Volume 12: Yaguna Kotor Chapter 585: Crystallization in the Brain
"I have taken cells from more than a dozen places including hair, epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, etc. for examination. Except for blood cells and body fluids, all other cells have a structure similar to the cell wall. The material composition of this structure is still unclear, but if it is composed of cellulose..."
"If it is made of cellulose, these organisms would never be able to exhibit the same animal-like mobility." Ke Lan went on to say that if you magnify the cell wall, it is a bit like the exoskeleton of an insect. But if every part of an insect's body is a hard exoskeleton, then the insect would never be able to move.
"In addition, I discovered another thing... During the dissection process, this cell wall-like structure released a large amount of radiation... I even have reason to suspect that the 'source' of the energy shield generated by this wolf-like creature comes from here."
"Wait...you just said that except for blood cells, all cells have cell wall structures. What about nerve cells? Nerve cells must have a similar structure, right?" Ke Lan asked.
"I didn't find any nerve cells in the tissues of these creatures." Ivan looked at Ke Lan and said seriously, "Now you can understand why I called you over so anxiously."
"No nerve cells... What about the brain? Have you ever done a full body scan on a complete corpse or a living specimen?"
"I scanned it, but because there are a lot of radiation sources in the bodies of these wolf-like creatures, the scanned images are all snowflakes and I can't see anything." Ivan shook his head.
"Wait a minute, I'll make a call." Ke Lan was slightly startled, then immediately reacted, took out his cell phone and dialed a number.
"Is it the escort team? Yes, I'm Ke Lan. Pick out a piece of the remains with a complete head from the specimen immediately... No, send a complete body directly to the biological laboratory at the base. Now, immediately, right away!"
Soon, an almost intact corpse of a wolf-like creature was pushed in on a cart.
This wolf-like creature was killed in a battle with Augustus. Its spine was broken into four pieces, and there were multiple fractures and muscle tears all over its body. There were a lot of hard objects under its skin that could be felt by hand - they were lumps formed by coagulation of internal bleeding... This wolf-like creature was probably thrown to death by Augustus.
Fortunately, her head did not suffer serious injuries and the shape of her skull remained intact, basically meeting the experimental needs of Ke Lan and Ivan.
"Prepare for craniotomy." Ke Lan glanced at Ivan, picked up a pair of medical gloves and put them on, "I'll help you."
"Yeah." Ivan nodded and took out a metal tray from the sterilizer under the table. It was filled with surgical knives that had just been sterilized and a medical electric saw about the size of an electric shaver.
The shape of this medical electric saw is very similar to the electric drills often used in construction, so some people call it a "saw drill" - of course, as long as you change the working head, this thing can also do the work of an electric drill.
"Prepare the skin first." Ivan said. Even though he was dealing with a corpse, he still had to follow all the necessary procedures.
He covered the head of the wolf-like creature with a non-woven towel, shaved the hair at the incision site little by little with a razor, and then disinfected the exposed skin with alcohol and iodine.
"I'm going to start the operation." Ivan glanced at Ke Lan, and after the latter nodded, he picked up a scalpel from the metal tray beside him.
Ivan holds the knife in a pen-like manner. The advantages of this method are that it is easy to control, flexible to operate, and can perform some very delicate movements, but the disadvantage is that the force relies entirely on finger strength. It is generally used to cut blood vessels and nerves, but it is a bit beyond the ability to do so for large and deep incisions such as amputation or chest or craniotomy.
However, this problem does not exist for Ivan... After all, the hand holding the knife is not a real human hand, but a mechanical prosthesis. The power that can be burst out by the prosthetic fingers is even greater than the strength of his core muscles.
As the sharp blade slashed down, the skin on the top of the wolf-like creature's skull was cut open smoothly, and Ke Lan, who was responsible for assisting, used retractors to pull the cut skin to both sides and fixed it to prevent it from closing again and affecting the surgeon's operation.
Ivan's hand did not stop. After cutting the skin, he cut the subcutaneous tissue. Fortunately, the body of this wolf-like creature had just been taken out of the freezer, and there was not a large amount of blood flowing out during the dissection process. Therefore, even if there was no pump to absorb blood in the laboratory, the operation could proceed smoothly.
"Look at this guy's subcutaneous tissue... the skin, fascia, blood vessels, muscles, fat... it's almost exactly the same as that of most mammals." Ivan said to Ke Lan as he arranged the cut items on the plate in different categories .
"To be honest, even though this body has been frozen, the body tissue doesn't feel like it has cell walls... Is it possible that the cell walls we observed under the microscope are just a 'mutated' cell membrane?"
"It's hard to say..." Ivan shook his head slowly. "If there is a structural mutation at the cellular level, then the final form of this creature cannot be like this... Even monsters like the Seed of Corrosion don't have as much cell difference as this creature."
Ke Lan could naturally understand the meaning of Ivan's words. It was like building a house. One of the two architects used concrete as the building material, while the other used wood as the building material... As a result, the houses built by the two architects were almost the same in appearance or interior structure... From the perspective of architecture or biology, this was absolutely impossible.
However, this question cannot be answered with just the simple equipment in this laboratory...and what Ke Lan and Ivan want to confirm is another more straightforward thing.
Ivan had already made marks on the wolf-like creature's skull. He picked up the saw drill, took a deep breath, and then drilled the drill bit into one of the marks.
The teeth-grinding sound of metal and bone rubbing against each other suddenly rang out, and both men stared at the cutting position intently, not daring to even breathe.
Soon, a square cut with a side length of three centimeters appeared on the left side of the wolf-like creature's crown.
The two of them looked at each other at the same time.
"I'm about to witness the result, but I'm a little hesitant." Ivan said self-deprecatingly.
"There's nothing to hesitate about. Haven't we seen enough strange and unreasonable things?" Ke Lan whispered.
"Let's take this opportunity to clarify the speculation that we just didn't say out loud." Ivan said, "Do you want to speak first or should I?"
"I suspect this creature...may not have an organ called 'brain'." Ke Lan said bluntly.
"This is impossible... If there is no brain, then the various behaviors they exhibit cannot be explained by common sense." Ivan shook his head repeatedly - the "brain" they refer to here is not just the "cerebrum" used for thinking, but also includes organs such as the diencephalon, cerebellum, brain stem, etc. These organs not only control the thinking and movement of organisms, but also the operation of various parts of the body, from heartbeat and breathing to hormone secretion and metabolism, all of which require these organs to "give orders"... Without the "brain", the organism will instantly fall into a state of "out of control".
"Then what is your guess?" Ke Lan looked at Ivan and asked.
"I..." Ivan hesitated for half a second before saying, "Although reason tells me it's impossible, my guess is the same as yours... Since there are no nerve cells in other parts of these creatures' bodies, the brain is 'completely useless' to them. Since the signals from the brain cannot be transmitted to various parts of the body, even if this creature originally had a brain, this organ will slowly degenerate over time."
"But," Ivan continued, "It's easy to deal with without a brain, but if there is no cerebellum and brain stem... what is controlling the movement of the body ... controlling its heartbeat and breathing, eating and excretion? Even a robot must have a CPU (central processing unit), right?"
"Perhaps the organ underneath is its CPU?" Ke Lan pointed at the cut skull with tweezers and said, "Won't we know if we open it?"
Ivan nodded solemnly. His mechanical fingertips split into several petals, with a thin metal probe sandwiched between each two petals. He carefully inserted the needles along the cut gap, gently clamped the square bone fragment, and slowly lifted it up...
Below the incision was a layer of pale fascia. Because of the freezing, the blood did not spill out, but perhaps it was precisely for this reason that Ke Lan had an illusion in a trance: it seemed that what they were dissecting was not the body of a freshly killed beast, but a zombie that had been sealed for who knows how many tens of thousands of years.
"It seems... hard." Ke Lan poked the pale , and something beneath the fascia felt hard, which made his heart skip a beat - although the body had been frozen, even the muscles were not frozen so stiff, so how could the brain tissue be as hard as stone.
Of course, the premise is that the organ under this layer of fascia is the brain and not something else.
Ivan did not respond. Instead, he took the smallest surgical instrument and, with the help of tweezers and a picking needle, cut the thin fascia little by little.
The things under the fascia finally appeared in the two people's field of vision, and the two people fell into silence for several seconds.
Under the fascia is not brain tissue frozen into a lump of ice, but a crystal - a multi-faceted crystal that is transparent throughout and has a smooth surface.
"Although it is slightly different from my guess, it is basically the same." Ke Lan was the first to break the silence.
"This thing... is a carbon-based organism?" Ivan's mouth twitched slightly.
"Except for the 'brain', other parts can be considered carbon-based organisms." Ke Lan said.
"Will the brain of carbon-based creatures be a crystal? Or...are these creatures actually robots?"
"I am more inclined to believe that it is a modified organism. The creatures imprisoned in the 'Aguna Kator' are obviously not ordinary beasts." Ke Lan sighed, "Until now, we still haven't figured out the purpose of building this ancient warship... Is it a weapon, a colonization ship like the Ark, or a 'scientific research ship' used for various experiments?"
These wolf-like creatures were obviously not comparable to the crystallized lava leeches in the power room. The latter were more like immigrants who accidentally entered the warship and then found a place "extremely suitable for survival" and settled there; while these wolf-like creatures were more like "artificial creations" deliberately kept in captivity in the warship.
But who keeps them captive? The Alpha Civilization? Or... the mysterious third civilization that built "Aguna Kator"?
There was too little information at hand. Logically speaking, Ke Lan and the others should be ecstatic with such a significant discovery made in the first phase of exploration, but for some reason, Ke Lan wasn't happy at all.
An indescribable feeling of oppression lingered in his heart.
At this moment, Ivan suddenly let out a low cry. Ke Lan quickly looked down and saw that the originally smooth, mirror-like surface of the crystal had become bumpy in just a dozen seconds.
"This thing... it, it is degrading itself?" Ivan was suddenly at a loss, "How could this happen?!"
"Normal." Ke Lan nodded. "This explains why we didn't find this kind of crystal in those mutilated corpses - because all the crystals that were exposed have 'disappeared'."
"What should we do now? Suture the cut fascia?" Ivan tried to pull the fascia with a crochet hook and wrap the crystals again, but he just used a little force and the crystals under the fascia suddenly shattered into powder.
"Try freezing it." Ke Lan said as he walked around to the other end of the dissection table. But before he could lift the body off the dissection table, the crystal had completely disappeared, leaving only an empty cranial cavity.
"Record all of this and send it back to the Ark along with the samples." Ke Lan said to Ivan, "There aren't many samples left. Every time we waste one, we lose an opportunity to study it... If we had known this would happen, we shouldn't have dissected it hastily."
"Crystals that quickly degrade when exposed to air... This is the only information we have so far." Ivan looked at Ke Lan, "Do you think of anything?"
