Green Science

What is known about the clinical nightmare below the Green mansion is mostly from the supplies it orders — vast quantities of nerve toxins, amphetamines, and behaviour-modification drugs. Small quantities of carbon fibre and several electron microscopes suggest work on nanotechnology as well as drugs. Power consumption is apparently massive, with on-site generators supporting industrial landlines more suited to a steel mill. The few witness reports and rumours corroborate to describe a state-of-the-art medical centre where "patients" are sedated and given extensive drug treatments under some form of encephalographic helmet. A full lobotomy suite is on hand to clean up afterwards.

Her warped masterpiece aside, Hazel Green also controls extensive mundane research labs. The family hold a number of military contracts for high-tech equipment, ranging from fighter jets to night-vision goggles, and quietly disseminate some of it for their own use. It is a brave pilot who approaches a Green corporate jet, and her personal guards and mansion security system use defensive and early-warning systems that would not disgrace a missile silo. A tiny trickle of Board ultratech is also beginning to make its presence felt, as the low-end computers leased to the Greens begin to take control of the systems from human (and thus bribable, and highly-paid) hands.

By any conventional standard, the Greens are highly advanced — dangerously so. The "holy grail" of a one-dose mind control pill is, thankfully, still beyond them...but not for want of trying.