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Your Highness,
I must beg for your reconsideration, Your Highness. As I tried to emphasize in our previous three correspondences, we are simply not ready to move on to people corpses as test subjects.
If you will recall, the purpose of the HEPER project was to create a virus that would, to put it bluntly, transmogrify corpses of people into edible flesh. After the catastrophic drought and subsequent famine of the last decade killed more than half of our population, we in the scientific community are pleased to follow Your Highness’s decree to create an alternate meat source. This top-secret project, initiated by Your Highness, has thus far proven to be a roaring success. Injection of the HEPER virus into dead mice has resulted in live mice devouring said corpses in as quickly as one night.
However, it is simply premature to move on to testing the HEPER virus on people corpses. There is far too much about the HEPER virus that we do not know. Even with the mice corpses, we are finding disturbing results. Just last week, when we doubled the dosage the living mice developed a craving for the dead mice that bordered on madness.
I urge you to reconsider, Your Highness.
———
From: the Commander Scientist
To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler
Date: January 10
Subject: re: increase in HEPER dosage
Your Highness,
With all due respect, Your Highness, your request simply cannot be followed. You previously chose to ignore my advice when you ordered—over my vehement objection—to start injecting people corpses with the HEPER virus. And now, you are exacerbating this mistake by insisting on an increase in dosage. The dosage level administered to the corpses already exceeded what we consider to be the maximal input. The level that Your Highness is requesting is excessive, and will likely cause unforeseen and deleterious problems.
While I understand you are frustrated with our lack of progress with people corpses, simply increasing the dosage is not the most prudent or rational next step.
I must restate my objection to further HEPER injections in the strongest of terms.
———
From: the newly appointed Commander Scientist
To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler
Date: January 18
Subject: Thank you
Your Royal Highness,
First, allow me to express my deepest thanks for the honor you’ve bestowed upon me. This promotion to Commander Scientist (and chief of the HEPER project) is humbling. And although the former Commander Scientist—whose recent and untimely death we still grieve—set a bar I cannot possibly hope to reach, please be assured that the HEPER project will continue unimpeded. In fact, I am happy to report that tomorrow we will triple the dosage level on people corpses, as Your Highness had previously requested.
———
From: the newly appointed Commander Scientist
To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler
Date: February 2
Subject: re: live subjects
Your Royal Highness,
If I may be so emboldened as to query the purpose of Your Highness’s latest request? I know I am new to this post and thus lack experience, but even so, I fail to see the rationale behind your Highness’s desire to inject live subjects with the HEPER virus. I know that the latest round of experiments with corpses has produced unsatisfactory and disappointing results, but let me assure you that injecting live subjects with the HEPER virus is highly inadvisable. In fact, it seems to go against the purpose behind the HEPER project, which, if I may be so impudent as to remind Your Highness, was to produce edible meats from corpses in order to replenish food supplies in the unfortunate event of a famine.
———
From: the Commander Scientist
To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler
Date: February 8
Subject: re: increase dosage
Your Royal Highness,
We have been observing subject FY013 over the past few nights. The injection of the HEPER virus has had little effect upon him except, apparently, to blind him. He cannot see. He stumbles about with arms outstretched, constantly bumping into things. Also, he has lost his ability to sleep. Now, he simply faints, collapsing to the floor and lying there for hours. Yet other than those minor changes, there is little else. Again, if I may state, I do not understand the purpose behind injecting live subjects with the HEPER virus. And I am at a loss why Your Highness now wants to further increase the dosage to FY013.
———
From: the Commander Scientist
To: His Most Eminent Highness, the Ruler
Date: February 11
Subject: re: need another test subject
Your Highness,
Unexpected events have unfolded over the past two nights with relation to subject FY013. After we, at Your Highness’s behest, injected him with the increased dosage of the HEPER virus, the subject began to exhibit rather peculiar symptoms. Of note: (1) stubs of hair began to show on his limbs and underarms; (2) his incisor teeth begun to go blunt; (3) he developed an apparently unquenchable thirst (one cup of water per day); and (4), most oddly, he seemed to gain a resistance to infrared and ultraviolet light. Also of note, he has begun to give off a particularly fragrant odor.
