Loop 86 Year 1 Day 360 Continued

No. Nope. I hand the child over to Chelsea. I run to my private quarters. I quickly rummage through my drawers and find a syringe.

Loop 86 Abyss

The voices are loud this time. They seem angry, but flee from me. As I try to grasp them, they escape. I continue this for an eternity. They are screaming at something, but it is not me. I feel the hate towards my offspring. Why do they hate him?

Loop 87 Year 1 Day 1

I decide this Loop is going to be spent away from everyone. I buy the ticket, and begin preparations for Bomb Day.

Loop 87 Year 1 Day 73

Today the vault is finished. From going to the store to buy a few laptops, to the final coat of paint finishing the drying process, it only takes 73 days. Very quick to have a fully functioning life-supporting vault.

It is minimalistic style. It only has about ten floors for research. It also only makes enough food and air for one person.

I crawl into the life support system. With this I should be able to live out several hundred years. It constantly pumps the Elixir into my body. In addition, it also can replace any organs with a mechanical version in seconds.

Loop 87 Year 1 Day 198

I take Chelsea, and begin to experiment on her. I want to find out why she specifically is able to bear my children. I have AI build a blood analysis area. I also have her build a stasis chamber like area. It is too keep Chelsea asleep, but un-aging. That way I can wake her up at any time.

I think quite often about Eric. In all probability, he is corrupted by the original somehow. Much like how my mind is partitioned because of Little Emperor, so too could my descendants be.

I cannot accept that my descendants wish to die. Who could handle knowing that every one of their children and grandchildren were suicidal for the single reason that they were born.

AI also sends out several bots to procure test subjects. The insatiable desire to research something seems incurable. I plan on having AI dissect my brain at some point.

Loop 87 Year 5 Day 134

I come to the conclusion that it is the original who is responsible for this. He must be. Why would my offspring want to kill himself? It must be set up by the original. Otherwise, all of the work I used, and time I spent, to get Eric to finally come into existence would have been worthless.

Loop 87 Year 6 Day 23

AI has compiled a list of experiments on the ‘Analysis of Degradation into an Irregular’. She has almost a hundred test subjects she captured. They are in stasis right now. We unlock them as she needs them. I usually spend my days thinking on how to undo what the Original did to Eric.

Loop 87 Year 84 Day 365

Today I visit Chelsea. It has become a habit. Each year on the anniversary of the bomb drops I visit her. I unfreeze her to speak with her. She usually is disoriented for the first few minutes, the starts undergoing extreme stress from the situation as she remembers what is happening.

It doesn’t make sense to me. She should be happy I am taking time from my experiments to visit her, but she only freaks out.

AI also finishes a report on the clones. We have been trying to force the degradation for quite a while. It seems as though it is finally successful. Although it is early, I leave Chelsea. She gets strapped back into the stasis chamber by the bots, and I leave. Maybe she’ll be better next year. Probably not.

I walk to the chambers. After leaving the elevator I am greeted by a long hallway of cells. Each sell is lined with an opaque version of my special metal fibers. The break one of these cells would likely require the force of an atomic bomb. I have several set up here in case of emergencies.

I look at his chart. The subject is male. Age: 27 discounting stasis. Race: Caucasian. His skin is like parchment, and his anger is visible. He madly thrashes against his cage. The flexibility of the ‘window’ shows its worth.

“So, what did you do differently this time?”

AI began speaking about the chemical compounds she used. Suffice to say it is a very particular molecule combination, most notably was the Nitro Oxide. It is the basis of the entire experiment for this cell. I have her repeat this procedure with some of the other cells that are currently housing failed experiments.

Loop 87 Year 86 Day 201

It really was! It was the Nitro Oxide gases. Nitro Oxide x or NOx are various Nitrogen Oxide gases formed through pollution. A brief explanation:

Ozone is toxic to humans in low quantities. It is formed when the O2 in the atmosphere is met with the high temperatures of the sun. The temp splits the O2 into two oxygen atoms. When those atoms hit other O2 molecules it becomes O3, or ozone. When factories and automobiles vent exhaust they produce Nitrogen Oxide gases. This combines with the O3 during hot periods of the day, and of the year.

This is the combination she is using for our experiment. As I think back, I realize that rural areas were hit considerably less hard than urban ones by the irregulars. This would make sense as to why. It would also explain the low Irregular turning rate after the bombs drop.

I have AI begin to create those gases in the outside world. We need more subjects to see if this is a viable bit of information. It could just be that it is only in our small case studies.

Loop 87 Year 145 Day 16

The bombs! The bombs are back! I watch the monitors with excitement on my face. My bots are recording the Bermuda right now. Bombs are spewing forth from it as if they were fireworks at the Fourth of July.

This is insane!

I can’t help but twirl in my chair just a bit. I mean! I haven’t been able to find even the slightest clue on how to stop the bombs, aside from Eric being born. I don’t want him being born again, not until I have a way to deal with the control the Original has on him.

The Irregulars begin to arise when the levels of pollution are high. If this disease can even turn power users into Irregulars, how does it interact with APG? I have AI start a floor of testing to formulate a hypothesis on this.

Loop 87 Year 167 Day 365

The bombs drop roughly when twenty percent or more of the population has become an Irregular. It is odd. Though we keep the population of Earth low, and sometimes let it grow, the bombs always drop when roughly twenty percent of the population is an Irregular.

We have found a way to distinguish which cells in a person are changing in them. As a human slowly changes into an Irregular, certain cells begin mutating. Those cells begin giving off a small amount of radiation.

Having so many subjects turning is really helping us discover things about the power users and Irregulars. The type of radiation they give off is so far below detectable ranges, we actually didn’t see it until a few days ago.

On a whim AI has been developing a way to detect radiation in a range that would kill living things. It is done, and this is the result.

The radiation amount is so low that it is impossible to determine without hours of focused implementation.

I’ve stopped chatting with Chelsea. I am more interested in her cellular structure at the moment. Her cells seem to be able to cannibalize other cells that have reached a certain degree of degradation into an Irregular.

It would appear that is how she remains cut off the adverse effects. She doesn’t heal from other diseases, nor does she heal from wounds, her body just seems to absorb radiation and use it as an energy source.

Odd that.

We are going to experiment with this right now.

Loop 87 Year 267 Day 365

Every 25 years seems to see new studies born.

Today is the 100th anniversary of our discovery. The discovery of the pollution, and of Chelsea’s ability. Today is the 75th anniversary of the ‘Clone the Chelsea’ project. A project where we have been constantly creating clones of Chelsea to see if they have the immunity, and how to increase the power of that immunity.

Today is also the 50th anniversary of the ‘Bermuda Project’. I have stationed several Chelsea clones near the rift. The results are interesting to say the least.

A CC or Chelsea Clone, will develop powers only at the time of puberty. Being in close proximity to other power users, even cat 10s, will slow their power growth. Upon examination, AI and I found that this is due to the fact that the CCs actually absorb nearby radiation. This includes the energy coming from the portal. And it is a type of radiation coming from the portal.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the ‘Study Program’. A program where we are using bots and equipment they make, to study the portal. It is very resource intensive. Being near the CCs actually helps a lot. It allows lower efficiency models to maintain peak abilities for longer periods of time when contaminated by this radiation.

During this last 25 years we have found that the radiation coming from cells turning Irregular, is also coming from this portal. It seems to be slowly pouring out this wave of energy constantly. Sometimes, when it is almost visible, it pours out so much it seems like an eruption. It is no wonder only cat 10s can be near it.

They CCs can stay much closer to the portal than normal beings. They seem to evolve much slower as well. Being in close proximity to other CCs slows the process.

The range they absorb at increases exponentially slowly. It feels like a snail going through a maze. We can determine the effect radius by the lightened amount of ‘Radiation Z’ around them. In 25 years the best radius increase has been only by about five feet. I obviously administer the Elixir to them. They will live for quite a while.

Loop 87 Year 367 Day 365

Over a hundred years. Just for one tiny increase. I am on generation three of the CCs. It is unfortunate, but they seem to age still. I am currently working on that.

Aging is a funny process.

As our DNA duplicates, it sheds tiny bits of each end. These ends are useless, except for the fact that they keep the DNA intact as long as they are there. When our Telomeres, the end bits, are cut enough times, due to duplication of the cells, our DNA becomes damaged. This process is the same as naturally aging.

I am going to stop it. My Elixir slows the aging process, due to the lessened need for duplication of cells, but it does not fix it. AI and I are working on how to restore lost Telomeres, giving eternal youth. One could still be killed by an accident or poison, but aging would be gone altogether.

The increase I am speaking about isn’t in the Elixir though. It is in the power of the CCs. Even though it has been 100 years, and I have the CCs stay as close as possible to the portal, they are only able to increase the radius of their power to ten feet. They are so far from cat 10s that it is almost funny. That really brings in to question one thing though.

If certain powers take longer to increase in potency, how long would I have to stay near the portal to be able to increase the level of my own power?

I have many CCs surrounding the portal. The dead ones are perfect for experimentation. Their skins are immune to most radiation, making for great radiation suits. Even after death they absorb radiation of most kinds into their bodies. Using these suits on some of the rank 7s or higher actually allows them to come to the edge of the portal.

I obviously have my cloning centers in full swing. I have thrown tens of thousands of clones at this problem, seeing exactly how powerful a being must be to withstand the portal at varying distances, and how much different strengths of CCs effect power growth of others.

Loop 87 Year 767 Day 175

I have finally made some progress on the Telomeres research. It is almost four hundred years from the start of the research. Humanity would have never done it. Creating an RNA sequence to extend the telomere is easy. The tricky part is that extending the telomere means infinite expansion of that cell. Cancer. That’s cancer. We just found a way to halt the extending of time without use of a very limited signal.

Normally when a telomere gets the signal, the signal is lost a few days after it gets it. Anything longer than that and you get a perpetually extending set of cells. It was pretty gross looking at those blobs of flesh/cancer that used to be humans.

I have found a way to continuously send that signal to the telomeres, but have it stop whenever I want, through use of a special implant in each clone. The implant delivers a unique chemical compound that will cease the RNA sequences. I have an immortality switch.

Looking back, I should have had more than a single lab working on this. This could have saved me years of effort on these CCs. Well, at least this information will be world-altering when I loop again.

The CCs increased in power a bit. The strongest of the group can hold an area of up to fifty feet. Although it is classified as one of the lowest rankings, it will be a cat 10 soon, hopefully. It is also the only one of my experimental CCs that has been next to the portal while I was testing the telomere changes on it. At least it was the only one that lived. It has a long life ahead of it. I can’t get anymore of the original’s tissue for the CCs. Chelsea died a few decades ago. I don’t really need her tissue for my experiments, but it is just sad to see her go. Without growing, uncloned, tissue, it is more difficult to determine the effectiveness of the modified Elixir versus the effectiveness of the radiation coming from the portal.

My next project is going to take place after the CCs, or at least one of them, reach cat 10.