[the video feed clicks on to Duncan setting up the camera. He pulls away, hands held up tentatively while he waits to make sure everything's working how it should and nothing's going to fall over. The setting behind him is obviously a science lab, and the camera is centered on a pair of double-sided portable whiteboards in front of the counter lining the wall, with a stool sitting somewhere off-center in between them.
Satisfied with the recording setup, Duncan turns around and walks up to the whiteboards, which are both covered in chicken scratch notes and hastily drawn science diagrams. If you can actually read his shitty handwriting, it's a lot of half-formed ideas about nanotech and genetics, and some of it is...concerning. like mad science concerning.
He pauses, staring at the board on the right, which is the one with all the potential mad science on it while the one on the left is mostly just note-taking and calculations. he scrutinizes it for a moment, absently biting his thumbnail, like he's looking for some kind of answer in what he's written there.
it's worth noting that he looks like hell. button-down collared shirt wrinkled in the manner of having been worn for a couple days straight, and he hasn't shaved since whenever he put that shirt on either. he looks exhausted but wired. manic, even, as he looks back toward the camera as if suddenly remembering that it's there. he turns to face it completely.]So.
So, nanomachines, right.
Fuckin'. Fuckin' nanomachines. Nanites. Nano...tech. All that bullshit.
[he is definitely exhausted enough for his accent to be slipping. he's still trying to maintain the neutral American, but his Texas is showing through, and what he winds up with is an inconsistent mess of an amalgamation of the two.]You know what I know 'bout fuckin' nanomachines? Fuckin'. NOTHIN'.
[he smacks a hand against the whiteboard's frame and then is distracted for a second while he straightens it back out.] Nothing. But! I am also a goddamn grad student, so if there's one thing I know how to do, it's motherfucking
research.
So. So nanomachines, alright, nanotech 101, tiny-ass fuckin' machines that can do all kinds of cool shit. They call 'em nanites here, but it's the same shit, it's all nanotech. And their nanotech progress would be fuckin' incredible if they used them for, you know, curin' cancer or what the fuck ever, but no! No, instead they just shove 'em into ImPorts for government surveillance
bullshit. They can use that shit to bring us back from the dead but they can't be fucking bothered to--
[okay, no, deep breath. he holds his hands up like a signal to halt--to, uh, himself? inhale, exhale, lowers his hands, starts over.] Anyway. The government's use of nanomachines on us is irresponsible as fuck, and fuck you if you disagree.
And, uh, the government's hiring ImPorts right now to
improve on their nanotech, so it can't get hacked by Russia again I guess.
But you know what'd work better?
Fucking
not pumping us full of goddamn nanites in the first place.So--so! With that in mind!
[he snatches up a dry erase marker and flips the board over to its reverse side, which is...well, it's equally full of concerningly mad-sciency shit, but he swipes his sleeve across a big arc of it, clearing off a space. he decisively uncaps the pen and then...doesn't...write anything, instead standing poised with it as if he's going to start in a second here.] I say we put our collective science brains together and figure out how to fix this fuckin' nanite problem our own damn selves.
Like. Like would an EMP take them out? Not optimal for the robots, probably. Or we could, uhh, make our own nanites to combat the originals and take them out. Corrosive anti-nanite chemo mix? Find their resonance frequency? Lasers? Fucking. Science is all about lasers, we can probably solve this with lasers somehow.
Or.
[facing the camera again, turning away from the whiteboard. no, he still hasn't written anything down yet.] Or we could engineer fake antibodies to bind to them. Or uhh genetically alter a virus--HIV, right? Perfect. Turn HIV onto the nanites instead of T-cells and let that dismantle 'em exponentially.
Or, um. I don't know, draining all your blood would probably work. I mean, you'd have to be willing to die a little, but I can resurrect people so don't worry about that. Honestly, that's probably the simplest answer.
[that sounds like maybe it should be a joke, but he definitely sounds and looks as serious about it as he did about every other suggestion he threw out. he hasn't slept in three days, his mad science meter is through the roof right now.]