Tunnel Rat Chapter 378 (Patreon)

Back to my regular schedule. This one took forever, I kept getting distracted with dives into the internet researching odd things and suddenly it was nearly the next day.
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Mama got the explanations she needed and got to work organizing parts of her extended family to make sure everyone was fed and rested. Bork, Algernon, and Onyx were surprised when Rusty sounded an alarm and announced "Warning! Incoming high-priority message from Starfleet Command."

Algernon stood, put his hands behind his back, and said, "Put it on the screen please, Lieutenant Rusty."

Mama's image appeared, wearing a Starfleet Admiral's uniform with an appropriate background behind her. "Greetings, I hope your research vessel is on course, but I'm worried about the supplies in your commissary. You haven't been back to base and you've been working for four hours on an important project without eating. My research has shown that brains don't work when they don't have fuel. I'm sending down a supply ship with dinner, and you'll receive food every four hours plus snacks. Max will let me know if you don't eat enough, and I warn you, I've seen how much Milo needs to know what 'enough' is."

"Thank you, ma'am. Happy to have you supporting our mission."

"You're family, you'll always have my support. And that includes making sure you get your sleep. I want you home every twelve hours and sleeping for at least two hours. We're fixing up a house for you. Do you want separate bedrooms or one big room?"

"A big room, please, with extra pillows for pillow fights, and nothing breakable."

She smiled at that request, "Extra pillows it is. Give me a call if you need anything else. I have a screen in the kitchen and Rusty can open a hailing frequency. Starfleet out."

Algernon saluted as the screen went blank, "Well, we have our orders men. Back to work. We have eight hours of research left in the day, then a pillow fight and a quick nap."

Elsewhere, Zander and Milo were completing their crawl through the pipes between Rhebus and Section E. As the cables were connected, Nina had secure communications between her and the researchers. Milo and Zander followed each other's cables back to their origins, checking each other's work. With everything secure, Milo went to see the Rhebus labs and Zander descended to Downtown.
To Milo's slight surprise, he was already entered into the Rhebus security system. Nina sent him a map of the facility and highlighted the areas where the alphabet had their private labs, and where their dozens of lab technicians, researchers, and other employees worked. He'd never considered having people working for him, and carrying out the basic jobs that kept a company running. As he climbed stairs and ran through half-completed corridors to meet Nina, wheels were turning in his head.

The Rhebus labs were far beyond Milo's cobbled-together workshops, hosting state-of-the-art medical equipment along with the alphabet's innovations. Belinda was in a type of medical pod that Milo had never heard of, sleeping and relaxed. Nina watched him as he moved around the pod, examining it and looking at each read-out. "If I'm reading this right, she is mostly stable and sleeping, but there are processes still going on within her brain that I don't understand."

"Neither do I, to be honest. She's making connections within her brain and creating a more efficient structure, becoming something more like us. I've slowed the process using a cocktail of drugs, some of which her doctors were using. But the process is continuing. It's only at 4% of the speed I initially measured. I bought us time but didn't fix the problem. We need to find out what he did to her. It's hard to believe he did this to his daughter without having a fully researched plan. We just need to find it."

Milo considered that statement, and then realized what must be true, "He didn't have a plan."

"How can you know that?"

"Vigo didn't have time. He wasn't expecting his wife to get pregnant. That surprised him and he acted quickly. He didn't plan for the procedure and wasn't ready so he did what he could and must have expected to keep treating her. He didn't anticipate the effect it would have on Belinda's mother, and that she'd kill him for it. Vigo was brilliant and self-absorbed. He was determined to increase human intelligence. So was his father. It must have upset him to think his firstborn child would be normal."

Nina slowly nodded, "Onyx made a joke about us being created by Frankenstein and Frankenstein Jr. I wonder if Vigo's father experimented on his son? Maybe Belinda wasn't the first? By all accounts, Vigo was far more intelligent than any of his peers."

"But not smart enough to anticipate how angry his wife would be. He forgot what family he married into."

"Back to work then. We can do research from here as well, now that you've linked us to Rusty and the database in Downtown. Let's focus on successful experiments prior to his creation of us. He would have needed quick fixes he could do all at once. Gene therapy would have been out of the question, in that timeline. He'd need to first map out Belinda's genome before he could begin to formulate changes. Basics, yes, things he'd already done like the nerve clusters along our spines. But not an ongoing mutagenic effect that upgrades her nervous system and brain cells. Let's not rule it out, but I think it's not what we're looking for. Belinda's mother mentioned nanites, and I've been scanning her blood for anything of that nature, but her bloodwork isn't showing anything active beyond the nanites I'm using."

Milo agreed, and the two of them got to work, coordinating with the downstairs group, and joined by Zander. Starfleet Command contacted them as well. Rhebus would supply nutritious meals as they usually did, and they promised to watch each other and get enough sleep.

A day went by, with small successes that led to dead ends. It was the pigs that finally gave them their first solid clue. Bork was intrigued by the revelation that Vigo Johansson wasn't the first mad scientist in the family and began gathering together all of the information he could find on his father, Felix. There were always patterns that Bork could find around a person's life. He found that certain equipment and chemical supplies were delivered to the small towns near Felix's farm that far exceeded what many corporations would need. Backed by his knowledge of how Rhebus had operated in the early days, he identified Felix's suppliers and from that could extrapolate some of what he was working on.

And while he found no mention of any sales of live pigs or pork carcasses, he did find evidence that twice a year a truck was sent to the farm, and then delivered several tons of 'biological waste' to an incinerator. Strange behavior for a pig farmer, but not for someone experimenting on pigs. The need for a high-tech, 15' high 'unscalable' fence with electronic locks was another clue. Bork theorized that Felix was either paranoid about someone stealing a pig, or worried that the pigs might escape.

Five hours later he found a section of data in the discs that detailed experiments on animals. Felix had been breeding smarter and smarter pigs. The basis of the experiments had been genetic, but he hit a wall at some point. Pigs were smart to begin with, smarter than dogs. Most people would be satisfied to breed pigs that were comparable to a human with an IQ of 50. The smartest test subject, Violet, had learned to recognize written words and spoken commands. Her vocabulary was limited to only 50 words and she could count to 23.
Violet was the recipient of the next experiment.

Felix wasn't as organized in his notes, and most of his work had been separated and archived by Vigo. Luckily, Bork had Rusty to help. The AI could look through all of the scanned data in seconds looking for research into nanites, or experiments using them. Within an hour they'd found the experiments done on the pigs. It was odd enough that Bork immediately notified the rest of the family and get more eyes on the research.

Milo took the schematics and compared them to his own designs. These were smaller by a factor of ten, with a radically different design. "These were never meant to be distributed by blood. They're crawlers, tunnelers. They break down the tissues in front of them, separating the neurons and rebuilding, layering one nerve cell at a time."

Nina was tearing through the research notes, dozens of pages a second, "Direct injections into the brain and spine. A slow process that rebuilds and strengthens the body's nervous system. This is it! I'm sure of it. I need a look at her nerve tissue. I know where the changes are taking place. Algernon and Onyx, get to Rhebus. I need you to scrub and get ready for brain surgery. If the nanites are there, we can get a sample and learn how to shut them down."

Zander started laughing, "Go to disc 37, page 4867. It's hysterical. The pigs got away! Violet figured out how to work a keypad by holding a stick in her mouth. She released all the experimental animals and they disappeared into the countryside. Felix spent a fortune hiring trackers and hunters but never found the ones he was looking for."

Nina paused at the door, puzzled, "Where could they hide?"

Milo knew. "Another pig farm. If I were a super-intelligent pig, I'd split up my pack and have them lie low in other farms. The hunters were looking for pigs on the run. It would be easy to get away from normal farms. Or maybe they stayed? Some farms raise pigs for sale and show and always keep the best."

Zander was looking at the historical records for Fairs and animal competitions, "That part of South Wales is known for having some of the smartest pigs in the world. Some even herd sheep." Noting he was alone in the room, he ran to scrub and head to the surgery arena. No one wanted to miss watching Nina do brain surgery.