like… that until the Head Doctor and Dr. Reeden get here,” he explained. My name’s Zavier,” he added. 

Danny wanted to ask more. He was forgetting something, a lot of something, and it freaked him out. But ‘Zavier’ couldn’t answer his questions. 

There was a ping, and Zavier pulled out the device again, reading something on it. It almost looked like a cell phone, if cell phones were sleek bricks instead of being phone-shaped. 

“Since you’re awake, we’d like to confirm a few things while the Head Doctor is on her way to answer your questions. Is that alright?”

Danny nodded. He found it weird that he had to be the one to confirm the questions. Usually, medical professionals just ask Jazz or his parents. Did that mean he was here alone? 

“Okay. Your name is ‘Danny’, right? Also, what’s your last name?” Zavier began. 

They didn’t know his name. Danny had definitely been brought here alone from… wherever he had been before. 

“My name’s Danny Fenton,” he confirmed. 

“Birth date?”

“June 14th, 1990.”

“Tests show that you’re around 17 years old, is that right?”

Danny blinked. That… that didn’t make sense. 

“I… I’m 17?” Danny ended up asking instead.

Danny had some memories still intact, but he could for the life of him remember what he had been doing before. He was just about to start high school wasn’t he? If he was supposed to be 17, then that would’ve been years ago. Anything from that point forward was blank, while things from before that were blurry at best. 

Zavier looked up from his device, frowning and meeting Danny’s eyes. Zavier’s eyes were a blue so pale that they almost blended into the whites of his eyes. It looked like he should be blind, but he met Danny’s gaze just fine and didn't seem to have any trouble reading on his weird phone. 

“Some memory loss was to be expected but… but that’s a lot.”

Danny looked down at his own hands. They didn’t seem different, but were larger and slenderer than he remembered, despite not feeling like there was anything off with the proportions of his body. But he was three years older now. He was older than Jazz was, wasn’t he? No, Jazz would be 19, probably off at some fancy university doing whatever know-it-alls did there. (Something in his gut told him that wasn’t true, he ignored it). Danny wanted to go look in a mirror, just to see what he looked like. 

“Do you know what happened?” Danny asked. 

Zavier twitched, which was more than Danny had honestly expected. He looked nauseous at the thought, if anything. Something had happened, something really bad that was horrible enough that it made sense if Danny forgot. 

“I… can’t tell you that, either.” The answer was expected enough. 

The door hissed open a second time and two more people entered the room, both seeming older than Zavier by at least a decade, just from the way they carried themselves alone. 

The first to enter was a shorter, round woman with skin so dark it was almost black, but having warmer hues to it than the cool greys of Zavier’s. Her hair clung tightly to her head before exploding out behind her in a dense orb of gray curls. Her lab coat was even more heavily decorated than Zavier’s as well, but she wore them like military badges instead of quirky patches. Following her was a person who looked like they had been pulled through a taffy machine, slender in every way, with a gaunt face and dark hair contrasting a pale complexion, like an inverse of the other two. 

“Head Doctor, Doctor Reeden,” Zavier greeted. 

The Head Doctor, the woman, who Danny assumed was in charge of everything, gave Zavier a quick nod before approaching Danny and looking over him. Danny fought the urge to squirm. Dr. Reeden snickered in the background. Once she was apparently satisfied, from a bag Danny hadn’t noticed when she walked in, she pulled out a thick binder and held it out to him. He just let it sit in his lap, unable to hold it up. It was heavy. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Danny Fenton. Your existence here is groundbreaking and we have much to talk about, but first, welcome to the Terra Zero Archeology Project. Here’s the basics of what you need to know for a time 3,000 years after your own.” 

If the binder hadn’t already been sitting in Danny’s lap, he would’ve dropped it.

Ectoberhaunt 2024 Masterpost