Daniel had thought it had been a mundane occurrence at first, he had been writing an essay for college, a paper on Dracula. He had thought his professor was a nut but the madman still controlled his grades. He still questioned the sanity of having an Engineering student take multiple liberal arts credits. It didn't make much sense to him but who was he to complain.
He had completed the majority of his finals without issue, his English professor had assigned an essay as the final assessment. A 20 page essay on one of the books they read for class this semester. Seeing as The other books read in the class were rather dry and unpleasant to read, Bram Stoker had won the draw.
He had been furiously typing with both hands on the keyboard but hey clearly remember also taking a drink from the cup next to him. The cup inquisition was a massive 2 gallon water jug and not something he could pick up easily. Daniel was desperately trying to justify the occurrence of two contradicting events in his mind. He clearly had still been typing on his keyboard yet something had quenched his thirst.
He then went to scratch his head at the conundrum and he did. But he was still typing his essay. He looked at his arms continuing to type away at his essay realizing they were still typing without him having to devote the mental effort into his essay. He then cocked his head to see his right arm scratching at the back of his head, then looked back to see his right arm typing in front of the keyboard.
There was something surreal about the sight in front of him but his mind was having trouble putting a finger on the exact issue in front of him. There was something wrong with the image but he couldn't figure it out. His left hand then proceeded to rub at the stubble growing out of his chin while he pondered the conundrum, all while still working on an essay.
“Ah, I see” arriving at the crux of the issue. “I seem to have four arms.” The words were spoken with an almost absolute calm. He then proceeded to continue working on his essay until the words “I seem to have four arms.” his typing slowly came to a stop.
Then Daniel “Dice” Jacobs proceeded to grab a pillow from the bed next to it and then screamed into it.
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The local Fae court was starting to push things too far, and while the majority of the Fae in the east Texas compact were against the Wild Hunts held by the Court of Harris, Miller knew that it was unlikely for the Fae to audit themselves over such events. And since the events had been kept on the down low, the ball was still in the mages court. Even so, Agent Miller and the rest of the rest of the Houston field agents had started packing cold iron in their magazines.
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It took Daniel an hour and three cups of tea before he was willing to sit down and go over what he saw. When he had stood up his arms returned to the appropriate number. At first he had thought he was too tense and had hallucinated the experience. But while he had been brewing tea to try and calm himself, multiple arms erupted from his torso. Grabbing his mug, filling his kettle and grabbing and filling a tea pod.
It wasn't until he was pouring the hot water into the cup did he realize that instead of two arms, he had six. Out of curiosity, he thought of having a seventh arm, and if he hadn't been looking for it he would have never sensed the arrival of his seventh arm. Again he thought about one of the arms being banished, and the seventh arm disappeared. He did the same with the others until he only had two arms left. Then looking at his arms, he decided the left one was less useful and thought about it disappearing, nothing happened. He then grabbed a small sky blue notebook from his back pocket and began experimenting.
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The Texas branch of the Arcanist’s Society had been placed in a rather tough place. Because of a misdemeanor With the East Texas compact, The branch had been placed under censure, something that made it hard for them to react to situations in their territory. The Harris court had been taking great advantage of this with their “Wild Hunts”. While the majority of mages couldn't care less about the death of a few mundane's, the actions of the Harris Court had started to arouse the Ire of the feds. Even if they were poor in the magical sense, cold iron and mage buster bullets were good for no one.
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There were two Daniels now, one was sitting in front of his computer furiously typing away, working on homework and the like. The other was sitting on his bed furiously writing in his blue booklet. He had learned that each arm he outputted, the slower his conscious thoughts were. After the tenth arm, his conscious was so faint he couldn't output any more. His next experiment was to create a full body simulacrum. It had been a jump but he had succeeded, sort of, his first simulacrum was nude, unhealthily skinny, had unnaturally long limbs, was completely bald and was missing a face. He had banished that one immediately. His second attempt created a similar monstrosity but this time Daniel did not immediately banish it, the simulacrum refused to move. It wasn't that Daniel couldn't control it, he had the feeling he could, but that it couldn't move. Upon closer inspection, Simulacrum #2 seemed to suffer from ossified joints. It wasn't until attempt ten that the monstrous simulacrums could move, and move they did even if the movements were jerky and stiff. Simulacrum 20 had a more normal physique, minus clothes, hair, genitals, nails and face. However this one's movements were fluid enough to work a keyboard.
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The 20th simulacrum had been given a designation of model 1, rough and weird looking but functional. It had a independence to it, even if Daniel was aware of what the simulacrum was doing but it was independent enough that he didn't need to micromanage it. He left it to work on his home work as he continued to toil creating simulacrum. It was at this point that Daniel started to take better notes.
Gore warning. Clinical descriptions of autopsy, dissection, and vivisection.
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‘24th simulacrum, fixed the fusing of its jaw to the skull present in its predecessors, the atrophy to mandibular muscles are too atrophied to keep the jaw closed, much less allow speech or mastication.’
‘29th simulacrum, the jaw is functional but the inner soft palate and voice box are mangled to all hell. Any attempt at speech results in shrill screeches and pops. Upon vivisection, noise was caused by over tension of vocal cords causing tears in muscles and flaps of tissue sealing up the airway. Note, simulacrums do not seem to need to resperate. Note simulacrum do seem to have partially correct internal anatomy, a small number of bones are missing, the sternum is solid, both the large intestine and ureter end in the pelvis, and several vertebrae were fused together, the results are negligible on the flexibility of simulacrum but marginally increase the durability. Note, simulacrum was still functional with the removal of stomach(empty), intestines both large and small (empty), lungs (upon removal, simulacrum became mute), Heart (continued to pump after removal), Simulacrum also seemed immune to exsanguination, simulacrum seemed to perish after the spinal column was severed. Note, Simulacrum bodies remain even after cessation of life. Note, simulacrum blood and viscera disappear with the banishment of said simulacrum.’
‘38th simulacrum has partially functional vocal structure but sounds partially unnatural. Vivisection shows a lack of nasal cavities, ocular skeletal structures, or cochlear structures present. Upon opening the brain case, several lobes of the simulacrum's brain were either missing or severely atrophied, this includes the occipital and temporal lobes as well as section of the parietal lobe. Currently incapable of measuring the functions of the remaining gray and white matter. Note, the more detailed the simulacrum the greater the strain there is in production, focus of simplifying internal functions and removal of non functioning organs.’
‘39th simulacrum, upon completion of subject, subject showed complete cessation of function and mental connection to subject was cut. Dissection shows significant atrophy to digestive, circulator, and smooth muscles systems. Note, significant trauma to organs seems to be capable of “killing” a simulacrum.’
‘Note simulacrum 40 to 51 were identical to simulacrum 38.’
‘40th simulacrum. Subject’s spinal column was severed above the first vertebrae, immediate cessation of function occurred and mental link was severed. Autopsy showed that all internal systems ceased function seemingly at the same time. Note, find 12 lead EKG and other equipment to perform more exact tests of internal function.’
‘41st simulacrum. Use of a camping knife of approximately 4.5 inches of length and one inch of width to repeatedly stab into the subject's abdomen. Subject experienced cessation of function after the 12th wound. Autopsy shows trauma to what is assumed to be the both abdominal and oblique muscles. The majority of the damage was to the digestive system. 4 perforations to the large intestines, 2 counts to the ascending colon, 1 count to transverse colon and 1 count to the sigmoid. The small intestines suffered 8 perforations and a handful of lacerations. Final blow seems to have caused damage to the superior epigastric vein.’
‘Simulacrum 42 through 51 underwent a similar experience to subject 41. Result, cessation of function seems to occur once enough damage is done to either the circulatory or nervous system however to removal of main organs to the system doesn't seem to count towards damage. Subject 45 ceased function immediately after blade entered chest between 4th and 5th rib, puncturing the pericardial sac and lodging into the left ventricle. Subject 50 suffered immediate cessation of function after blade pierced temporal bone entering the skull. Note, it was assumed that subject 39 failed as major parts of the circulatory system had been excluded from the construct as it was deemed unnecessary to function.’
‘Simulacrum 52 is designated as Type 2, with functional auditory and speech capability mimicking my own. It is capable of detecting the space around it through unknown mechanisms. It is missing both olfactory and ocular organs and such is unsuited for external movement without a modified wardrobe.’
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Thus four days of research went by the majority of being done in the dorm showers. Both of Daniel's roommates had moved out for summer. So the majority of the work had been done in the showers. It had been surprisingly efficient to do autopsies, vivisections and dissections with three pairs of hands and a fourth pair taking notes he would go over after words. It was disturbing how easily his mind allowed him to do such actions, he felt almost like an outside observer. But he needed the data.
Stepping out of the shower room, the first thing he noticed was an odor, his to be specific. He smelled awful. The second thing he noticed was that more than 4 days had passed, he hadn't slept through any of them yet he still felt fine. The final thing he noticed was that the dorm seemed cleaner than he remembered. Stepping back into his room he saw the first simulacrum he had created was folding laundry. He had forgotten that he had sort of left it to its own devices. Shrugging, he grabbed a set of clothes and walked to the shower.