Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

Kraft's hand holding the bottle trembled and he almost threw it away. Then he increased the strength in his hands and grasped the bottle tightly to prevent himself from losing control and throwing it out and breaking it.

In terror, he found the fulcrum of reason. After experiencing something unimaginable to ordinary people, my spirit seems to have undergone unknown changes, making it even less likely to be shaken.

It cannot have its own thoughts. It is just a little bit of liquid and has no basis for thinking ability.

This liquid is only inducing itself through some means, rather than speaking directly. The impulsive thoughts I had just now were essentially composed of the original materials in my mind.

Curiosity about new things, plans to conduct animal experiments, and learned that the professor and Lucius had swallowed diluent. The contents were dug out and spliced ​​together to come up with new ideas that helped release it from the bottle.

Following the strong curiosity, the brain completed these contents on its own, so its "persuasion" only provided the most primitive attraction, and the rest was left to Kraft's own thinking.

The principle is not complicated. It is equivalent to an emergency call made by a scammer, without clearing out the specific information. It only provides a huge anxiety, and the content is all imagined by the anxious victim.

All it takes is one primitive impulse to leverage the whole situation and use the subconscious reasons of the target to deal with him. This applies to everyone and even all living things.

"This is so interesting." Kraft raised the small bottle and exclaimed. Although I don’t know the mechanism through which it affects my emotions, this idea is brilliant.

If it was really a different kind of creature, it would be better than the anglerfish's lantern.

In fact, it has almost succeeded. With two people acting irrationally as it wished, it has easily achieved its goal of contacting more living creatures.

At least a few rats and two people came into direct contact with the black liquid.

There's one thing that hasn't been figured out yet: What's the point? At least Lucius doesn't seem to have much abnormality now. Why does it do this?

A parasite living in liquid? Is it bacteria? Or a virus? The pursuit of communication is nothing more than spreading oneself on a larger scale, continuously multiplying and reproducing, and completing meaningless replication.

It has been more than ten days since Lucius came into contact with it. There seems to be no physical abnormality, and the mental state is difficult to evaluate at the moment.

Is the amount too small, or does the black liquor not cause drastic changes in the short term? Will the mice used for experiments have the answer?

Kraft carefully placed the bottle on another table and asked Lucius, who was holding the candlestick: "Do you remember any changes in the mice that you fed the diluent? I mean, except for the coma. The change."

"No." Lucius shook his head, "There were a total of fourteen mice, all of which were dissected by the instructor. No long-term observation was done until the last experiment."

"If you feel uncomfortable, please inform me in time." Kraft patted Lucius on the shoulder and glanced at the bottle on the table. "To be honest, I feel that this thing is a bit dangerous. If it is not necessary , we’d better not touch it.”

Craft couldn't explain to Lucius what he noticed. When he consciously refuses, the induction of black liquid cannot force people to take drastic actions, especially when the distance is increased, the effect quickly weakens to the point where it is difficult to detect.

"Really, no joke, let's stay as far away from it as possible. Don't you really think it's weird that you drink diluent rashly?" He added, this attitude made him look like a timid old scholar. , giving up valuable opportunities for a tiny bit of risk.

But Kraft knew this was the best option, and he could never be too careful with something that was beyond comprehension, suspected of being a living thing, and had a propensity to spread.

If he wasn't afraid of causing trouble, he would rather go out and lock the cellar and fill up the cellar with soil. He would never step foot here again until the professor came back after figuring out everything.

This is not something he should touch. Just like the gift he brought back from "outside the cave", it is not part of human common sense. He has not yet thought about whether to pay the price of going too deep.

He refused this change and refused to pay any unknown price. He opened a corner of the giant screen and was shocked by what he saw. He didn't have the courage to face the whole picture.

At least now, he doesn't have enough reason to jump into this muddy water.

"Okay, okay." Lucius picked up the glass bottle and shook it. The black liquid rolled in it, hit the thick wall of the bottle, and finally lay peacefully at the bottom of the bottle.

He opened the closet door and put the bottle back in, but the moment he lifted the bottle, Lucius paused.

He stopped the bottle at eye level and looked at it for a few seconds, then put the bottle back on the table. Under the light of the candlestick, he lay down at the table level and turned the bottle a few times.

Then he said in an incredulous tone: "It seems a little missing?"

"A little less?"

"Yes, look at this thread." Lucius moved the candlestick closer and pointed to the bottom of the bottle so that Craft could see it more clearly.

There was a tiny scratch there, done so lightly and so inconspicuously that Kraft hadn't even noticed it just now.

Lucius held Kraft's shoulders and asked him to lean down and look at the line from a height close to the table.

"I drew this line on the last day before the professor left. Logically speaking, it should be consistent with the highest point of the liquid level. When I took it out just now, I felt something was wrong."

"you sure?"

"I thought it was a viewing angle problem just now." Lucius's breathing behind the mask became heavy and rapid. He stretched out his hand to straighten the lenses, readjusted the position of the beak, and then lay down at the table level to confirm again.

Indeed, if this scratch is used as a standard, there is a clear gap at the highest point of the liquid level, about a quarter of the height has disappeared.

The liquid itself is small. Without drawing lines for comparison, it may be difficult to make a definite judgment based on memory and intuition.

"Could it have evaporated?" Kraft asked. People in this world are still aware of the three-state changes of liquids, but they are still at the stage where they regard the white mist on the kettle as water vapor. They think that they cannot usually observe it because the white mist is too little and too light.

"No." This guess was immediately denied by Kraft himself.

He remembered that the professor had only been away for seven days, and the experiment lasted for more than ten days, with only a small amount of liquid being dipped each time. The amount of liquid itself was small, and if the evaporation had been so obvious, it would have been noticed.

Considering that the amount of liquid itself is very small, it may even evaporate on the way to Wendeng Port, and there is no chance to keep it until now.

"Evaporation? It's unlikely." Lucius also denied this conjecture. He was in deep confusion and couldn't understand how this happened.

"Aside from the professor and you, will anyone else be here?" Craft asked. This is the most reasonable explanation he can think of at present. If this is not right, the black liquid can only escape by himself.

Lucius put his hand into his pocket. Inside was the thick metal lock and matching key hanging on the door. His hand brushed over it, and the cold metal was reassuring.

"That's impossible. Only the professor and I have the key. Unless someone can pry open the lock and hang it up exactly as it is, but this lock is not that easy to deal with." Lucius gave a negative answer again.

He might have thought about this, but there was no need for people in the academy to do this. After all, it is normal to have some secret experiments, and most of them end up with no results. It is abnormal to have no secrets. Who would go to that trouble to find someone else's secret laboratory?

As for the people outside the academy, regardless of how they got in, even if they accidentally came here in a complex building, could it be that he opened the lock and put it back in, only to take some unknown liquid from the small bottle?

Could it be that the black liquid really just ran away on its own? Kraft was confused. This thing doesn't seem to have this ability at all. It can't be that it opened the plug and escaped partially, and then put the plug back in, right?

If it was really that outrageous, would it still require luring creatures into contact with it?

Amidst a cloud of question marks, Kraft ruled out several possibilities one after another, and the entire incident was shrouded in sudden fog.

But there is actually another possibility.

"Although it may be strange to say this, there is no one else here. I would like to ask the professor if he knows that you scratched the mark?" Craft asked, his eyes behind the red lenses staring at Lucius, waiting for him to tell his professor of course I know.

"..." Lucius was silent, as if he was thinking, but also as if he didn't know how to answer, but silence itself was the answer.

The atmosphere in the room was slightly frozen. Professor Kalman should have been the one least likely to cause problems. Kraft mentioned this purely in passing, but he did not expect that a problem would actually occur.

He hesitated for a while, picked up and put down the bottle on the table, without directly giving his opinion, only throwing out what he knew: "I took a small stone and drew it casually, trying to estimate the dosage for future experiments, but I didn't Inform the professor."

Things began to go in the direction Kraft least expected.

Professor Kalman did all the experiments with Lucius, including all the experimental records, which he handed over to Lucius for sorting. As the professor's academic heir, he basically has no reservations, and even his biological son may not be so close to him.

What was the reason for him to avoid Lucius and secretly take out a quarter of the black liquid before leaving?

Anyway, it can't be used for animal experiments. There is no need to avoid Lucius when conducting animal experiments, and it is obviously more convenient to use multiple people.

…

…

The two put the bottle back in the closet, leaving the box containing the experimental records. They locked the door and covered it with the box, and left the cellar without saying a word.

Lucius seemed a little frustrated, but he still patiently told Kraft the time and place of his classes as a lecturer, as well as the specific location of the house that the professor left for Kraft. After confirming that Kraft had no doubts, he left.

Kraft thanked him and watched his somewhat tired figure disappear at the end of the corridor. He knew what Lucius was thinking.

The person he regarded as half a father did not give him the full trust he expected. He must be thinking now whether he did something good enough or failed to show the ability to meet Kalman's expectations.

This kind of denial of himself may have hit him too hard. No matter what the reason is, it is difficult for him to accept it. He may not be able to get over it for several days.

Kraft did not comfort Lucius, nor did he know how to comfort him. He still has his own problems to think about now, and Kalman's concealment is also bad news for him.

The liquid showing strange inducing tendencies, the twisted and weird characters in the notes left by the professor, the parts of the sample that were taken away and disappeared...

He stood in the corridor that was painted scarlet by the setting sun, and took a deep breath, as if he was trying to pull the elongated shadow of the pillars and the dusty light pillars into his lungs.

There is a vaguely familiar yet unfamiliar and unknown smell permeating the mouth and nose, making people instinctively feel that it should not be there. You can't catch it when you focus on your sense of smell.

From the moment I walked into the building myself, the more I got to know it, the more obvious it became. It exists in the spread out experimental records, wanders in the basement, and appears in every moment when Kraft is inspired.

Craft woke with a start, wondering why he felt familiar. That is a weak and irrefutable characteristic, indescribable, incomprehensible, and should not exist in the world.

"Fuck!" The otherworldly part of the soul couldn't help but burst out the curse words from home, "This is really bad news."

He had already come into contact with similar existences that were countless times stronger than this in the snowy night. But now, it's just an unexpected and inevitable reunion.