Expendable Pathogen-Testing Protocol

The Expendable Pathogen-Testing Protocol is the Niflheim colony’s method for discovering which local microorganisms threaten human health: expose the expedition’s Expendable to material isolated from the environment, then wait to see what happens. It turns biological uncertainty into an organized series of experiments, with the colony’s need for survival set against the bodily suffering, death, and constrained choices of the person made to supply the data.

Purpose and Operating Principle

The procedure begins from a stark premise: every new colony must investigate its local microbiota, and there will be something in it that poses a hazard to human health. Rather than rely on an abstract inventory of possible pathogens, the expedition tests isolated environmental material against a living human subject. The Expendable becomes both experimental subject and indicator: the reactions of his body reveal what the colony needs to know about its new environment.

That arrangement reflects the wider practical logic of Expendable service. On a beachhead colony, humans can endure some dangerous conditions longer than machines, and replacing an Expendable can be easier than replacing a mech when industrial capacity is not yet established. The same logic that assigns an Expendable other hazardous work therefore supports using one for local-microbe trials. But the apparent replaceability of the body does not make the research process painless or the individual trial brief. Before signing on, Mickey Barnes is told that exposure to local microbiota may be among the duties expected of him, and that some experiments may require him to endure their effects until Command has finished collecting data. His understanding of the general danger does not prepare him for how often such work may be demanded or what a particular trial will do.

The Niflheim Trials

The first Niflheim trial begins less than a day after the expedition reaches the surface. Nasha gives Mickey Barnes a last kiss and pats his cheek before a Medical technician named Arkady escorts him into the isolation chamber. Arkady fits him with a scanning helmet for continuous upload, so information from the trial can be preserved for later use. Mickey Barnes asks whether he really has to remember the experience; Arkady’s explanation makes clear that the recording may allow Command to ask him about it afterward. The helmet therefore serves as more than monitoring equipment: it is a link between the immediate exposure and the later interpretation of its effects.

The experiment does not end with a single exposure. After four days, Burke enters the curtained sleeping nook where Mickey Barnes has been kept and administers six injections. Two are immune boosters; the other four are vaccines against microorganisms that killed his previous iteration. Burke plans to wait two days for the vaccines to take effect before trying again. The injections make the experimental cycle visible in specific terms: a previous death supplies biological knowledge, that knowledge informs a new round of preparation, and the next iteration is sent back to test whether the intervention changes the outcome. Burke does not promise success. His response leaves the possibility open while indicating that survival is unlikely.

Mickey Barnes later learns that Mickey4 died in Nasha’s arms, as Mickey3 had, but he does not remember Mickey4’s death. During that trial, when the chamber vents open, Mickey4 unplugs the scanning helmet’s leads and removes it. The outcome is conveyed to Mickey Barnes later through surveillance video. The protocol’s dependence on recording is thus tested by the subject’s attempt to interrupt it: removing the helmet prevents an iteration’s experience from becoming an ordinary continuous upload, but it does not prevent Command from retaining other evidence of what happened.

Monitoring, Refusal, and Command

Eight days after the previous trial, Burke administers another set of inoculations: four injections in the right shoulder, three in the left, and the remainder in Mickey Barnes’s right thigh. He also relays Marshall’s order that Mickey Barnes wear the helmet this time. When Mickey Barnes refuses, Burke explains the consequence authorized by Command: a subsequent iteration may be sent into the chamber without any shots, and that process can be repeated until he agrees to cooperate. The choice is therefore not simply whether one individual will wear a device. Refusal risks transferring the exposure to another iteration without the vaccines, while compliance preserves the possibility of preparation but accepts the monitoring requirement.

This threat reveals the coercive structure beneath the procedure’s clinical sequence of isolation, inoculation, exposure, and observation. The protocol relies on Mickey Barnes’s participation, yet Command can make refusal costly to the next version of the same person. The recurring body allows the colony to continue its research, but the promise of another iteration does not amount to a freely available escape from the trial. Before joining the expedition, Mickey Barnes had assumed that an Expendable could choose to end a prolonged death and wake as a new version. Gwen Johansen explains that this rarely happens in practice: self-preservation remains powerful, and some experiments cannot be cut short because Command needs the full course of biological effects. The Niflheim helmet dispute gives that general warning a concrete form. Compliance is secured not by a guarantee of safety, but by the threatened treatment of a future iteration.

In the end, Mickey Barnes puts on the helmet. Nasha comes to see him off again and holds him in an embrace until Arkady pulls her away. She tells him she believes this is the iteration that will come back out; he asks Arkady whether he thinks so too. The trial’s emotional stakes enter the procedure at the chamber door, where inoculations and recording equipment cannot make the outcome certain. The evidence establishes that Mickey Barnes enters the chamber wearing the helmet, but does not establish the result of this particular exposure.

Research and Human Cost

The protocol is presented as necessary to the colony’s survival, not as a detached scientific exercise. Its findings are meant to identify biological dangers before those dangers spread through the expedition. Continuous upload can preserve observations for later questions, and inoculations show that earlier deaths can change how a subsequent trial is conducted. Yet the account also makes clear who bears the immediate risk and who controls the conditions: the Expendable is exposed, while Command determines when data collection is complete and whether the next iteration receives protective treatment.

That imbalance complicates the idea that backup makes a lethal assignment manageable. The colony’s procedure treats the return of another iteration as compatible with continued testing, but Mickey Barnes’s missing memories, the surveillance footage of Mickey4’s death, and the order to wear the helmet show that continuity and consent are not interchangeable. The protocol produces knowledge by repeatedly putting one person’s iterations between the colony and an unknown microbial threat. Its central tension is therefore built into its operation: the information may protect the expedition, while the method of obtaining it makes the Expendable’s suffering an institutional resource.