Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

At Kraft's insistence, Lucius went out and found two pairs of beak masks and several bags of things with different smells.

I have to say that this thing fits Kraft’s aesthetic very well. The beak is made of brass and is connected to a leather hood. The eyes are two pieces of impure glass. I don’t know what chemical composition makes the lenses red.

The breathing opening is at the beak. The design idea should be that the airflow is filtered by the packing and then inhaled by the human body.

Now let’s use our invincible memory and recall the homemade gas mask tutorial I watched when I was bored.

Oh, I remembered, I need to add activated carbon to it. So the question comes again, how is activated carbon made?

This question is completely beyond Kraft's knowledge level. It goes straight to the blind spot of knowledge. No matter how powerful the memory is, it cannot be made out of nothing. Now I guess I can only survive with the plans of this era.

He watched as Lucius stuffed the bird's beak like scallion buns.

First, lay a layer of crushed dry plant tubers and then cover them with burlap, and then lay a second layer with fibers that look a bit like dried daylilies. Repeat this, using the contents of several bags, filling the entire bird's beak starting from the tip.

It’s hard to say how effective it is, but the amount of filter material is indeed very sincere.

Kraft took the prepared hood and sniffed it with his nose. What hit his face was an extremely rich mixed smell.

It has an almost incense smell, mixed with a hint of cool mint, and spicy ingredients comparable to chili seeds. The other less obvious ones are indistinguishable.

"Lucius, have you ever used this before?" Kraft put it on his head, a very classic image of a doctor in black robe, black hood and beak.

The otherworldly part of the soul likes this mysterious image very much. Unfortunately, the price of such handicrafts on the Internet has always been high, and there is no occasion for him to wear it and cosplay. Today is an unexpected dream come true.

The wearing experience is almost as expected. It is very difficult to breathe in a mask filled with a large amount of filter material. It is so difficult that it feels like wearing several layers of masks, and it is stuffy and uncomfortable.

During a plague, doctors would wear such masks and continue their work. No one has calculated the actual effect of the layers of spices and herbs, but at least it gives considerable psychological comfort.

However, the shadow of death also makes people associate it with crows and misfortune. The doctor did not correct this misunderstanding, perhaps because of disdain, or perhaps because the prejudice brought about by the fear of death is deep-rooted and unshakable.

In Kraft’s memory, his grandfather told him about the latest plague. More than ten years have passed, and the only place where the beak mask exists is in the warehouse of the medical school.

While filling his mask with stuffing, Lucius replied: "No, it was all taught to me by my mentor. He is very interested in this, and these two masks are also in his collection."

"Be careful. These two masks have special meaning to the mentor. He said that he used these two masks during the plague more than ten years ago." Seeing Kraft walking around the room wearing the mask, Almost hitting the wall, he warned.

"Ah, I'm sorry." Kraft put his hand over the bird's beak and stood firm against the wall. The two pieces of red glass for the eyes are of poor quality, uneven in thickness, and contain granular impurities. Coupled with the difficulty in breathing, it makes people feel dizzy and their sense of direction is greatly reduced.

"It doesn't matter, this thing is so well maintained, no one would have thought it was old." Lucius also put on a mask, held the bird's beak in the correct position, and picked up the box, "Then let's go to the laboratory now? It’s safe to say it’s best to keep it there.”

"Two more pairs of leather gloves."

…

…

With some concerns about the effectiveness of the mask, Kraft followed Lucius to the so-called "secret" laboratory.

In the meantime, it is another journey with nine twists and turns. The two of them turned back from the professor's work room on the third floor to a deserted utility room deep on the first floor.

Unused bookshelves, tables and chairs with missing arms and legs are all gathering mold and dust here. I don’t know which designer with a bad idea put the entrance to the cellar in this room.

It's similar to the cellar of the Wood family castle. After uncovering a wooden board with an iron ring, there is a step downwards, leading directly to the dark underground space.

Lucius, who was walking in front, handed the box to Kraft and walked in front holding a candlestick. He held onto the wall and carefully walked down the uneven steps.

The depth of this cellar is only more than two meters, and more than ten steps are within the range of candlelight. Lucius stopped at the last step and stretched the candlestick into the cellar, illuminating the decaying barrels and crates inside.

After waiting for a while and seeing that the candlelight was still bright, he waved to Kraft, who was still adjusting the position of the eye glass, indicating that he could come down.

After moving several empty wooden boxes against the wall, a locked wooden door appeared in front of them.

It seems that the secret laboratory is not very secret, but normally no one would come here. If someone were to visit, it would be difficult to notice the traces of boxes being dragged in this abandoned cellar.

With a "click", Lucius opened the lock hanging on the door, took off the chain key and put it in his pocket. Kraft took two steps back, so that he could serve as insurance in case something unexpected happened.

As the wooden door, which looked like a scourge in Kraft's eyes, opened, this mysterious laboratory was unreservedly displayed in front of them.

It is only about ten square meters in size and shorter than the cellar. You can reach the top with your hand. However, in a space the size of a storage room, two tables, a wooden frame and several small iron cages are crammed into it. If the stools under the table are dragged out, there will be no space for people to move, and the things can only be stored until Wall closet.

Kraft was holding on to the door frame at the door, ready to hold his breath and pull the person out at any time.

Lucius placed the candlestick on the table and opened the closet with thick leather-gloved hands. The closet carved out between the stone bricks has a three-story structure from top to bottom. The bottom two floors are already occupied by clay pots, wooden boxes, metal boxes and various small tools.

On the third floor that was left alone, there was only a small glass bottle, the color of which could not be seen through the red lenses. The cylindrical bottle body is regular and translucent, and the mouth of the bottle is closed with a wooden stopper.

The light from the candlestick passes through the bottle with good transparency, casting clean light and shadow on the wall and Kraft's face. The quality of this glass bottle is obviously much better than the lens of the mask.

There is indeed a shallow layer of opaque black liquid at the bottom of the bottle, and the texture is somewhat thick and viscous.

Lucius put it in front of him and observed it carefully for a while, then picked up the candlestick again, tilted it slightly, so that the melted wax oil dripped onto the mouth of the bottle, and turned the bottle to solidify it into a circle.

He turned around and pointed the mouth of the bottle toward Kraft, demonstrating a good seal.

"That's absolutely fine." He held the bottle under the metal beak and sniffed it, "Look, there's no need to worry so much."

It seems like there's really nothing wrong with it. Kraft walked into the room, placed the box on the table, took the bottle from his hand, and leaned it in front of the lens.

The liquid flows slowly as the bottle shakes, giving it an oily feel. The liquid surface is slightly convex and there is no wall hanging. If you tilt it, it will turn into small droplets, which look like black mercury. They are quite similar to the small magnetic fluid toys that the alien souls bought before.

Kraft was convinced that he had never seen such a thing, and he did not know how Professor Kalman's mentor extracted such a thing from the human body. It's impossible to use the corpse to refine oil, right?

Looking at the flowing liquid, curiosity arose spontaneously, and he felt the desire to study it. He wanted to find some mice or any other experimental animals to try.

I want to see what effect they will have after being exposed to black liquid, and I want to know what other manifestations the "inhibition" the professor mentioned is there.

It is not a shallow layer of material, but the future of medicine. It is the black starry sky and the unexplored trench in the deep sea. It evokes mankind's primitive desire to explore and want to know what it is and why.

These black liquids make people feel that they should not be in bottles, but should be used in large quantities and come into contact with biological tissues so that people can learn more about them.

He felt a little anxious and understood why Lucius was so excited to continue the experiment, because he also had the same mood and wanted to make a plan and start working immediately.

I want to skip the experimental animal link directly and verify the mechanism of its function in the human body. He had more detailed and advanced examination methods that he could do better than the professor could, rather than just counting the heartbeats and breathing of the ingested person as he fell asleep.

He even wanted to drink it directly like Professor Kalman and Lucius, just a little bit, to experience the feeling for himself.

That must be more direct and effective than any experiment, and it can also satisfy the increasingly urgent desire to explore, the desire to contact it and understand it...

"Um?"

Kraft made a confused sound. He couldn't understand why he thought so. Years of safety education have never faded in his mind, and countless typical negative cases are still vivid in his mind.

Why would you really want to take a sip? Even if it was diluted, with Lucius and the professor trying it first, he shouldn't want to try this unknown liquid that comes from nowhere in the human body.

After a quick recall of how this idea came to him, Kraft quickly found its origin - that curiosity suddenly appeared when he took the bottle, and then gradually grew during the process of careful observation, and then became I want to use it on animals.

Following this line of development, in just a short while, the idea of ​​​​drinking this liquid myself was born.

It was persuading itself, the most active part of its consciousness, to come to a conclusion. Without complex logical thinking, it naturally stuffed the answer into Kraft's brain, without giving him a chance to choose, and without bothering to tell him where the answer came from. Come.

Like a confusing science question in high school, an "easy proof" is laid out generously below, and it jumps to the final data in one step. And the subconscious mind understands everything as a matter of course after knowing the answer that it had never thought of before.

The chill of fear went up from the tailbone and crawled all over the body along the back. I don't know whether it came from the weird answer or the fear of where the answer came from. Maybe a bit of both.

Is it persuading itself? In your own mind, use your own voice to pretend to be your own thoughts. What is it... a living thing?