In the name of science - Tag Avery

David was well used to people having ID badges on them so they at least could open the door to the lab when he worked in the hospital in Birmingham; they weren't always properly on show round peoples necks or hanging from a shirt pocket. The same thing was happening here as his hung from his trouser belt but he couldn't see Avery's. You needed your badge to even get into the building and this lab so there wasn't an issue for him.

Ever since he'd walked in the door for his initial meetings before ending up in the sciences part of things his scientific world had vastly enlarged. Ideas were being talked about that weren't even mentioned in the UK and these papers alone wouldn't have even turned up there. Printed papers on the stability of oddity mutations, a theorem about how to turn humans into oddities via mutation and the one he was looking at now was about human cloning. Obviously people were still thinking about making more than a cloned sheep but the reality still seemed years away.

"Oh Hello" he replied cheerfully "today has been good and these papers are certainly interesting". He was unaware of just he was talking too as he hadn't seen her before.

The now drained tea and need for another one was on the back burner as he looked back at Avery in his usual frame of mind. With bright eyes and mind burning with the possibilities of the questions he would work with. "I'm David Lightfeather" he said as he introduced himself to his co-worker.

Avery Ashford

David heard the name and his first thought was 'this is the boss' but she seemed nice just like a lot of people here. She also posed a question he could partially answer and he would try and enlighten her as much as he could.

"Hello Avery. Well this one I started is about further ideas on human cloning. The most viable method being the process that was used on Dolly the sheep. Growing somebody is a cloning vat is still pure science fiction.

This one is thoughts about how to turn normal humans into oddities. Just leafing through it I find it hard to believe it was even published and I know the person who wrote this. I met her in a medical conference in Glasgow two years ago. Dr Janet Kinross explained this over dinner and I had to caution her to keep it quiet. She didn't seem to listen". They'd done more than just have dinner and those details weren't really part of the tale he wanted to tell.

"Basically her idea was that everybody has potential to have mutations which lead to being an oddity. Those just need to be activated and her ideas included a lot of pain and a high chance of death. However if she is right it might change the way the rest of the world looks at our kind".

The idea was that dangerous he'd leave it in Avery's care. He could provide a detailed summary but what if the world governments also had this information?

Avery Ashford

David figured that further exposition was necessary as it could equally be trouble for Ashford Island as much as could help them. "I would certainly agree that we need to be ahead of everything. I can look further into this and see if there are any practical way to use these theories.

I'm sure there's people looking at this worldwide given its been published in the first place. However could these ideas make people fear us more? Not that it will make much difference to our current situation. Until the attack on the White House governments thought they were top of the tree. Now they know it dosen't take much to hurt them they got paranoid about our kind".

Even if oddities didn't start anything paranoia alone would cause enough fear and chaos for governments; and people tended to go along with what they were told but not always.

Avery Ashford

David knew how serious things were and he figured that some good news coming out of the island would help. If they had time before fear turned into a much worse situation. So after listening to what Avery had to say he gave his reply. He sounded thoughtful as he spoke.

"Some good news like a medical or scientific breakthrough might balance out some of the bad press other sources are putting out; as what we do here can benefit all humanity. I agree with you and you will be the first person that sees or hears what I come up with. I never worked on my own anyway and always in a team; we will be a team of two.

I also think that I can have a summary of Dr Kinross' idea on your desk in three hours. I believe in action this day".

It wouldn't take three hours to type up the summary. Most of that time would be reading the original paper, thinking it over while drinking tea and putting his reply in plain language. You needed to write based on the target audience and he'd cut out as much jargon as he could. Other people apart from Avery might also see it in due course so he'd keep it simple the way he'd always done.

It had taken a scientist to make sense of Dr Kinross' work but he believed in making things easier to understand.

Avery Ashford

What did he do for fun? Quite a bit given his social life was building up as well as keeping up his learning. David looked back at Avery as yoga sounded interesting.

"I tend to do my fitness work in the gym but for fun I do get out quite a lot. Concerts and clubs are fun and so is an evening watching football with friends. Also movie theatre trips. Also once spring hits I could get watching live sports again". Add in walking his dog and that was pretty much his life here. He was more sociable here than he was in the UK but that didn't mean he'd lived like a monk before his exile. He could also add in time with Mallory.

It was way too cold to watch live sports in this winter and Avery had spoken again. The time frame was set and he knew where to find her now.

"Avery, you'll have it in time" he added cheerfully and when she left he got a fresh hot black tea and got to work. The tea and bit of radio music helped his concentration. It was the local commercial station which was good enough. The BBC world service was too depressing to listen to for long.

So giving the paper a proper detailed read he came to quite a few conclusions. He opened up a new page and got a pen drive for a back up copy. He'd password lock this so only Avery could read it for now.

He firstly stated there were serious ethical issues that would need looked at later; which should be obvious as the good doctor Kinross was crazier than a bag of frogs and she clearly hadn't considered these. He remembered that night in her room and wondered just what had happened to her after that. If the UK security forces hadn't killed her by now he hoped she was safe. Even if she was crazy.

One of his concerns was the lack of consent that hadn't been mentioned. So it would be a volunteer project if it got off the ground. With no sample size mentioned success was hard to gauge but it did seem like a slim chance given the stresses the body and mind would have to deal with; and that depended on there being a dormant mutant gene present in the first place. You'd need a test to determine if that existed before a test subject even started the process. It seemed to come down to success, death or brain damage after all that.

Even with the slim chance chance of success he did think the ideas were viable and recorded that in his report. He knew for certain that oddity mutations were stable because new oddities were being born all the time. So the other report was appended to this one.

More tea and head scratching later he had everything together and 30 minutes earlier than he'd estimated. He'd started by sending Avery the password protected document and there would be another copy on the pen drive for other people to read. The other papers along with the pen drive were in box file and he'd tell Avery the password verbally.

He just hoped the server security was up to scratch as this was very sensitive information.

So box file in hand he knocked on the door ready for further questions.

Avery Ashford

Hearing the invite to come in David did that with the box file tucked under his arm. The two academic papers would benefit anybody else following this up as you needed the context to appreciate the research.

"Hello Avery. For starters the password for the file is 'keepthisunderyourhat01$'" he said cheerfully. Something so random he figured out it would take a while to crack the first level of security. Then they'd depend on the server security for the rest of this.

Then giving her the box file he added "there's also a pen drive with the same file as I sent by email. So if anybody else needs to see this they can examine it offline. David did work hard but he how to switch off when the work was over. Going to the gym was his way of de-stressing.

"The box also contains the original papers that started this journey". Questions would follow later and he was ready for this.

Avery Ashford