DOA? A-Okay! [IC]

[Dr Archeville]

"I didn't thow 'em!," he protested. "Well... not that time...."

"See, I was chasin' some drug smugglers," he explained, "were usin' corpses as their drug mules. Figured customs wouldn't look too close in a dead body. I tracked 'em to an airport, an' knocked out all but two, an' they'd fled to a lil' prop plane. They took off, an' as I was tryin' ta figger out a way ta get after 'em, I remembered tha 1983 Indonesian horror film Mystics in Bali, which had a leyak, a Balinese versions of a penanggalan. So I concentrated -- this was back when I still had all my mojo, mind you -- an' next thing I know, my head's tearin' itself outta my body and pullin' mah organs out, my lungs is flappin' like crazy lil' bird wings, an' I'm flyin' up after 'im!" He was chuckling now, and slapped one knee a few times with his remaining hand. "I glanced back an' saw the rest'a my body was still there on the ground, an' had keeled over. I went up an' scared the daylights outta them two smugglers; they almost crashed! I managed ta get 'em down safe, then went back and slithered my bits back into my body."

So, not only horrifying, but flying in the face of aerodynamics, too.

[Electra]

"Well, that's an image I'll probably see in my dreams tonight," Miss A said dryly, not seeming too upset. "If you ever do that again, try and get yourself to the lab here, all right? I'd be very interested to see what readings I could get off you then. At the very least, I'd probably win some mad science prize just for the footage," she chuckled. Even as she spoke, she tuned in more closely to her molecular motion scanners. They were picking up something unusual, and though it might just be artifact, it was the closest she'd come so far to actually picking up anything useful off the zombie.

[Dr Archeville]

"Well, shoot," he said with a big grin, "I'd be willin' ta try it again, here an' now, if'n ya want!"

The detached hand scurried back to dead Head, up his leg, around and up his back, down his arm, and back to its home wrist. Americana's scanners for the most part detected nothing but dead room temperature meat, but she did find one scanner that did pick up faint but definite activity: her psionic energy scanner. The readings were vaguely similar to readings she'd seen in assorted ArcheTech archives regarding experiments in psionic powers, particularly telepathy and telekinesis, but the level of energy detected here was atypically low for the level of activity she was witnessing. Of course, those experiments at ArcheTech were all about a subjects using their abilities on some external target, not on themselves, so perhaps (if this was solely a psionic phenomenon) high levels of psychic energy were not required for what Dead Head was doing. Or perhaps they were being amplified in some other, as-yet-detectable manner.

The (still-naked) zombie stood, "so whatcha say?"

[Electra]

Miss A found it hard to restrain a grimace at the idea. "I'm afraid I'd need more prep time to acquire tarpaulins and the other necessary equipment before such an effort," she told him dryly, "but I do appreciate the offer." She homed in on the psionic scanner with laserlike focus, adjusting the settings rapidly as she searched for a better modulation. "I'm getting something, " she told him, restrained excitement in her voice. "Do something a little bigger than what you've been doing with your hand."

[Dr Archeville]

"Bigger? Well..."

He grabbed his head and removed it, holding it as high as he could, then brought it down to chest-level. [bg=#000000]"How's this?"[/bg]

Gina's psionic sensors detected the same faint traces of telepathic and telekinetic energy, still at levels far too low to manipulate an object of mass equal to that of Dead Head's head.

[bg=#000000]"Gettin' anythin' good?"[/bg] he asked, smiling.

And now another sensor detected something: transdimensional activity, centered on the head, specifically the throat area. The signal pulsed in rhythm to Dead Head's speech, but that was all she was able to get with her basic dimensional scanner.

[Electra]

"Fascinating!" Miss A muttered, grabbing for the scanner, recalibrating it. "Transdimensional activity... what could be causing that? Do you have any dimensional powers?" She took hold of the scanner bodily and moved it forward, aiming it towards Dead Head's throat. "Damn, I don't have the right equipment for this, we should be doing this at ArcheTech, but how could I have known? Psionic and interdimensional energy on a zombie!" She seemed very excited, and almost like she was talking to herself.

[Dr Archeville]

[bg=#000000]"Psionic?"[/bg] he repeated in his eerily flanged sepulchral voice, [bg=#000000]"I used ta have psionic power! Well... kinda."[/bg]

The headless body shrugged its shoulders, [bg=#000000]"see, when I was little, I'd get these bad headaches, but when I did I could sometimes see things. See inside people's heads, or see what they was seein'. Few times, I even saw diff'rent times, the past an' the future! But those really hurt."[/bg]

[bg=#000000]"But dimensional stuff..."[/bg] He scrunched his face up in thought as he passed his head from one hand to the other, [bg=#000000]"well, I used ta have a loa in mah head, and they's from another dimension, so maybe it's... residue from that? Or maybe some... bleed-over, I guess ya could say, from all them afterlife-worlds? Whoooaaa-"[/bg] His body froe, holding his head stock still, [bg=#000000]"I thought tech an' magic didn't mix? How's you able ta detect all that, if that's what it is?"[/bg]

Mutt cocked his head at Miss Americana, but remained in his spot on the floor by the table Dead Head had been on.

[Electra]

"'Magic' is a shorthand term for certain types of energy that aren't yet explained by scientific principles," Miss A explained, even as she devoted most of her attention to the readings. "It's a much simpler and easier term than unquantified phenomena, and it evokes romance and mystery, which makes it very appealing. As science gains a greater understanding of various energetic phenomena, certain principles move from the realm of 'magic' and into the realm of what the average layperson considers science. It's a process that's been taking place for thousands of years, since human beings huddled around their magic campfires. Magic and science aren't opposites, they're merely terms of art."

She moved from one scanner to the other, actually flipping open a panel to go to work on the guts of the thing. "Psionics and dimensional movement are in the gray area right now, where we are beginning to grasp hold of their fundamentals, but still don't have a firm handle on why and how they work. My scanners are advanced enough to detect that energy, but not to tell me very much about it. There are scanners at places like ArcheTech that are designed to detect that sort of energy, and could tell me a lot more. Were you ever tested as a child for metahuman ability?"

[Dr Archeville]

[bg=#000000]"I know a few folks that ight disagree with ya on that viewpoint,"[/bg] the disembodied head chuckled, [bg=#000000]"but I'm far from qualified t'make any sort'a debate on it."[/bg]

[bg=#000000]"Never did get tested fer metahuman ability,"[/bg] he said as he continued to pass his head from hand to hand. [bg=#000000]"I'm from a small town -- the local hospital ain't even got a maternity ward -- so we'd have t'drive an hour t'get to the nearest hospital what could do a CAT scans or MRIs for my migraines. I never heard the docs say anythin' 'bout gettin' me tested fer metahuman powers... but...."[/bg]

The headless body shrugged, [bg=#000000]"it's possible the docs did suggest it to mah folks, but they never went fer it. Probably figurin' I had enough t'worry about without addin' in bein' a superhuman. Knowin' the pressures that woulda put on me, not wantin' me ta have that t'shoulder on top'a everythin' else. Not like I can really ask 'em now, though."[/bg]

[Electra]

"Do you have access to any of your old medical records?" she asked him curiously, making notes on her pad. Perhaps if the records had been digitized she could find them herself, but from the sound of his medical center, their decades-old records were more likely lining a rat's nest in some basement than safely stored online for posterity. "I would be interested to see the progression of your case and compare it to those of known metahuman adolescents. I would posit that you may have had some latent metahuman potential that attracted the attention of a transdimensional life form, thus causing your current state, but of course I can't draw any conclusions without more evidence." Her fingers flew across the screen as she wrote, her lovely brow furrowed in concentration. "I need to get you into the lab at ArcheTech," she said again. "If you're willing, of course."

[Dr Archeville]

The disembodied head chuckled; it echoed eerily. [bg=#000000]"I'm pretty sure my medical records was tossed years ago. 'Member when I told ya how I died? What I left out was when -- New Year's Eve, 2000."[/bg] His rictus grin widened a bit, [bg=#000000]"Yup -- Y2K!"[/bg]

[bg=#000000]"Which means I been dead -- legally dead, at least -- fer over a decade. Dunno how long they keep the records'a dead folks. 'Course...,"[/bg] the headless body shrugged, [bg=#000000]"even if hospitals is s'posed t'keep 'em indefinitely, my local hospital was so small an' ill-kept -- friend'a mine, Travis, he went huntin' with his poppa once, an' when they was field dressin' the deer, the knife slipped an' he cut his hand real bad. He went an' got it stitched up at th' local hospital.... and the stitches rusted! Ha! Can ya believe that?! 's'true! So, ah, yeah, if they still got my files, they's probably in a rusted file cabinet in a dank basement."[/bg]

[bg=#000000]"Buuut...,"[/bg] he drawled, [bg=#000000]"ya might be able ta contact the hospital where I got my scans at -- they's actually one'a the top ones in the country! -- and find some records there. It's Duke hospital, down in Durham."[/bg]

Yes, they would definitely have nice, digitized systems for her to play in.

[bg=#000000]"As fer Arke-Tech,"[/bg] he passed his head back and forth between his hands, [bg=#000000]"sure, I'm game!"[/bg]

~fin~