Google Hangouts

5:55 PM

Mina Murray

Hey, professor V, you around?

A. Van Helsing

Yes. Did you have luck with your friend, Zoe?

Mina Murray

Yup, success! She did…uh, a thing with technology and sharpened the image up. I sent Arthur the plate number so he could put it in the app for the next clue and this is what he sent.

www.jeffersonhospitalmd/surgicalstaff/bios/yates

Click on that link ok? And you should get taken to a website.

A. Van Helsing

Yes, it appears to be the website for a surgeon at Jefferson Hospital. I assume this is meant to be the man whose license plate Zoe clarified? And the man from the security footage?

Mina Murray

Yup I think so. Well, at least the car seems to belong to this surgeon, Webster Yates.

Only, I guess we don’t know if Yates was the man in the video. You can’t really see his face in the pics.

Do you maybe want to dig into some of the academic stuff? I mean I know it’s medical, not anthro but…I figure you’re the best one for the job.

A. Van Helsing

Certainly. Do we know what we’re looking for?

Mina Murray

Oh, right. The clue from the app asks: “What does Lazarus say?”

A. Van Helsing

This is in reference to the mention of The Lazarus Project, I presume?

Mina Murray

Guess so? It’s the only thing not hyperlinked. Or I didn’t read the other stuff bc it looked like medical journal articles and zzzzzzz, but you can check them out maybe?

A. Van Helsing

Yes, I’ll do that. I shall…“ping” you when I have some news. (Did I use that word correctly?)

Mina Murray

Yes! Oh and, in case you care, Moby Dick is named after “Mocha Dick,” an albino whale that terrorized ships off the island of Mocha in the Pacific. And then “dick” just was a generic term like “jack” or “dude,” I guess?

A. Van Helsing

How interesting. Yes, I assumed that “Dick” was generic in this context, but I confess I entertained the notion that it was a double entendre due to the species of the whale being a Sperm Whale…

Mina Murray

Lol @ Moby Dick double entendres. Arthur would be delighted.

A. Van Helsing

All right, so I shall be in touch about the clue soon, then.

Mina Murray

Okay. Sorry if I overstepped by mentioning Arthur…

A. Van Helsing

No, not at all. I… In real life, I would have smiled, but I forget that there is no way to read tone here. Well, I suppose that was a moment when an expression face might have come in handy.

Mina Murray

Emojis, yes :)

I keep kind of thinking you’re joking when you say that stuff. Did you just…not use online things ever?

A. Van Helsing

I don’t believe I’m quite the luddite that I give the impression of being. Certainly, I have long used email, and I utilize a number of online interfaces through the university, the library, and for my research. It’s amazing how easy it is to simply filter out certain layers of culture if one is not directly in conversation with them. And I suppose I have done so intentionally, to some degree. In a cultural moment when modernity and novelty are signified by technological nimbleness, academics have a nasty habit of entrenching ourselves in the official and the unchanging. It is, after all, a conservative institution, academia.

Mina Murray

Hmm. I never thought so—I guess I always assumed academics were pretty liberal…

A. Van Helsing

Ah, yes, political liberalism at the individual level is common. However, as an institution, to resist change is, quite literally, to conserve. To hew to that which is tried and true. Consider, for example, the rules of grammar, which in practice are fluid and changeable, adapting quickly to the mode of communication that is most efficacious. However, academic conventions insist on a previously agreed-upon set of rules in order for the content to be deemed legible.

Mina Murray

Yeah, I work at this after-school program, and the kids there are the MOST up on all the newest slang and technology and all that stuff. And a lot of people think textspeak, or chatspeak or slang or abbreviations and all that is ignorant or…or they just think it’s undignified or something. But for ppl who spend hours and hours a day communicating that way, it’s basically just like our version of conjunctions, for people who speak, you know?

A. Van Helsing

Conjunctions as in “it is” to “it’s”? What an apt analogy.

Mina Murray

Yeah, like it’s just a thing that happens naturally with speed and a lot of chatting. And then those things become their own conventions and they give way to new ones, etc.

Uh, sorry, obviously you know this since it’s like How Language Works ;)

A. Van Helsing

Yes, I know the theory quite well, but we are living through a highly dynamic moment of its demonstration. It’s fascinating to witness. The speed with which things are changing is unprecedented, because the introduction of technology has the power to spread the new conventions so much quicker than ever before. First, it was tribes having contact with new languages. Then written speech. Then the printing press. Ah, anyway, you do not require a lecture. That is all to say that I thank you for underscoring the value of this new medium for me, especially when I’m aware I’m well behind the curve.

Mina Murray

I think there’s value in keeping the old ways of doing things too tho, of course. Like, no need to get rid of them.

A. Van Helsing

Yes, I am very gratified by our joining of forces ☺

Mina Murray

There ya go ;)

Ok, well I’ll let you work your professorial magic on that stuff. Ping me whenevs, I’ll be around. I’m gonna go make cinnamon rolls.

A. Van Helsing

That sounds delicious.

Mina Murray

I’ll save you one! Uh, if we ever meet. Hey, that’s strange, huh? That we’ve never met.

A. Van Helsing

And yet, amazingly, I feel as though I already know you.

Google Hangouts

8:42 PM

A. Van Helsing

Hello, Mina?

Mina Murray

Hey, prof! How’d the sleuthing go?

A. Van Helsing

Well, I have learned considerably more about a horror film entitled The Lazarus Project than was strictly necessary for keeping my sleep undisturbed.

Mina Murray

Not a horror fan?

A. Van Helsing

I am fascinated by ghost stories, urban legends, tales of superstition. And yet, despite their similarity in content often, I find contemporary horror movies…very upsetting. There is an extremity of visibility that disturbs me. In ghost stories and aural tales, so much is left to the imagination. To be confronted with visual representations is…yes, it upsets me.

Mina Murray

I get that. I love true crime (obvsly bc podcast) but I can’t really watch the super gruesome torture porn-y horror movies. Even some of the pics of actual serial killers creep me out. Like, I KNOW that you can’t actually judge people by how they look but there’s this way that once you know someone’s a murderer even their FACE starts to look evil, you know?

A. Van Helsing

Yes it’s a fascinating phenomenon in which we see things through the lenses of knowledge we have about them, and those lenses actually seem to alter the very things themselves. Ah, but in my enthusiasm to discuss this with you, I became distracted from my purpose. To wit: I found mention, finally, of The Lazarus Project, buried deep in a discussion board… I shall spare you the logic by which I arrived there, as it is serpentine and difficult to reconstruct.

Mina Murray

You fell into an internet hole basically

A. Van Helsing

Yes, if that is the correct terminology.

Mina Murray

Yup

A. Van Helsing

Excellent. Well, then, at the bottom of this particular hole, I found what I believe to be “what Lazarus says,” as per the injunction. In this instance, it is a kind of motto or raison d’être for the project, I believe. A tagline, perhaps. It is: “The Blood is the Life.”

Mina Murray

Yeah, no, that’s not creepy at all

Is it bc the body was exsanguinated do you think?

A. Van Helsing

That seems a very logical connection. The research propping up The Lazarus Project (a reference to the biblical Lazarus whom Christ rose from the dead, I assume) seems to be a rather un-rigorous cobbling together of sui generis instances of spontaneous resuscitation, from comas and the like, as well as some highly experimental work with flushing bodies completely of blood and replacing that blood volume anew. Hence, the tagline, I believe.

Mina Murray

Yikes, ok. So if this dude, Webster, is a surgeon, then I guess maybe the idea is that he could’ve had access to medical supplies that could drain blood? I guess? But then why would he dump a body drained of blood in a cemetery? NOT SUBTLE, WEBSTER.

A. Van Helsing

Yes, I quite agree. Unless he was attempting to divert suspicion from himself, creating a scenario that would seem unlikely for that very reason?

Mina Murray

Oh true. Well, ok, so we have the answer and we can get the next clue, yay! Well done. You should chat Arthur and tell him ☺

A. Van Helsing

Yes, of course, I’ll do that. Mina, it’s been a pleasure to get to chat with you one-on-one; I look forward to it in the future.

Mina Murray

You too, prof V!!!