OFFICER’S LOG 10:30 16/7/2063
The Lompensenteret was still the center of Longyear. Built generations ago as a bathhouse for coal miners, it was now home to my favorite cafe that had been serving something unique every day for nearly 100 years. And it always had a line out the door.
It was worth the wait. I always found the perfect cozy spot among the sea of tables. The energy was warm and welcoming. The ambiance of so many people softly chatting was the perfect white noise to study too.
I hopped in the line, preemptively waving to Sara, who ran the register. Her radiating smile lit up the room and set the mood of the cafe, juxtaposed with the grey sky that lingered outside.
Sara and I had been friends for years. I first met her when she started at the Cafe. Our first interaction was awkward, she messed up my order so thoroughly that I felt like it had to be on purpose. But she was just trying her best and now it’s one of our favorite things to laugh about. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“Logan, it’s been days! Are you feeling ok? You like death, girl!” Sara came running around the counter to give me a hug.
“Wow, OK, I guess it’s good to see you too. You know I’ve been working nights,.” I tried to look offened, but Sara’s smile was too infectious and her hug too warm.
“I wish I was as passionate about anything as much as you are with your work. What can I get you today?” She said walking back to the register.
“Do you have anything from the mainland?” I asked referring to their selection of tea.
“Absolutely we’ve got this wonderful Siberian-grown green, that just tastes like a jungle of flavor.” Her eyes lit up as she talked about the tea.
“You seem quite passionate about the tea selection you have. And that sounds delightful.” I tried to be validating. Sara’s face got bright red.
“We get the best we can!” She said through the blush.
“Thanks Sara, let’s get together again soon.” I tapped my phone against the register and heard the ding as the money was transferred.
“A group of us,” She gestured to her coworkers. “Are going out on Saturday, I’ll text you.”
“Sounds perfect! Thank you again.” I said as I took the steaming mug of tea a coworker had just placed on the counter adjacent to the register.
The Lompensenteret made me feel connected to the community. Unlike the auto-cafes that let me sleep for a few hours before it called an ambulance to, “check on the customer that had been motionless for too long.”
EMTs woke me up with a pretty forceful shake. They told me overdosing is pretty common in these unmanned restaurants. As a cop, I was pretty unfamiliar with this, as controlled substances in personal amounts are mostly considered medical emergencies.
The Drug Taskforce is researching substances with no current legal definition. Essence is also not just a drug but one that contains human DNA giving us extra concern. As it has to be harvested in some way adding to the overall danger. Putting Essence in my jurisdiction.
I went to take a sip of tea. It was still too hot and I moved my nose over the water and inhaled deeply. The steam had a wonderful scent of grass. It brought me back to my time at the police academy in Pyramiden. Where they had lush fields they kept neatly mowed. Where Seven was first given the nickname Clouseau, for nothing more than having French relatives.
I put the tea down and took another deep breath. Looking at the backpack I’d brought.
I pulled out my precinct tablet. Flipping to the first file, containing the brief history of Essence.
Our first consistent interaction with the drug as law enforcement was about 5 years ago as a designer drug that was so expensive it was nearly impossible to get a sample to test. The price has been steadily decreasing as it becomes more available. But nobody seems to know how it’s made. But from the samples we have collected it all contains human DNA. So far we have gotten no matches to police DNA records.
There are reports of something similar as far back as 20 years. But those reports are so infrequent it could have been anything. But if it had been around for so long what changed? Why are we only finding out about it now? Why the body pits now?
I pulled up another file. Something new! More analysis of the essence samples. Damn, not my most recent set but still a shocking report. Other undercover officer’s have been finding it in other cities as far as mainland Europe.
Main Office Report: Essence, On Purity
Abstract: The price of Essence and the ‘marketed purity,’ word of the seller (using pure or potent defined terms) correlates to the storage temperature and amount of preserved human DNA/Organic Chemicals of human origin.
In the study, n=100 ‘high value’ samples of Essence are compared to the overall samples in the database N=1281 to determine what is considered pure or potent.
The analysis concludes that potency is referring specifically to the amount of human-produced chemicals. These neurotransmitters are chemicals specific to the electrochemical processes of the human brain.
Present values of human DNA seem constant in all doses of Essence regardless of assigned value or purity. The cheapest Essence and Essence stored at room temperature contained little to no trace of Neurotransmitters. While the most ’pure’ had the highest levels of present Neurotransmitters.
A dark silhouette was weaving its way around the room in the upper peripheral view. It was hardly noticeable until it was standing right on the other side of my tablet.
I looked up without moving my head to see Seven standing in front of me in a navy police uniform. As detectives, it was something I didn’t see him in often.
“I thought I’d find you here, the Task Force had a closed-door meeting today and I attended for you, Captain’s orders.” Seven was holding his hat in his hands like a schoolboy.
“Why are you dressed like a dork, Clouseau?” I gestured to the seat in front of me. Seven began to sit.
“How have I put up with you for so long?” He said sitting down and pulling out a field tablet. He handed it across the table. “Also yes, I gave my debrief to the Captain and now I have street duty today. For instigating your reckless behavior.” He scoffed. I looked down at the tablet.
“They found a match!” I sat up.
Seven shushed me and leaned forward. “News about the tragedy is spreading like wildfire, this is case-sensitive information.”
I rolled my eyes and focused on the document.
Samples: A414, A415, A416, A456, A457, A459 (Maria)
Collecting Officer: LY#19574 Laurence, Logan
Statice: Matched
Identity: Body #36 (Maria)
Seven was leaning across the table trying to get a look at the document. I made eye contact with him and he sat back down in his chair.
“I couldn’t remember where those samples came from. Who did you get?” he said with excitement.
I continued to look at the paper, after everything I forgot to think about actually having to arrest Vet. Of course, his wide selection would have a match.
“Vet,” I said still looking down.
“Wow, how you talked about the guy I wouldn’t have expected it.” Seven leaned back and looked over at the counter. “Can I get you some food? I gotta eat before I go back out.”
“Thanks, that sounds nice.” I said as I scrolled through the other matches. I needed to get to Vet. I needed to know what he knows.
VET’S EXTENDED MEMORY MODULE - CREATION.MME 21/7/48
My hand was just a scalpel, and the process was second nature. I’d been working in the morgue for quite a few years now. But my sense of time had diminished to the point I really couldn’t tell you how long I had been here, and for half of each year looking outside doesn’t help you tell the time. I rarely left the comfort of the building.
All of us morgue boys lived right upstairs. Høyre and the othes had converted the upper floor offices into bedrooms years before Mat and I arrived. Mat and I shared the only available room, a small store room with a small square window barley wide enough for us both to lie on our backs.
The center open floor plan was now a common space with a support pillar in the center where we hung 12 TVs, 4 stacks of 3 TVs. Each stack facing a different corner of the room with its own couch or chairs so each person could play of watch whatever they wanted.
We shared the public bathrooms, converting one stall in each into a shower. Playing with human remains all day doesn’t lend itself to being very handy and the shower was jerry-rigged out of the toilet plumbing. With only one cold ass temperature, you had to hook the toilet handle to an elastic cable to keep the water flowing.
This was the first place I felt safe, this was my first home.
Left had the actual headquarters of Twins Death and Loan in a high-rise in downtown Longyear about 30 minutes north of the morgue. He actually did in-person meetings with the customers there and never let them see what actually went on.
The employees who worked up there did everything in their power to avoid us. They were city people with distinctive and colorful hairstyles, bright reflective clothing made for the Arctic, and big-city attitudes. But they did come over to us consistently and for one specific reason.
I pulled out a synthetic liver from the body I was cleaning. A strange device of fluid pumps on all sides of a ceramic pumice-like filter, one set pumping contaminated blood through, and one set pushing water through to clear contaminants, alternating with the heartbeat. Its other metabolic functions were replaced with synthetic hormones and laboratory proteins refilled through a strange set of tubing which had one side extending to just under the skin, where a syringe would be used to refill all the things a real liver created for your body.
I’d removed hundreds at this point and each one exactly like the one I had received at some point in my Immortal Dawn years. Actually, I might have received a couple, but I couldn’t remember anymore, I had so many augmentations in such a short amount of time. I’m just glad I work with Høyre, who was a real MD before becoming a top-of-the-line Synthetic Technician, he was our company healthcare plan, making sure all our fluids are topped off and our software updated, and the best part was the upgrades. Last year Høyre gave me and a couple of the other guys a surgical tool hand just like his.
This year he gave us an internal memory drive for my neural interface. I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s supposed to be able to curate a set of vivid memories that will live on forever or something like that.
Høyre got them off the black market so it didn’t come with a user manual.
Three boldly dressed individuals apporached from the front door. They were trying to look happy to see me. Their disposition was as forced as the eye roll I greeted them with, which was so exaggerated it actually hurt. I shook my head to regain control of my synthetic eyes and focus.
“So... Do you guys have any more of the... the... stuff?” A tall spindly fellow whose outfit looked like a comic book superhero in all spandex, blue arms and legs, white torso, with a red groin and ass.
“You mean Essence or whatever the fuck they decided to call it?” This conversation was becoming an often occurrence ever since we let the office workers try it.
“Yeah!” They looked excited.
I’ll admit it was incredibly dumb. And I’m not entirely sure who had the idea, nor who was the first to actually huff brain fluid. Our only excuse was the amount of alcohol and other intoxicants we had already consumed.
But in the midst of a forgotten night, there is a memory more vivid than my present moment. Yet it is strange as there is no image attached to this memory. It is only a feeling and a blinding white light and yet my eyes never opened. The feeling was felt all over my body. Even in the parts I hadn’t had connected in years. The first time I tried it I couldn’t discern if the feeling was good or bad, my brain was just overwhelmed by the sensations it had almost forgotten.
“No, I don’t have any Essence at the moment, plenty of other stuff. Høyre has some more test subjects coming later this afternoon but it will be tomorrow at the earliest and that’s if we don’t fuck up like last time.” I sighed heavily and they looked confused.
“Afternoon? It’s almost midnight?” The tall one pulled out his phone to double-check.
“Whatever, it doesn’t fucking matter the sun is always fucking up there this time of year.” I shook the synthetic liver and all of its tubing for effect. And they all eyed me cautiously.
“Well, could we just get some Star?” He looked at his two much shorter friends, who shook their heads in agreement. I lifted my blood-covered arms. Showing in one hand was a synthetic liver and the other hand was currently not even a hand and just some surgical equipment.
“I’m a little busy and I’m sure Mat or someone upstairs can help you.” I looked down hoping they would leave.
“But it’s dark and icky in there.” One of the short friends retorted.
“Piss off, I live there. Now fuckin’ go get whatever the hell you want... Upstairs!” I began shooing them away with my arms and flinging what little droplets of blood hadn’t dried to me and the synth-liver.
They erupted into a cacophony of protest to my flinging of blood at them, and that put a smile on my face.
“Assholes.” I zoned back out into the motions of dissection. A blur of red.
Høyre and Mat arrived later to meet a couple they had paid to give their brain fluid. They held each other’s hands and stood close together nervously. It made my heart hang heavy seeing them comfort each other.
I thought of Chaz and how I never went back to see her, never even bothered to call. I think about it often. I know something would have been different if I’d just gone, but at this point, it had been years.
Høyre ushered them over to his custom Doc-chair that he had been adding parts to over the years. Now it resembled a mix between a dentist’s chair, a fiber optics repair truck, and a medieval torcher chamber. With the standard dozen or so hydraulic arms dangled above you each with a different tool on the end. For non-MD Synthetic Techs, this automated system would do the brunt of the surgeries. But for Høyre, an MD, it depended on how he was feeling if he would let his robot chair tear you apart or not.
She sat down trembling. Her partner holding out his hand. But she couldn’t squeeze it tight enough to stave off the fear.
A faceless underground doc moving about with the largest hypodermic needle they had ever laid eyes on. Trapped in this chair by their desperation to get a little currency for survival. They were one of many living patients we had offered a bit of money for their brain fluid.
Høyre had to do this procedure himself. He was working on a program we could install and use on any standard Doc-chair, but he was far from finished. The Doc-chair could take the fluid from the spine in a standard spinal tap, but Høyre said that was too far away from the brain to get the effects. The chemicals we were looking for break down too fast.
He had been experimenting with the best places to find potent fluid on us morgue workers. But we were all so augmented and drugged up that we had pretty weak fluid. You could hardly feel much besides the drugs we were already taking.
This couple was one of many to respond to a feed post about a one-time payment for a small procedure. We did our best to keep the advertisements above board in terms of legality, but this was anything but.
Høyre moved one of the many arms of the chair and placed the syringe in its end clamp for stabilization. Mat held a camera recording the exact procedure so we could learn from it. We accidentally paralyzed one of the recent subjects and Høyre was adamant he learn more before he let us or the Doc-chair do anything by ourselves.
She stared directly into her partner’s eyes until the needle touched her skin and her eyes snapped shut. Høyre slowly pushed the stabilizing arm allowing it to do the work. Until he stopped and began to draw an almost clear liquid.
The rest of the night went smoothly, not a single incident, and we took more subjects than ever before. But I made note of the first woman and followed her fluid through Høyre’s current process of preserving the delicate chemicals that produce the effects, distilling them to make it potent, and packaging it for easy consumption and sales.
I took a couple of her capsules back to my room and pulled off the aluminum foil I’d taped to the small rectangular window in the thick concrete wall to keep out the ever-persistent sun.
I cracked the capsule in the inhaler and sucked in as much of the fumes as possible. An instant later I was flooded with, that feeling. The one I had when I saw Chaz’s smile. A feeling that someone wanted me, wanted to care for me. It was the most intense dose Høyre had distilled yet. The most nuanced feeling that I could recognize beyond general stimulation. This drug was emotion.
I raced back to the morgue, still enveloped in the feeling, and dug through the computer we used to reach out and found their contact. I barely contained myself enough not to call immediately. I saved their contact. Høyre recommended we wait a few weeks so as to not cause brain damage. But that was far too long to make the two doses I had left last. I tried to find other couples in the system, but the list of subjects was limited.
When the time came I frantically began calling and messaging the contact I had for the woman and her husband. I finally got in touch with the husband. But 2 weeks is a long time in the universe.
“We used the money from the fluid donation to rent a pace for a month so we could get jobs out in the harbor. She was killed in an accident, falling shipping container. But I could use the money if you were still looking for a donor.” His voice was somber and my heart sank.
In my desperation to find that feeling again I said yes thinking that he still has to have some residual feeling, neglecting everything else he was going through.
Høyre and I decided to try his Essence. To that point, I would have categorized Essence as an upper, because even if the emotional response was slightly negative the bodily sensation was enough to keep you light and up.
But this was something else entirely. The emotions were so overwhelming I could hardly think of anything else. And where the average Essence would usually wear off after a short while, this darkness lingered for days.
This was the first time it really dawned on us how powerful the emotional effect was. A glimpse of what this drug was truly capable of. I wanted to go deeper. After years of not feeling much emotion beyond getting high and going through the motions, even something like anguish at the loss of a soulmate was in a strange way pleasurable. And I began to wonder about the extremes I could push this drug to. From the peaks of euphoria and palaces of pleasure to the depths of despair and dungeons of pain.