Far Too Much Blood

I’m an administrator at a major hospital in the New York City area. I’m not supposed to talk about this, but it’s so disconcerting that I believe more people need to know about it. There’s been an unexpected and inexplicable rise in the stockpile of blood. It’s not only at our hospital, but in hospitals and blood banks all over the world.

No one knows where it’s coming from and no one can seem to explain how it gets there. All the routine tests say it’s perfectly good and free from any pathogens and impurities. But the fact remains: no one knows what’s going on.

You have to realize – hospitals and blood banks everywhere have always been low on blood. It’s why there are blood drives and calls for donations and all that. The last few weeks, though, there’s been so much that our hospital needed dispose of some because it expired before we had a chance to use it. As weird as this sounds, it gets worse.

This is the part I’m worried will come back and bite me in the ass if any of the other administrators discover who I am. I signed a NDA explicitly stating I wouldn’t talk about this. Still, I can’t keep this quiet. When we dispose of blood, we do it in the incinerator with all the other medical waste. The fire burns so hot, pretty much everything evaporates and all that’s left is inert ash. But this blood didn’t evaporate. It did something way different.

A hospital maintenance worker was on the roof doing some unrelated work when smoke from the incinerator began exiting through the chimney. It looked normal for a while, but then the smoke tapered off and flies started pouring out. He told us they flew straight up for nearly two full minutes and hung above the roof like a cloud. After another minute, they fell like rain and burst open, covering the roof and the maintenance worker with the same blood we’d tried to incinerate. We tried to incinerate more blood, this time with hospital administrators waiting on the roof. Same result.

Our administrators have spoken with the heads of other hospitals around the country. They’ve experienced similar issues. The blood banks are bursting with overstock and people everywhere are being given this blood that just appeared out of nowhere.

The last thing I’m going to mention is the patient we re-admitted last night. He’d been discharged a month ago following an operation which required multiple transfusions. Those transfusions were done with the mystery blood before anyone noticed its existence. His re-admission was due to a fire at his home. He came into the ER with 60% of his body covered in 3rd degree burns. While he was being worked on, flies erupted from underneath the burned flesh and dropped to the floor, exploding into thick droplets of blood.

The patient died soon after. The doctors and nurses were frightened and confused, but they don’t know the whole story. But I guess they will soon. Please help me tell more people about what’s going on. The blood just doesn’t stop coming.

More.

Runners, part 1

Click here to view the related stories.

It’s not easy to organize a marathon. You need to get permits to use the roads, you need to plot out a course, you need to find vendors and sponsors and volunteers and safety professionals and, above all, runners.

As shitty as it sounds, the bombing at the Boston marathon helped bring attention to road races. People want to run to show their solidarity. This is all over the Western world, mind you – not just in the US. That’s why my partner and I got the idea to put on this race in Belfast. He’s from there, I love the city, and hell, what better a location to conduct a marathon than a place with the word “fast” in its name? The marketing writes itself.

The Belfast city council approved the marathon pretty quickly. It didn’t conflict with any other road event and Belfast was doing some citywide “healthy living” campaign, so another road race only helped draw attention to it. Continue reading “Runners, part 1”

Far Too Little Progress

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GeneMedica General Memo
Rakesh Chandrasekhar
March 16, 2015

The cursory observations from Kyle Arrington’s field reports and preliminary data suggest we might be on the right track. I had the bulk of the samples collected by the expedition sent for sequencing and analysis. AppDyn is waiting for our results before they can proceed with their own work with their amplifiers and transceivers, but the merger is slowing everything down on their end.

The portion of samples that were sent directly to the test labs are showing promise. The fail points of MR1 through MR331 aren’t an issue with MR332. Transmissibility among mammals via spore burst and secondary pathways is still lower than our target, however.

GeneMedica General Memo
Rakesh Chandrasekhar
March 17, 2015

I talked Rakesh Patel from AppDyn into loaning us one of their new transceivers. It’ll be set up by tomorrow, which is perfect because the sequencing and analysis on MR332 will be available tomorrow morning.

The overnight guys in Lab 4 had a small breakthrough when it was discovered that MR332 had had a 100% transmission rate when applied to flies. Tissue degradation is still the main concern, however, as it decreases the secondary transmission radius. Fly mortality was 96% within the first hour and 100% by the third.

GeneMedica General Memo
Rakesh Chandrasekhar
March 20, 2015

Our researchers have been unable to successfully bind MR332 zygospores to AppDyn’s most recent respirocyte iteration. AppDyn is unwilling to provide us with its full design specifications, claiming they will only be made available once the GeneMedica/AppDyn merger is complete.

This is a major setback, as the bulk of our models were built on the assumption of a successful zygospore/respirocyte synthesis. That said, the respirocytes are still sensitive to on/off broadcasts made by the AppDyn transceiver I secured from Rakesh Patel.

Mice exposed to the pure respirocytes were able to exert themselves approximately 4000% above baseline. Structural damage of legs and feet was within expected levels. This percentage will need to increase exponentially to meet the modelled goal.

GeneMedica General Memo
Rakesh Chandrasekhar
March 23, 2015

There have been suggestions that the failure of zygospore and respirocyte synthesis can be mitigated by our hemoengineering technologies. While I understand the thought process behind the suggestion, I’m uncertain about its overall feasibility. It would require significant, stealthy acquisitions of hospitals, blood banks, and other medical facilities using capital beyond what GeneMedica has available. I’ll suggest looking into this again after the merger, but considering the cost and the enormous risk involved, I’m not increasing our hemoengineering budget. We will continue working on the synthesis.

GeneMedica General Memo
Rakesh Chandrasekhar
March 24, 2015

AppDyn sent us their preliminary results on our model-based zygospore/respirocyte synthesis and the model’s receptivity to early PHz transceiver signal models. As predicted, the respirocytes embedded within spores will take complex commands while inside a host. This would be a big relief to me if we weren’t just talking about models that still aren’t reflecting reality.

CONFIDENTIAL – GeneMedica Emergency Memo
CONFIDENTIAL – 11A access only

CONFIDENTIAL – Rakesh Chandrasekhar
CONFIDENTIAL – March 25, 2015

Dr. Erin McConnell: deceased
Dr. Arthur Crane: deceased
Dr. Abasi Ndoga: deceased
Dr. Li Chen: deceased
Dr. Annette Chang: alive

I’ve ordered the immediate shutdown of Lab 4 located in sub-basement 3, and the interview and indefinite quarantine of the survivor.

DVR footage shows Dr. Li Chen surreptitiously emptying a vial of zygospores onto the floor of the sample lab. The sample lab does not require a cleansuit for entry. Drs. McConnell, Crane, Ndoga, and Chen began showing symptoms within minutes. Dr. Crane was able to sound the alarm and initiate a lockdown before being overcome.

Dr. Chang returned from the restroom immediately following the lockdown and was able to view the zygospore effects upon Drs. McConnell, Crane, Ndoga, and Chen from the lab window. DVR footage showed the zygospore effects on the doctors were in line with the field observations of Kyle Arrington, albeit far faster due to the artificially-concentrated zygospores used for testing purposes.

A note was found in Dr. Chen’s locker which read, “We will be the first ones to travel.”

I’ve ordered sub-basement 3 to be incinerated following the collection of samples from the flesh of the deceased. Labs 1 – 3 and 5 – 28 will be unaffected and researchers will be kept unaware of the event.

This setback is not expected to affect the GeneMedica/AppDyn merger, although the loss of zygospore samples as well as four doctors will hinder the progress toward zygospore/respirocyte synthesis. AppDyn is being notified of the incident.

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