RESEARCH PROJECT #001, DAY ONE

♦️8: Anomaly found in the consent & screening process. In giving my authorization countersign for our first batch of participants I discovered something quite unexpected: My personal signature -- the same one that I have used personally and professionally for the last few decades -- simply will not adhere to our existing screening forms.

In multiple instances, I have noticed my signature fading from the signed document within moments of signing, the pen simply running dry or out of ink while I am holding it, the paper suddenly refusing to take marks of any kind, or in one case, the signature literally falling off of the paper and landing on the table like a stray paper clip.

After some troubleshooting involving variations in our standard pens, paper stock, cursive and hand lettering, we have determined that the issue is likely semiological in nature. It turns out that I am no longer able to write my own signature with my own hand, regardless of the writing implements or methods used. Even a renowned document-forgery expert was unable to reproduce my signature from earlier photographic records, at first accidentally signing his own name, the signatures of multiple celebrities (living and dead), and finally breaking both hands in his final attempts.

It appears that any attempt to represent my name in normal written or typed lettering, as well as in ciphertext or abstract electronic waveforms ends in failure. Henceforth, I have commissioned our nanotech wing to fashion for me an adhesive-backed label, displaying my signature as a single visible strand of monomolecular "memory wire", suspended in a single-atom layer of unbreakable transparent aerogel, transfixed between two tiny rectangular panes of one-way transparent flexible nanocarbon. The resulting "sandwich" preserves my signature in a theoretically inalterable form, ready to apply to any future documents.

We have already talked to the material applications wing about marketing these as a spin off to other researchers in similarly sensitive areas of endeavor.