About 12:00, Orba Organics research centre, somewhere in the Pacific, Wednesday the 14th of April, 2055.
With Ian and Maureen having completed the visual part of the autopsy, Yuki takes over to do a lower level check as well as beginning a more forensic examination. She starts by checking under Janet's fingernails for foreign material, in case Janet had managed to grab her attacker. Unfortunately, it looks like Janet wasn't able to.
Next Yuki takes some swabs from the areas of Janet's skin where it looks like the killer's 'hands' grabbed her head. Then she takes some sections of skin from those contact areas as well as some samples of blood. Apart from the skin showing signs of bruising, nothing interesting shows up until she looks at the blood samples from the brain and upper neck.
Both show something disturbing and all too familiar; long string proteins of the sort that encode the instructions for nanites. Checking a sample of brain tissue, she finds that that too contains similar proteins. The proteins are in an advanced stage of break down, which means the nanites have used them. Evidence of their activities is provided by the way the ganglia in the tissue sample look as thought they have been torn apart.
Concerned that the nanite infection may have spread, Yuki decides to risk alarming everyone by asking for blood samples from everyone on the island. To allow Yuki to continue with the autopsy, John actually goes round taking the samples for her.
The damage to Janet's brain looks to be confined to the hypothalamus, which controls autonomic functions such as temperature and hunger, and the cerebellum, which is responsible for the control of muscle tone and balance.
The adrenalin (also known as (HO)2C6H3rCHOHrCH2NHCH3 according to Yuki) present in Janet's bloodstream shows that her body did have time to react to the attack before she died. Though whether she was reacting to the sight of her attacker before the attack or whether she experienced the horror of a 'slow' death while in the attacker's grasp we can't know.
Yuki suspects the latter of the two scenarios. She says that she believes that Janet's brain suffered a progressive attack that shut down her body from the feet up over a number of seconds. First the motor functions and then the autonomic systems were attacked, while the centres responsible for memory and consciousness are seemingly completely untouched.
Yuki calls Sheila to give her her initial conclusions and Sheila says that she'll look into the data that Yuki has collected. When Yuki asks if Janet had been involved with nanite research on any previous projects, Sheila confirms that she had worked with nanites on a project when she was at the OO facilities in orbit, before transferring down to the island to head up a horticultural research team.
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This page © Greg Aldridge, 29 September 2003
