Posted by Lieutenant Fey Kastil (Chief Medical Officer) in Building Arms - GLaDOS’s Personal Chambers - Tag CMO

Posted by Lieutenant Commander GLaDOS (Chief Science Officer) in Building Arms - GLaDOS’s Personal Chambers - Tag CMO

Posted by Lieutenant Fey Kastil (Chief Medical Officer) in Building Arms - GLaDOS’s Personal Chambers - Tag CMO
Posted by… suppressed (5) by the Post Ghost! 👻
A few days had passed since her medical examination, and as she had promised the good Doctor, GLaDOS was going to show off her regeneration process. =^=GLaDOS to Dr. Kastil, if you are free this evening, I would invite you to join me in my Chambers.=^=

GLaDOS stood before a chair, beside which was a large vat of a gooey almost-liquid substance. Hopefully by the time she was ready to begin the process, Kastil would have arrived. With a small, almost imperceptible wince, the woman began to disassemble her arm, taking off the outer Borg components first, and stripping it down to its base, a thin layer of metal and plastic surrounding the existing components of her regrowing biological arm.

GLaDOS, CSO

The Doctor didn’t arrive alone, Fey had come with Feira who immediately took an interest in the dismantled arm parts and began tinkering with how it worked, taking scans with her Tricorder. Doctor Fey on the other hand was more interested in the semi-liquid substance. “Alright, you have my attention. What is this and may I play with it?”

• Doctor Fey Kastil

“Welcome. You’re just in time,” GLaDOS said with a small smile. “Please be careful with that. A misplaced touch might make you a target of my Nanoprobes,” She warned Feira, then turned back to the vat of goo and Kastil.

Feira pulled away rather quickly and held up her hands, “Valid point, apologies, I just got a bit excited. I mean, how often does a cyberneticist get a chance to look at genuinely functioning Borg technology without being a part of it? I mean, imagine the discoveries to be made here for micron auto repairs and bio/cyber functionality and compatibility! So much potential and opportunity!” Doctor Fey gives Doctor Feira a stringent look, “Be sure your excitement doesn’t make you into a science experiment yourself.”

“At least until my process is complete, I would request you not mess with my regenerator gel. Here,” she grabbed a small jar, small enough to hold in her fist, and filled with a sample of the gel. “It is a mixture of anti-infection compounds, mixed with heavy traces of my own biomaterial grown from the stem cells my duplicate gave me,” she explained.

She stepped into the seating harness and rested into it, then slid her arm down into the glass-walled vat. Mechanical grabbers lifted up and peeled off the last layers of plastic and metal, making GLaDOS wince in pain. The exposed surface of her muscle and bone was severely rough, looking like a fresh, un-cauterized wound. “It’s not the most pleasant sight, but that is raw flesh. The process works by something like biological electrophoresis. There chemicals and bio agents in this gel are smartly engineered to grow in a certain pattern. I use the chamber fairly frequently, but I do have to be wary not to build enough that the tissue is rejected by my body”

GLaDOS, CSO

Doctor Fey takes notes on a PaDD, occasionally setting it aside to take scans and recordings of the gel doing its work. “This is fascinating, what is the rate of regrowth? How much have you been able to regrow before rejection sets in? Can you manipulate the base genetics to achieve a different result?”

• Doctor Fey Kastil

“I haven’t been experimenting too much, mostly just following the procedure laid out by my light-mirror self,” GLaDOS replied. “If I had more than one arm, perhaps I could experiment, but I am not fond of the idea of messing up and having to undo something,” she jolted slightly at some phantom pain, then continued. “I usually get two to three milimeters per session, with bone growth happening more quickly. As you can see, my radius and ulna have nearly grown to completion, but the muscle and tendons are only half that distance. When I began this process, they were all equally cut off just above my elbow. The fact that I currently have a fully functional elbow feels like a miracle. I lost it before I emerged from the growing tanks.”

After a moment, GLaDOS realized she’d missed one of Kastil’s questions. “I tried to increase the rate, but once I reached more than a centimeter in a week I experienced cell death in the newer areas, which then had to be cleaned up. So I try to stick to three sessions a week, for an average of seven to eight milimeters a week.”

“Feira, if you want to examine my Borg Components more deeply, you can check out that compartment,” she pointed with her normal arm to what looked like a small cabinet. “The code is A113.”

Upon examining and opening the cabinet, Feira could find a full borg leg, clearly dormant. “Unlike the arm, all nanotechnology has been fully cleared from the leg. However, it is still functional. I could remove this one,” she gestured to the chrome leg affixed to her left thigh, “And use that instead at any time. I don’t because it was starting to cause nerve issues and extreme pain.”

GLaDOS, CSO

Feira was more than excited to explore functioning Borg components and began poking at the one in the cabinet right away. Doctor Fey, on the other hand, had a new puzzling question. “Have you tried to achieve regrowth from all amputated locations? Does that make a difference in the process? Seems like it would be a really wasteful process to be only doing an arm if you could do both the arm and the leg.”

• Curious Doctor Fey

“I would rather only be working on one portion at a time,” GLaDOS replied. “For one thing, I would need to double the amount of gel and containers. Regenerating the arm is more practical because if there is some kind of emergency I can cover it quickly and get to ready stations with only one arm. Not so easy with a missing leg. The arm is also easier because the systems in my artificial arm are more modular. I have to disassemble and re-assemble the arm every time I grow material, and allow for whatever growth there has been. That is more difficult to do on a load-bearing leg. Stability is more important.”

The Borg leg was, indeed, fully functional despite being dormant. It was also in much better condition than the arm, which had been messed with and altered quite heavily by the science officer. The metals were clean, and the nerve-tech interface was very complex.

GLaDOS, CSO

Doctor Feira was completely enamored with the leg, doing scans and poking at different components to see what they do if anything. She pulls a set of goggles that will allow a micro level scan so she can see how the components fit together and compliment each other.

Doctor Fey, on the other hand, was puzzling the conundrum of how to quickly move with one leg medically out of commission. “Considering how long it’s taking to regenerate the arm, are you considering not regenerating anything else due to the inconvenience it creates on your duties? Honestly, I’d hate to see you miss out on a chance to have organic limbs simply because the process takes too long. I have a few theories we can try, but it runs the same risk of causing more harm than good mostly because it’s untested and there is no way of telling how it will react here. This is fascinating, but I can’t help but feel it’s…inefficient.”

• Doctor Fey Kastil

“This process is essentially taking an already existing process in my species’ genetic profile and activating it more … Strongly. It may not be effective for anyone but myself. But it does create perfect tissue. The tissue that I have been able to grow already has integrated effortlessly into my pre-existing flesh. I worry about my ability to do the same with internal organs, mostly because of access issues and the problems should there be a complication. It is untested technology for me, and I am using my own body as a test subject, which comes with some risks. I just don’t want to die because of one of those unforseen complications.”

GLaDOS, CSO