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View Full Version : After the Zombies...Part 2 Professor Lampson


BattleNymph
06-15-2007, 01:47 PM
With a yawn Aefe glanced around her and then tapped at the painted metal door lightly. It had been a while since she’d been back here. But, the place never seemed to change. The door was still an ugly, mind sapping shade of mustard yellow. Seemed even in the institutions of higher learning, people never learned.

A faint response from inside and she opened the door and slipped into the room. The room itself looked like something from a mad scientists sanctum. Books covered shelves at one end, but the rest was filled with odd bits of glass and metal. Aefe knew from her time here that each of these things had a function, not all of them lawful however.

The older man occupying the chair behind the desk had started to move when she’d come in, but as he saw who it was, put his feet back on the desk and pulled open the drawer next to him.

“Aefe! Always one of my favorite students. Haven’t seen you for a while. What brings you here?

She smiled at him and quirked an eyebrow as he pulled out some papers and a small bag of green.

“Still imbibing I see. Haven’t they kicked your butt out of here yet for possession?”

He sniffed in disdain as he rolled the joint. “I have tenure.” A quick lick and then a light. “And regardless, even if they did actually notice I’d just write myself a prescription.”

Aefe grinned and shook her head. Professor Lampson never changed. A rebel to the end, he had introduced her to the wonders of blood pathology, and the wonders of marijuana at the same time.

As she accepted the joint from him she leaned back and sighed. “This isn’t a social call professor. I need some help.”

“Oh? Got yourself into trouble again? I keep telling you the hard stuff will do you in.”

Aefe grimaced… she had started using again to hold the nightmares at bay but she wasn’t about to tell him that. Not when she needed him to take her seriously. “I have it under control. Don’t worry. What I actually have is some blood that needs testing.”

He perked up a little at that. Finishing the roll of his own he delayed lighting it to ask, “Bring me something interesting?”

“Possibly a new disease. One that is spread through biting and massively changes the victims physiology.”

He snorted at that. “Don’t tell me you’ve brought me werewolf blood.”

“Um…. No…. zombie.”

The look he gave her was skeptical, and then piercing. “You believe this. Tell me about it.”

“I witnessed it. The zombie I believe was initially dead, but when it bit a living person, something perhaps in the saliva spread to the living person, beginning to change them in a big way. I have samples of a person who was bit, before any treatment and samples of the blood and saliva of the zombie.”

He tilted his head. “Well, I think you’ve been taking a little something,… but this could be interesting. Let’s go take a look.”

Origen
06-15-2007, 03:59 PM
Dr. Lampson empties a small amount of the blood and tissue onto slides.

"Let's kick it Old Skool, first," he says, taking a hit and holding like it an old pro before exhaling the smoke. He offered it to Aefe, but she politely declined.

"The blood cells and serum have separated indicating that this is not a fresh sample," he said, speaking to himself in that neutral tone she'd heard so many times in the lab. "There is nothing immediately out of the ordinary in the sample. The clotting is normal, although there is some dark matter, perhaps mud or necrotized tissue, that I'll want to look at. Does this deserve a full work-up?"

BattleNymph
06-15-2007, 09:52 PM
"I believe so. The people who caught this 'disease' died quickly and painfully. If it gets out, it would be bad. I'd like to know if that's even possible. Which sample do you have there? The bite victim or the zombie?"

"Oh, and I have saliva as well from the biter."

Origen
06-15-2007, 10:06 PM
"Let's start with the zombie, since that was the primary vector of the disease. If it was a disease."

BattleNymph
06-15-2007, 10:25 PM
"Let's start with the zombie, since that was the primary vector of the disease. If it was a disease."

"You know professor. I feel like we need to be playing spooky organ music and dimming the lights for this."

With a smile she starts pulling some of the equipment for the full workup. "I'm sure others are looking at this too, but they don't have your brilliance, desire to circumvent the establishment or outright strange thinking process."

Origen
06-15-2007, 10:41 PM
One thing that the test reveals are the presence of a number of what Dr. Lampson can only call "empty cells."

"They are like burned-out light bulbs," he says. "Like something was there, but isn't, anymore."

Your preliminary tests don't reveal anything in the way of biochemical agents, however.

BattleNymph
06-15-2007, 11:00 PM
"Weird. Burned out cells? I've never heard of that before. Is there anything we can do to test those further?"