Civil Blood_The Vampire Rights Trial that Changed a Nation by Chris Hepler

Author:Chris Hepler [Hepler, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Christopher Hepler
Published: 2018-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

34 - KERN

September 15th

"State your name for the record."

"Marcus Kern," I say.

Campion, lead lawyer for the Health Initiative, starts our routine. We practiced plenty, and today is the payoff. It's all too easy to get distracted by the packed house, the scurrying media trying to get good camera shots and the stare of Judge Bayat. Instead, I let my gaze settle on Campion's polished features. The sharp arch of her sculpted eyebrows. The gold of her earrings. The crochet-braids of her hair. Her confidence buoys mine.

"Dr. Kern, did you supervise work at the Benjamin Rush Health Initiative's Advanced Biophysics Lab on the date of the outbreak?"

"Yes."

"And have you supervised contact with that department since then?"

"Yes."

"Has your work there given you experience with people infected with Virally Induced Hematophagic Predation Syndrome?"

"Yes, just about every day."

"Did you observe biological changes in the individuals infected with this syndrome?"

"Yes."

"And what were your conclusions in a broad sense?"

"That VIHPS-infected individuals were medically unable to join normal human society."

"What observations led you to conclude that?"

"There are deep physiological changes in them. Bone, muscle, brain—where do you want me to start?"

"How about the brain? How does it change?"

"The brain undergoes a substantive development in the number of synapses between the sensory strips and the rest of the cerebral cortex. This development is unparalleled in normal adult human brain development."

"Can you be any clearer, for those of us who know a synapse is part of the brain but aren't really sure what it does?"

"A chemical synapse is basically a connection between a neuron, that is, an informational processing brain cell and another kind of cell, like a motor cell. We start off with about 10 quadrillion synapses when we're young, and stabilize to 1 to 5 quadrillion when we're older. But normally the number doesn't go up again after that. VIPHS changes that equation."

"What do you think this change to the brain does?"

"Based on our interviews with VIHPS vectors, that is, carriers, we think a few things are going on. The first is that the brain wires itself to respond to its senses differently. The vectors say they can smell and hear better, and our tests seem to back this up. They're more sensitive to light hitting the structures in their eyes."

"You said that's the first thing. What's the second thing?"

"Well, technically what's next is, after some changes occur in the brain, the body releases hormones and a storm of electrical signals. This increases absorption of calcium and compounds that increase bone mineral density. They also show a slight strengthening in skeletal muscle."

"Slight?" The lawyer looks askance. "Dr. Kern, from all accounts, an infected person is strong like a bull."

"Yes, but if you'll look at a vector, you know, a carrier of the disease, he doesn't look like a bodybuilder. His strength comes from different physiological changes."

"And what are those?"

"The increased mineral absorption leads to ossification—bone growth. The bones become slightly more striated. If you look at them with a microscope, you can see they are rougher, which leads to more muscular adhesion points.

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