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  Raj had a huge collection of short term relationships with women, but never settled down. He seemed to get easily bored after a few months and moved on.

  Raj was a great philanthropist and visionary, but was often accused of being motivated by one thing - his ego. He loved being thanked, being told how wonderful he was, and how he had changed the world for the better. For many people of course, this was true.

  I can't see anything in these personal interests that really links into the HOME deaths though. However, writing these down in one place like this does highlight one thing. All the items that Raj liked, was inspired by or even minor idiosyncrasies are now generally established as the norm these days. Secular society? Check. International collaboration? Check. Roman culture? Check. Speculative alternate histories? Check. Casual clothing? Check. Dislike of fashion industry? Check. Live theatre? Check. Are we just doing this out of homage to him?

  Research projects

  In the years prior to the Flood, Raj initiated multiple research projects within Tethys. Many of these seemed fairly benign on their own, but when pieced together by Raj formed the basis of the Flood. I've not managed to work out how all of these projects linked into Flood Day, maybe they were just things Raj was interested in regardless, or dead ends that didn't lead anywhere. I'll outline the most interesting projects in this section, but I have a feeling there's some wider agenda that I'm missing to some of these.

  Fully Integrated Tap

  This was fully in the public domain - Tethys openly stated they wanted to make the high-end fully immersive Tap available to all at a low cost. This program was intended to bring down the cost and complexity of having such a Tap fitted. Internally, the project had loftier goals than that though - they wanted to make the integration fuller and richer, tapping in to all the primary centres within the brain, so this went hand in hand with advanced neurological research (see later). This latter aspect was given more funding and focus internally than the democratisation of access - clearly the cheaper access was really just a cover for the research as Raj had no need for it.

  Nanovirus Stimulated Growth

  Ostensibly a cancer research project aimed at fighting cancerous growths and restoring damaged areas of the body, this project's goal was to harness nanotechnology to replicate and repair cells within the body. The aspect of this project that was of most interest to Raj was using the nanotechnology to grow a structure within the body from a template. The intention of this within the project was to repair damaged organs, but was exactly what was needed to grow a fully biological Tap. The phrase nanovirus was of course inaccurate as it wasn't a virus at all. However, much to the chagrin of the researchers, the name stuck thanks to its adoption by the media after it was used in a popular science fiction drama that was high on drama but low on science.

  Effective Vaccine Delivery by Inhalation

  Another project based on nanotechnology, this was aimed at developing a vaccine delivery mechanism that could work for all known vaccines, but effectively and efficiently deliver the vaccine by inhalation. It was inspired by an outbreak of a mutated Ebola variant that caused mass deaths and spread rapidly - despite a vaccine being available, it couldn't be deployed fast or safely enough by injection to curtail the spread. Mass vaccination by inhalation would have stopped the virus in its tracks. The nanotechnology was to be small enough to be airborne, and would carry the vaccine as its payload.

  Obviously this project was successful and is still used today for worldwide routine vaccinations, but was key to the delivery of the Tap nanovirus on Flood Day.

  Drone Vaccine Delivery

  A technology side project to support the vaccine inhalation delivery. This was to allow the Stream drone fleet to be upgraded to support a delivery mechanism for any vaccine. The drone could be redirected to target a specific geographic area, and work at lower altitudes. The drone fleet was to be expanded to ensure the Stream mesh could be reconfigured to accommodate for the data loss if a large number of drones were retargeted at once. Once a drone had been upgraded, vaccine could be delivered and loaded onto a drone via an automated shuttle service, no need to recall to base. An accelerated drone maintenance schedule was adopted to perform these upgrades, so all the delivery pieces were in place, and had been tested on real vaccine deployments, well ahead of Flood Day.

  Neurological Research

  This is an interesting one, especially as there seems to be so little neurological research happening these days. There was a huge amount of investment in the field inside Tethys, some of which strayed into wider territories. Much of it as you would expect was about gaining a fuller understanding of how the brain worked, how the sensory centres in the brain could be directly stimulated; all of which fed directly into making a better and safer Tap. However there are other areas of research that didn't seem to link into the Flood so directly, and for which I haven't managed to track down any of the results of the research. I've just found mentions of the projects but tracked down some details with the help of Doctor Sosa. Three projects were named:.

  1. Project Minsky. Full brain emulation (FBE), including scanning and recording a snapshot of activity within the brain at any particular time. This work fed into the Tap's effectiveness design and testing, but the project then seemed to get a life of its own beyond that. There's even hints at research on how this could feed into understanding thoughts from the scans.

  2. Project Heath. A study into the roots and basis of consciousness. Sounds very metaphysical, but no further details available.

  3. Project Reid. Direct brain stimulation (DBS) It seems as if there was a study into how direct feedback into the brain could affect behaviour, aimed at treating mental disorders, but also how it could be used to enhance the Tap. Again, initially this was related to how the sensory centres could be directly stimulated for a full immersive environment, but it then seemed to branch out wider and consider how stimulation of other areas might modify behaviour.

  It's odd how the details of these, especially the results, don't seem to be available - were they deliberately suppressed? I can imagine the latter being something that could lead into darker territories, so perhaps Raj didn't want it to be misused, and perhaps he just hid the results of failure elsewhere. Doesn't sound like him though - he took pride in the number of projects he had started that didn't lead to the expected results and felt he learnt as much from the failures as the successes.

  Political Theories

  This was a bit of an outlier for Tethys. The state of the antediluvian world was a growing concern for Raj, with political turmoil, mistrust and intolerance growing everywhere, much to his despair. He knew the world could be a better place, and wanted to understand how a sane, stable world order could be made to work. He had a small but expert group coming up with ideas on this, from minor evolutions on existing structures to widely radical concepts. Few details exist on the results, other than obviously the Raj Doctrines that he left behind when he died. These must be based on ideas that came from this group, plus probably many of Raj's own flights of fancy.

  Cosmological Research

  Cosmological research is another outlier for Tethys, which doesn't appear to have any link whatsoever to the Flood or any other aspect of research within Tethys. This however directly lead to the Confluvium we have today, with the breakthrough only being available well after Raj's death. Did he really plan ahead that far, or was it just a lucky coincidence? My gut feel is that it was really just part of Raj's long term vision for humanity, wanting us to spread beyond the Earth and having all our eggs in one basket, and a basket that we were doing our best to destroy. It really wasn't clear though that the renewed interest in LQG and brane cosmology carried out here would lead to the invention of the bulk drive and allow us to travel to other star systems so quickly. I'll chalk this one up to foresight and an example of his visionary genius.

  Artificial Intelligence

  A great deal of research went into rational agents to learn from and solve spe
cific problems. Huge advancements in AI were made, which now permeate so many aspects of modern life, such as VR drama rendering, automated transportation, Stream configuration, medical triaging and selection of public servants. Again, much of the research here had little impact on the Flood, but had a huge impact on forming the society we have today. There's one odd program that I can't trace any details about, concerning an investigation into the ethics and evolution of machine consciousness, but again, only mentioned in cross references.

  Humaniform Robots

  This is another very odd one. A small division focused on creating humaniform robots that were indistinguishable in how they moved and appeared from a human. No great rationale as to the use of these was given, and the word android was oddly taboo (but not to me). It seemed to produce working prototypes not long before the Flood, but then was never applied to any real situation and interest waned. I nearly didn't mention this research, but I couldn't decide if it was really irrelevant. There could be an overlap with the AI research, which was used as a testbed for human interactions with the android prototypes.

  Regeneration

  One more I can't link in to anything. Raj had a medium size team researching all forms of regeneration. In particular he wanted to find ways of regrowing missing limbs from stem cells or other using methods, ostensibly to treat people who had been injured in the many conflicts around the globe. The only thing I can find that this project achieved was the method for hair regrowth that we still use today.

  Acceptance

  Immediately after the Flood, Raj was vilified, hated and hunted down. After his body was found, attention turned to Tethys. There was general disbelief that only Raj could have known, and new laws were passed in India to allow corporate mass murder charge to be applied retrospectively to senior board members, with others charged with mass murder through negligence. Before the international courts could get organised enough to place charges of its own, India had tried and executed many senior Tethys executives, and nationalised its assets. Similar actions occurred in Tethys corporate branches in other countries. After the Tethys Pogrom, the company ceased to exist in any viable form, although much of its work continued under the auspices and exploitation of national governments in carefully monitored circumstances.

  It's hard to tell these days how much other Tethys members really knew what was going on. Raj always insisted he was the only person who knew, and that's generally come to be accepted now. However so much evidence and knowledge was lost during the Pogrom that it's difficult to be certain. It seems incredible that no-one else could have had any suspicions about Raj, but who can tell - he had such an altruistic reputation, which coupled with his charisma and vision probably meant most people just let him get on with things. But still, it still seems there was a lot of naivety and negligence within Tethys.

  Slowly though the world changed, it recovered from the Flood and started to reap the benefits of what had happened. The Flood was a unifying moment, and helped engender the realisation that we were all one people, living on the same planet. Local skirmishes and disagreements still continued for a while, but largely as a matter of habit. The world's heart seemed to have gone out of conflict. The United Nations grew in strength as cooperation between countries was renewed. This was facilitated by several of the most aggressive and militaristic world leaders being killed on Flood Day due to an accident at a summit. (Note: I'm starting to question everything now, could this have been by design? It's always been seen as coincidental, but it did prove to be very convenient.) Effective collaboration finally started to counteract the worst impact of climate change, and to try to reduce its continuing acceleration.

  People started to look at Raj Tamboli's actions in a new light. He was still responsible for more deaths than any single person in history, but at the same time he had given the world new hope. The long treatise left by him, which became known as the Raj Doctrines, was studied widely and also bizarrely became a best seller. The world could never forget what he did, but there was acceptance that he did it for honest and altruistic reasons. Forgiveness wasn't far behind, and Raj's reputation started to regain some of its lost lustre. Indeed a cult grew up around him and his life, and as the world became more secular they delighted in calling him Saint Raj the Coincidental, citing all the miracles that happened on Flood Day to justify his canonisation. The fact that these miracles were just people surviving accidents by blind luck was a good indication of how comfortable people now felt poking fun at their religious past.

  The most enduring legacy from the Raj Doctrines though was the evolution of a new world order. It was clear that the world could not continue as it was before the Flood. Most governments were driven on an irrational basis, many being based on religious doctrines set millennia earlier, or based on variants of democracy which they also been spread with a militaristic religious fervour. Democracies were riddled with stagnation and short-term thinking, and exploited by those who fomented division in order to obtain power. Fascism and intolerance was on the rise around the world. The age of dictators and governments run on the traditions of religions, including democracy, was at an end.

  Although not exactly what Raj imagined, much of the terminology and inspiration for the new world order came from his Doctrines. His love of Roman history would influence the world yet further. The world was split into administrative areas, with representatives reporting into a new world council known as the Senate. Senate members were appointed for five years, with the option of another five at their own choice, and then would retire on full salary. Overseeing all was the Decemvirate, comprised of ten appointed individuals who had ultimate authority within specific areas of expertise across the entire world. These Decemviri were appointed for life, and if they accepted the appointment had to commit to staying in the role until for at least twenty five years, or until they died. After that period, they could retire if they desired, or could continue indefinitely. Only health based grounds could remove them from the role early, and this judgement had such a huge number of checks and balances that there was no question of misdemeanour. Continuity and stability was key, and all hinged on choosing the right person for each Decemvir post.

  The big change here was how the Decemviri, and the members of the Senate, were chosen for their role. There was only one essential qualification - they must not have actively sought a position of political power. They were chosen using an AI algorithm developed by one of Raj's pet projects, known with his usual sense of humour as the Elector. There was considerable suspicion at this proposal at first, but the AI code was studied independently by multiple teams and considered to be flawless. That strikes me as odd straight away - nothing is flawless. Anyway, it was installed in a tamper proof tributary and set to work. Metadata on individuals and their lives was used to judge their suitability for a role, with the Elector learning from the success of its previous selections in order to improve itself over time. There were definitely some odd selections in the early days, but these days all seems pretty routine and reliable. In the end it was a weighted pseudo-random selection from the top ten for each role, but obviously each person could decline such a life changing selection. Politics was something most people no longer concerned themselves with or worried about. The world was a happier and more stable place, and Raj's reputation had been restored, with the minor caveat of being the worst slaughterer in history.

  Open Questions

  I don't think I've made any progress on the open questions from last time with this report:

  Who, or what, is causing these apparently targeted HOME deaths now?

  Who, or what, caused similar deaths to occur on Flood Day?

  Why are these professional groups being targeted?

  Why are a wider range of professions at risk now? Are there others we haven't spotted yet?

  Did Raj really commit suicide? Was he actually killed by who or whatever is responsible for these other deaths?

  Perhaps the 'are there others we haven't spotted y
et' should include the political leaders who died on Flood Day, although knowing what they were like, I see their deaths as a positive thing.

  There are a few other things that are worth bearing in mind:

  Is it a coincidence that many of Raj's interest, beliefs and idiosyncrasies are very much in vogue these days, and often ingrained in our way of life?

  What do these incomplete research topics that don't quite fit into Flood Day have in common? Full brain scanning and recording. The nature of consciousness. Behavioural feedback and modification. AI advancements (unless it was just aimed at the Elector). Humaniform robots. Regeneration.

  Having written it down and tried to justify it, doesn't Raj's rehabilitation just seem a little too easy?

  This all reinforces the feeling that there is some agency, our Fount, that is not only driving the world today, but engineered many of the things that happened on Flood Day. Did they also drive what Raj was doing, so that the research programs actually served a wider agenda? Was Raj part of this group, or their tool?

  I can't help mentally linking two of the items here, which is making me even more paranoid and more than a little scared.

  Is there a link between the hazy research program into brain feedback and behaviour modification and the fact that we all seem to be guided by Raj's Doctrine and like the type of things that he liked? Or is this a paranoia too far?