Emeret's notes

This document has mentions of death. Emeret's notes are not ones that will have a happy ending as we know thanks to Veran audio records.

Attached to this file, there was this note signed by Veran Ethalar:

Emer was an old soul, and by that I mean he enjoyed writing in paper rather than audio transcriptions. I'll never understand that. His are the only notes and research that aren't digitalised, and I don't want it to disappear with time, I don't know how long it will take for someone to reach this planet if it ever happens. I'll try my best to transcribe the notes and will avoid to modify them as much as I can, but man, he had the doctor's handwriting, it's hard.

First impression on the pathogen:

It seems to be affecting people regardless of gender and age, although we cannot confirm this so far as the AI cannot detect the pathogen and we have a low amount of detected patients (23 so far, 1 of them died). We cannot assume that none of us (Kiran Ledenim. Ilana Petroska. Nayea Ottowana. Veran Ethalar. Emerton Kirk.) is exempt of the condition.

Since it is affection people from different sectors, we should assume until proven otherwise that it is residing in one of the many systems related to the cryogenic stasis of the pods.

We do not know how long this condition has been affecting our spaceship, and thus, we are unable to determinate a life cycle for it. We should assume the worse, so I will write down what we know so far. The AI claimed it woke us up a few minutes after the first death, it's been 8 days since then, no new deaths, but the AI detected a new infected person. In that time, 13 people have worsened yet don't give signs of being close to death yet, and 10 people have stayed stable with no new signs.

The AI informs about the infected and the deceased are worthless. It does not know this condition or how to identify it before signs appear. I made Petroska and Ledenm skim through them anyway. They had no work and having free time would affect the morale of the team. We cannot afford to lose morale, approx. 5 thousand lives depend on us.

Update, three hours later: 2 more people have died, still in the 8th day.

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Autopsy of Patient 0:

Ledenim and Ottowana managed to bypass the AI locking the Patient 0 —or who we assumed to be Patient 0 out of timeline and symptoms— in their cryogenic pod. With proper equipment to avoid possible airborne contamination —and other contamination methods, but we worried about that one more currently—, Dr. Ethalar and I, Dr. Kirk, were able to do some extra tests that were previously unable to do due the limitations of the cryogenic pod tests.

Thanks to the AI abilities and our testing, we discovered that the pathogen is not airborne and thus we slightly lowered the protections as we proceeded to do the autopsy. We were still weary in case it could move through direct contact. We had Ledenim run some extra, longer tests through the AI as we did the autopsy, focusing on the —now open— contaminated pod.

The AI tests showed that the pathogen was in one of the stasis fluids. Unfortunately, that meant we were unable to know which one it was in, as they all mixed together before reaching the pod, and going to that mixing place was heavily locked and had a lot of failsafe to avoid manipulation. If we were to interact with that and mess up the concentration of the fluids without realising it would mean that we would not have to worry about the pathogen anymore since the stasis would not work as intended and people would die for lack or overdose of said fluids. On the bright side, it meant the only way of contamination was through the fluid itself as it would not have needed to mutate to find other contamination methods.

The autopsy revealed that the Patient 0 had died of MODS —Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. The pathogen seemed to be infecting the chest cavity of the infected, the body overreacts and causes sepsis as it tries to fight the infection off. A possible side-effect of the stasis? The lungs and the musculature around it were the most affected areas, heavily damaged, they would have not survived had them been woken up from stasis as they would have been unable to breath and any movement would have given them high amounts of pain.

Of course, the AI had detected some of the symptoms of MODS, but they could have been caused by multiple other conditions, and as it is a limited AI model, it resorted to wake us up.

The heart was the last organ to be affected. Makes sense, the stasis can keep us alive without the use of lungs, but it still needs our hearts to beat to move the blood and other fluids around. If my theory is right, this pathogen first attacks the musculature on the chest cavity as it makes it's way to the lungs, and once these are damaged to a certain threshold, it attacks the heart. Dr. Ethalar agrees on my theory, but we disagree on the origin of the pathogen. It matters little its origin as of right now.

My theory of someone non-sterile entering one of the cryo pods make much more sense of his theory of a cell mutated by solar radiation. We are too protected against the radiation for that to happen and that's without mentioning that we are not traveling around a star. Can't believe I looked up to this idiot. We argued too much about this, but this felt like the only thing that would make him show any kind of emotion and it reminded me that we are both people. How can he be so emotionless? The rest of us look constantly at the verge of a breakdown.

To avoid contamination of other kinds —corpse rotting—, I took the decision of airlocking the Patient 0 out into space. The team did not enjoy that decision and even fought against it. Thankfully the AI refused to take back the body into the stasis pod. As the rest of the team was taking a break and having something to eat, I airlocked them.

This made everyone scream and be mad at me. Petroska even punched me before leaving for her room, where she hid for almost a day. Dr. Ethalar... Veran just looked at me, defeated, and sat on a chair, hiding his face behind his hands. Trembling. Not even this is enough to make you show emotions???? I rather you punch me, like Ilana, just show me you have a heart. Why won't you let yourself be human??? You are destroying yourself even more by doing that, can't you see it? Can't you see how you are worrying us???

Update, five hours later: I can't say any personal information about Patient 0. I can't bring myself to do so. What kind of horrible doctor am I that I can't name or even gender them? Distancing myself from them had been the best decision at the moment for my mental health, but it is a heavy load on my shoulders now, yet one I can't take off.

Comment recorded by Veran Ethalar: I... I didn't know... Did they all see me as heartless? Did they all hate me for it? I thought hiding my emotions would be best for the morale, the best action for the team to keep working as hard as we could.

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Infected:

Ilana Petroska and Nayea Ottowana show signs of being in the late stages of the condition. Ilana mentions she didn't realise, Nayea says she knew for a day or so, but did not want to distract us.

I am the doctor! I am meant to —gods my hands are shaking badly. I'm meant to take care of the spaceship's inhabitants in case of an emergency. This is one. You two are also inhabitants!

How can I blame them when I am also hiding my symptoms as well. I almost found myself getting some painkillers and even sedatives last night so I could actually sleep. Stopped myself just in time. I don't want sedatives affecting my thinking capacity. Which now feels stupid to say considering the shaking and pain is bothering me so much.

Right, this was a report, not a journal.

The next few days, Dr. Ethalar with help of Ledenim found a way to test all the people in this vessel. 85% of the people had signs of the pathogen, all of us included. Dr. Ethalar's body seemed to be affected differently: while there was the pathogen in his body, there was no indication of his autoimmune system fighting the pathogen so aggressively and thus he had no signs of sepsis. Yet, at least. I theorised he had some biological mutation that helped his body fight this pathogen without overreacting which fomented my theory of a non-sterile person being induced into stasis. Didn't mention to Veran, it was past time to fight with him just to see him have emotions. Studying his body —he didn't deny tests, but the spaceship had limited abilities for tests while travelling— was too much time-consuming and did not help to find a cure enough for them to proceed. Or so he claimed. I would have kept experimenting, but consent is important. Or is it with five thousand people's life on hand? Why did I stop?

Between Dr. Ethalar and me, Dr. Kirk, we spent a week developing a potential cure. In theory it would work. Based on the workings of a vaccine, we developed a liquid that could potentially help the bodies fight off the pathogen while at the same time calming down the autoimmune system so it did not overreact. We were going to test it on ourselves, but Nayea's death hit us strong, and Kieran became so sick that he could not keep taking care of Ilana. Veran airlocked Nayea while I took care of Ilana and Kieran. And myself. I felt my body at its limits, I still mentioned nothing to Veran.

Veran tested the cure on the two of them, Ilana died before showing any signs of improvement, Kieran seemed to improve slightly but his heart was already being damaged and didn't survive. Veran was destroyed, but went to work on improving the cure. It was too late for me too, I knew it, but I wanted to survive just enough to give Veran another person to test the cure on. I took care of airlocking Ilana and Kieran while he was working. He got really mad, but I collapsed on him.

I don't remember getting in the med bay's bed. I am sorry Veran. I hope the cure works, I won't be here to see it. If the timeline I've been working on is right, I don't think I have more than a few hours. I'm sorry we leave everyone's lives on your hands.

I wish we could have met properly in a differen situation. I believe in you.