Human nature being what it is, it didn’t take long for cults to develop around the new technology. The advent of the Internet in the 1990s accelerated the paranoia and conjecture around the morsels of information coming out of the Institute.
Rumours abound that it was Alien technology, when it was actually just alien technology. Whispers of a government cover-up, when the government were as ignorant as everyone else. Funded by the Russian state, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, NAMBLA. “We should be so lucky,” mused Terrence, “to have access to such resources.”
Garish Geocities websites, pulsating with low-resolution animated GIFs, brought conspirators together in forums and IRC chat rooms to discuss the nefarious goings on. Much effort was expended to identify the individuals undergoing the procedures, gossip abound that famous people had signed up already – Uri Geller, Debbie McGee, Les Dennis. Proof was neither needed nor sought.
In actual fact, the Institute had a nascent marketing department, that routinely and shrewdly occupied these online viper nests and fed them misinformation, Richard Doty style, to make them sound as outlandish as possible, which kept the fog between the truth and the facts thick enough that nothing ever gained purchase in mainstream media.
Some decades later, this activity continued, but using AI chatbots to populate online blogs with turgid fiction.