Forced Coal
This page is a gem.
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 Warning! |
03.28.2022 - Subject #00501-Λ
As a child, I used to steal my sister's dolls. I would strip off their clothes, carve apart their plastic skin with pilfered scissors and knives, and glue their parts together to make chimaeras of my own, like a young Josef Mengele. She would always scream once she discovered my creations, and cry to my father, "Daddy! Daddy! Béla has ruined my dolls! Come and see what he has done!" And he would come and look upon my work, and laugh in delight.
I cannot shake the feeling that if only he had disciplined me more as a child, I might have pursued a different career path. Grown up to be a better man. Maybe raise a family of my own. Instead, I butcher and suture soyjaks together for a Russian madman in his Sisyphean pursuit of the perfect gem.
It's hardly been three weeks since the new geneticists from Kolyma have come to assist with our work, and already another viable specimen has been created (though I'm not sure how long it will survive) thanks to their help. They are remarkably dogged in their persistence, showing up to our laboratory early, leaving late, and avoiding their breaks whenever possible - a considerable boon, considering most of my original staff has resigned despite the increase in pay.
...I should clarify. In actuality, we believe this to be the fourth viable specimen we have created since the birth of Subject #00481-Θ. However, the last three were purposefully crushed to death by the broodmother upon their birth, despite our best efforts to restrain her. She has stopped recognizing the mutated foetuses we implant inside her as her own, bellowing in seething rage and desperation upon seeing their malformed bodies feebly crawl out of her poisoned womb. We had to sedate her with enough carfentanil to kill an elephant before she stopped trying to crush the newborn chimaeras to death.
After all, a mother only wants what's best for her children.
We've learned so much from our past experiments, and yet so little. Many of our early attempts at creating this chimaera were plagued by stillborn births. We had predicted that not enough blood could circulate to all three heads with just one heart, inevitably causing one of the lateral heads to die from poor circulation in the womb, and the rest of the chimaera with it soon after - and so it happened. It was one of the new Kolyma scientists who suggested integrating a secondary heart into its circulatory system to resolve this, something that my old team would have thought too outlandish to even consider, yet they perfected its implementation in a little over a week's time. They're far too good at what they do.
We chose the impish swede for the third integrant of the chimaera due to its close genetic similarity to the skof. We knew we must eliminate that part of the genome responsible for ear development, lest it hear the feraljak's screams at all hours of the day and night, and so we did. As a matter of fact, we excised a significant (>58.6%) amount of its genome to facilitate absorption of impish swede foetus into the chimaera, hence its unusually deformed appearance (though we must have missed the part responsible for arm development). The swede head also suffers from severe neurological impairment as a result, possibly some exotic strain of autism; it spends most of its time mindlessly flapping its mangled hands and chuffing in laughter.
The feraljak head has significantly deteriorated in health when compared to Subject #00481-Θ. Countless tumours, lesions, and tertomas have grown across its "neck" and face due to our overuse of shoyta stem cells to patch our mistakes, constricting its breathing and keeping its jaw locked open. Rotting teeth and gingival tissue protrude from the cancerous tissue enveloping its neck due to the stem cells differentiating into the wrong tissues. Hair grows from places no hair should. A fully-functioning eye even bulges out from its largest facial tumour, perpetually bloodshot from its lack of eyelids.
I had thought I had no pity for these subhuman homunculi, and yet I find myself feeling ever hollower with every wretched 'jakspawn that escapes her womb. I have become a god among scientists, but a husk of a man.
How my father would pity what I've become.
12.19.2021 - Subject #00287-Γ
Even animal testing under Obolensky has been disastrous. That fool insists we splice a dogjak with a horsejak to "impress the higher-ups." All would be well and good, but he insists on having the dogjak be the base of the chimaera, rather than the horsejak. "It will look more impressive this way," the idiot says! Tch. If he wishes to drag a corpse to his superiors, it's his prerogative, but I refuse to be dragged down with him.
Here is what I have tried to explain to him, and what his feeble mind does not understand: the head of the horsejak is far too heavy for the dogjak's comparatively frail spine to support, and making it protrude from the neck does not help matters. The small lungs of the dogjak are incapable of providing an adequate amount of oxygen to the horsejak's brain... but he failed to even merge their respiratory tracts together, making it physically impossible for the horsejak half to breathe in the first place! The very concept was flawed from the beginning, and now this pathetic excuse of a chimaera will vomit blood and hardened nutrient paste over our linoleum floors until it gracelessly expires. The failures our team have created under Obolensky's rule revolt me beyond compare. Our skill, our scientific knowledge, our artistic craftsmanship, all of it is being wasted by this self-absorbed simpleton obsessed with prostrating before those paid more than him in hopes of one day lapping up their riches. I grow wearier and wearier of his inability to lead this team by the day.
But not all hope is lost. I am told there have been sightings of a broodmother - a genuine, living broodmother - lurking somewhere deep within the territory of soyjak.party. Something we had once thought theoretical (for hardly anyone has seen a soyjak breed) may be out there, ripe for our taking. The ability to produce any variety of soyjak known to man at a moment's notice, rather than having to resort to poaching them from the wild or purchasing them from Chinese black market vendors... it would catapult our research to never-before-seen heights. I am told Kuz is strongly considering purchasing the "sharty" from its owner, at which point she and all her future spawn would be ours by extension.
I remain cautiously optimistic. Soot would never give up that goldmine willingly - our CEO may have to resort to lethal measures to gain control of what he wishes to obtain... as will I.
05.01.2022 - Subject #00678-ΞβΕ
I am unsure whether to categorize this as a success or a failure, as with the last few tests.
The thougher is one of the only known soyjak variants we've been unable to get the broodmother to produce via artificial insemination, and the specimens we requisitioned from Kolyma's containment facilities fail to show any sort of interest in breeding with her. This, in conjunction with their unusual physiology and behaviour, led me to believe that the "thoughers" may not even be "soyjak variants" as we know them, but something entirely different that just mimics their appearance.
Alas, I wanted to attempt to make it work - and after much experimentation, our team managed to finally create a chimeric zygote that would develop into an artificial hybrid between a thougher and a common soyjak.
...Or so we thought.
In reality, the spawn that emerged from the broodmother after gestation just appeared to be a thougher. We assumed the thougher had entirely cannibalized the common soyjak in the womb, let the people from Kolyma take it back to their facilities for further examination, and began the next test.
Cobsons are unusually resistant to the phenomenon of hybrid chemerism. Without significant alterations to their genome, they tend to consume other soyjak species in the womb in their entirety, though it should be noted that Cobsons birthed this way tend to become far more large, muscular, and aggressive in adulthood (the proposed "ΑX-variant" secondary gender) than their natural-born counterparts (which only have three known secondary genders: α-variants, or "Cobsons"; β-variants, or "Rapesons"; and ω-variants, or "Spadesons"). It is for this reason that a Cobson was chosen for this experiment, as we simply believed thoughers were just unusually aggressive in the womb to weaker soyjaks.
A few days later, and the "chimaera" pictured was born in a thick puddle of viscous black gunk. The Cobson half is stillborn, and its corpse is slowly being absorbed by the thoughjak's tendrils, which we never knew existed before this test. Meanwhile, the thougher half acts nearly identical to a non-chimaeric thougher, but its mobility is stifled by the burden of ingraining itself into the Cobson's corpse. Unfortunately, Kolyma has already seized this chimaera, so any further research on our end is impossible.
And to make matters worse, the broodmother is ill.
That same thick, viscous black gunk the latest subjects were born covered in has been continually discharged from the broodmother's vaginal canal ever since the Cobson/thougher chimaerism tests began. The on-site biologists are growing uneasy. They plan on sedating her and sending a few human test subjects in with HAZMAT suits and power hoses to clean her out and remove any more thougher gunk from the reproductive tract - a horrible plan almost certain to result in personnel casualties, but the only one we have at his point. The worst case scenario, which I believe to be likely, is that a thougher is now beginning to parasitize her from the inside out.
If this illness sterilizes the broodmother, I am a dead man walking.
If you are reading this after my death, know that I did not commit suicide. Do not make the same mistakes I have. Black and white must remain separate.
Unknown Date - Recovered Journal Entry - Unknown author
The work grows ever nearer to completion. I have spent weeks now sitting right under Kuz's nose and despite the wracking worry I feel every time there is a noise outside my bedroom window, no NSS agents have appeared on my doorstep. It brings me such delight to see it, the Khan so blinded with passion for this project and the Kolyma lab boys so devoted to their work that neither seem to have the slightest inkling of my true purposes here. In such a desperation for employees it was trivial for a man if my skill to slip in. When he saw I was the lead on the Cobson Grafts the head Doctor allowed me in without hesitation. He has solicited me for stories from the project on multiple occasions, the questions he has asked have convinced me that he is more than a mere skilled hand like some of the Kolyma workers seem to be, he is a skilled, of twisted, mind. Though on that front I do worry about the old Doctor, the one who brought this macabre circus to Kuz in the first place. He suspects the truth, that I am a sootist.
Despite his suspicions which become more apparent every day, the old man remains a marvel and I understand now that without him I might never have been able to come this far. How fitting it is that Dark Soot is born under the moniker of being Kuz's "perfect Gem". Soot would have disapproved of such methods in his own time but that moral high road only led him to a ditch in Omsk. Dark Soot will be much more receptive to the art of Splicing, Alchemyjakking.
I see him already in faded dreams. Each time he appears differently, some new innovation bringing him closer and closer to that elusive perfection. Such a shinerald he is, on some days it makes me wish I could simply sleep forever if only to be with him. But then I am reminded of my work, of the fact that this is no idle dream, it is reality, a reality that will come forth soon. Quite soon.
The Doctor had gotten the thing to three heads by the time I arrived, no simple task. Back in the asylum we had something similar, 1020 I believe he was classified. The thing was a combination of three heads, not three separate heads like they have stitched up here. Interestingly they have decided the best route forward is a chimerization of the subjects internal organs. This approach seems to have proven successful, if not for the fact that the heads themselves are useless things. I would use the word insane but that word implies there was ever a hint of sanity for them to lose. The correct approach will be to use a single, central, brain, connected to each head by an elongated stem. I cannot let this idea be my own however, and I intend to slip it to one of the younger Kolyma techs, I suspect he is struggling to keep up with his coworkers, a fact I have noticed causing him a great deal of anxiety. Poor lad, knowing what would happen to him were he to prove non useful I do not blame him. With the brain stem innovation introduced I will be able to subtly suggest the idea of more heads. Dark Soot will then be more complete than they know.
If the new Soot does approve of my work, my sacrifice, which I know he will for that is how I will make him, then I wonder in awe what grand things we might create. I see the asylum, reopened, without the tyranny of men like Soystein. I see Kuz as it's first inmate, perhaps there he will finally do some good to the world! Though before any of this can occur I am drawn back to the issue of the old Doctor. If he learns the truth he might not reveal it, his passion for the Splice may overpower his loyalty to Kolyma. But then again he might. A troubling dilemma, and one that must be dealt with shortly.
I suspect the Doctor's obsession will become his undoing. And very, very soon.
