The Experimental Journal of Professor Ezekiel Hojo
By
46:22:39, Midgar
Standard Time
Apparently, Lucrecia didn’t want sex. At least not yet….or so her kisses at the end of dinner indicated. The intercourse she and I shared last night was purely intellectual, but nonetheless incredibly stimulating. At times, I found myself stunned at the breakthroughs she’s found all on her own, not to mention those of mine that she later improved upon.
Without my knowledge, Dr. Vachel had obtained a sample of JENOVA’s DNA sequence, replicated it, and then used the duplicated strain to inoculate a mice brood. Her findings were extremely fascinating and disconcerting, which is why I suppose she presented them before dinner (she made me cherries jubilee for desert, my favorite!). The JENOVA vaccine not only heightened each individual mouse’s strength, but also their physical senses as well. Each mouse stared for hours at each other’s fur, utterly mesmerized by the ability to examine each other’s coat strand-by-strand. By dropping some seeds into the container, the mere sound of their hitting the mesh incited a bevy of mice to descend upon the food as if it were manna from the heavens.
Mice and rabbits are used in experiments like this because their bodies have a similar endocrinology to that of a human being. Vaccines are processed quicker, which allows for easier observation of their effects on the body. Their only financial benefit is that they are cheaper to use than human test subjects; both, nonetheless, are extremely expendable. Given their rapid endocrine systems, as well as the alien DNA derived from JENOVA, of which we know very little of, it came as no surprise that the rats began to mutate shortly after signs of accelerated metabolisms. All their fur withered right off, and their skin turned a deep blue, leathery to the touch. Their pupils dilated and their irises were infused with a red that can only be described as sanguinary in its intensity. Shortly thereafter, they began to attack one another; each mouse no longer exhibited instincts of self-preservation, and large chunks of their bodies were torn out long before they succumbed to death. They seemed to crave the sight of each other’s blood….but of greater inquiry is why they drank it. Lab mice are herbivores by nature, choosing to feast on leaves and seeds and maybe even the occasional insect. But on blood?
Lucrecia further explained to me the possible applications of a modified JENOVA vaccine. While it would have no real medical application, it could be used on the Turks, creating the ultimate stealth assassin. Quick. Clean. Effective. What more is desired? Injecting each Turk with JENOVA would undoubtedly be detrimental to the team as a whole; their bodies would control their minds, and the methodology to their practices lost to cannibalism.
This application brings to mind the Cetra and the plans for Neo Midgar. Ideally, the new city will be built in the legendary “Promised Land”, but finding it necessitates the use of a Cetrean, who would lead us there. If Gast was indeed correct in asserting that Cetrean’s “hear” the planet’s “voice” through a complex network of nerves that stimulate the empathic region of the brain, then the JENOVA vaccine can be used to develop that same network in a human patient. Why not create an assassin and a tracker at two for the price of one?