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Transcript of testimony from Golden Mountain Reconstruction Team

Project Head Dennis R. Thomas, Lead Archaeologist

Doctor Connor Moreau, Project Surgical Expert

Doctor Jeanine Richards, Project Neurologist

Doctor Ellen Cories, Project Geneticist.

Senator Ryans: "Good morning, Professor Dennis Thomas; thank you for making the trip back from your dig site to brief us. We have already been given documents with details on the project as a whole as well as your request to authorize the creation of a female specimen, but this committee would like a more detailed explanation of the process of converting prisoners sentenced to capital punishment into these... 'dragons', before deciding on allowing the project to advance. Could you detail the process for us?"

Professor Thomas: "Certainly. As you stated, the process is used only on the most heinous of criminals, and over the course of months converts their body from that of a human to that of one of the extinct creatures that once inhabited the Golden Mountain archipelago. Originally it had dismal results and resulted in the death of the subject, but the process has been refined significantly since then to improve the results. We have learned much about both human and 'dragon' biology as a result of this project, and the changes made over the years have resulted in an extremely low risk of fatality during the procedure."

Senator Carter: "Then would you say this process has become safe and humane enough to apply to less dire crimes?"

Professor Thomas: "Absolutely not. The procedure is done so rarely that we can't be entirely certain of the numbers, but we estimate the survival rate will only be about 70% of the subjects. Even aside from the risk of death, the process of rebuilding an individual's entire body from the ground up is traumatic, so much so that we end the procedure by effectively killing the individual anyways."

Senator Carter: "I see."

Senator Parson: "Well I don't. How do you recreate somebody's body? Aren't there millions of cells working against you?"

Professor Thomas: "More like trillions, as I understand it. And that's where we start - we turn as many of those cells as we can into ones that will work for us, and suppress the ones we can't turn. Doctor Cories is an expert in this part of the procedure and can elaborate further."

Senator Ryans: "Doctor Cories, if you will?"

Doctor Cories: "Certainly. The first thing we do is to prepare a sample of DNA extracted from a carcass on one of Professor Thomas' digs for the process. This requires two modifications to the 'dragon' DNA. First, the gene strands responsible for cell markers are taken from our human subject and spliced into the dragon DNA; this will cause any cells created by that DNA to be ignored by the subject's own immune system. Secondly, a gene sequence is inserted into the dragon DNA to provide an immunity on the cellular level to the poison produced by the Catharanthus roseus plant, for reasons I will go into later."

"After the dragon DNA has received those modifications, we then take a sample of Rhinovirus B14 virus and replace the viral RNA - the virus' genetic material - with the modified dragon genetic material. This is a very delicate and time consuming procedure - a virus does not reproduce on its own, but instead by inserting its RNA into a cell and having that cell replicate into new viral cells. By replacing the virus RNA we render the virus incapable of making new viral cells. This means each individual viral cell with the dragon genetic material must be produced individually. Originally a team of biologists manually inserted the new material over a period of weeks into tens of thousands of individual viral cells, but we now use machine assistance to speed up the process. A small percentage of the unaltered virus gets through the process with its original genetic material as a result of the machine use, but the savings in time and manpower are well worth it."

Senator Parson: "Genetically modified viruses? Isn't that incredibly dangerous? What if the virus gets loose?"

Doctor Cories: "No; it is completely safe. Since we are using Rhinovirus B14, any accidents involving the unaltered virus will result in nothing more than a mild cold, and any accidents with the altered virus will have no impact at all - the virus will be unable to reproduce itself, and any cells infected by the altered virus will be destroyed by the immune system of any individual except for the target subject."

Senator Parson: "I see."

---

Doctor Cories: "Next, we begin injections of the altered virus into the subject. The virus itself is recognized as an invader by the immune system and is attacked, and since the altered virus is not capable of reproducing, the injected viral cells are destroyed by the body in a matter of hours. However, during that time the virus will reach a portion of the subject's own cells and rewrite their original DNA with that of the prepared dragon DNA. As mentioned earlier, those cells will have protein markers that cause them to be ignored by the immune system, and they will co-exist with the subject's unaltered cells through the rest of the procedure. Since the injected virus sample is destroyed by the subject's immune system, we continue injections of the prepared virus throughout the next two weeks. Injections are placed at various points along the subject's body so as to give the virus the greatest permeation of the subject."

"By the end of the second week of constant injections, a little over two-thirds of the subject's cells will have been rewritten to contain the new DNA. Injections may continue for longer depending on the subject, but generally the individual will have developed an intense fever as the immune system begins to 'panic' at the continued presence of the virus - continuing injections run the risk of organ failure, or the immune system beginning to attack healthy tissue. Injections are stopped, and the process is paused for a day to allow the fever to calm."

"At this point the subject is given a dose of concentrated Catharanthus roseus extract. The poison of this plant was first used in cancer treatments; it has the effect of drastically slowing or even completely stopping cell division. As I mentioned before, the cells that have been rewritten with the modified dragon DNA will be unaffected by the poison and will continue dividing and growing as normal, but any cells with the subject's original human DNA will have their reproduction severely hampered."

"What this means, effectively, is that the subject's body will be a 'chimera' - one-third of the cells will be human DNA, with two-thirds matching the DNA retrieved from the dragon. The Catharanthus roseus extract will need to continue to be given to the subject for about two years even after the procedure is completed, to prevent the 'human' cells from beginning to reproduce and form cancerous tissues, but eventually the cells with human DNA will have completely died out and leave behind only the cells with dragon DNA."

Senator Parson: "I... see. And at that point, the subject is a dragon?"

Professor Thomas: "Not exactly. On a cellular level the subject might have more dragon DNA than human, but that doesn't mean too much - about 96% of human DNA is the same as a dragon's already, and most of the things a cell does won't even notice the new DNA. The subject might grow scales if their skin is scratched, or have their hair fall out after a few weeks, but other than that there won't be any physical difference in the subject. Doctor Moreau can give you more details on the next stage of the process."

Senator Parson: "Doctor Moreau? You mean, like the character in the boo-"

Doctor Moreau: "No relation. As Professor Thomas explained, at this stage the subject is still effectively a human, and any changes would be gradual and minor. Larger organs or tissues - such as a leg bone - can be grown externally and surgically implanted in the subject, but this is only feasible for specific parts of the body that are extremely critical, such as the rib cage. For everything else, we administer treatments to revert the subject's adult stem cells back to an embryonic state. Any stem cells with the subject's original DNA are hampered by the poison Doctor Cories mentioned and remain inert, while the stem cells rewritten with the new DNA begin a rampant growth of new tissues."

"What this means is that a new 'body' is grown, following the blueprint of the dragon DNA, right over the human body. Calcium is absorbed and laid back down into different bones, organs are regrown to meet the needs of the dragon's body while human organs fall into disuse and are absorbed back into the body or discarded. The subject is kept isolated in a sterile room, but must be constantly monitored since the human organs may fail before the dragon organ is fully grown and prepared to take over, requiring emergency assistance. After roughly two or three months of the stem cell therapies, the subject's human body will have been completely replaced by that of a dragon."

Professor Thomas: "Doctor Moreau is using polite, sterile terms to describe the procedure, but senators, you need to understand that this stage is anything but sterile or polite. It is monstrously grotesque. Your packets undoubtedly contain pictures - I urge you to burn them without looking at them, so as to spare yourself the nightmares I and others on this project have when we sleep. The reality is that the subject is locked up in a tiny room for the procedure. The doctors will tell you that this is to lower the risk of infections, like Doctor Moreau mentioned, and this is true - new bones are growing rapidly, in the form of a dragon's skeleton, and they often rip through the 'subject's' skin. Gashes and open wounds are all over the body, making it vulnerable to infections, and the immune system is failing and growing back. Even the cold virus introduced earlier can cause complications if enough of it is around. All of that is true, and a reason to keep the subject in an isolated, sterile environment."

Professor Thomas: "But the main, real reason is so that we don't have to hear the screams."

Professor Thomas: "The subject is in almost constant pain those months. New bones are forming inside them and ripping through them. New muscles are forming without flesh to protect it, and the slightest touch to it is painful. Fevers are common, as the brain doesn't quite know what it's temperature should be anymore or how to regulate the internal temperature. We can't give the subject painkillers - either they won't work anymore, or they would cause things to get even worse and disform the new growth. Organs fail, like Moreau mentioned, but again, painkillers and anesthetics do not work or are too risky. If the lungs stop working, the subject is forced to experience a surgeon cutting open their chest, cracking the rib cage, and implanting a mechanical lung - and then going through it all over again when the dragon lung is working on its own and the mechanical lung has to go."

Professor Thomas: "To reiterate my answer to your earlier question, senators, no, this absolutely should not be done except against the most horrific of criminals."

Senator Parson: -Comment censored.-

Professor Thomas: "I warned you not to look at those pictures."

Senator Carter: "But as a deterrent; if people knew this could happen if they broke the law..."

Professor Thomas: "With all due respect, this process already turns one person into an animal. You are welcome to watch the upcoming procedure - involving a Mitchell Donnelly, if I recall correctly - and I am quite certain that will deter you from a great many things afterwards, but performing this procedure on anyone other a fully informed volunteer, or the most irredeemable of criminals affordable all possible due process beforehand, would make animals out of us all. I assure you we will all resign before we take any part in that, senator."

Senator Parson: "If it's that bad... why do it at all? Isn't there another way?"

Professor Thomas: "Unfortunately, there isn't. And believe me, we've tried. Our normal methods of cloning don't work - when we tried the fetus always ended up dying within a week or two, and we haven't been able to determine why. Using this procedure on other animals instead of humans has some limited success, but the result is always brain dead. The assumption has been that the process causes too much strain on an animal's nervous system to function afterwards, or that dragon physiology requires something animal brains can't handle. Whatever reason, it's only a human subject that can survive the process - which means that to recreate the species, we have no other option but this. Even still, it should be treated as a grim necessity, and not as a first solution to common problems that competent government officials could easily find other solutions to."

Senator Ryans: Thank you, Professor Thomas, your point is taken. If you would, please continue - what is done next, now that a heinous murderer has the body of a lethal animal?"

Professor Thomas: "We lobotomize it."

Doctor Richards: "Professor, we've been over that, and you're under oath; the subject is not lobotomized."

Senator Ryans: "Could you explain, Doctor... Richards?"

Doctor Richards: "Gladly. A lobotomy is a surgical procedure - for whatever reason, a surgeon will go into a brain and cut part of it out. This leaves the person with a severe disability after, as part of their brain is simply not present any longer and cannot perform a certain task."

"A lobotomy is required in certain cases where part of the brain is damaged, or has developed a tumor, or to address other specific ailments... and while there are numerous neurological problems facing the transformed subject, they are not the kind requiring a surgical lobotomy. What we do instead-"

Senator Parson: "Excuse me, Doctor Richards - what problems does the subject face? I thought by this stage their body was entirely a dragon?"

Doctor Richards: "Their body is, yes, but not their mind. The process relies heavily on cell division to replace human cells with dragon cells, but nerve cells do not divide into new cells. The nervous system in the subject was formed by human DNA, and that doesn't change - the cells are still there, and aren't going anywhere. There are new nerve cells as a result of the stem cell growth, so the brain is bigger, and the spinal column is longer with nerve bundles extending even as far down as the tail, but the 'core' is still human, and wasn't designed to function with a dragon body. That's where the problems come in."

"Over the years the brain develops 'habits' for certain things. Some of those aren't that bad, like being used to walking on two legs, or having your ears five or six feet off the ground. When that meets a dragon body it can be disconcerting - the brain is having to learn how to deal with moving on four legs, and has to get used to the inner ear being much closer to the ground and being tilted a little. The brain thinks it's in the process of falling flat on its face, which is going to be unsettling, but it's ultimately something a person could get used to. That habit could be unlearned, and a new habit learned instead."

"But in the meantime, there are dozens of other habits that are going to be damaging the body. The human body needs a certain sugar level in its bloodstream, and the brain works to keep it at that level; dragons require a different level, and the brain keeping a dragon's blood at a different level is going to cause organ problems. The human body has a different core temperature than dragons, which is another 'habit' the brain gets into. Same with adrenaline production, or breathing, or heart rate - the brain is in the habit of telling all the glands and organs to do very specific things, which are very bad for dragon organs to do."

"And, as you also mentioned, the brain also has the memories and personality of an extreme criminal."

"The issue in this case isn't so much the nerves themselves, but the connections the nerves have made to each other. That's how memories are formed and how the brain handles commands to the body. A group of nerves are connected to each other in a specific path, which translates into a memory, or a response to an organ being a little too hot, or so on. So what we do is destroy those connections - we leave the brain intact, but we destroy the vast majority of the connections formed in the brain."

"The way we do this is by implanting a slightly more permanent version of the Neffal gland. Once that's implanted, the subject's nerve cells begin to form new connections in accordance with dragon DNA, instead of by human DNA. Yes, some of the nerve cells will still have human DNA and form those types of connections, but enough of the nerves will have been converted to allow the subject to function. The nerves reconnect the same way a dragon's would, at least mostly, giving the subject both subconscious habits and conscious instincts that natural dragons grew with."

Senator Ryans: "Excuse me, Doctor Richards - I'm familiar with that from earlier briefings, but could you please explain a little more about the 'Neffal gland' for the rest of the committee?"

Doctor Richards: "Oh; of course. The Neffal gland was developed several years ago, for use in treating trauma and PTSD patients. It is planted at the base of the neck - or, with dragons, at the left side of the nose - and produces a mixture of chemicals that damage nerve connections. In humans it is usually left in place for only a few hours - the patient will be aided by a doctor on focusing on the traumatic memories, triggering panic attacks if possible; the flood of adrenaline will cause the Neffal gland to release more chemicals than normal, and the active neural pathways will be most affected by those chemicals. The connections between the nerve cells that form the memory are destroyed, and the patient is left without direct memory of the traumatic events. After the treatment is completed, the doctor will remove the Neffal gland from the patient and continue more traditional forms of treatment; this is typically only used in extreme cases."

"For our purposes, we simply leave the Neffal gland implanted. Over time the nerve cells will develop an immunity to the chemicals it produces, and there are simply far too many habits and memories that have to be removed for us to extract the gland after a few hours. It is surgically implanted, and the brain begins to forget all it learned over a lifetime as a human. Since there is a bit of urgency - the brain has to be stopped from overheating the body or stressing its new hearts - and since we don't want a criminal mind to have control of a dangerous body, we also inject the subject with a 'booster' that kicks the Neffal gland into a hyperproductive state. It takes a day or two before the gland is ready for the booster shot, and that hyperproductive state lasts for about three days, but by the end of it the mind is practically returned to a fetal state - no memories, no habits, and ready to begin learning how to control the new body."

Senator Carter: "Is the booster strictly necessary, then? Couldn't the subject be confined for a time and monitored by a doctor, to allow the gland to complete its work?"

Doctor Richards: "In theory, perhaps. But the issue in that case is the nerve cells developing an immunity to the Neffel gland's effects. The brain would likely hold on to a few old memories, especially strong ones that aren't necessarily traumatic, and the brain would have a harder time dealing with the new body - there would be too many 'habits' left over for a human body that would just make the subject clumsy, at least by comparison to a subject who was given the booster. It might be something we could try in a future case - the booster could still always be given at a later point, and it would likely overcome the resistance the nerve cells had developed. But it would require close medical supervision of a potentially dangerous individual, and for no real benefit. If the government would like to give us more funds we could try it, but I don't think we'll get the funding to pay for that from the universities supporting the project; the booster is far cheaper than paying a doctor for a month or more of constant monitoring and life support."

Senator Carter: "I see."

Professor Thomas: "Regardless of the specific medical details, the end result is the same - the subject is left with no memory of their past life, and with extremely limited intelligence."

Senator Parson: "Limited intelligence? These are dragons; how smart are they even supposed to be?"

Professor Thomas: "Honestly, we don't know. The relics we've recovered from archaeological digs suggest the dragons may have been extremely intelligent, even more than a dog or bird, but we haven't had a natural specimen to examine to find out. It's possible our subjects have just reached the intelligence limit of dragons, or it's possible the Neffal gland damaged their mental functions, or that one of the fevers or another issue with the process causes the problem. All the dragons we have produced now have an intelligence a bit greater than that of a dog, but until a dragon is born naturally, we simply won't know what a dragon 'should' have."

Senator Ryans: "Which brings us to your request today - approval for a female dragon, so as to allow for a new dragon to be born naturally."

Professor Thomas: "Yes. We've learned a great deal about dragons from our male subjects, but we will need a female specimen to begin to learn more about the species - which traits are part of the males of the species, how their interactions change with a potential mate around, how reproduction even works in them in the first place; we may even learn how to resolve the issues we encountered trying to clone the dragons, with the fetus dying early on . We have DNA available from three female dragons, and the gender of the human subject is irrelevant; with approval we could have the next subject become a female dragon."

Doctor Richards: "And given the crimes of this particular subject, it would be especially fitting."

Professor Thomas: "Doctor Richards' personal feelings aside, the criminal condemned for reconstruction does present an opportunity. We have been preparing for this for some time, and are ready, although we did not expect a new subject to be available this quickly.. With approval we could begin immediately - the subject is being transferred today, and Doctor Richards will start the procedure tomorrow."

Senator Parson: "Senator Ryans and Carter have already read the details of your proposal and have agreed to allow you to proceed with a female subject, but I have a few concerns still. Even with the subject having no memories of their former life, are they any danger? Could they escape, or potentially harm civilians?"

Doctor Moreau: "Absolutely not. As soon as the procedure is completed, the dragon's claws are clipped down to nubs - they aren't able to slash or claw anyone with them. They still have spikes on their tails, and teeth, but they are kept under guard in a facility inside Dome Site Seven. Any time they are allowed outside of the facility they are first placed in a metal harness that traps their wings securely against their side; without their claws they are unable to remove it. The guards at the facility are well trained and equipped to deal with the dragons, and have had no escapes - there is no chance of a dragon escaping the facility, much less the test dome, or of getting to a residential area and attacking civilians."

Senator Parson: "Is that your assessment as well, Professor Thomas?"

Professor Thomas: "Completely. I have seen the facility; the guards are well trained and equipped with tranquilizer guns that will immobilize even an enraged dragon within seconds. We have been preparing to repopulate the island chain with dragons, and have taken every step to make sure they do not pose a threat in the meantime. None of the dragons are going to pose a threat to any civilians."

Senator Parson: "And the offspring that will come about?"

Doctor Cories: "Not a concern. One female dragon won't be able to overwhelm us with babies - even if she were able to produce twenty children in a litter, we could still easily contain them, and stopping the population from growing out of control would be as simple as moving her to a different facility than the males. We already have another site picked out for such an eventuality, and it has room to handle her and any female children she might have. And we already know how to deal with unruly adults; if necessary we can simply clip the nails of the children as well."

Professor Thomas: "And long term, we have begun preparations for the dragons to be moved to the Golden Mountain islands; after that they will be isolated by the Far Ocean and be no possible danger to anyone. This whole project is meant to repopulate that island, after all; they are only being kept here as a temporary measure until we can safely reintroduce them into the island ecology."

Senator Parson: "I see. I have no further questions, then."

Senator Ryans: "I think we have all the information we need then. Let's take a break and reconvene in half an hour; we should have an answer for you then. Thank you, Professor, Doctors."