For our hike through the biosphere, we had hermetically sealed all electronics in a box.
But we forgot that capsuleers are also full of circuitry.
I do not remember much of this, and I am relaying what the crew told me. I do remember the headache, which became quite unbearable after about an hour walk. Apparently, I started saying things that did not make sense. At first, they thought I was simply making little mistakes from time to time, or showing signs of old age. But then I also started to act strange. Little bouts of running. Anxiously looking into the forest.
When this became more severe - I started relentlessly attacking ferns with a stick I had found, the crew finally realized this was not the eccentricity of an aging capsuleer, but that whatever was afflicting electronics, was doing its work on me too. They tried to convince me to abort the walk, and to go back to the Indagatrix's medbay. It almost worked.
Then Ms. Ellur tried sprinking holy water from Mishi on me (she always carries a small vial of it with her). It actually made things worse, as it startled me and I ran away, yelling "overheat afterburner!". The crew chased me. I climbed in one of the tall conifers. The strongest of the crew, my cargo bay loader, was sent up after me to try and get me to come down.
Every time he got closer, I climbed higher. In the end, both me and my cargo bay loader were near the top of the tree, swaying dangerously from the weight now destabilizing its upper branches. He managed to attach a rope to me, and secured the rope on the tree, using the trunk and the sturdiest branch as a makeshift pully. Very makeshift - I fell in spurts of three to four meters before the rope caught me back each time. It took a lot of time and a lot of struggling, but in the end, I was brought back to ground, and was too exhausted and bruised to put up any resistance any more.
They brought me back, and convinced me to put the Indagatrix on autopilot back to Mehatoor - I was unable to fly the ship myself. Back in Mehatoor, decontamination again did not reveal anything, no nanites, no radiation damage, no parasites. The pit corrosion was also present in my malfunctioning clone's circuitry. The lab's working hypothesis is that the damage is caused by some biological entity that does not survive outside the biosphere. From the size of the pit corrosion they think it is most likely a type of amoeba.
Basically I was told that now I am old and mouldy.
They advised us to bring back a sample of the biosphere in a sealed sample collection box, making sure to include soil and plants and some electronic device in the box, and seal it enclosing some of the biosphere's own air.
