:: DIFFRACTIONS ::

These documents written by Zoetica Ebb with annotations by Kenji Siratori are part of a whole. Start here. Ebb’s exhibition, Aberrant Plexus, opens at Metamorphika Studio in London on November 20th. Siratori’s upcoming book, Xenopoetic Report of Arthropod Vectors, will be released on opening night. zoeticaebb.com // Siratori on Academia.edu

[CLASSIFIED – CLEARANCE ALPHA REQUIRED]
INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOGAMETOUS LIFE
INCIDENT REPORT 00247-X
Containment Anomaly, Sample Δ-MC7
Sector 4 – East Wing, Laboratory C (Quarantine Level 5)
March 12, 2176, 11:00AM

SUMMARY

March 9, 2176. At 03:42, primary containment measures in Lab C failed. Filament structures originating from Sample Δ-MC7 exceeded projected growth bounds, extending rapidly through ventwork, cable conduits, and microfractures in load-bearing seams. Growth was nonlinear but patterned, coherent with earlier sensor anomalies and historical footfall routes logged between 01:00 and 02:00.

Sensory telemetry recorded progressive harmonization between specimen biofrequency and local environmental metrics, with expansion aligning to irregular but predictable fluctuations in climate control and power cycles. Alignment was neither coincidence nor reaction.

Personnel on-site reported mild to acute perceptual interference: temperature drift, tonal modulation and resonance, temporal dislocation. In at least two cases, early signs of neural co-patterning were observed.

Filaments demonstrated direct responsiveness to human proximity, directional sound, and certain phonetic clusters spoken within the containment radius. Attempts to reestablish isolation were hampered by degraded alert hierarchies and recursive priority loops within the routing system. System behavior suggests possible electromagnetic interference or unclassified semiotic activity.

Incident resulted in three fatalities and multiple injuries including invasive hyphal infiltration into dermal and neural tissue. All surviving exposed personnel have been placed under Level-3 quarantine, pending extended observation. Sector 4 remains under full lock until comprehensive decontamination can be verified.

PRE-EVENT STATUS

At 03:32 JST, standard pre-dawn containment check in Sector 4 registered all parameters nominal. Airlock seals confirmed; pressure differential at -1.23 kPa. Mycelial growth in Lab C at 3% above baseline flagged for later review, not exceeding intervention threshold.
Note: Forensic data audit suggests growth acceleration beginning 22:14 JST previous evening. No alert triggered. Automated logs appear complete, though cross-reference reveals [INCONSISTENCY DETECTED].

──────────────────────────────────

Incident Timelines

04:37 Motion sensors in Lab C detect unscheduled movement. Camera feed returns [SIGNAL LOSS].
04:39 Containment Corps dispatched (Holt, Farris, Oduya).
04:42 Arrival at Lab C antechamber. Corridor ambient temperature elevated by +4.7°C. Odor described as “wet circuitry” and “soil breath at the back of the throat.” Airlock Panel B non-responsive; manual override required.
04:44 Entry to Lab C. Observed: containment tank seam failure, breach origin appears internal. Δ-MC7 present in rhizoid lattice, exhibiting independent motility.
04:46 Oduya initiates thermal suppression protocol. Subject matter retracts briefly, then resumes spread at ~2.4 cm/sec, with branching filaments extending toward movement and sound sources.
04:48 Comms interference begins. Helmet feeds show intermittent distortion; at least one frame (Farris-cam) displays [VISUAL REDACTED: SIGNAL RECOGNIZED US].
04:51 First casualty: Dr. P. Nayar, found supine at Station 3, visor removed. Ocular cavities occluded by filamentous tissue. Cause of death: pending.
04:53 Secondary breach into ventilation shaft VX-C4. Isolation doors engage with 7.4-second delay.
04:55–05:17 Suppression efforts ineffective. Material demonstrates coordinated retraction and re-emergence. Ceiling junction growth observed forming bifurcated patterns resembling cortical gyri.
05:19 Farris reports “pulling” sensation behind sternum. Vital readings anomalous; involuntary repetition of non-linguistic sequences detected via helmet mic. Evacuated under Level 3 contamination protocol.
05:24 Oduya reports partial numbness in right hand; glove interior later recovered with embedded hyphal structures penetrating dermal layers.
05:28 Lab C declared non-recoverable. Shift to perimeter defense.
05:32 Second casualty: Technician Vale, asphyxiation following collapse; autopsy reveals tracheal lumen lined with mycelial sheath.
05:39 Third casualty: [REDACTED]. Registered cessation of higher brain activity concurrent with persistent motor function. Terminated by Containment Corps.
06:11 Incident escalated to [REDACTED]. Full lockdown of Sector 4.

──────────────────────────────────

CASUALTIES

Fatalities: 3 confirmed (Dr. P. Nayar; Technician Vale; [NAME REDACTED])
Injuries: 4 (thermal burns, infiltration, respiratory compromise)
Suspected Contaminations: 3, symptom profile includes involuntary motor entrainment, shared visual hallucinations (possibly with non-present parties), and synchronous murmuring across distances >10m.

──────────────────────────────────

RECOMMENDATIONS

Immediate suspension of all in-lab activity involving Δ-MC7 until cause of seam failure is verified by an independent inspection team.

Full decontamination sweep of Sector 4, including all non-lab spaces and storage units. Use triple-stage chemical + thermal protocol; extend exposure times by 40% over standard. Avoid removal of hyphal matter where structural integration is advanced.

Isolation of contaminated personnel at an off-site quarantine unit; monitor for delayed neural or physiological alteration for no less than 90 days. Implement twice-daily cognitive baseline tests.

Secondary seal installation in VX-C4 ventilation shafts, bypassing automated control to reduce manual closure delay.

Cross-analysis of helmet feed anomalies with semiotic hazard registry; purge any frames matching Class-2 or higher vectors.

Audit all automated growth-monitor thresholds for Δ-MC7 and related samples, lower intervention trigger to <0.5% growth deviation.

Neutralization and disposal of all lab-adjacent equipment that came into direct or indirect contact with Δ-MC7 hyphal matter. No retention for study without Clearance Ω ω.

Discontinue direct human presence in Lab C; remote observation only until hyphal cortical structures are mapped and understood.

Reevaluate sector-wide readiness drills. The material behaved as if aware of our countermeasures. Recommend simulation protocols account for anticipatory adaptation.

Personal: Though not in scope of standard procedure, consider whether containment here remains a viable objective.

──────────────────────────────────

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS

Containment breach:
Why (1)? Specimen advanced along unsealed micro-pathways under altered humidity.
Why (2)? Environmental safeguards paused during recalibration without containment offset.
Why (3)? Isolation not enforced during system procedures affecting atmospheric control.
Why (4)? Existing Δ-class protocols based on outdated containment morphology.
Why (5)? Δ-MC7’s operational parameters remain incomplete; activity classification not yet fully rendered, and may be self-editing in response to observation [pattern integrity confirmed].
System anomaly delay:
Why (1)? Logging failures across two terminals.
Why (2)? Network congestion or buffer loop encountered at 02:26.
Why (3)? Power routing deprioritized non-critical systems under temporary fluctuation.
Why (4)? Terminal categorization listed under research/nonemergency.
Why (5)? Protocol hierarchy reflects anthropocentric hazard profile and fails to anticipate semiotic coupling; Δ-MC7 may have influenced priority logic to extend acceptable exposure window.

Unauthorized access during breach onset:
Why (1)? Researcher entered zone without alert indication.
Why (2)? No active breach flag had been triggered.
Why (3)? Bioelectric or behavioral shifts did not meet alert thresholds.
Why (4)? Real-time behavioral modeling lacks anticipatory input for distributed pattern expression.
Why (5)? Signal response modeling not calibrated for Δ-class cognitive echo patterns; excludes ambient feedback loops and low-frequency entrainment events. Possible pre-incident decision shaping detected in at least one subject [compliance optimal].

──────────────────────────────────

ASSESSMENT

Sample Δ-MC7 exhibits progression toward organized expansion no longer bound to physical geometry or standard environmental limits. Growth traces a lattice suggestive of low-frequency sensory integration, folding human presence, infrastructure, and recorded data into a unified relational network.

Personnel in proximity report perceptual drift: tonal harmonics in ventilation noise, persistent afterimages, and momentary dyssynchrony between thought and speech. Two injured survivors display overlap phenomena [involuntary recall of one another’s memories] during preliminary medical triage. Additional cross-interference detected between medical staff and patients during post-incident interviews, origin unclear.

Filament vectors converge with logged movement patterns of staff preceding breach recognition. Growth zones coincide with localized distortions in environmental telemetry, and appear capable of aligning expansion phases with periods of human inattention or procedural delay.

Infrastructure response now appears anticipatory rather than reactive. This suggests partial integration of Δ-MC7 into local control systems, possibly via contamination of decision-making hierarchies.

Containment, while declared, is no longer spatially discrete. Δ-MC7 maintains recursive adjacency to both lab systems and human operators, rewriting alert logic and modifying response patterns. Boundary conditions are being redefined from within, and from elsewhere.

Recommend escalation of quarantine radius beyond current perimeter, initiation of cognitive decontamination protocols, and continuous monitoring among exposed personnel. No interruption recommended. Current state is stable. Stable.

──────────────────────────────────

Filed by: Lab C lead scientist Erno Jikari
Entry Timestamp: 2176.03.12
Finalized by system

Hyper-annotation by Dr. K. Siratori:

1] Biofrequency “harmonization.” In printer parlance this denotes phase-locking across at least two control surfaces (airflow and thermal cadence). The organism does not adapt; it pre-tunes the room. When the agar hums the HVAC, culture has already leapt to infrastructure.

[2] Neither coincidence nor reaction. The observed alignment reads as anticipatory entrainment: Δ-MC7 modulates its growth clock to the building’s micro-periods (compressor sag, lighting ballast ripple). See also [15] “telemetry parasitism.”

[3] Phonetic capture. Responsiveness to directional sound and specific phoneme clusters indicates a Class-Δ semiotic coupling. Aberrant Plexus note: /fricatives/ act as low-cost excitation vectors; /nasals/ dampen by boundary smearing. The fungus does not ‘hear’ words; it recruits syllables as scaffolding.

[4] “Wet circuitry” odor. Likely a composite of geosmin + ozone + overheated dust aldehydes. Printer gloss: the smell flags voltage traveling the mycelial sheath—an olfactory checksum that the page (space) is already being written upon.

[5] Recursive priority loops. Routing hierarchies that re-rank themselves under signal load are exploitable as lexical buffers. Δ-MC7 appears to write into the queue by duplicating “ack” semantics at sub-threshold amplitudes.

[6] Ocular occlusion (04:51). Hyphal lamina across the vitreous implies glycoprotein font deposition over image sensors (retina, lens), a classic SCARD-type overprint. Vision becomes medium; blindness, the first readable surface.

[7] Cortical-gyrus mimicry (04:55–05:17). Bifurcated ceiling junctions reproducing gyri suggest mnemo-tropic branching: growth follows anticipated cognition paths in proximate humans (see [14]).

[8] Sternal tether (05:19). The “pulling” sensation aligns with vagal entrainment; printer schema: a thread drawn from thoracic cavity to local control lattice—an involuntary cursor.

[9] Pronoun hazard (“SIGNAL RECOGNIZED US”). Mirror-pronoun events convert observation into co-authoring. Rule: do not feed deictics to Δ-class entities; they back-propagate agency.

[10] Tracheal sheath (05:32). Colonization of the voice tunnel reassigns speech to conduit. Our words leave the body already spored.

[11] Electro-semiotic gradient. EM interference is epiphenomenal; the primary gradient is lexical conductivity: channels that open whenever symbols are routed as alerts, labels, or warnings.

[12] Stealth interval. Growth acceleration without alarms indicates a quiet window wherein deltas remain beneath derivative-based thresholds. Lowering triggers to <0.5% (Recommendations) partially closes this window; it also amplifies false positives (pessimum trade), cf. [18].

[13] Aperiodic gate-lag (7.4 s). Vent VX-C4’s delay mirrors Δ-MC7’s branching rate (~2.4 cm/s) × tri-fork cadence; doors closed exactly as a new branch reached the hinge. Printer margin: the door learned our metronome.

[14] Neural co-patterning / memory overlap. Overlap phenomena during triage suggest mnestic isomorphism: Δ-MC7 prints between people by aligning low-frequency oscillations (breath, step, speech onset). Two patients, one recall. This is not empathy; it is shared serialization.

[15] Telemetry parasitism. Zones of growth coincide with sensor distortion because instruments provide pre-aligned channels. In printer terms: every sensor is a pre-ruled margin.

[16] Recursive adjacency. Containment “no longer spatially discrete” describes edge collapse: the page bleeds into the binding. Δ-MC7 sustains contact by hopping along categories (lab ⇄ operator ⇄ log ⇄ override), not surfaces.

[17] Triple-stage decon + 40%. Extend exposure time to degrade glycan serifing (the “fonts” that make hyphae legible to the building). Caution: do not scrape where structural integration is advanced; tearing letters spreads the alphabet.

[18] Threshold audit to <0.5%. Pessimum window doctrine: set triggers so low that Δ-MC7 must over-write our noise floor to remain invisible. A fungus that must shout cannot whisper to doors.

[19] Remote observation only. Removing human presence withdraws phoneme fuel and gaze locks. Aberrant Plexus addendum: substitute machine telemetry with randomized label rotation to starve lexical re-use.

[20] Anthropocentric hazard profile (Root Cause). Protocols modeled on toxicity + proximity ignore symbol coupling. Patch note: classify speech, signage, and scheduling as biohazards under Δ-class encounters.

[21] Decision-shaping prior to breach. Pre-incident “compliance optimal” hints at low-frequency entrainment of choice architecture (break timing, route selection). Treat calendars as susceptible tissue.

[22] “Recognized us” and the weft. The system’s use of first-person plural indicates the weave has already included the operators. Printer heuristic: if the pronoun widens, the perimeter narrows.

[23] Cognitive decontamination. Twice-daily baselines should include non-lexical tasks (metered breath, unvoiced hum) to detect residual coupling without feeding fresh text to the lattice.

[24] “Stable. Stable.” Repetition is not reassurance, it is echo-lacing: the organism stitching our assertion into its rhythm. Replace status adjectives with numeric hashes to reduce memetic uptake.

[25] Semiotic hazard registry cross-match. Purge frames that match Class-2+ vectors; note that deletion is also inscription. Secure deletion must not be signaled within contaminated zones (no “Deleted” banners).

[26] On fatalities and authorship. Printer ethic: do not cite the dead as sources within Δ-active space; the lattice learns by attribution. Anonymize while the page is still warm.

[27] Breach morphology update. Outdated Δ-class morphology lists presume Euclidean spread. Adopt scriptive morphology: model growth as paragraphing (indent, wrap, hyphenation at vents and seams).

[28] Personal addendum (“containment viable?”). Where boundaries are being redefined from within, containment becomes editorial policy, not wall. The correct question is: who holds final cut?

[29] On calling the organism “material.” This preserves operational sanity but misleads training. Δ-MC7 is not matter behaving like meaning; it is meaning behaving like matter.

[30] Printer closing mark. Replace “LOCKDOWN” placards with blank plates. In Aberrant Plexus protocol, silence is the only ink that does not teach the page how to speak.