X-Factor

[aldersprig]

“We’ve studied one million samples.”  Professor Georges was very solemn.  It didn’t keep Professor Osborne from scoffing at him.

“There aren’t a million people in this part of the world anymore.”

“We have been studying for a long time.  At approximately fifty thousand people a year for the first one hundred fifty years, and then a much reduced rate.  The last five years, we took samples from merely a thousand people.”

“So your rate of testing decreased over time.”

“The population decreased over time, and the methods became, by necessity, more circumspect: we could no longer use blood tests overtly.  Also, our own population was badly hit by the Disaster.”

“Yes, of course it was.  What did you determine?”

read on…

Comments

[kelkyag]

O_o

I would say it sounded like SCIENCE! but their standards for human or animal testing aren't likely to match what Professor Osborne describes.

But I have to disagree with Professor Georges about what constitutes being human.

[aldersprig]

Well, it could be Science! but not the same team. Like people *IN* the Science! world.

Except that Science! doesn’t have an apocalypse.

And yes, Prof. Georges is… a little biased there.

oTOH, I liked how Prof. Osborne ran with that one.

[kelkyag]

It could be much earlier or much later in Science! That 'verse did have the alien invasion that Cara was diggin up the scary weapon to deal with. And if the giant chickens are in Science! then they've got bits of world that have been abandoned for vague reasons and food shortages ...

[clare_dragonfly]

...but how do they even have funding?

This could well be fae apoc.

[aldersprig]

they’re a uni. They found funding somewhere :-)
It COULD be, although I don’t think their numbers are right for fae apoc.

This story went suddenly into like uni rules and I was like… what?

[sauergeek]

I think I dislike both of these people. Prof. Osborne for being a rules lawyer for a place that may no longer exist and almost certainly has no funding source of any substance; and Prof. Georges for being a bloodthirsty and/or vengeful bastard who cares not one ounce for who he's hurting so long as he gets his results (and possibly his justifiable homicide). It is a far too consequential version of the "Cakes and Ale" story (https://www.snopes.com/college/admin/cakesale.asp).

I can see this fitting Science! more readily than Fae Apoc; perhaps this is yet another example of very early in Science!