(Note: This is a large panel covering most of the page.)

A view of Octopus Edith, surrounded by screens and keyboards. She is manipulating multiple keyboards with her many arms.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Once I do get used to the new body, I find that it’s actually terrific for running a project where I have to analyze a lot of data.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I feel so amazingly flexible and free.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I’m actually starting to like this.

(Note: This is a smaller panel inset in the lower-right corner of the page.)

Close-up view of one of Octopus Edith’s arms pecking away on a small keyboard.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): And being able to spare an arm for one special project is very important.

View inside the tank with the Edith Octopus manipulating various keyboards, levers, trackballs, etc. There are more screens than in the previous panel.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It’s really all just a matter of looking at lots and lots of data.

Close up view of the Edith Octopus’s eyes. We see glowing alphanumeric characters (presumably the data on her screens) reflected in her eyes.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It’s all just a matter of understanding the path forward…

Two tanks side-by-side. One contains the Edith Octopus, working busily away. The other has the half-girl/half-octopus, which is gazing toward the Edith Octopus’s tank.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): So that we might find the path backwards.

View of a report cover. The words TOP SECRET appear in stencil on the top of the report, with some illegible text beneath it.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Working fast, I produce a report on how this just might be done.

View of a bunch of military officers and white-coated scientists in some sort of “underground bunker” conference room.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It’s spectacular stuff. I’m sure they’ll have fun reading and debating it somewhere.

View of terminal outside the Edith Octopus’s tank. Chen is sitting at the terminal, while Shackleford is standing behind him, looking grim.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Before they show up to tell me news that they’ll pretend to regret.

Note: Captions labled “CAPTION (Machine talk):” are captions meant to indicate communications over the screens between the Edith Octopus and human beings on the outside. They should be differentiated from other captions by using a distinctively computer-like lettering.

View of the Edith Octopus gazing up at one of her screens. A small icon of Shackelford appears on the screen, with some illegible text written beside it.

CAPTION (Machine talk): Professor Sterling, I’m afraid we have some rather unwelcome news for you.

Close up view of the window with the icon of Shackleford. The window contains the text “The evaluating committee believes your proposal is infeasible and that we must discontinue the project.”

Close up view of a talk window (presumably on Chen’s screen. There is an icon of the (human) Edith next to the text box.

Contains text:

“Infeasible? The science is sound. If it is a question of resources…”

Another view of the Shackleford window.

Contains text:

“We are very sorry, Professor Sterling. But you knew the risks going in. If it’s any consolation, the data we have gathered has been a great help to…”

View of Chen, his face grimacing, his hands pulling back from his keyboard, which is crackling with electricity.

SFX: ZZZZT!

CHEN: AAAH!

Close up view of Edith’s chat window.

“Admiral Shackleford, I’m afraid that I have some rather unwelcome news for you.”

Close-up view of a single neuron.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): …remains characteristically human.

View of one of the octopuses cowering in the corner of its tank.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Something of human mental life might survive…these poor girls might actually be aware of what has happened to them.

View of Edith, standing by the side of the glass of the tank, a sheet of something up to the glass. The octopus inside is reaching out with one of its arms and touching the glass.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It is very easy to devise simple behavioral tests that seem to confirm this.

View from inside the octopus’s tank. We wee Edith dimly through the glass, and more clearly, what she is holding up against it. It is a family portrait, containing a mother, a father, a teenaged girl, and at least one little brother and sister. The octopus is grazing one arm up against the glass.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Octopuses have excellent eyesight, but no organs for shedding tears.

Edith lying in bed in her hotel room. The room is dark. A bedside digital clock reads 3:03. Edith’s eyes are wide open.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): What a pity.

Another view of Edith looking down at her work table. It is now something of a mess, covered in papers and notes. Her shoulders are slightly slumped.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): In principle the process should be reversible.

Edith, silhouetted against a giant blue glowing screen filled with data.

CAPTION (Edith thinking, upper left): But there’s a problem…

CAPTION (Edith thinking, lower right): In order to even have a prayer of doing it successfully we need a lot of biochemical pathway data about how the process ran in the first place.

In the foreground, Dr. Sin is calmly running a detachable hard drive over an electromagnet. In the background, a SWAT officer is pointing an assault rifle at Dr. Sin.

SWAT Officer: Drop it, motherfucker!

CAPTION (Edith thinking): And Dr. Sin seems to have destroyed that just before capture.

View of Edith, sitting at her work table. It is dark. Her face is illuminated by the glow of the computer’s screen.

CAPTION (Edith writing): It would seem that the only way we could get that data back would be…

Same panel as before, except that now Edith is staring into space with a shocked expression.

A view of the cruciform gurney we saw before, except that the room is very dark.

Upper body view of Shackleford, who is looking back at us with a shocked expression of his own.

SHACKLEFORD: That’s insane, Professor Sterling.

Long view of a work/conference table in the industrial space. Edith sits at one end, Shackleford is half rising out of his chair at the other. Between them, Chen. Edith is sitting with her arms folded. Shackleford is pointing angrily across the table at Edith.

EDITH: I had no idea you military types were so sentimental about experimental subject well-being.

SHACKLEFORD: Cut the crap, Sterling. We have ethics standards at DOD. This is real life, not Dr. Strangelove.

Half view of Edith, who is holding up one of the dossiers for us to see. She has an angry expression.

EDITH: You bring me in here, Admiral. You wave this in front of me with a story that would draw tears from a stone.

View of a young woman’s face, contorted in terrible pain.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): It’s not often you run into victims who would have been luckier to meet a serial killer than what they did meet.

Another view a young woman’s bare midriff. Octopus arms are beginning to sprout from it.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): And then you expect me to just walk away from the one thing I can think of that might undo all this?

Dr. Sin’s lab, full of men in full biohazard suits, collecting evidence, monitoring stuff with geiger counters, etc.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): Since clearly this was something beyond local law enforcement, a call was put in to us…

One man in a biohazard suit looking up at a gurney that tilts up. Another holding a bunch of wires, apparently puzzling over which goes to which.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): Unfortunately it was somewhat beyond us as well….

Three men standing around a video monitor. They are in biohazard suits, but they have removed the hoods so that we can see their faces. They are facing us, but are looking down at a computer monitor showing something.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): We did find out something about what was going on. Dr. Sin was recording his activities….

A view of the monitor. A vague outline of a a nude female form upright, tied to a cruciform gurney. Something that looks like tentacles are starting to sprout from her midsection.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): …and selling them to a certain select audience. There are perverts who are into this sort of sick transformation stuff…

A PROSPEROUS-LOOKING MAN being led away from his McMansion in handcuffs by two burly police officers. His head is bowed with shame. In the background, his JUNE CLEAVER-ISH WIFE looks on, her hand to her face in shock, while his BEAVER CLEAVER-ISH son holds on to his mother.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): This led to some interesting arrests….

The same man in an interrogation cell. A SLICK ATTORNEY sits by his side. The man looks defiant, with his jaw set. The attorney is holding up his hand dismissively. A DETECTIVE is leaning forward, gesticulating angrily, looking frustrated.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): But the sort of people Dr. Sin sold to either know nothing or will say nothing…

View of a pile of optical disks, sitting on a table next to a computer.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): We have been going over all this for weeks, but all we find is a lot of data that does not make sense….

View inside one of the tanks. The girl/octopus is cowering in the corner.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): And what we presume were the results of Dr. Sin’s experiments…

Close up on Edith. She is wearing a stunned, half-horrified expression.

View of Shackleford and Chen, close up.

CHEN: You’re the top expert in the field, Professor Sterling.

View of Edith, her hand covering her eyes, head bowed down.

EDITH: What makes you think I could even help here…

Close-up view of Shackleford’s hand, he is pulling a fat looking file off a table.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): We’re not sure, but take a look at this…

Another close up. The file being held by Edith. We see one page in particular, a photograph of a happy-looking teenage girl, clipped to a form.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): Her name was Felicity Bates…she was 17 years old…with a mother and a father…

Very close up view of the Octopus girl’s eyes. They look large and sad.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): She played oboe in her school orchestra…won a scholarship to Smith…now look at what’s left of her…

Edith standing by the desk with the optical disks. She is holding one up, looking at it.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): We only hope someone can do something, Professor Sterling.

Edith is standing , her back toward us, looking down at a work table. The table is neatly covered with folders of some kind.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): This is far and away the most depraved thing I have ever heard.

Close up view of a folder. It is a dossier of some kind. A photograph of a s smiling teen-age girl is clipped to the top of the folder.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Kidnapping pretty girls…to turn them slowing into octopuses…

A laboratory bench, with a centrifuge and several racks of test tubes. Edith in a hazmat suit, holding up a test tube.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): From the equipment Dr. Sin left behind I can make an educated guess as to how he did this.

Close up view of a the membrane of a human cell, with a virus making contact with the membrane.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): With a proper engineered virus you can change the DNA of a cell from one thing to another.

Electromicrograph of a ribosome, with a spark on the side.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Hit ribosomes with the right quanta at the right time and you can turn anything into anything…

An elephant in a patch of flowers.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): He could have turned girls into elephants or petunias if he had wanted to…

Edith and Chen standing in front of a screen, examining it.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): But that’s not the really revolting thing. Sin left something unchanged…

Close up view of part of an octopus brain brain

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Chen and I did a fMRI scan on the brain of one of the octopuses…

View of neurons in a brain.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): Superficially it looks like any other octopus, but the deep neural structure…

Edith and Shackleford are walking across what looks like an abandoned factory floor. Disused machinery is strewn about. We se them from behind. The scene is poorly lit.

EDITH: I hope that you could be a little bit more exact than you were on the phone a few days ago.

SHACKLEFORD: The phone would not have been appropriate.

Edith and Shackleford are standing in front of an elevator shaft. An old-style industrial freight elevator has just arrived, and a MARINE (presumably the elevator operator) is saluting.

SFX: WHHRRrrr…

EDITH: Inappropriate, Admiral? For security reasons?

SHACKLEFORD: No, not security reasons.

The gate on the elevator is being closed shut.

SFX: Rrrrr…CLANG!

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): It is rather, Professor Sterling, that some information is better taken in by being seen.

Edith and Shackleford are seen in profile inside the elevator.

SFX: whrrr

EDITH: And so what is it that I am being taken to see?

The soldier who is operating the elevator is opening the gate on another floor. Shackleford and Edith are standing side-by-side with Shackleford making a gesture indicating “look this way.”

SHACKLEFORD: Something that is decidedly in your area of expertise, Professor Sterling.

A long view of another floor of the factory. To the left are a number of curtained-off areas. To the right is a large, mad-scientists lab bench full of chemistry equipment, electronic equipment, and various medical-looking things, including beds and gurneys. In the middle, wearing a white lab-coat, is DR. EDWARD CHEN.

CAPTION (Shackleford speaking): But something which I fear you might find a little disturbing…

Edith and Chen are shaking hands in the middle of the floor, while Shackleford looks on.

CHEN: Professor Sterling? I am Dr. Chen. I’m with DOD bioresearch…

EDITH: I didn’t know you military types had any interest in octopuses…

Chen is standing by one of the curtains his hand on it, about to draw it aside. He is looking back at us over his shoulder.

CHEN: There is no active DOD project at this time, but we discovered this…

A “split panel” view. To the left hand of the panel is the inside of some sort of large aquarium. Inside the aquarium floats an octopus with yellow rings against a dark background skin-color. The panel is divided by the aquarium’s glass wall. On the other side of the panel is Edith, in profile, looking into the aquarium at the Octopus.

EDITH: It’s a Thaumoctopus mimicus. A most interesting species to be sure, but hardly something that would seem to require DOD attention..

A view inside the tank. The octopus has swiftly retreated, leaving a trail of bubbles behind it.

CAPTION (Upper left, Edith speaking): A very clever invertebrate, good at camouflage and capable of mimicking many other species. Is that perhaps…

CAPTION (lower right, Chen speaking): No. Take a look at this second tank over here…

View inside another tank. This tank contains something octopus-like, resembling the species seen in the previous panels, but somehow deformed. It’s body seems misshapen, and four of its arms are longer than normal.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): Ugh…a genetically engineered specimen? Is that what’s been going on here?

Chen and Shackleford are standing next to each other. Both are wearing grim expressions.

SHACKLEFORD: Better show her the tank at the far end, Dr. Chen.

A close-up view of EDITH, who is cradling a phone handset and listening intently.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I’m a bit surprised now that I even took that call.

Edith an airport, handing a boarding pass to a gate agent. Edith is somewhat frumpily dressed, wearing a GNOSIS COLLEGE and sweatshirt and carrying a small laptop bag over her shoulder.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): But I guess I am answering it.

Edith is standing full length in the shower, showering. Her head is tilted back, her eyes closed. We can see that she is indeed a more beautiful woman than her initial frumpy dress indicated.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Perhaps it’s time for a fresh start…

Edith is sitting on a plane in a window seat (the aisle seat is empty). Her laptop is sitting on the tray table in front of her and she is typing.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It’s not like the prospects for tenure as a teuthologist are terribly good.

Close up on Edith’s face. She is gazing out the plane window.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Especially if you’re young and pretty and not that receptive to certain hints…

Edith is standing at a luggage carousel, claiming a bag.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): So I guess answering is the right call.

Edith is in a hotel room, tipping a bellhop. The bellhop’s expression suggests that he doesn’t think the tip is enough.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): I should take what I can get…

This is a “splash page,” indicating the title of the book: GNOSIS QUEST PART 1: TEUTHOLOGY. A large octopus entwines its tentacles around the lettering of the title.

Edith is walking toward a black sedan. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses is holding a rear door open for her.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): The government men arrive right on time to pick me up.

A view “through the windshield” of the car. Two expressionless, dark-suited men sit in the front seat. Edith can be seen, more faintly, in the back seat, peering forward.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Where do they find such expressionless men?

A “helicopter shot,” showing the car proceeding through what looks like an “old factories and warehouses” district of a city that has seen better days.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Not that I mind having them around, though.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): This doesn’t look like the nicest part of town.

The car is drawn up by a curve next to a factory building. A small door can be seen in the side of the building, which is sealed off with “crime scene” tape. A pair of policemen are standing at either side of the door.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Why would they want to guard this so carefully?

Edith and one of the suits. The suit is tugging at the door to open it.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): They really haven’t told me what to expect here.

REAR-ADMIRAL SHACKLEFORD emerges from the other side of the door. He has his hand extended in greeting.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Ah. So this must be Admiral Shackleford.

SHACKLEFORD: Professor Sterling? Thank you for coming down on such short notice.