"Don't tempt this place," he warns. "Honestly, I still suspect that half the reason things happen the way they do is because some upper-worldly being hears us complaining and has chosen to punish us as a result," he says with a grimace. "We had a problem with lightning strikes a while back, so you might see plenty of people with tattoos of their own around, little leftovers from that."

"Still, drop by the hospital sometime," he adds, not wanting to let a test subject skitter away. "I'll do a few baseline tests, try not to poke you up too much, if that's fine by you?"