Formaldehyde and milk

Pictured: samples from human lung

1. Inert
2. Unfertilized
3. Destroyed
4. Left, fertilized. Right, unfertilized

Notes retrieved from demolition site (damaged)
Le Pont-de-Beauvoisin, France
Dated 1893
Translated by Auguste O’Connor

They call the material Galalith. Just formaldehyde and milk, it is so easy to make. Sadly it does not function well. At even modest size, it begins to warp and crack. Perhaps another use – contacted Coco, her reply suggests to sand it down, dye it white and use it to mimic ivory buttons and pearls. Ever in character, she sees formaldehyde and milk and her first thought is of fashion.

Hopefully there’s profit in it. Sanding it down makes a lot of dust, and it gets on everything.

Safety Data Sheet information, dated 2022
CAS#25038-59-9
Chemical formula (C10H8O4)n
Solubility in water: practically insoluble

Polyethylene terephthalate is the world’s most common plastic. Common uses include in fibers for clothing, drink containers, and food packaging. Safe for consumption – humans incidentally ingest roughly 5 grams per week.

Portion of transcript of interview
Recovered from damaged hard drive, May 2023
No indication of origination date

AR: no, we don’t produce it in house.
GN: you just take samples for your work?
AR: correct.
GN: if it’s so easy to make, why not produce it for your own use?
AR: risk mitigation. I don’t want to sound–
Static on tape
AR: –stored separately, away from the plastics.
GN: that’s fine. how many tests have you performed, and how many support your thesis?
AR: tests aren’t churned out like widgets. We incubate them for 12 weeks. The grand majority never hatch. But at these volumes–we haven’t had a test that resulted in zero healthy specimen maturations.
GN: how many tests?
AR: we’re on our 86th batch.
GN: why continue testing that long if all the tests have returned the same result?
AR: we…I…think we need to widen the scope of which viruses–
Static on tape
AR: or multiple fertilized microplasti–
Static on tape
GN: –any of them human?
AR: At least biologically. So far, all of–
Remainder of tape is unrecoverable

Author’s note

I’m actively working on piecing this together from the boxes in my dad’s storage unit. None of this was stored or organized well, as if he dumped it quickly into the boxes and stuck it in here to rot. In his will he said to clear this out and take everything to the landfill. But I wanted to spend some time looking through it first, get to know the guy a bit. He was always so closed off and any time we talked it felt like his mind was elsewhere.

Regardless, these are the interesting bits I found loose and I’ll be getting into the boxes themselves later today. Most of the titles for each section are whatever he had written at the top of the page or stickied to the paper. I wish he had kept these in a plastic binder or something, but I guess that was another one of his quirks. I don’t think I ever caught him with so much as a styrofoam take-out container.

Until next time,
Andy Ramirez