Dokhtar-e Ahriman

Methuselah was the codename for a black ops programme run by the Directorate of Research and Engineering's Bio-systems Division, under Magister Kapec in cooperation with Augur Industries and the Natopian Spacefleet.

The programme began in 1641 AN and consisted of a series of cyberorganic experiments of live human volunteers drawn from the overcrowded gaols of Shirekeep. The intent was to enhance the natural abilities of humans through cyberorganic and cybernetic implants and to recreate the Babkhan Dokhtar-e Ahriman [1] [2]. The process was difficult on all of the participants, resulting in sickness, convulsions, body shock and trauma, but they all endured because they were they believed in what the promise of a parole. One of the volunteers died during a botched operation that was intended to replace her eyes with implants that would give her ultraviolet spectrum receptors that would have allowed for direct interaction with the dataports of the Panopticon Suite.

After the early experiments found that Humans couldn't function with machines in their brains, the project team began using subjects on the verge of death such as prisoners hung at the gallows, wounded soldiers and coma patients. The running theory was to hardwire the subject's brain with a computer intelligence that kept the brain functional while the body was surgically repaired. After this a neurolinguistic programmer would fixate the subject on the moment of their 'death', shutting down all conscious thought and allowing the computer to exert complete control while the subconscious is dying over and over again. The CPU is powered by a small thorium battery cell.