Monoregular Materials
Sustenance
The Resurrection Sequence

Monoregular materials play a prominent role in my fanfiction, and seem to have rather mystical powers.  The ancients probably thought the same thing when they first encountered magnetism and magnetic rocks.  The theory behind magnetized materials is simply that the atoms in magnetic subregions are oriented in the same direction.  The magnetic subregions in unmagnetized iron point in all directions in a random fashion.  Rubbing soft iron with a magnet orients many of the regions in the same direction, causing it to be magnetized.  Heating a magnet often causes it to be demagnetized, because the heat causes the atoms in the magnet to move about more strongly, breaking up the common orientation of the magnetic subregions. (This is different for an electromagnet, where the magnetism is caused by the movement of electric charges.)

In my fanfiction, monoregular materials are manmade materials assembled atom by atom so that there ARE no subregions.  The lack of subregions allows intermolecular and interatomic effects to be amplified because all the molecular/atomic components of the material are oriented in the same way.  Just as magnetism arises when magnetic subregions are all aligned in a piece of iron, so the effects postulated in my fanfiction arise by the synergistic effects of atoms and molcules all oriented in the same direction.  All natural materials, including crystals, have flaws and irregularies that exist down to the molecular level.  Even crystals have flaws that divide it up into regions similar to magnetic subregions in iron.  These flaws are called fracture lines, and act like gaps that interfere with the "monoregular" properties that would otherwise arise, in the same way that gaps in wires interfere with the flow of electrons that makes up electricity.

The properties and capabilities of monoregular materials differ based on the atoms comprising the material, as well as the arrangement of the molecular components.  Pure silicon behaves differently when selectively contaminated with different materials, and the electrial properties are different enough to serve as the basis of the electronics field, including the silicon chip that is the central brain of the computer that you, the reader, is using to read these very sentences.

What is sustenance?  Obviously, at one level, it is the fluid that all of Von Richter's creations, including Cybersix, desperately need in order to survive.  There have been several theories advanced in the fan fiction literature on its nature.  Each author uses his or her own theory to explain certain aspects of its use in the Cybersix universe, as well as advance the story they are telling.  It is no different with mine.  I feel, however, that my Cybersix fanfiction is unique in that sustenance becomes something more than just a life-giving fluid essential to one man's genetic creations.

My theory of sustenance must explain several phenomena associated with sustenance.  It must explain why it is necessary to Von Richters creatures.  It must explain why Fixed Ideas vaporize.  It must explain why Cybersix's arm shorts out when she goes low on sustenance.  It must explain why it glows.  My theory also will advance serveral ideas unique to me.

Why does Sustenance Glow?  Without exception, materials that glow are emitting photons because of changes in the energy levels of electrons.  Electrons are arranged in "shells".  Hydrogen and Helium have electrons solely in what's called the "s" shell.  Lithium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, and Neon have electrons in what's called the "t" shell.  The electrons that emit photons (light) usually are in the outermost shell.  In my fanfiction, sustenance glows because carbon atoms in sustenance have both "s" shell electrons raised to the "t" shell.  The amount of energy per atom to do this is considerable, and gives sustenance its power.  The green glow comes as the excitated "s" shell electrons fall back to the "t" shell.

How is sustenance used in Von Richter's creatures?  The muscles of Von Richter's creations are very strong, but also require a higher level of energy than can be provided by AMP, the biological fuel for muscles.  A form of super-AMP is required to fuel these super muscles.  Von Richter added an extra biological side-chain in muscle cells that builds the building-blocks for super-AMP. Sustenance is "burned" in a protein cage, whose outer skin is the site where these building-blocks are constructed, and which uses the energy of sustenance.  This "burning" occurs when sustenance reacts with certain protein projections found in some organic materials.  Sustenance is not technically an acid, even though it burned holes in Lucas' wood floor.

At the current time (chapter 13), I have not as yet explained why sustenance behaves as it does, it has several interesting properties that I have added for the sake of the story, the main one of which is that it releases all of its energy when diluted enough.  With the exception of Cybers, all of Von Richter's creations have a low enough dilution level in their blood stream that causes the sustenance to release its energy in the form of light and high speed electrons (Beta radiation).  This causes the bright flash of light and the disappearance of the body (which will be explained later).  However, this effect can be counteracted by the presence of an electric field generated by the nervous system of the creation.  The death of the creation causes the collapse of the electric field, initiating the dissolution process of the body, fueled by the burning of sustenance.

An interesting (and important) side effect of using an electric field to prevent the "discharge" of sustenance is that the collapse of the electric field when the sustenance concentration is very low causes an explosion.  The difference is in the relative speed of the burning of sustenance, and is analogous to the distinction in chemistry between burning and explosions, with the latter taking place more rapidly than the former.

In Nightflower's "Resurrection", Dr. Zacharias has a cameo appearance as the scientist who translates Marryn's Lab Notes so that the experiment that ressurrected Kayla can be replicated.  I wrote "Lab Notes and Fellow Scientists" after Nightflower inserted the cameo into her wonderful story,  In a private communication, Nightflower admitted to having skipped over the science aspect of the story, and thought that my story helped out a lot regarding the science.  She added it to the Kayla fanfiction section of her website.

To summarize, the Resurrection Sequence is a re-activation of genetic material that currently is regarded as being inactive.  A very large amount of genetic material is considered "vestigial", that is, leftovers from the evolutionary process and does not currently serve any useful function.  It is an extension to the genetic level of the Vestigial argument for Evolution.  Advanced soon after Darwin's "The Origin of Species", the argument was that a long list of organs in the human body originally served a useful function, but that evolution of the human body soon rendered these organs useless.  When originally made, the list essentially consisted of the organs for which science, at that time, didn't know the function.  Alas for the argument, as time went on and Biology advanced, the essential nature and usefulness of these organs became apparent, and the list shrank.  The last member of the list was the appendix, which was found to have an important function in the immune system.

Thus, given this track record, you can understand my skepticism when geneticists have now pronounced that the majority of human genetic material is either inert or "vestigial".  There may be many good reasons for having "inert" or seemingly "vestigial" genetic material in the human genome that geneticists haven't thought of yet, and which future progress may force them to retract at a later date.

"The Resurrection Sequence" is my humble suggestion for the seemingly "inert" genetic material.  I submit that it is the human genome's version of "Initialization code": The sequence of instructions required to change a fertilized egg into an infant.   (In computer parlance, initialization code is the code used to get a computer or program started and in a state that is ready to interact with the user.  That long several minutes of disk activity that comes when you start up a computer with Windows NT or Millenium is the execution of "initialization code".)

Immediately after fertilization, the "inert" genetic material is decoded into "active" and "understandable" genetic sequences that guide the process of pregnancy.  The pacing of pregnancy is guided by the re-encoding process that "turns off" the "initializing" genetic material.  One only needs to look at the changes that a zygote goes through to become a baby to realize that a lot of complex changes are going on in the human body.  In comparison, the changes that take place after birth to bring the individual to adulthood are trivial.  In fact, the only systems inactive at birth are the immune and reproductive systems: Everything else just has to grow in size.

Clearly, nobody has discovered something like "The Resurrection Sequence", but the reasons are rather obvious:  the human genome project concentrated on adult genetic material because it was more readily available and had fewer problems associated with obtaining and sequencing it than fetal tissue from abortions.  There is also the assumption that genetic material active in an adult is the ONLY material that IS active at any time.  The genetic machinery and unencrypted genetic code postulated to be active during the Resurrection Sequence would have been re-encrypted and the machinery shut down by the time the fetus is ready to be born. much less when the adult genetic material is sent to the gene sequencers for mapping.

Thus, if a genetic scientist is reading this and dismissing my assertion out of hand, just consider this:  Nobody knows for sure what IS happening at the genetic level during fetal development, because nobody has bothered to gene sequence fetal tissue.  The genetic material that's been gene sequenced is the 2 to 3% that makes sense, not the vast majority that's claimed to be vestigial because it doesn't make sense to anybody RIGHT NOW.

Don't be like the naturalist who doubts the existence of owls or bats because he hasn't seen any during the day, and dismisses the idea of looking for them at night because it's too hard on his sleep patterns to look, as well as being dark then, and thus hard to see.

Or like the drunk who lost his keys a half block away, but is looking for them under the lamppost here because the light is better.

An honest admission of temporary ignorance, seasoned with a dash of humility, is probably in order when faced with the enormous complexity of biochemical and genetic systems.

I heartily recommend Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" for a nice, easy introduction to Molecular Biochemistry.