7TH SON TECH

If you’re looking for a refresher on the technologies and concepts mentioned in 7th Son: Descent, dig this handy resource. If you’re a new listener to 7S, here’s the obligatory warning: Spoilers are everywhere. If you’re a longtime fan and don’t see a particular technology mentioned here, feel free to contact J.C. Hutchins. He may update the page accordingly.

The Womb cloning chambers
Project 7th Son was created nearly 60 years ago. Through the decades, the 7th Son staff perfected biological cloning, and eventually used it on an unwitting test subject: John Michael Smith, code-named “John Alpha.” Samples of his DNA were placed in a complex machine with seven cloning chambers. This machine, housed in a subterranean level of the 7th Son facility called “The Womb,” successfully cloned John Alpha, and — using a growth accelerant — grew these clones to mid-teen maturity in just two years. The monstrous, seven-armed machine used electrical impulses to assist in the growth process, and employed audio stimulation to simulate the in utero experience for the clones.

Memory Totality
“Memory Totality” is Project 7th Son’s in-house name for the entirety of a person’s memories. Every memory, emotion and dream that a person experiences — even events that are seemingly forgotten — are forever stored in the hippocampus, the brain’s first stop for stimuli that will eventually become memories. The hippocampus stores all of this stimuli, in case the need arises for future recollection. This “all-term memory” is a unique brainwave that operates at all times.

MemR/I recording technology
Using sophisticated equipment, Project 7th Son discovered that the hippocampus’ unique brainwave can be detected and recorded; in essence, allowing a human’s lifetime of memories to be copied and “uploaded” into a computer system. This process is called “MemR/I” — Memory Recording/Installation — and is the key to creating intellectually and emotionally identical clones.

MemR/I Hypercomputer Array
Deeper still in the underground 7th Son facility resides a mammoth “hypercomputer” array, in which the Memory Totality of John Alpha is stored. Designed and built in the 1980s, this “MemR/I Array” is actually a self-sufficient network of two thousand supercomputers. These machines, based on the iconic horseshoe design of the Cray-1 supercomputer, are cooled by a complex system beneath the MemR/I array. All told, the field of “Q-Crays” can store an exabyte of digital information, apparently more than enough to contain John Alpha’s Memory Totality.

NEPTH-charge
During the creation of the MemR/I technology, several technological “dead ends” were discovered and abandoned. One such technology created a bioelectrical “hiccup” that could completely erase a host brain’s Memory Totality, effectively leaving a vacant brain. This mistake was nicknamed “NEPTH-charge” (NEPTH: Neural Erasure Pulse Technology Hardware) by the 7th Son staff.

It was later discovered that this “brain erasure” process could be easily re-created. While this technology was abandoned by the 7th Son project, it was later taken to the Department of Defense by Dania Sheridan, one of the 7th Son staffers.

As the clones have recently discovered, NEPTH-charge can be used to erase a person’s Memory Totality … and then, using MemR/I technology, that person’s vacant brain can be filled with a new Totality altogether. There is a horrifying side-effect to this technological combo: NEPTH victims live for only three weeks. It appears as if John Alpha has access to both technologies, and is be using them.