Surface-Kin Experiment Logs

Phase IV: Clinical Detachment

By the time these images were recorded, the Surface-Kin research teams no longer referred to the subject as living.

Vital signs are displayed, but not monitored. Neural activity is charted out of habit. The body lies intact only because protocol has not yet required disassembly.

The scientists work in silence.

Their suits are clean. Their hands are steady. Their instruments are calibrated to perfection. Each movement is practiced, efficient, and utterly indifferent to the form on the table.

No one speaks to the subject.
No one avoids looking at her.

Post-Mortem in Progress

Incisions are made along predetermined luminous pathways where Rootworld’s biolight once flowed. Organs are exposed not with urgency, but with curiosity. Data streams across tablets—pulse decay, tissue resonance, aetheric contamination levels—annotated without emotional variance.

The head has already been catalogued.

It hangs behind the table as a reference specimen, suspended for comparison. Not as a warning. Not as a trophy. Simply as context.

The body is still warm when measurements begin.

Behavioral Degradation Index

Surface-Kin scientists exhibit no signs of distress.

• No hesitation before incision

• No change in cadence when the subject expires

• No acknowledgment of identity

• No deviation in tone when logging cause of death

One researcher pauses only to adjust a sensor slipping from the ankle.

Another corrects a colleague’s handwriting.

The death itself is unremarkable.

The Tragedy

This is not cruelty.

Cruelty requires intent.

What Rootworld records here is worse—the complete erosion of meaning. The subject’s body is treated as a mechanism that failed, not a life that ended. There is no anger, no malice, no satisfaction.

Only process.

The scientists believe they are behaving responsibly. Ethically, even. Emotion, they have concluded, introduces noise into the data.

Indifference improves clarity.

Rootworld’s Response

The ecosystem does not react immediately.

Bioluminescent growth nearby dims, almost imperceptibly. Fungal caps lean inward, as if listening. The soil records pressure, vibration, chemical trace.

Nothing attacks.
Nothing screams.

Rootworld is patient.