Z-SGSD03 (Jun 11, 2023)
Puzzle
“Seeing doubles—or: Seeing a Shaka.”
Pathologist Trivia | 2 Words
Clue
Hover over the clues if you require!
Clue 1: What's Shaka's codename? Well, one of them.
Clue 2: Alternatively, what's another term for delusionally thinking someone's been replaced?
Clue 3: Named after Joseph Capgras, which...should probably tell you everything.
Answer and Explanation
Answer: Capgras Syndrome
Explanation: Capgras Syndrome is also known as Delusion of Doubles, and one of the Shaka is called Capgras.
Summary of Receipt
Dover and Pathologist continue working on the Soul Replacement Method. They've managed to 'copy' some soul matter and use it as a 'stamp' of sorts, possibly allowing Nine to retrieve Katherine's natural soul (or a sample of it) and use that to restore Rune. Issue is, it'll be difficult for Nine to time-travel backwards, and Rune - that is, Randall Rune - will likely not want to get deleted and will presumably put up a fight. Pathologist wonders if they can't try to 'paralyse' the soul, or maybe even just knock Rune unconscious. Though that wouldn't be easy.
Transcript
Receipt: Z-SGSD03
Author: Pathologist
Status: Secret
Subject: Business as Unusual
We are making marvelous progress with Dover’s Soul Replacement Method! So far, we have been able to imprint onto a piece of neutral soul matter and then replace that soul matter with another fresh sample of soul matter. In theory, assuming Nine would be able to get a sample of Katherine’s natural soul composition, we could more than likely replace Katherine’s currently corrupted soul with a soul more akin to her original soul. Though there are still a few considerations, we need to make before attempting such a dramatic and unpredictable act of Soul Magic.
First, there is the problem of backward time travel. It’s not exactly easy to do, even for Nine. Though, we believe if Nine could find an adequately similar Cycle a few years behind our own, he could cross over to that Cycle to acquire the sample of “old” Katherine’s soul. Of course… we aren’t sure exactly how… well, “deadly” acquiring a soul sample would be. In our limited testing so far, there doesn’t seem to be any problems with copying one soul to another, but we are using essentially blank soul matter. A real living Soul is much more complex, I’m sure.
Second, our testing so far with neutral soul matter has been effortless in that the soul matter has no thoughts or opinions of its own. That is to say, it hasn’t resisted any of our attempts to alter, imprint, replicate, or replace it. Rune will more than likely put up a fight. Especially if his ambitions have persevered thus far. It would be marvelous if we could devise a sort of… temporary soul paralysis method. Or perhaps if we could just knock Rune unconscious, that might be all we need to replace her soul. It probably wouldn’t be easy to knock her unconscious, considering her constantly growing power and seeming immunity to death.