braaaaains?

[zomboligist]

WHO: Ravi Chakrabarti
WHERE: Behind the Inn
WHEN: May 23
OPEN TO: OTA!
WARNINGS: (Please warn for adult content or anything triggering) Gravedigging, brains, zombieism talk

---

It's probably alarming, but in the early hours of the morning, Ravi has been out with a shovel, digging up graves that he'd once put bodies into. It had been something he's been wary about ever since Major started showing symptoms, because maybe if he could somehow find old brains, he could at least keep Major off the animal ones.

Unfortunately, days of digging in the exact place he remembers the corpses being yields nothing but dirt on his face and frustration. He needs to figure out some sort of solution that's more viable (and horrifically gross as it sounds, tastier than what they're doing). Unfortunately, replicating myelin is a strange idea to begin with and that's with a postulation that the myelin is what's causing the zombie to be fed.

So here he is, another early hour, trying yet another grave site that he thinks might be the location of one of the bodies he'd performed his autopsies on. If this is a bust, then he's going to have to resort to trying to lure the new animals into a trap of some kind and hope that possibly, the brain chemistry or the effects of one of their new friends can help to keep Major fed without him resorting to wanting to hoard nuts for the winter every single time.

Sticking the shovel in the ground, he wipes at the sweat of his brow, having dreadful flashbacks to the days of their delightful tainted utopium searches and he knows, more than ever, that this is absolutely not the sort of life he wants to keep on repeating.

Grateful it's hardly sweating season, Ravi stares at the large mess he's made, realizing he'd started far too late today and he's definitely appearing to audition for town gravedigger with absolutely no intentions of taking that job, but honestly? He's just absolutely too worn to do anything but stare right now, because the emptiness is too much to handle.

Comments

[zomboligist]

"Either they stayed behind or they're one step ahead," Ravi says, because that's about the only options that he can think of. "No, wait,' he amends, "There's a terrifying third option in which they've been moved by our evil overlords." The reason he doesn't like that one is because it doesn't help him in the least.

"I need their brains," he confesses to Helen. "I really didn't want to have to go around hoping for another tragic accident, but they're not here and I'm back to square one."

[notsocommon]

"What sort of examination are you going to perform on said brains?" The fact that he wanted them was neither here nor there - if there were brains to be had, Helen was happy to help provide them. Science was science, after all, and she didn't consider it a desecration of the dead to do some sort of post-mortem excavation. Others might have moral or religious compunctions holding them back but she wasn't the sort to have either.

"I'm trying to decide if the new equipment we received would be useful in such an endeavor."

[zomboligist]

"Major has been having some issues," Ravi says, seeing as they're in public and he wants to be cautious about blurting out 'my best friend turned back into a zombie and I don't know what to do yet'. "The sort of issues that have been making him a bit squirrelly."

Literally, that is.

"I need to help create some kind of synthetic replacement, for his little habits," he says, which means he could really use a brain to figure out the equal material.

[notsocommon]

"Hmm, and obviously no one is going to volunteer to provide for those habits," Helen said, reading between the lines. It did create something of a real ethical conundrum, how to supply Major with his needs without harming anything sentient.

"We do need...yes. I know this sounds completely illogical but is there a chance that we could find other bodies? Bodies that aren't from...our settlement, possibly?"

[zomboligist]

"If they are, I think I might be more worried," Ravi confesses, because that's just a very strange thing to volunteer for. It's not like he can start sneaking little pieces of brain matter, either, which means that he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or, rather, in this case, he's stuck between a zombie and an empty grave.

"If we could, I could do some tests. Ideally, I need to synthesize a component of the brain for long-term feeding without having actual brain matter," he says. "I've no idea if that's even possible, but I have to try, for Major's sake."

[notsocommon]

"Damn. We need to find these bodies, then. Perhaps we can widen the net, some? Surely they can't have just disappeared. I know there were two deaths here in the time I've been here," Helen said.

It was a mystery, like so much else about this place, and one she intended to solve. "We should make a grid of the known territory and start searching."

[zomboligist]

"I've already done this for about three days, but these were definitely the places," he insists, reaching over to pick up the little stones that he'd set up the last time around, waving them like they're going to tell a story instead of just sort of being there.

"I even marked them!" Which means nothing if the bodies have been stolen. Is there a strange underground city beneath them? Is that something Ravi should be worried about? Should they have tried tunneling?

[notsocommon]

"Do you think...and I realize this is insanity...but do you think those deaths weren't real? That they were simply part of whatever simulation we were in and that those people might not have actually died?"

Helen paced a bit along the grid where Ravi had marked the bodies. "We know things weren't as they seemed. Why would a body be here if no one had actually died?"

[zomboligist]

"The exams definitely felt real," Ravi guarantees, because he'd incised into them and examined the bodies, even testing the organs as much as he could to look for causes of death. Could he have been hallucinating all of that? It seems impossible, but at the same time, this place does like to trick them.

He runs a hand through his hair, sweat and dirt all over his face. "It's too early in the morning for that sort of existential breakdown," he insists. "Why fake their death?"

[notsocommon]

"To, pardon my French, fuck with us." Helen didn't normally use such strong language but in this instance it applied. She was tired of finding answers and then running into more brick walls or, worse, having the laws of the natural world turned upside down on her.

"Everything about this place seems to be designed to make us break, whether it is a mental or physical breakdown. Why not simulate the deaths of people who lived with us, broke bread with us, and then tell us later they never existed?"

[zomboligist]

"If they keep driving me towards having to dig graves, it'll be a physical breakdown for sure." That, or he'll complain enough that someone will rise up and kill him, which isn't a very fitting ending either, so Ravi's hoping that it's not going to be that one.

"I need their brains," he says, and he's not desperate yet, but he's getting there. "It's going to get messy if I can't find something to mimic."

[notsocommon]

“What happens to Major if he doesn’t have them,” Helen asked. It wasn’t something she had asked in so many words before but she thought she might as well have it laid out bare to examine for the time being.

“Will he die? Or can he subsist on animal brains for the time being?” Helen needed to know how dire this was and how quickly they needed to find the answer.

[zomboligist]

"It's not death, though I'm sure if Major had a choice between what happens to a starved zombie and death, he'd pick the latter," he says, with a dire look on his face. "You know those movies, where you have to shout at the screen so someone can outrun the awful monster coming after them?"

"That's what happens if a zombie goes too long without nutrition. No turning back," he says, "that was learned through experience."

[notsocommon]

Helen winced a bit. Well, that would not be happening on her watch. Surely between she, Ravi and possibly even Mark they could come up with something to synthesize what was missing.

"I suppose my next question is thus: whatever this village used to suppress the zombie in him until recently, do you think we could find it? I know it seemed we were in stasis or something but I cannot imagine these people wouldn't have some sort of failsafe."

[zomboligist]

"We'd need to keep him contained in a cell where he couldn't scratch or bite anyone," Ravi says, seeing as that's what it really boils down to. "I mean, or have sex with, but I imagine if Major hits that state, no one's really going to want to tap that, six pack or no six pack," he deadpans.

The jail cells are the best he's thinking about, unless they can somehow fashion straps or metallic cuffs. "Let's try not to go down that road, maybe?"

[notsocommon]

Helen winced a bit at the idea of a rampant zombie on the loose and, worse, someone she liked as much as she liked Major. This would be a...major problem, forgive the pun. They would need to solve it.

"Do we have an idea of what chemical it is in brains they need? Is it a neurotransmitter? Serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine? Acetylcholine?"

[zomboligist]

"The initial onset of the disease was due to a tainted drug similar to LSD combined with an amped up energy drink, so I have to think that the disease has somehow tweaked the brain chemistry, but what the eating of brains is trying to replace, I hadn't figured out."

He'd been too busy trying to reverse engineer the cause of the disease so he could cure it, but without the ingredients, that's not happening. "I need a whole lab, which we don't have."

[notsocommon]

"No, we don't, and we can't start killing people just to steal their brains. I think that qualifies as unethical."

Not that Helen hasn't danced on the line of ethics before but she hasn't exactly murdered anyone in the name of science - not yet, anyway.

"Clearly it's something that both animal and human brains have - it's not something unique to the human anatomy, correct?"

[zomboligist]

"Only slightly," Ravi agrees with a wrinkle of his nose, because murdering for his best friend? Something he would actually do, so maybe it's best not to go trumpeting that around too far. "I don't know if a zombie can survive long term on animal brains, but so far, so good?"

At least, unless Major has been sneakily out murdering people, but Ravi feels like he would notice something in his personality, if that were the case.

[notsocommon]

"I'll start working on this problem as soon as I can. If we can guess at some things, perhaps we can work toward some sort of solution. How willing is Major to experiment with...neurotransmitters? It'd be rather like taking psychotropic drugs I think, though I don't know how we'd even isolate them."

Helen sighed, frustrated. "I wish I could tell Beverly so she could help me but it's likely prudent to keep his condition a secret, isn't it?"

[zomboligist]

"If I had a brain," he says, shooting her a glare to preemptively warn about any Wizard of Oz-like jokes, "then we could be isolating areas to see if it's something specific. Given the visions and personality traits taken on, I would assume it has to do with the frontal lobe. Though, the flashbacks and memories are in the limbic system," he says.

So, that's a no-go when it comes to figuring this out, not that he thought he'd get anywhere close.

[notsocommon]

"Makes for a difficult experiment to carry out. What I wouldn't give for my library back home," Helen said, sighing a bit. "I'm certain I have to have collected a book on this subject at some point. Zombies aren't unknown to me."

She gestured a bit with her hand. "Not Major's sort, naturally, but in general they are known in my world."

[zomboligist]

He'd take actual physical samples over a library, but honestly, books would be helpful. "You don't think that we could offer up a prayer to the strange gods of this place and see if they'd give us a library, Beast-style? I mean, if they want to woo us as the beautiful princess we are, it's only fair," he insists.

[notsocommon]

Helen laughed in spite of herself and found herself nodding. "You know, it would be helpful if sometimes those care packages we get actually had books in them instead of just clothes and pets."

Helen didn't particularly mind the gift of clothes - she'd much rather have anything to wear but the scrubs - but she wanted books and tools to help her get out of this place.

[zomboligist]

"I'm fairly sure they're promoting illiteracy, but then, I'm just grateful anytime we do get something." Ravi has noticed the lack of books, which is a bit suspicious because that means they don't want anyone here to have knowledge. If they don't have any knowledge, then how are they supposed to know what to learn and do.

Or, maybe, that's the point. "I mean, you could always just start writing the books. I think that'd be a fairly good 'up yours'."