As well as the numbers spoken aloud by many subjects (see Addendum A), each has acquired a twelve (12) digit number at the nape of their neck immediately post-mortem. The latter number is different to the vocalised one in each case, and varies by subject. Physically, it is approximately two (2) inches wide by half an inch high and is composed of slightly-raised scar tissue that forms rapidly following the subject's expiration. A selection of the numbers encountered follows:
When these numbers are plotted on a scatter graph (see Figure 2), they exhibit a strong negative correlation. The small amount of data we have means that, though unlikely, this could be coincidental. A request has been made for more test subjects. Request denied - we don't have limitless D-class personnel to throw at your pet project - O5-██
<Begin Log, ██/██/19██>
Researcher █████: I found something I think you'll find interesting, ████.
Dr ██████: Good. Tell me what I'm missing.
Researcher █████: So plotting the two numbers against each other doesn't tell us much, right?
Dr ██████: Right, other than they appear to be somehow related to each other.
Researcher █████: Sure, but it doesn't tell us what either number actually means. What if I told you the scar number is inversely proportional to the subject's age?
Dr ██████: I'd say what on Earth made you consider their age?
Researcher █████: Call it divine inspiration. Think about what this means for a second though. The older a subject is, in other words the earlier she was born, the smaller the scar number is.
Dr ██████: That is interesting. So…how old would you have to be to have nothing but a one on your neck?
Researcher █████: That's just it! We're looking at numbers in the low hundreds of billions, right?
Dr ██████: Right. A hundred and twelve billion or so.
Researcher █████: Well, it just so happens that's almost exactly our current best guess for the number of people ever to have lived.
Dr ██████: As many as that? Don't they say there are more people alive now than have ever lived in total?
Researcher █████: That's a common misconception. Even if we're just counting homo sapiens, that's two hundred thousand years of history. For an awful lot of that time birth rates were decidedly high and life expectancy was almost comically low. We're talking lucky-to-reach-fifteen. An awfully large number of people lived and died in relatively short periods of time. So yes, it comes to around a hundred and twelve billion and, would you believe it, the numbers burned on our subjects' necks are in that ball park. If I'm right about this, every person that's ever lived on Earth had one of those numbers. ████, I think the scar number is some kind of…index…or serial number. And everyone's got one.
Dr ██████: The implications of that…
Researcher █████: I know.
Dr ██████: [After a moment] When's this index assigned though? At birth? Inception?
Researcher █████: Hard to tell from the limited data we have. I'd love to get identical twins in here, though. They ought to have adjacent indices…maybe even the same index, depending on when and how it materialises.
Dr ██████: You're right. So many avenues of study here.
Researcher █████: Yeah…but there's more.
Dr ██████: You have been hard at work, haven't you? Go on.
Researcher █████: The other number, the one they say right before they pop. That one's directly proportional to their age.
Dr ██████: Okay. What does that tell us?
Researcher █████: The interesting thing is how it's proportional. The gradient of the line comes out at 14.5.
Dr ██████: So? What's 14.5?
Researcher: Well…I'll get to that. First, let's talk about the other things we've heard the Ds parrot. The stuff before all the numbers.
Dr ██████: Just a load of gibberish, isn't it? Side effect of a brain that's trying to leak out their ears.
Researcher █████: I thought so too. One in particular caught my attention though. D-37883 talked about something - a creature - on his chest. I was sure that sounded familiar. When I looked into it I discovered a legend from Norse mythology about undead revenants shapeshifting into the forms of cats and suffocating sleeping people by sitting on their chests.
Dr ██████: I've heard of something similar to that. A creature that slowly crushes the life out of you as it gets heavier. Possibly an early explanation for sleep apnea. Something like an 'elf'. An 'alp'? Don't think it was Norse folklore though - it was German or Dutch or something.
Researcher █████: Yeah, similar ideas exist in other mythologies. In Norse legend it's called a 'draugr'.
Dr ██████: Alright, so why are we leaning towards Norse rather than German?
Researcher █████: Let's look at some of the other experiments. D-44863 kept going on about it being "so blue". She just kept repeating that over and over. Guess what colour your average Norse draugr is?
Dr ██████: Blue's a strange colour for a cat to be.
Researcher █████: I agree, but we're talking about their human form. Draugr are reanimated corpses that sometimes shape-shift into cats. Cadavers often take on a pale blue-grey hue. Doesn't seem unreasonable for these creatures to be that colour.
Dr ██████: Fine. What else do we have?
Researcher █████: One subject muttered something about foxfire. Foxfire's-
Doctor ██████: [Cutting researcher █████ off] Bioluminescent fungi in wood. Really beautiful in a dark forest, if a little eerie.
Researcher █████: What are you doing in the forest after dark? Don't answer that. The burial mound harbouring a draugr is said to glow with a blue-green light, like foxfire. It's a clear signal you should keep the hell away.
Dr ██████: Foxfire points to draugr too then. Getting harder to refute this, I'll admit. Anything else?
Researcher █████: Yes, actually. There's a Norse myth about a draugr known as Thorir Wooden-Leg in which a ghostly seal rises up through the floor of a house in a coastal village, despite the inhabitants' attempts to force it back down with clubs and hammers. Sound familiar?
Dr ██████: You've looked at the experiment logs more recently than I have. I assume one of our subjects alluded to something like this?
Researcher: Pretty unambiguously. "Floorboards should stop them. But they keep coming!"
Dr ██████: Alright, alright. So they're all reeling off snippets of Norse folklore about draugr. You've convinced me. What's that got to do with this 14.5 figure then?
Researcher █████: Ah yes, from the graph. 14.5 just happens to be the exact number of orbits a particular exoplanet makes around its star in an Earth year.
Dr ██████: Oh? Which exoplanet?
Researcher █████: That would be PSR B1257+12 b. More commonly known as 'Draugr'.
Dr ██████: [Sitting back in his chair] That's…interesting, to put it mildly. But what does it mean?
Researcher █████: Well, it means the Ds are dutifully reporting their Draugr age right before they go bang. It's evidently entirely automatic, like a diagnostic readout on a failing machine.
Dr ██████: Wait a minute, though. If we're assuming these…pre-expiration ramblings…along with the spoken numbers, are somehow referencing the planet Draugr, how does that fit with its discovery? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it only very recently found? So if we didn't even know this exoplanet existed, let alone have a name for it, there's no way anyone could be chirping things about Draugr. Even if our subjects somehow were aware of the planet before the rest of us, they couldn't possibly have known we'd one day give it that name.
Researcher █████: They couldn't possibly…but they did. All our experiments predate Draugr's discovery and yet a significant number of them resulted in subjects making direct references to Norse mythology, immediately prior to reeling off their age on a far-flung planet whose name would eventually link to the statement they just made.
Dr ██████: That makes no sense.
Researcher █████: I know. And yet the evidence…
Dr ██████: The evidence confirms exactly what you're saying. Well, I suppose we can add this to the long, long list of inexplicable phenomena we've witnessed since enrolling with the Foundation. [Sighing] Alright, why Draugr? What's there?
Researcher █████: Not an awful lot, to be frank. It's in a dead system some two thousand three hundred light years away along with two other planets, orbiting a rapidly spinning pulsar. Pretty inhospitable, by all accounts. The beam of radiation emitted from the collapsed star is enough to vaporise more or less anything.
Dr ██████: And yet, there must be something of interest there. Let's talk to the folks at NASA, see if they can't lend us a hand in probing a bit deeper.
<End Log>
