After twelve days of abducting insectoids all over their world, they finished abducting seven of the nine blocks of abductees their study calls for. As such, the trio starts analyzing the data obtained by using three sources of pain, and later injecting caffeine, but only focus on the data gathered with full doses of caffeine.

  However, the weather conditions make it dangerous for beaming up abductees, so they must stop abducting aliens for the time being, until the UFO can be moved to safety in low orbit. After Lokath sets a course to do so, and uses the autopilot to fly the UFO, he leaves the cockpit…

  “For the next few hours, I’ll be busy with the yearly paperwork the AAA asks of us” Lokath announces to his students.

  “I guess, we should get started analyzing what data we have right now. It’s not ideal, because I would have preferred to wait until all nine blocks of data are captured” Killanaus sighs before getting into a computer console with Aqqar.

  While the UFO flies to safety on autopilot, Aqqar loads the first 7 blocks of data in the dataset into the UFO’s data analysis suite, in hopes they can make sense of the data collected up to this point.

  As they start visualizing the results, they feel like it’s time to begin interpreting them, but they know they aren’t done yet:

  “It seems like, at least with full doses of caffeine, our abductees, by and large, react the same way to caffeine as an analgesic” Aqqar looks at a screen full of experimental data from all 3 blocks of abductees subjected to a 300mg shot of caffeine.

  “This means either that race has one nociceptor that reacts the same for all three types of pain studied, or all nociceptors of that race can be blocked with the concentration of caffeine three hundred milligrams of it can provide” Killanaus reacts, while Lokath is busy dealing with paperwork in his cabin.

  “I guess, the only way to be sure that’s it’s one nociceptor is to analyze the neural activity profiles over time for the other dose levels”

  “Maybe, for what we know, there could be one nociceptor on which caffeine requires a minimum concentration to work, and that one would react specifically to one pain stimulus”

  “But I feel like, while the abductees didn’t show any side effects while onboard, other side effects could take longer to materialize than what the regulations allow us to retain abductees for”

  The pair write down the implications of caffeine as an analgesic in the context of that insectoid race, and possibly side effects related to the reactions between caffeine and the neurotransmitters responsible for pain, but that take longer to act than the pain relief.

  They also write down the limitations to their research, given the straitjacket the abduction regulations places on their methodology. That side effects due to caffeine metabolization and reactions between the neurotransmitters and caffeine might become apparent later. Not to mention the time it takes for the chemical products of pain relief to get out of the insectoids’ bodies. I guess, we’ll only know for sure what these nociceptors are made of in a few days, but for now, anyway, we know nothing about the age and sex of the abductees since that information is in the DNA samples we took, and we didn’t do anything yet with that.

  Once Aqqar catches the undergraduate repeating previous info in the working paper…

  “If I may, Killanaus, I believe we have written down the limitations elsewhere already!” Aqqar points out to him.

  “I guess, we didn’t have the opportunity to analyze what we were doing just yet. In the past ten days, we were lucky the conditions were relatively favorable to abduct lots of test subjects early. We could try the same exercise, but with specific pain types and the variable being the caffeine dose. That, too, might shed some light on nociceptor or caffeine behavior” he tells her.

  What they realize is that, while they ignore the effects of age and gender, for now, it seems like higher doses of caffeine don’t appear to make pain relief come all that much faster, but what relief it does provide, will last longer. Just not necessarily one-to-one. This pushes Killanaus to offer some insights:

  “It seems like there’s a bottleneck effect. There’s only a finite amount of caffeine a nociceptor can take…” Killanaus talks about his insights, which he deems to have some value.

  “If the bottleneck effect differs across pain types, then we might be able to show that there are multiple types of nociceptors, one specific to a type of pain and another one that’s more general”

  “And we might have evidence that, while there could be different types of nociceptors, they can all be neutralized with caffeine! However, that would imply that, if there were different types of nociceptors, one of them has a lower cutoff after which any additional dose wouldn’t work, but I guess we won’t know for sure until we finish the final two blocks of abductees”

  So I guess, this voyage has been fruitful from a research standpoint. Then again, there’s only so much of a signal a nociceptor can make, and hence only so much pain they can feel, Aqqar reflects on the nociceptors’ role in pain.

  When they finish their preliminary analysis of the first 7 blocks of abductees, the UFO is in low orbit, looking for a safe spot to resume abducting and then go back down to the low altitudes required of the tractor beam.

  “There could be some metabolization of the caffeine taking place, but I hate these abduction regulations that prevent us from even studying side effects of what we experiment on! And that’s only those races whose scholarship is too primitive to do it on their own!”

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  “You do realize that the abduction time limit is in place because of a study which, even though it met the highest standards of scientific rigor, accidentally sparked an uprising in the abductees’ race!”

  “Aqqar, this leads me to feel that, at some point, some abductee race might demand reparations for our forefathers’ actions, and that merely giving them access to the scientific papers written based on the data taken during these exactions, heck, even complete access to what’s publicly available of our medical databases, might not be enough to placate them!”

  “That’s a matter of diplomacy, and for a better understanding of what makes such matters so delicate to us, I invite you to read the Stoneship Files, which is an account of the experiments that led to the uprising, the uprising itself and, of course, the diplomatic tug-of-war that came after the uprising. So the scenario you told me about has already happened!”

  I would love to see Qinlei’s face, or Majuro’s, when I’ll discuss the evolution of abduction regulations with them, and our checkered history of abductor-abductee relations, even if we abducted aliens solely for research purposes. For sure, intellectually, I don’t feel stifled here the way I might have been at home, Killanaus muses as he starts reading the Stoneship Files. And, of course, I’m getting a head start on grad school coursework…

  This reading proves pretty damning, and makes him question whether this entire incident could have been avoided with shorter holding periods for research abductees.

  “A few days ago, we discussed how civil unrest could be caused by a wave of abductions concentrated in an area. My impression is that the uprisings couldn’t have been prevented by simply holding abductees for two hours at most, as opposed to holding them for a day, as they did. I wonder how the AAA came to that conclusion”

  “The AAA of the time was, in my opinion, a bunch of incompetent fools. Once again, the public called for outlawing the use of abductions in research, but there are times when you just can’t get any research done otherwise”

  “And the scientific community of the time harbored the same concerns as I did about the size of the straitjackets the maximum holding time reduction would place on experimental protocols, and monitoring short-term side effects, which, while standard practice for pharmaceutical research, can’t even be done!”

  “It shows that you haven’t finished reading the Stoneship Files! It’s a required reading for Abduction and Society, along with the whole abduction-induced accidental epidemic Lokath told you about”

  All right, this is the kind of thing that can turn public opinion against the scientific community. Not that the public rejects scientific findings per se, public outrage was directed against the whole system of abduction. In a sense, licensed abductors are the lightning rods of the scientific community, Killanaus then feels like he should read about the aftermath for the abductors involved in the crisis. And other aspects of its consequences.

  So it seems like the university for whom the abductors of the Stoneship worked had its AAA accreditation revoked, refitted its fleet of UFOs used for research abductions, and then its bio department rent out the resulting fleet of luxury UFOs like space yachts. And, of course, the abductors involved were all sentenced to life in prison, and the university’s other licensed abductors were laid off.

  After Killanaus has finished reading the aftermath of the Stoneship Files, he knocks on the door of Lokath’s cabin. He lets the undergrad in because he arrived at a point in said paperwork where he needs to wait for more info to arrive from others on campus. Meanwhile, Aqqar goes to the cockpit and then gets the UFO in position to resume abductions.

  “Sir, now that I have a better idea of the risks involved in research abductions, about the scandals that can erupt because of abductions that you warned me about at midnight, behind a mall, it seems like this whole experience opened my eyes on what I really want out of a career doing abductions!” Killanaus confesses to his research advisor.

  “What do you mean? You have a knack for conducting abductions like none of my past grad students, or seasonal interns had!” a confused Lokath comments.

  “So I read about the Stoneship Files, as well as the epidemic accidentally caused by theft committed on abductees, and it made me realize that the consequences of a poorly made abduction can be severe and expensive to sort out, unlike, say, abducting a criminal, a stranded person, an abused or orphaned child, whose consequences of stuff going wrong are smaller in scope”

  “By now you should know the whole Stomeship Files fiasco didn’t come to light until someone else crashed an UFO on that race’s world, and it was discovered by the rescue party of the stranded people. Initially our government offered them complete access to our medical databases, starting with the papers published based on the abductions, but it wasn’t enough! They wanted reassurances that it wouldn’t happen again, and only a travel ban would do!”

  “I know it’s a bit premature, but will you write me a letter of recommendation? After the season ends, of course”

  “Thus far, I’ll wholeheartedly write you letters of recommendation as required by grad programs granting abduction licenses”

  “And then, I think a class-two license is what’s best for my career goals and disposition”

  If he wasn’t afraid of large-scale risks of the kind posed by a wave of abductions, I feel like he’d become a great research abductor. But stuff such as the Stoneship Files and the accidental epidemic can send shivers down the spines of a lot of would-be abductors, Lokath starts realizing that something is amiss in his undergraduate intern. Very easily among the best off-season undergrad interns I had during my career. But I’ll respect his decision: if he feels like a class-2 license is what’s best for him, I’ll support him regardless.

  As Killanaus steps out of the supervisor’s cabin, he finalizes the reading of the Stoneship Files, and, in the end, the abductees’ race managed to get a ban on travel to their world in exchange for being given a copy of every scientific paper written by abductors on them.

  I ought to read more about whether travel bans to worlds linked to abduction incidents are standard procedure, or this was a one-off thing, Killanaus sighs as he dons a new pair of nitrile gloves, on top of a new N95 mask, as he’s about to man the tractor beam station once more. And abducting the eighth block of abductees begins, with the winch being prepared to drop a weight on the abductee currently being abducted.

  They conduct another batch of abductions, while ensuring that abductions have sufficient geographic spread to prevent the risk of another Stoneship Files incident from occurring. Once they have finished abducting however many abductees their N95 mask would last them, he starts reading about the legal classification of abduction incidents and their implications.

  And, of course, the highest classes of incidents result in harsher consequences, such as travel bans to the worlds affected, and punishment, for the perpetrators, going all the way to life imprisonment. Class-1 abductors can perform more abductions than other classes of licensees, but are the first to get hit by travel bans enacted because of abduction incidents. Before other civvies. Class-2 abductors may travel to these worlds but only on duty, and to either catch criminals or rescue people from UFO crashes. For less severe incidents, travel bans might be time-limited as well as class-limited. And perpetrators can be charged with crimes committed on the abductees the same as if they were committed on one of our own.

  And, obviously, the career consequences can be disastrous, even more so for Class-1 abductors, whose employers can take a hit depending on the class of incident.