Project Remnant

Cannon Falls National Laboratory - May 7, 1982

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Finally. After all this time, after all of my hard work, I have the materials I need. Once my colleagues see what I've discovered, I'll be sure to earn my respect among the others. Some kept saying I was an under-appreciated genius, others said I was insane. That there was no way to connect paranormal physics with that of scientific physics. How very wrong those people were. My research has provided me with plenty of knowledge over the years, and now, it is time to start my experiment.

The scientist was in a large, confined room, with smooth, white brick walls around him and a black-tiled floor. There were several lights on the ceiling that lit up the room. On one side, there was a gigantic shelf, filled with all sorts of random items, varying from a mysterious candle-holder to a strange, robot-like doll. On the other side there was a separate room, one that was often used for interrogation purposes, with a large glass panel that one could see through. Inside this testing room was a steel dissection table, with a large animatronic endoskeleton that was strapped tightly around its arms and legs to the table.

The endoskeleton was composed of many mechanical parts and animatronic devices, such as wiring, eye and mouth pieces, moving limbs, and voice boxes, as well as two large eyes that seemed to pop out. Overall, it seemed like a bipedal humanoid animatronic endoskeleton, apart from the head, which looked similar to some kind of animal. Its original left hand was torn off and replaced with a brand-new, fully smelted and wired hand that the scientist created for him. Alright, all of the right pieces should be in place now. Let's begin.

The scientist was none other than Dr. Phineas Taggart. He was in around his late thirties, with thick, light brown hair, along with a large, light brown beard, too. Phineas was somewhat of an energy and a chemical scientist, but his particular experiments focused on something that most other scientists wouldn't care to acknowledge. His experiments were focused on researching the concepts and power of human emotion. It's much more insidious than expected I first expected...it emanates from us. It's excreted from us like tears, and it spreads outward like some form of gas, soaking into the surroundings. The emotion he was specifically fond of researching on was agony, or in this case, extreme human suffering, to be specific. Agony, I'm convinced, radiates farther from humans than any other emotion. It's powerful enough to create energy of unknown limitations. My work is focused on this new hypothesis.

Phineas arrived to this conclusion based on his research with the various items on his shelves. He specifically collected objects that were in some way or form associated with any paranormal effects, such as strange visions, to give an example. Their previous owners claimed that they were haunted or cursed. But the objects on his shelves were not possessed by ghosts. The objects that were truly terrifying were energized by agony. It was these objects that would help prove whether or not his hypothesis was correct.

The term "haunted" could mean several things, according to Phineas. It could mean showing signs of torment, a tragedy, or even some kind of severe mental anguish. Most of the objects he collected seemed to tie back to at least one of these kinds of instances. For example, there was a dark steel candle holder, which was one of his most mysterious objects. This was no ordinary candle holder. This item had quite a dark history with its previous owners.

According to the last owners he bought it from, they thought this candle holder was cursed. It turns out that many decades ago, the candle holder belonged to a rich family once, before it was rumored that it was used to murder one of the household members. Ever since, the item has been giving off strange feelings and signs of despair, pain, and anguish, and the previous owners claimed that sometimes at night, they could hear a woman screaming out in fear randomly, with no one else around. It was creepy, but it was just the thing Phineas was looking for.

Other haunted items he had were a few retired torture devices that he bought at an auction. Phineas used this candle holder to test his new hypothesis. I am searching for a way that I can extract whatever agonized energy is contained within these haunted items. If I can take a saturation of agonized energy, and affiliate it with any form of intelligence, even an artificial one, the two will combine. The saturation's energy will theoretically transmit to the intelligence and transform the energy of emotion into the energy of physical action. This energy should give the intelligence power, and possibly give it life to a limited extent. This is what I believe explains what people refer to as "haunted objects". I really dislike using that term, though.

The only problem was figuring out to how obtain this agonized energy. He didn't know what he needed to extract it, but he had another theory that he decided to test. Instead of extracting the energy, Phineas instead smelted the candle holder, and formed a new hand for the endoskeleton out of it. He wasn't sure if it would work, but he had a feeling that even if a said haunted object was smelted, or changed its state of matter, whatever energy inside of it would still be there. All he had to do was find some way to connect it directly to the endoskeleton's AI system.

Fortunately, he was able to gain the blueprints for the endoskeleton from a man named Dave Miller. He was also the one who provided him with the endoskeleton in the first place. It was sent from some kind of children's restaurant with animal mascot animatronics that performed for the customers. I can't remember the name of the place, but I don't really care about that now. I'll have to admit, I was hoping I would receive one of the more advanced models, but I suppose this one will work, too. It was one of the few decent artificial intelligences he could find, so that's why he chose it. Now that he knew what to do, he correctly wired and positioned the newly smelted hand to the animatronic according to the designs, connecting the two.

Theoretically, the energy from that candle holder should now transfer to the endoskeleton once I active it. However, he didn't know whether or not this would work, or to what extent the power would reach if it did work. That is why Phineas decided to place an electricity meter in the testing room to measure how much energy would be transferred if the experiment worked, along with other energy measurement devices. He would also be standing a safe distance away from the endoskeleton when he started the experiment, just in case anything dangerous would happen. There was no way of telling what would happen.

Time to start my new research. If this works, then I think Project Remnant will hopefully be supported. He decided to use the name "Project Remnant" as sort of a codename for his studies in these kinds of experiments. All he needed now was a power source to bring the endoskeleton to life. He considered giving it an electrical shock at first, but then he looked at the blueprints and saw that it was powered by a small power module located near the chest cavity. Miller also provided him with this early on, thankfully. He put on his protective facial goggles, white lab coat, and gloves before carefully placing the power module near the endoskeleton's chest cavity.

The animatronic didn't seem to move for a few moments, probably because it took a little bit of time before it activated. It gave Phineas just enough time to safely exit the testing room and close the door behind him, watching the endoskeleton through the glass panel. Alright, let's see what you have to offer. He began using the energy devices to measure how much energy was being emitted from the animatronic. For the first few minutes, nothing too special occurred. The endoskeleton powered up, but the devices didn't show any energy levels that were beyond the current power module, and it didn't act in any unusual way.

Only a few minutes later, the devices started showing a small increase in energy, and Phineas noticed something peculiar about the endoskeleton now. Before it was just making normal movement, but it couldn't do much since it was strapped to the dissection table. Now it started jerking, in some kind of odd, spastic dance. Also, while all this happened, Phineas noticed that the lighting in the room and the area around him dimmed down, as it wasn't nearly as bright as before. Hmm...intriguing. Are the movement and the lights caused by this energy transfer?

He started writing down his observations in his little notebook to keep track of his progress. For the next few minutes, the endoskeleton would continue to jerk around until the devices detected a much larger power signal than before. At that exact moment, the endoskeleton started jerking around much more violently, no longer in some kind of dance, but seemingly rather trying to break free of the restraints. Good thing I made sure to strap the robot firmly, Phineas thought. The lights also started flickering on and off randomly at a slow pace. Now this is something I didn't expect. He kept writing in his notebook.

Then, in an instant, the devices picked up even stronger power signals, but now there was something else that was different. The endoskeleton was still violently shaking, but now a loud and painful screech could be heard coming from it. The screech didn't sound like anything normal, almost supernatural, actually, and it spooked Phineas because it was so unexpected to him. The lights started unnaturally flickering on and off much faster now. All of this happening at the same time made him both very confused and terrified, as he was about to run off and abandon the lab to get to safety.

He quickly stopped when all of a sudden, the lights went back to normal, and the horrible screeching and shaking stopped, too. The endoskeleton was only vibrating slightly now, too powerless to be considered a threat. The devices recorded a significant decrease in the energy levels being recorded. He was sure that he would be getting a long talk with his boss about what happened with the lighting and everything, but that was the least of his concern now. I can always deal with that later.

Phineas entered the testing room and made sure to carefully remove the power module from the endoskeleton, successfully shutting it down. The animatronic stopped vibrating and stayed still. After he calmed himself down, Phineas recorded the rest of the experiment's results down.

Given the results, I'd say this experiment was only a small victory. From what I can tell, perhaps the energy from the candle holder was transferred to the robot, but I didn't expect it to be this intense. It looked like it was working for a moment, but then it just gave up at the end. Why did it do that? Maybe I didn't calculate this correctly. I think the agonized energy did transfer to the animatronic, but it wasn't enough to fully power it. That could be why it didn't work. It appears that a single haunted item doesn't contain enough agonized energy to power a machine like this.

Or maybe it's due to smelting the candle-holder in this first place. Perhaps some energy was lost or something? I'm not sure. Paranormal properties are much harder to study and understand than scientific properties. Researching this is going to be long and difficult. Phineas decided to write down his predictions and ideas for what he did wrong, and what he should do in the next experiment. But before I do another experiment like this, I need to better understand what this agonized energy I'm dealing with is. Once that's done, I can make progress.