Professor Grant Emerson
3 DEC 1999 23:49:07 -0600

Alphonse:

Here is the preliminary investigation of the materials from Hawaii you recently forwarded to me. The findings to date seem to correllate somewhat with the previous data obtained from specimens procured during the Groversville incident, but I shall come to that presently. Needless to say, all the work was done under maximum containment precautions.

To summarize, the materials comprise a brief dossier and a "Briefcase" containing some rather sophisticated equipment. The dossier is typewritten on thin sheets of plastic laminate, which are punched and bound in a black metal three ring binder. The dossier indicates that the biological material contained in the briefcase was taken by venipuncture from an unidentified female in her early twenties recovered from the ocean off Kaneohe three days prior. According to the file, this material was cryogenically preserved in the receptacle within the briefcase immediately upon being taken from the individual in question. The file also mentions the potentially hazardous and mutagenic properties of the material in question, however no specific details of these properties are mentioned. The dossier concludes with basic instructions as to the functioning of the devices contained in the "Briefcase".

The "Briefcase" is something of an enigma. It is of standard dimensions (although a little thick) and fabricated from what appears to be black aluminium with what resembles a laptop computer touchpad next to the lock. According to the dossier, this pad is a thumbprint scanner keyed to authorised users - the "Briefcase" unlocked itself when I placed my thumb on the pad. Frankly, if correct, I find this more than a little worrying as it implies that whoever supplied the "Briefcase" is aware of my connection to the Group. Within the "Briefcase" is a small LCD-type display (with touchscreen function) and a tube at the left of the upper section of the case with an LED temperature indicator. The tube contains a red fluid (apparently the blood withdrawn from the individual) and there are two valves attached to the tube (for adding and withdrawing the fluid). The remaining part of the case is flat black aluminium lined such that there is no remaining room in the case when it is shut. The dossier notes that the case contains several devices including a mass spectrometer, flow cytometer, and "micro DNA sequencer" - I am highly dubious at this, as current models of such devices would take up a mid-sized laboratory. Clearly there is a chance that this is an elaborate hoax designed to draw us in. However, I suspect that this is not, in fact, the case. In any event, I was loathe to attempt to dismantle the "Briefcase", as I noted that the dossier mentioned a "self-defence" mechanism. I also note that there appears to be no recharging port or maintenence points within, or on the exterior of, the case. The entire unit seems wholly self-contained.

I began my investigation by using the analytical functions of the "Briefcase". It is worth noting here that there was a simple physical anomaly in the blood sample. The LED temperature display indicated that the sample was maintained at a constant -70oC, but the viewport of the case showed that the contents of the sample receptacle were still liquid. It is possible (just) that there was some form of antifreeze agent added to the sample (more of which later), but there is the possibility that the "Briefcase" itself was holding it under conditions sub-critical for freezing (such as by keeping the fluid constantly in motion to prevent ice cystals from forming and acting as nucleation points).

Starting with the chemical analysis, the blood was at a slightly acidic pH and the glucose level was elevated (perhaps indicating keto-acidosis), but otherwise within normal ranges. There was however a distinctly low level of both erythrocytes and leucocytes (both lymphoid and myeloid compartments). This correlated with an almost total lack of antibodies in the sample, a highly unusual state indicative of profound immune-suppression (although similar results have been found in so-called gnotobiotic animals - ones which have been raised in sterile conditions with no exposure to the general environment). Platelets however were present at somewhat higher than normal levels (I am unsure what to make of this, however, as no information is available regarding the anti-coagulant used to prevent the sample from clotting). The sample also contains two anomalous cell types. The first, and by far least common, is the easiest to explain - although the "Briefcase" was of little help here, simply identifying them as "abnormal". The flow cytometer function was able to separate this population out and direct some of them into the mass spectrometer, which identified them as "calcium carbonate rich".

My initial guess was that these were diatoms (sea dwelling algae with a rigid calcium carbonate shell). I was able to withdraw some of the raw sample from the outlet port of the receptacle (interestingly, the sample was at -70oC as indicated, but did not freeze on withdrawal from the receptacle suggesting that some form of ant-freeze agent had been added) and put it into my scanning electron microscope, which confirmed the presence of several types of diatoms (which look eerily beautiful under the EM). The simplest explanation for these is that the individual took fluid (containing the diatoms) into her lungs on immersion in the ocean, and some were able to cross into the bloodstream via damaged alveoli. The presence of diatoms in the bloodstream is occasionally used by forensic pathologists to determine if a body was alive when it was immersed (and drowned), or was dumped in the water post mortem (in the latter case there will be no diatoms in the bloodstream due to lack of circulation) - however, the technique is controversial and not universally accepted.

The second anomalous cell type is of rather more relevance. This population of "cells" appeared to comprise around 8% of all cells in the sample. Physically, these cells were slightly smaller than the resting lymphocyte population and gave a very high side scatter readout (indicating they are highly granular in nature) on the flow cytometer. However, they did not apparently stain with the human blood cell markers that the "Briefcase" used for identification purposes. Whilst this may be a technical limitation of the device (or as I have mentioned, a clever hoax), it was interesting enough to follow up. To further examine this (and verify the results from the "Briefcase"), I took the raw sample withdrawn from the tube and carried out a simple cytospin, then fixed and stained the "cells" with the usual Wright-Giemsa stain.

The expected cells showed up as expected, with a paucity of leucocytes - confirming the data described above, however, the anomalous population did not stain by this method - showing up as a pale group of perfectly spherical "cells". I then attempted a more rigorous battery of staining, with few positive results save for strong positive reaction with leucopararosaniline (the Groversville reagent). The anomalous cells stained intensely with this, and the usual rapid fading was observed indicating thet these "cells" were comprised of Neotissue. It is worthy of note at this point that the lack of leucocytes may be due to the presence of circulating Neotissue - explaining why the Neotissue is not rejected by the host immune system.

The final set of investigtions I carried out were to construct a DNA fingerprint of the individual in case an attempt to match this against the FBI database was required. DNA was easily extractable from the few leucocytes present in the sample, but an unusual pattern of amplification was seen with the standard human PCR primer set. Several unusual extra bands were present, and one or two were missing (I was able to confirm this further with a non-PCR based RFLP typing assay). This raised the possibility that the blood was not human at all, so I amplified and sequenced the human ribosomal RNA genes (which are highly conserved).

The results from this are a little unsettling as although amplification was possible (indicating that the gene is human or from an organism very homologous to human - more so that the great apes, whose rRNA genes do not amplify with these primers), there was considerable degeneracy between the sample and human standard sequences. Thus I repeated the procedure, and although I got the same overall level of degeneracy, the sequence was different from that obtained before. Several further experiments confirmed this observation - DNA extracted from the same sample at sucessive 6 hour time intervals was unmistakably different in sequence. This means that the DNA is mutating within the sample at an unheard of rate (tens of thousands of times faster than expected! - approaching the rate of RNA viruses) and means that the leucocytes in the sample are actively dividing (this is highly odd to say the least, as leukocytes are normally generated in the bone marrow unless actively fighting an infection).

This is the current state of play. I have several further experiments to conduct once the data analysis on the current results has been completed (please regard the above as preliminary studies only). I have taken the liberty of removing the "Briefcase" and the dossier to the Durham Green Box, as I remain uncomfortable about it's "self-defence capability", which I can only take to mean a self-destruct feature. I hope this will not cause too many problems. Copies of the data obtained (including the partial DNA fingerprint) thus far are attached to this report.