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The Burden of Intelligence; Box, Elixir, Doctor Nemesis
Topic Started: May 29 2012, 12:17 AM (607 Views)
Paige Guthrie
Unregistered

May 7th noon

Paige was well pleased with herself, this idea had come together beautifully. With many of the X-Men's mental giants behind the veil in Utopia and some strange doppelganger problem going on, someone needed to step up and organize a team of professional thinkers to solve these mysteries. So she had taken it upon herself to reach across team lines and recruit the best of the best. First off was fellow X-Man Joshua Foley. A brilliant and talented geneticist as well as a biokenetic, he had spent the largest amount of time with the reptilian double. Next was her old colleague and former XFI teammate Madison Jeffries. A robotics expert and unparalleled machinist, he had graciously interrupted his vacation to help out. Last, besides herself of course, was the world renown X-Corps member Dr. James Bradley, one of the few remaining actual polymaths. He was an unknown in many ways to Husk, though he had been in the scientific community for over 80 years.

The young woman found herself almost overwhelmed by the presence of these men of scientific genius and intellectual prowess. Paige had always been intelligent and prone to study, but this group surpassed her like Xavier surpassed a man in a coma. She mainly intended to keep them organized, stay out of their way and learn all she could.

To that end she had provided dossiers on all the current X-Men in New York, a far more detailed report on Tommy Shepherd and every single detail Josh would let slip about the current situation. She had moved every possible piece of equipment she could fathom a use for into the lab and triple checked the seals on the room containing the dead foreign body. In addition she had made plans for food and drink for the assembly as well as security measures to make sure they were not interrupted. PDAs were also available containing all the information contained in the files as well as whatever new notes were taken. Each was linked to the others so if one person made any type of notation the others would have instant access to it.

Paige knew she was out of her league here, but she was doing her best and hopefully this would go as planned and the mysterious blackout would be solved and a reliable method to find any other doppelgangers obtained. She privately wished she had a tactical genius to include to plot out possible battle plans or anti-invasion tactics if that was what this was. However one could not always acquire what one wanted. Pleased with her preparations she had greeted each of the men as they arrived and helped Joshua in whatever ways she could.
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Box
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Mechanical Interaction/Merge
It was nice to be away from the frenetic pace of daily X-Investigations life. To set up in a small town up in Alberta, near where he'd grown up as a kid, near where he'd gone to school, played (though play was a very loose word to use - he was more the tinkering type, even when he didn't have the power to transmogrify metal at will. It was just what he liked to do.

But the... inactivity did get grating at times. He knew he needed it, and his healing had come along very far to this point. He was no longer in a cast, but he did use a leather splint on his hand. He didn't need his chest to be wrapped up, and his foot was doing better as well. So he was healing up after Jubilee had blown him and his workshop straight to hell.

And then came this call to help with a project he'd actually started on before the X-Men had gotten a hold of it. He had done some molecular scans on the body, had figured out a few things about it, recording that data into the computer network he'd set up in Alex Summers's "Undercity".

So he'd forwarded himself that data, set it up in his palm unit, and made the trip back down to New York. And now, here he was - set up in this little facility with the girl who'd called him, one of the X-Men or an associate of the X-Men, he wasn't sure. There were so many, it was hard to keep track of them all.

Too bad McCoy wasn't here. McCoy, he'd worked with before. He knew how to pick McCoy's brain about certain things and McCoy knew how to pick Madison's. They'd developed a good working system.

"Alright, so I've sent the data I've obtained from the body during my scans back in Undercity to your units - you have all my data now," he said to the others as he slipped his portable computer back into his pocket. Palm-sized, with more power than a machine twenty times its size and value.

"I take it you've kept it in my deep-freeze unit? Perfectly preserved still? Have we done an autopsy?"
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Signature mock-up made by Heather, the greatest Heather I know. :)

Oh it's tough bein' a Box, but I'm livin' it up, livin' it up - doot-doot-doot-doot-doo - livin' it up, livin' it up - BOX!
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Elixir
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“Kinda sorta,” Josh replied, slipping his hands in his pockets as he looked toward Box.

Josh Foley stood with the rest of those gathered and suddenly felt very out of place with them; wearing his typical baggy jeans, t-shirt, with a flannel shirt thrown over that with sleeves rolled up, Elixir wasn't exactly dressed like a man you would see on CSI or ER. He scrubbed his hands through his golden hair with an even more golden hand before shoving the hand back in his pocket and fixing his piercing blue eyes back on the object that had brought the people in this room together.

I should be wearing a lab coat or something. One with pens in the front breast pocket maybe. Jeffries has all his crap together sending me all his data on our computers and his small computer and... he just looks all smart... and I'm some skinny kid who looks like I just got given away at the Academy Awards. Is that where they give those little Oscar statues away? That's the only name I can remember... is there a ceremony called the Oscars? That sounds right... I think.

I look like I belong on a skateboard on my way to McDonald's...


“I read all your stuff.” Very technical term.

“It was really helpful... gave me a good place to start and helped me make sense out of some of the stuff I was picking up on.” He shook his head, “Man... I've felt some really weird mutants and even a couple of crazy humans, but I've never felt anything like this, and it had me stumped for a while.”

All of his notes were scattered over a messy clipboard, pages out of order and half missing because they were on his computer. Josh jotted notes and thoughts down on the first thing he could reach... while some of them simply remained in his head to germinate. He had all of his conclusions ready to spout off... all of his facts tucked away in the brain of a biokinetic, but no one aside from Doug could decipher the thoughts he'd written down. To call it organized chaos was to put it nicely.

“I finally cut the body open,” Josh gestured in the direction of the thing's chest, held closed by several straps, “but I didn't really get anything I hadn't already figured out by – y'know – touch.” He shook his head, “the shapeshifting abilities this guy was packing are scary.” He glanced at each and every person in the room, “It's perfection.”
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Doctor Nemesis
Unregistered

A crisis was brewing in the world, and the only thing that could prevent it's combination was SCIENCE!! He'd been invited to a summit of sorts with other like minded mutants to see if they could solve this dilemma, and he was genuinely excited. He didn't get to work with almost equals much, and to do so just tickled his fancy. When he arrived, he was wearing his trademark all white, although his mask was tucked in a pocket until it was needed. Paige Guthrie was...well she was a Guthrie. She'd proven herself to be rather intelligent though so he'd reserve judgement. Maddison Jeffries was X-Factor's resident genius and mutant mechanist; he seemed to be a bit of an astronaut to James, but he couldn't deny the man's brilliance and capabilities. And finally the X-Men's most powerful healer.

Young Joshua Foley had some of the most all encompassing biology based powers he'd ever seen or heard of, and he had a head for all the sciences that would only make him more effective and skilled in the future. The people were technically the most important part of the equation, but how they went about analyzing the impressive array of information they'd been given was equally tantamount. He let Joshua finish before scrolling through the data for the umpteenth time and shaking his head. "Yes, Jeffries...what you learned is morbidly fascinating." He thought about the last thing the chromatic youth had said and for one of the first times in his life, he was truly scared. The sheer scope of what someone with that level of shapeshifting could accomplish was limitless.

"Perfection? I don't think I need to point out just how bad that is. That...humanoid was impersonating Wanda's son for, none of us can even comprehend how long. And for the entire time he was among you and the Brotherhood, then you again;" he gestured at Joshua, "he drew no suspicion to himself as anyone other than Tommy Shepard. Looks, attitude, mannerisms. Not even the most powerful telepaths on the planet picked up anything even remotely different about him." He sipped a bit of water.

"If this being was truly masquerading as Tommy for any significant length of time, then not only is his...kind's shapeshifting abilities for all intents and purposes perfect; it appears they've found a way to mimic a person in their entirety." He didn't say what they were all thinking, because they were all thinking it. Any one of their friends or loved ones could be one of these things in disguise...there was simply no way to know until they revealed themselves. Not yet anyway, as that's what they were there for.
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Paige Guthrie
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Paige had been watching the groups interaction since their arrival. So far she liked what she saw. Box was matter of fact, to the point, and quickly organizing details into working principals and theorems. That kind of focus and drive she readily identified with. Elixir was a little nervous and seriously needed some wardrobe advice but holding his own. The young man really needed to relax and believe in himself more. He was after all their core component and one of the most powerful mutants on the planet. Doctor Nemesis was all that Paige expected and more. The man appeared to be some exotic fusion of mad scientist, cartoon character, and archetypical genius. He was brilliant, expressive, and eager all at the same time. Paige's doubts about her own place here started to disappear as she focused more heavily on their work.

She spent most of her time listening to everyone's musings and rapidly making notes on her personal linked PDA. Most were simple reflections and theories on biomass transference and fundamental cell alteration. It was all simple basic stuff, but it was often best to cover all fundamentals before tackling a new problem. There was however one question that bugged her more then any other and she voiced it out loud to the gathered men. “Why Mr. Shepard? I just can't find an answer to that. What traits or purpose did he bring to the table that they needed?”

She expected no real answer to that though, the information was still too sketchy, details too few. She tapped in a few more notes before listening closely to Nemesis' grim proclamations. Perfection is form was indeed an amazing achievement, however it was no less then terrifying when used against those you cared for. She entered in a few more bits of data before voicing an theorem of her own.

“This makes me look at my own omnimorphic abilities with a far more introspective gaze. I in theory can mimic any substance both in it's entire and even improve on said substance, or at least stabilize it. This really seems to be a variant on that concept. A full, complete, changeover into a former being instead of mimicking the component cells. This would, in my mind, almost certainly require the possession of the subject's physical body for both further analysis and deep reference. Mr. Shepard is almost guaranteed to still be alive somewhere undergoing captivity and/or study. Would there be a way to use this body to find him?”

Of course as she spoke Ma Guthrie's eldest daughter guessed that the group had most likely come to this conclusion themselves hours ago and she was just playing catch up. After all if they had a way to find Mr. Shepard surely someone would be working on it already. Still there was an off chance her meager musings might allow one of her betters to unlock some secrets.
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Box
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Madison glanced around the group. Perfect mimicry. Yes, that much it seemed, was likely. This person had fooled who knew how many? Fooled people there was no way it should have been able to fool. People with superhuman senses, people who saw the weave of the fabric of reality itself, people who had access to scanning on the genetic level... and this person fooled them all.

"Bad news or not, doesn't matter. We're just here to provide solutions. And I think I know how," Madison scratched at his chin, observing the body with narrowed eyes.

"Now, I'm no biological expert - for that I defer to you, Foley," he said with a tip of his head towards the young man. The awkwardness the boy felt, displayed - Madison missed out on all of it. Non-verbal cues were not his strong suit.

"But I do think I know enough to know that every conscious and unconscious decision the body makes is governed by electrical impulses. Electrochemical gradients up and down the nervous system, signals, messages - not unlike an electromechanical circuit."

He began rifling through his pockets, emptying them. His trusty stand-by, the Game Boy. A pocket calculator. Nuts, bolts, a small flashlight. Pennies. Wire clips. It was all just raw material as far as he was concerned.

"So we hijack this body's nervous system. Hook into it, connect it to our computer system and... well... program the corpse. We figure out the way its shape-changing works, we figure out how to make it change into what we want it to..." he knew it. He was on to something, he had to be.

"And by figuring out how to make the shape changing do what we want, we can figure out how to shut it down. We may not be able to use this body to track down whatever's happened to the real Tom Shepherd, but we can use it to understand how they work, and how to counteract them."
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Signature mock-up made by Heather, the greatest Heather I know. :)

Oh it's tough bein' a Box, but I'm livin' it up, livin' it up - doot-doot-doot-doot-doo - livin' it up, livin' it up - BOX!
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Elixir
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Josh shook his head at Paige's suggestion that they could possibly use the corpse of this... thing to search for the person he was representing. As much as he would love to be able to do exactly that... he had no basis at all to support the possibility. “No... I mean... there's no way to tell where this thing has been. It's almost as if it purifies its body every so often of anything foreign. Part of the shapeshifting process, I think.”

“And yea,” Josh said as he pointed at the Doctor, “that's exactly what I'm getting at... Tommy was one of my best friends, and I didn't have a clue. Like... at all. I mean...” he looked apologetically around the room, “sometimes I delve a little in someone when I shake their hand. Y'know... not really peeking at anything... just to check on their health. I've found a few cases of early stage cancer... two cases of drug use, and a few other things that way. I don't do it all the time,” Foley said, a defensive edge in his voice, “Just... y'know... randomly.”

He fell silent as Box pondered ways to use the body to glean even more information than they already had, suggesting hooking the body up to computers and trying to access its ability to shapeshift. That sparked another idea in Josh...

“Hey... do you think you could access memories with a computer?” Josh leaned forward, his hands on a table as he looked Box in the eyes, “I mean... accessing memories is a little out of my field. I can't think of a way to do that biologically, but if you could get a computer to interpret brain impulses... I could heal any damage to it... maybe coax out a little efficiency maybe?” He looked around at the others, eyebrows raised as he asked the silent question of whether or not the others thought it was a good idea.
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Doctor Nemesis
Unregistered

Each person in the room with him had their own specialties, and it was a good thing they'd all been brought together, because none of them would solve this on their own. Even he wasn't arrogant enough to think this was something he could figure out on his own and just make all the current problems go away. He didn't answer Paige's question about Tommy; none of them did. There was no answer; at least there wasn't one they could find out with the limited information they possessed, so there wasn't a point in beating a dead horse. He chuckled at Josh when he showed a bit of apprehension when informing them that he would, at times "check" on a person's physical state with his powers. James was no different.

"Nothing wrong with that, Joshua. I do it all the time." His eyes flashed green momentarily as Nemesis tapped his temple. But what he'd said was like everything else, unsettling. Not only could these beings copy a persons memories, mannerisms; even their abilities...there was nothing at all to differentiate them from one another. More than clones; they were perfect doubles. He looked at Jeffries with a disguised face of irritation; he was right that Josh was an authority on Genetics, but so was he, and his ego didn't like being passed over. This wasn't the time to gripe about what could be a simple case of familiarity over anything else...maybe it was just a simple mistake.

It wasn't important now though so he didn't say anything. The younger man was on to something though with his idea about re-purposing the corpse for their own means; why hadn't he thought of that? After that, Elixir brought up another idea and he smiled to himself. If one was electronics, and the other was organics...he was the middle ground. He was an expert in both fields and had just the way to implement was the golden hued youth was suggesting. "It's very possible; with a little ingenuity and elbow grease of course."

Wheels in his brain were turning and turning even as his hands were making a rough outline of the device he'd concocted in his brain. "The brain itself is a computer; a biological computer and one of the most powerful in existence...if you can unlock the higher percentages and thought processes of it. What we can do;" he slid a well drawn, but rough draft picture of a device surrounding a brain with ports connected to it to the middle of the table.

Along with it were the beginnings of notes he was jotting down. "Is make a network connection between the brain and an actual computer; then download the memories like data files. Bio-technological sciences are practically nonexistent at the moment, but we're some of the most powerful minds on the planet. This should be no problem for us. And once we're done, we'll have this thing licked."
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Paige Guthrie
Unregistered

Paige found herself following the conversations of the gathered men easily. She thought she would be easily outstripped and find herself in the background like she had so often in X-Factor. That, clearly, was not going to happen here. Finally at ease the lovely metamorph stuck the end of her pen in her mouth and bit it lightly. It was a terrible habit but one she had yet to kick. She let her mind relax and took a few moments to let her train of thought flow where it would.

The idea of treating a dead being's mind like a computer had an astonishing level of merit and with the sheer brainpower and resources this group had access to it was an inevitability. Two things irked her though and they slid into her thoughts repetitively. First, there was no such thing, scientificly speaking at least, as a “perfect copy”. Something was one thing or another, never both. Even two mirror image diamonds would have different flaws throughout. Second was the creeping feeling she was on to something vitally important that continued to float just out of reach.

“OK so how do we do this? Electronics aren't my specialty but I can do whatever heavy lifting or other tasks that need exotic materials.”

Bottom line, Paige wanted to be, needed to be useful. She knew she had this trait in spades but was, as always, unable to rid herself of it. As she tapped a few more notes into her pda and double checked the chemical composition of a super high resistance polymer, her thoughts swirled together and she asked some questions out loud.

“How did they isolate the X-Gene? If this thing switches between itself and Mr. Shepard it either has an X-Gene itself, or it had an artificial one that could be isolated and switched on and off. If it reverted to itself upon death the gene should be present but inactive. Can we isolate it? If so there is so much we could learn....”

Paige quickly closed her mouth as her comments were way off base for their current plan. They were good ideas, but she labeled the timing to be off and tapped them into her notes as she blushed softly.
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Box
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"Downloading memories?" Madison asked, glancing off to the side as he mulled it over. Considering the brain's sheer storage capacity, they'd need... oh, what would they need?

"Okay, we're going to need at least five hard drives, empty hard drives. And we'll need... alright, I can reformat this table a bit to expose the neck... I can fashion an electrode plug - basically a needle I jam into the spinal cord... right at the base of the skull where the cord connects to the brain... and from there we hook it up to both an electrical generator and our soon-to-be built computer network..."

This was going to work. He just knew it. They were going to have their secret weapon. And this was it.

"And then we'll split to get our tasks done. I'll work on commandeering the shape-changing mechanisms - Miss Guthrie, if you're particularly good with computer programming, I might need your help on that front... while Dr. Bradley and Mister Foley can figure out how to download and decipher this guy's memories."

He glanced to those around him, unable to keep the slight smile off of his face. This was exciting. They had plans of action, and by God, they were going to pull it off. He was sure of it.

"Alright, I'll get to work fashioning our hardware, can somebody get to setting up the computer network? We're going to need a lot of space if we're going to download the contents of this guy's brain."

He wasted no time, crouching down by the table to examine its underside. Flat metal, simple enough. Good. He lifted his right hand up and touched the underside of the table, and as he did, a hole began to form itself underneath the body's neck, opening up to allow him access.

"There we go," he grunted as he stood back up, moving quickly to the assorted gadgets he'd pulled out of his pocket. The Game Boy was the first to undergo metamorphosis, slimming and taking a cylindrical shape at the top while the rest of it lengthened into a wire - one that forked off in two directions - one end became a USB plug, the other a standard electrical wall plug that dropped to the floor.

He grabbed a bolt next, and at his touch, the metal thinned and lengthened, growing razor sharp at the tip. Electrical conductor to be inserted right into the corpse's nervous system. He plugged the needle into the cylinder that once was the Game Boy, and his hardware was set.

"Alright, here we go," he nodded his head, bending down again with contraption in hand. He took a deep breath, and placed the needle tip on the back of the neck, pushing it inward and upward to get the tip of the needle into the brain. He couldn't help but wince slightly at the feel of it, that feeling of resistance as he pushed through.

"Now we plug it in and fire up the computers - see what we can get."
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Signature mock-up made by Heather, the greatest Heather I know. :)

Oh it's tough bein' a Box, but I'm livin' it up, livin' it up - doot-doot-doot-doot-doo - livin' it up, livin' it up - BOX!
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Elixir
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Josh's eyes grew wide at the fact that they were actually running with the notion of downloading this thing's memories into a computer. They'd been spitballing, and then these two geniuses actually decided to run with it... to do something that – to his knowledge – had never been done before as if it were simply a puzzle to solve. For all he knew, they could be standing at that table looking at a thousand-piece puzzle to solve as if they did one together once a week. Josh looked back down at the specimen and swallowed as he realized how over his head he was.

If this is a thousand-piece puzzle... then it's a picture of a clear blue sky.

He looked under the table to see what Box was doing, and then straightened up as quickly as possible... that guy had the bull by the horns and was already making incredible progress. His blue eyes fixed on Paige, then the doctor... he would just have to pretend that he knew what the hell he was doing and fly by the seat of his pants.

“Okay then,” Foley said as he placed his hands on the thing's chest and closed his eyes as he set to work. He stood there for several seconds with his eyes closed, delving the creature but not quite sure what to do next.

“Alright,” Josh finally admitted, finally being a little honest. He opened an eye to look at Nemesis, “I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for or what I'm trying to do. I mean... I can restore some blood flow to the brain and recreate impulses... but any of you have suggestions...” He trailed off as he felt Box's needle enter into the thing's skin.

“On how to encourage interaction between this thing and the computer?”
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Doctor Nemesis
Unregistered

He looked to Paige and smiled; he never smiled as much as when he was in a lab, doing science and related fields of study...never so much as then. "If I were a normal person I'd say trial and error, but since I'm not, I'll tell you." He'd thought about that very thing, and while the ways and explanations were many, only one truly made sense to him at the moment, and he hoped would be solidified as fact once they were done with this. "The easiest way to get an X-Gene is to take a tissue sample from a mutant; preferably blood or saliva. Our X-Gene is encoded within our very DNA, so anyone with access to enough genetic material and the technology to identify it can from there extract it, isolate it...whatever they want.

The level of tech accessible to these beings is unknown to us at the moment, but let's just assume it's higher than ours. Coupled with their changeling abilities, there might not have been a need to isolate it. What if...what if they used a DNA sample to copy Tommy? Make a perfect duplicate in his exact image... From powers to persona; right down to the last molecule?" The data that had been complied was there; there was no pussyfooting around it. "That's just a theory at the moment, so let's stick in a pin in it till later, blondie. But after we jack in to this thing's cerebellum, we'll have all the knowledge we need and we can answer some questions that are burning a hole in my mind." One thing that never ceased to amaze him about himself was how good he was at his job.

Snapping his head in Box's direction, he ran the numbers in his own mind and concluded that he was correct. Five large hard drives would be enough to hold the sheer amount of raw memory data they got; they could decode and compress it later. For now acquisition was the word of the hour. He respected the man for his intelligence and dedication, and for the fact that like him, he could easily get lost in the splendor of science and figuring things out. Maybe he'd see about working with him in the future; but that was an idea for another time. When the world wasn't at stake. When he gave them their assignments, he cracked his knuckles and brought up a holo-keyboard display.

His fingers began to dance across the keys so fast that they were almost blurs; the keyboard itself becoming a see-through light up display. As he typed, lines and lines of code were being produced, and when he finally got to the end, all he had to do was push enter and the network would be linked with Box' system. From there, the information could be fed directly into the hard drive, where they could decipher it from neural impulse memory, to Times New Roman. This of course was in conjunction with Paige and with the merging of their two programming, things would go smoothly from there.He was still working when he felt a pair of eyes on him, and turned his icy blues to Elixir; his hands were on the subject and he was ready to do his part. Good lad.

He ignored the soft pluck of the needle piercing flesh; he'd done it himself so many times that it wasn't even an afterthought as he stood up and scrambled to find a marker. When he found one, he walked to the body and popped off the cap. "The code I'm writing is more or less setting up search parameters and subroutines that will look for and recognize specific types of memories, then copy and download them to the correct hard drives. Now, the brain as you know is divided into many many wrinkly crinkly parts; each with a specific purpose to keep a person going. Memory is a very tricky thing, a very complicated thing. As such, the brain has several areas dedicated sometimes primarily to a different type of memory."

He took the marker and began to mark x's on different parts of the creatures skull. Hopefully the physiology was similar enough between them that if they didn't have the exact same parts, they were close. "Short-term memory is handled by the pre-frontal cortex; one X. "Long-term is handled by the hippocampus"; another X. "Declarative; hippocampus, cortical structures, and surrounding neural pathways connecting to the cortex." His eyes glowed brightly as he used his powers to pinpoint the exact places Josh should look. "Semantic memory is handled by the temporal lobe and frontal cortex working in conjunction."

He was long winded, but he wasn't sure just how much the biokinetic knew about the human body. Just like a basketball player who could dunk all day but couldn't make a free throw to save his life; natural skill didn't equal learned knowledge. "Emotional memory is handled by the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the limbic system. And finally, Procedural memory is taken care of thanks to the cerebellum, basal ganglia and motor cortex." He made the final X, then replaced the cap and almost threw the marker down in his excitement.

"Those areas I marked are the processing and storage centers for the main memory types; everything else not major basically overlaps. You hit those sweet spots; give them some of that miracle Elixir...and those memories will flow like water." The concept was simple; with each of those memorial "floodgates" that Josh brought back to life and opened, the memories inhabiting them would flood into the hard drives. He knew the boy was young, but the scope of his powers was incredible...he could do it. He had to or they were dead in the water before they even started.
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Paige Guthrie
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May 14th 10 A.M.

It had been a long, grueling, exhausting week for the omnimorph. She had literally lived in the lab all week. A cot in the back held her motionless form on those few occasions when she absolutely could not push herself any further. Meals were called in and delivered or made of what rations she could find. She even made liberal use of her husking ability to extend the time she could go without food, water, or rest. This was the young Guthrie at her finest, she firmly believed that hard work always equaled success and she had rarely worked harder in her life. Though her part was not as one of the “big guns” like Box or Nemesis, she did what she could.

As the week went on her computer skills, already a bit above average soared to new heights and she started to grasp both the ideas of programming languages and technology as a whole. She was naturally gifted in the area of learning by doing and in this regard Box was a great teacher. Added to this was the unrelenting difficulty of the project. This group was literally trying to do the impossible, and Ma Guthrie's oldest daughter was not one to back down from a task.

So she typed, she sorted data, made comparisons, charted things, learned about electronics, machinery, physics, medicine and anatomy, and a thousand other subjects, all the while taking notes whenever she could. Within the week's time frame she was on her third pda and had backed up all her personal notes on a massive external hard drive. The project data in the meantime had been processed, translated, researched and was ready for the team to take a closer look and perhaps discern some answers.

Paige was completely, totally spent. Her eyes were open only because she was husked into a carbon-fiber form. She had refused to miss this moment, the project was about to reap it's work and she wouldn't miss it for the world. She swiveled her chair to look proudly at her mentor.

“Alright Madison, we should be good to go. I've set everything up to display on all 7 of our main monitors simultaneously with slightly different feeds. This way all angles are covered. Also there computers will be running a constant data analysis like you taught me.”

She hit enter and beamed proudly as the screens all around the lab came to life.
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Box
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Mechanical Interaction/Merge
Madison had never really worked with biology before. That was more his brother's area of expertise - and if that man was still alive somewhere, he'd have deferred to him in this matter. But Madison knew nothing about where Lionel was, if Lionel still was. The man was living proof of just how twisted being a mutant could possibly make people, and Madison steered clear. Very clear.

But this work was fascinating. They'd learned much about Skrull physiology over the course of the week - intracellular chemical signals, physiological mechanisms within the shape-shifting process... they had even found methods to detect Skrulls on a small scale. Methods employed in this laboratory - a laboratory that Madison didn't leave for long-term periods this whole week. Maybe it was paranoid behavior, but he was here, he was staying, to make sure that he was not replaced. He had his suspicions, and those suspicious would eventually be tested. But now, the work. And the work was what was important. The work could quite literally save the world - which was why it was crucial to not let any Skrull impostors inside.

He'd even cut off communication with Madrox's crew save for Monet St. Croix. They had a working exchange going - she informed him of her suspicions, namely in regards to Alix, he informed her of his progress. It was all very top-secret, and in a way that was exciting. Classified information.

Now it was time for the big test. It was time to see if they could trigger this corpse's transformation into Tommy Shepherd. They'd worked very hard and very long on this, and it was about time to see if it would pay off.

"Excellent, Miss Guthrie," Madison nodded his head and smiled as he slipped his data-stream goggles into position over his eyes. He'd be able to tap into the computer no matter where he was with these things. Sure, they weren't particularly fashionable, but fashion wasn't on the table as far as he was concerned.

"Alright, the download process is going along swimmingly," Madison said with a nod of his head. "Nemesis's memory-reading programs are working up to specs. Foley's kept the body in prime condition, no deterioration, no rigor mortis... this is working. Alright, Miss Guthrie... let's fire up the Shift Program and see if we can't teach this dead body some new tricks."
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Josh nodded, his eyes following every move of the Doctor's as he marked different spots on the Skrull's body. He'd known all this... the different parts of the brain and what did what... but it wasn't in the way that this man had. It had all been textbook knowledge buried away in the giant mound of facts he'd been memorizing over the last few years. He hadn't had the ability to sift through all the stuff he knew to determine how to use the stuff he'd studied in practical application. Not with something this bizarre.

For him, it was all instinctual... as if the body had its own voice and language that only he could understand. Days upon days after this one had been dead and preserved... Josh could still hear it 'whispering' to him in an almost unknown language. Yet it was almost as if it had the same base as the human or mutant body... it was all related. It was all biology.

“Yea,” he said nodding as the Doctor wrapped up what he was saying. Josh's own blue eyes bounced around the thing's skull as he began picturing the thing's different parts of the brain. It was foreign... some of those parts in different places and almost under different 'names' – for lack of a better term. Still... that innate connection of biology made it possible for him to sift through the madness and glean the information he needed. The skin color around the head began to darken slightly as Josh began to warm the body and cause thawing fluids to begin moving through veins. He could almost feel different parts begin to pulse with activity... it was like the faintest flair of a match head that had been struck against the side of a table.

“Oh man... oh wow... guys... I thought this thing was weird dead. I mean... it's dead... but... oh guys... this is weird.” He'd never felt anything so... alien.

The sensation of being in this much contact with something so different almost made him lose himself, drowning out the clacking of computer keys and exchanges going on between the others. He blinked as beads of sweat began to form on his temples and forehead. What if this thing came back to life? Could it do that? He didn't think so, but then... he didn't know near as much about this thing as he thought he did.

“Guys,” he said without taking his eyes off the body. It felt as if chaos existed around him... as if something would explode... yet to the rest it would only seem like a quiet lab and a bit of interesting research and study. Blood pulsed in his head, “How are we doing?”
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