Caduceus City
The appearance of a thoroughly protocolized environment is, almost, the perfect cover for dark practices.
Late-morning on November 5th, a dispatch ping sent me to the Advanced Research Lab to investigate the death of a Dr. Ori Demmel. It was only my second month working for the Caduceus City Police Department and my previous time had been spent investigating petty theft of lab equipment and the occasional aggravated assault between coworkers. This was the first death I’d encountered on the Caduceus campus, though I’d expect that roughly 20,000 employees working in a high pressure environment would result in the occasional death by heart attack or stroke. I had accepted the Caduceus City job as a cushy way to stave off retirement, but I’d spent the previous 20 years as a homicide detective on the Stockton Police Force. I was used to dealing with death.
As my cart wove along the campus paths, I had my Glasses share a high-level summary of public information on the victim. Dr. Demmel was one of a few Nobel Laureates on the Caduceus payroll and he featured heavily in Caduceus marketing – even I had heard of him. Caduceus had poached him from Stanford a few years back, shortly after their student newspaper published an exposé that accused him of fostering a toxic workplace. He was 57 and divorced, had been living on campus, and his only hobby seemed to be running marathons.
This was the first time I’d visited the Advanced Research Labs and I was greeted at the front desk by Dr. Elizabeth Barvan, Vice President of the Advanced Research Division. She wore a lab coat over a black business pantsuit and it seemed like she kept one eye on me and one on the stream of notifications that were flickering through her Glasses. Her demeanor was calm and focused and she brought me up to speed. One hour ago, Dr. Andrea Vezena, Dr. Demmel’s lab partner, had walked into the room and discovered him face down on the lab table. She’d tried to wake him and, on failing to find a pulse, called for paramedics. They tried and failed to resuscitate him and pronounced him dead on the scene.
Dr. Barvan made it clear that while the death was a tragedy, it was imperative that my investigation be conducted quickly and quietly so that the division could resume its urgent research. Caduceus’s stock price had slipped earlier in the week, when the CEO announced research setbacks on its most promising new drug, and the mood on campus was more anxious than usual. I had the sense that the research team was under significant pressure to generate positive news.
I asked Dr. Barvan about how Dr. Demmel got along with his colleagues and she said that the lab celebrated him as a hero of modern medicine; she was confident that there had been no foul play. I thanked her for her overview and let her know that my investigation would be discreet but I would still be following the relevant police protocols. She said she understood and that she would make herself available if I needed her assistance.
We arrived at Lab Room N, where Dr. Demmel had died. Dr. Barvan badged the door open and then departed, saying that she would arrange for temporary access to the building and the lab room so that I could continue my investigation without needing a staff chaperone. The CCPD was technically independent from Caduceus, commissioned through the Solano County Police Department, though our jurisdiction is limited to the Caduceus City corporate campus and my Police Chief effectively reports to the company leadership.
Lab Room N was unsecured; there were neither CCPD officers nor company security because, unless I found evidence otherwise, Dr. Demmel’s death was being treated as natural. Police Chief Walsh had dispatched me here due to Dr. Demmel’s fame, in an effort to protect the police force and the company if his death was a result of foul play or from anything other than natural causes. His body was already at the local morgue and my Glasses would alert me when the medical examiner’s report was filed.
I entered the lab room, which was 20 feet by 10 feet with several large lab tables in the center. The walls were lined with myriad research equipment and storage lockers of chemicals. The large lab benches in the center of the room were lit up with a kaleidoscopic array of technical diagrams, chemical visualizations, and process instructions. In the center of the room, a lab technician was crawling on the floor cleaning up broken glass. I immediately told the technician to stop, as I would be treating this lab as a crime scene until we confirmed that Dr. Demmel had died of natural causes.
The technician seemed flustered and he gently placed the glass shards back on the floor, stood up, and took a step backwards. He introduced himself as Eric Terson and said that he was responsible for the lab equipment and supplies in this wing of the lab. He then moved to leave the room but I asked him to stay and answer a few quick questions about the room and Dr. Demmel. He frowned but agreed and I recorded our interview with my Glasses.
He replied to my questions with short answers while repeatedly glanced to the doorway: the lab belonged to Dr. Demmel and his partner Dr. Vezena; he didn’t know anything about their working relationship; he didn’t know Dr. Demmel well; nobody had been in the room aside from the two lab partners, the paramedics, and Dr. Barvan. He said that he had only entered the room after the paramedics left and that all he had cleaned up was some broken vials and spilled liquid from the floor – likely pushed there when Dr. Demmel collapsed.
Mr. Terson said that there was nothing more he could add and asked if he could leave, but I took the opportunity to ask him a bit more about the room itself – I hadn’t seen a lab space this advanced and figured that he could help me understand what I was looking at. He relaxed a bit as the discussion moved away from Dr. Demmel’s death and walked me through how the various systems worked.
He pointed out how the ceiling was covered with cameras and projectors that pointed down at the lab tables. They were part of a robust research system that allowed scientists to efficiently plan and carry out experimental protocols, walking them through a research process one step at a time. He explained that the system indicated that there was currently an experiment in progress and that the full protocol was illustrated on the left side of the bench, a detailed rendering of the final molecular output rotated on the right side of the bench, and in the center area, where Dr. Demmel had died, there were detailed instructions for the current step. Numerous errors were flashing due to missing components, likely the broken vials, and due to steps taking longer than expected. I asked Mr. Terson if he knew what the experiment was testing, but he shrugged and said it was beyond his understanding.
He asked if he could leave, saying he had a growing list of tasks in other parts of the building. I nodded, thanked him for his time, and reminded him not to clean up Lab Room N until he had my approval.
With the room to myself, I queued up a number of tasks on my Glasses, including scanning the room and interviewing Dr. Andrea Vezena. I sent Dr. Vezena a short message asking if she would return to the lab for an interview. Dr. Barvan had sent her home for the day but she lived close by and agreed to walk back to meet me here.
While I waited, I used my Glasses to make a 3D recording of the lab. They helpfully marked which areas I hadn’t yet scanned as I walked about the room and knelt down under the lab benches. I took closeup shots of the broken vials and spilled liquid that Mr. Terson had been cleaning up, and I documented the detailed text and illustrations projected into the lab benches. The scans presumably contained Caduceus trade secrets so I saved them to a protected evidence folder with instructions to auto-delete once the investigation closed.
I also looked through Lab Room N’s access logs. They aligned with Mr. Terson’s statement: he had entered the room several times that morning; Dr. Vezena had been in and out of the room for much of the morning, but was absent when Dr. Demmel arrived. No one had entered the room between then and when Dr. Vezena returned and found Dr. Demmel dead. Just as I finished reviewing the logs, the lab door opened and Dr. Vezena entered the room.
Dr. Vezena was wearing a lab coat over a t-shirt and sweatpants. I instructed her to make herself comfortable and then asked how she was doing. She replied that she was shaken and still processing Dr. Demmel’s death. I told her that was understandable and that I’d try to keep our interview brief; I started recording on my Glasses.
I began by asking about Dr. Demmel’s reputation on campus. She expressed how lucky the department was to work with such an esteemed scientist, but I brushed away the broad praise and asked if people enjoyed working with him. She paused and noted that very few of the staff actually interacted with him. He was brilliant but extremely difficult to work with; he refused to talk with anyone he deemed nonessential, which was pretty much everyone.
I asked if she had trouble working with him and she sighed. She described him as a jerk who frequently berated her and she said that his unwillingness to talk with the other staff had shifted even more work onto her plate. However, she assured me that it was worth putting up with him to be a part of the lab team and engage in the most exciting research on campus. I asked her to provide me with a brief overview of her work and she came to life with an animated explanation of synthetic biology of which I understood very little. The gist was that she and Dr. Demmel had been exploring a new method for quickly and cheaply creating complex large molecules.
I then followed up, asking if she knew of any other staff with whom he’d had bad interactions. She said he treated almost everyone he encountered with cold indifference but that she didn’t recall anyone taking that particularly poorly. However, she recalled him ranting at their lab technician, Eric Terson, earlier in the week. Dr. Demmel accused him of mismanaging the supplies such that he kept running out of key reagents and it was impeding his research. Dr. Vezena said that she hadn’t noticed any supply issues and that Dr. Demmel was frequently accusing those around him of impeding his research.
I then asked her to walk me through her morning and how she came to discover Dr. Demmel. She said she’d come into the Lab after breakfast and spent an hour or two refining the experiment protocol and setting up the equipment and reagents for today’s test. She said it was typical for her to do this alone and that Dr. Demmel usually didn’t show up until late in the morning but that he preferred to manually conduct the most sensitive steps for each test. She said she’d then left the building to meet a colleague for coffee and when she’d returned she found Dr. Demmel face down on the lab bench. She’d immediately called 911 and stayed until the paramedics had pronounced him dead. Then, Dr. Barvan had told her to take the rest of the day off so she had gone home.
She paused and looked at me for a few seconds. Then she said that she probably shouldn’t share the following with me but that I would probably find out anyway because she’d filed a report with Dr. Barvan. Yesterday, she and Dr. Demmel had fought a heated argument over how to share their research. He had wanted to disclose their new method to the world and encourage the free use of it as a way to accelerate medical research and lower the cost of new therapeutics. Dr. Vezena had countered that such a disclosure was completely against Caduceus’s interests and that the typical approach would be to retain the method as a trade secret.
Dr. Vezena said she was sympathetic to Dr. Demmel’s perspective but was far too early in her career to support such a risk, one that would almost certainly lead to her being fired and, likely, prosecuted. When she pushed back, he had threatened to use his seniority to kick her off of the lab team and remove her as a collaborator from their research papers – papers to which Dr. Vezena had contributed most of the work.
After the argument, during lunch, Dr. Vezena had typed up a formal complaint and sent it to Dr. Barvan, who immediately summoned her for a chat. I asked her how the complaint was received and she said that the VP appeared shocked and angry for a moment, before switching tone and laughing it off. Dr. Barvan had told her that Dr. Demmel was being a prima donna, that it was just posturing related to a recent request for more budget, and that she’d talk to him and straighten things out. I asked her to send me a copy of the complaint and she did. I thanked her for her candor and asked her to stay on campus and remain accessible for the rest of the day, in case I had follow-up questions.
I left Lab Room N and looked to find Mr. Terson and ask him about his confrontation with the victim, but he wasn’t in any of the nearby rooms. I asked my Glasses to see what doors he’d recently badged through. The system reported that after leaving Lab Room N he’d badged into employee housing, on the other side of campus, and that just a few minutes ago he’d entered the parking garage. I considered this suspicious behavior as, earlier, he’d told me that he would be working on tasks in the lab building.
I alerted Caduceus security and asked them to stop his vehicle if he tried to leave campus. A few minutes later, they stopped him at the east entrance and I carted over there to meet him. When I pulled up, he was complaining loudly to a group of guards but he immediately stopped when he saw my face.
I asked Mr. Terson where he was going and he said that he had an off-campus errand, though he avoided making eye contact with me. I asked if I could search his car and he nodded while fidgeting with his badge. His trunk contained a backpack full of reagent bottles. I gave him the Miranda warning and told him that I needed to bring him into the station for questioning.
On the drive over I messaged Police Chief Walsh, asking him to treat Lab Room N as a proper crime scene, to request a forensics team from Solano County Police Department, and have the medical examiner do a full autopsy. I made sure Mr. Terson overheard my requests and he started talking as soon as I sat him down at the station.
He swore he had nothing to do with Dr. Demmel’s death but admitted to stealing reagents to sell off campus. He’d been reselling the supplies for months but planned to stop after Dr. Demmel confronted him; especially so after Dr. Barvan had approached him in Lab Room N earlier this morning, asking him to leave the room while she personally conducted an inventory of the supplies. He claimed that he was leaving campus to sell off his remaining reagents, not to flee from a murder investigation.
The technician was on the verge of crying and his claims seemed earnest. I thanked him for his cooperation and left him in our holding room. I sent Police Chief Walsh an update, grabbed a quick bite at a company cafeteria, and drove back to the Advanced Research Labs for another look at the crime scene.
As my cart pulled up to the lab, I received a message from the medical examiner with initial autopsy and toxicology reports. Biomarkers indicated that Dr. Demmel had likely died of heart failure; however, his heart didn’t show any structural causes such as blocked or ruptured arteries, and his prior health records hadn’t shown any relevant pre-morbidities. The toxicology screening was negative.
By the time I reached Lab Room N, I had fired off a few queries to my Glasses. For someone Dr. Demmel’s age, heart failure without an obvious cause was rare, though not impossible. I greeted one of my fellow officers who was guarding the door and walked into the room.
The projectors were still casting their diagrams on the table but the room smelled of disinfectant. I bent down on the ground and saw that the floor had recently been mopped and the broken glass and spilled liquid cleaned up. The room’s access logs said that Dr. Barvan had badged in an hour earlier. I messaged the VP asking why she’d been back in the room and if she’d ordered it cleaned.
While I waited for a reply, I paced the room trying to look at the lab bench and equipment with fresh eyes. I opened the supply cabinet which held the reagents and scanned the bottles. I asked my Glasses if any of the reagents present in any combination could have caused heart failure. It replied that some of the chemicals, if mixed, would produce fumes that could induce heart failure if inhaled. I walked back over to the lab benches with the complex diagrams illuminating the surface and asked if that included any of the reagents used in today’s experimental protocol. It replied that some of the relevant chemicals were present, but not the right combination of them. I asked about the reagents that Mr. Terson had stolen and learned that none of them were a match.
With the help of the Glasses, I altered the protocol plan on the left side of the bench, replacing an innocuous reagent with one that could have created a deadly result. The room transformed immediately, casting warning icons on the bench, stating a high-level hazmat suit would be required to execute the experiment. I restored the protocol to its original configuration and the errors disappeared.
I wondered if the contents of one or more of the bottles had been changed, priming a lethal combination. Dr. Barvan had confronted Mr. Terson in the room early this morning and then had the room to herself while she ostensibly conducted the inventory; I hadn’t thought much of it earlier but now it struck me as odd that someone as busy as Dr. Barvan would personally look into potential theft of lab supplies.
Dr. Barvan replied to my message, asking me to come to her office, a large room on the top floor of the Advanced Research Labs which overlooked the Caduceus City gardens. I walked in and found her and Police Chief Walsh were drinking coffee around a low table.
The VP thanked me for my diligent work and apologized for having let in a janitor to clean up the lab; she had thought I was done with the room after my initial investigation and wanted it all ready for Dr. Vezena to resume her experiments the next morning.
Chief Walsh then said that he’d updated Dr. Barvan with details of my apprehension of Mr. Terson, with the stolen reagents, and he’d shared the results of Dr. Demmel’s autopsy report. He said that Caduceus would be firing Mr. Terson, effective immediately, but that the company wouldn’t be pressing charges. He looked over at Dr. Barvan for a second and then turned back to me, saying that the medical examiner’s reports made it clear that Dr. Demmel had died of natural causes and that the lab could resume its normal operations. Before I could open my mouth, he thanked me for my diligent work today, which was echoed by Dr. Barvan who stood and walked us out.
When we left the building, I told Chief Walsh that I had my concerns about the cause of death, and that the hasty cleanup of the lab was suspicious. He said that he had looked over the case notes and that it seemed to him that natural heart failure was a reasonable explanation. He firmly reminded me that this was Caduceus City, not Stockton, and then he hopped in his cart and drove off. It was getting late and I chose to walk back to my car the long way, through the twisting paths of the Caduceus Gardens.
This story is a Protocolized bounty, written in response to a cyborgs and rooms prompt. We set regular bounties in our Discord.
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