You ask me why, and, being in a benign and jovial mood, I shall answer as best I can. Bear in mind, however, that the truth will hinge upon the recollection of my deeds and accomplishments, and if you will follow my tale soberly, you might glimpse a fragment of the workings I pursue.

Let me begin by assuring you that my youth was most ordinary and relatable. My father was of Teutonic stock and provided the family with a good living through the ownership of several merchant vessels plying the waters between Can and Dwemarth; whilst my mother, a golden angel whose throaty-purr of an accent spoke of Ancient Gaul, presided over my siblings and me at our small but comfortable country home west of Dunwich. From an early age I displayed an affinity for mathematics and the sciences, earning the praise of our instructor, but it was biology that really carried my fancy, particularly in the fields of genetics and hybridization. Over a thousand years we've been orbiting this blue star of ours, and yet only in the last century of so have we made any progress towards a harmonious co-existence with the local ecosystems. Where once we toiled to supplant the native fauna with Terran stock, we now have hybrids thriving and producing untold benefits to our society; the excellent and exotic wines coming from the slopes of Mist being one of the very best. My parents were most supportive of my interests, and spared no expense in ensuring me admission to the best medical university the Consortium can offer, where I spent my teenage years joyously delving into the workings and functions of both living creatures and plant-life.

As my twenty-fifth year came around I was the recipient of a doctorate in medicine, with accompanying degrees in microbiology, genetic-therapy and chemical engineering, securing me a position at one of the most lucrative and prestigious gene-bath's of the time. It is a hallmark of our civilization that we undertake eugenics programs to ensure the absolute best genetic heritage by manipulating and dosing the pregnant mother's body and womb with all sorts of cells and alimentary D.N.A sequences, as nature has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted with evolution at such high levels of being. My professional career flourished, but my mind grew restless. Beauty, strength, healthy grey-matter and strong immune systems, even selected eye and hair colours for those who could afford it, all seemed so insignificant. People were more concerned with perfecting their current form that true evolution and transcendence weren't even considered!

As I mentioned, my profession provided me with a more than adequate living. To say that I was wealthy was not an idle boast. Those who could afford the baths on their own would never consider straying from normality, vain fools that they are, so I discreetly began inquiries into the less affluent neighbourhoods. Many shunned my proposals, but a few desperate or greedy souls found my monetary donations far too tempting, and besides, I assured them, my experimentation would only elevate their offspring to higher forms of living. Still, my subjects were few, and the nature of my modifications would be frowned upon by my superiors, so I did as much as I dared to each fetus. An extra opposable thumb on each hand, filters and channels in the nose to allow normal breathing in even the most poisonous or dust chocked air, and even elongated limbs that most would call grotesque but that I regarded as eminently practical. Not all of my experiments succeeded, of course, and many resulted in stillbirths or miscarriages, while those that were carried to term had the unfortunate luck of weak-minded mothers who smothered their infants shortly after taking them home. Complaints were made, rumors started, and a mark placed upon my name. Dismissal followed in short order, and with a whispered association to macabre grotesqueries and reports of infanticide, securing employment became a challenge. For two years I lingered in my home, occupying myself with hybridizing various flowers and vegetables, while simultaneously becoming somewhat engrossed with the dissection and study of lizards, whose superior pineal glands excited in me vague imaginings of opening up mankind's own "third-eye." However by this time my fortune was fairly depleted.

After the sale of my home, with the only true loss being my extensive library and home laboratory, I took a room at a small but clean inn near Arkham's space elevator, and immediately fell in with the proprietor, a middle aged man of some learning who hid away a respectable wine cellar. It was through this honest man that I learned of the Whately Mining Installation in orbit of the gas giant Xedillian, and their need of a physician. A small, relatively new outfit, the hours would be long and the pay meager, but it just so happened that the good proprietor's son was our own dear Thomas Hill, the beautiful young pianist who kept us all enchanted in the lounge during off hours. I shouldn't need to remind you, for often I remarked you having a drink at the bar, and truly no words can describe the wonder of his art. Such symphonies as never were heard before. Such swelling of emotion and themes as complex as any human feeling or thought. I was enchanted from the first, completely swept away in a maelstrom of admiration and wonder, and I will admit freely that it was not simply with his immense talent that I was enamored. His soft, boyish features and delicate, almost feminine grace captivated me as he sat at his piano; I should say that I had never understood the concept of love until that moment.

The workers of Whately's were representations of what small wages bring. An assortment of dunces who would flood my office with injuries and ailments of all kinds, real or imagined. But you could not dislike them, good natured, simple folk that they were. I pitied them, in a way. The victims of parents who disdained the gene-baths during conception and pregnancy and left their progeny to fate. I believe your parents had greater sense, didn't they? Though at this time I am ashamed to say that it never occurred to me to assist these poor unfortunates, so enraptured was I in my burgeoning relationship with Tom. Since it was he who put in my credentials, on the prompting of his dear father whom I'd left with one of my experimental grape varieties as recompense, our acquaintance was made extremely easily. Whenever we had a spare moment it was consumed in passionate discourse and fiercely intense love making, but one night, as I sat watching his delicate fingers play over the keys of the piano, my mind leapt with inspiration! My poor patients, given none of the advantages available them in the physical world, could be the vanguards of a spiritual enlightenment! I could bequeath upon them the glories of the soul to balm their physical shortcomings.

Familiar as I was with the effects of chemical stimulants on the brain, particularly psychedelics, I also remembered the ancient Terran myths associated with the spirit world. Hindus, in particular, believed man but needed to open his third-eye to gaze upon the mysteries of the magical soul, and through my research, I knew exactly where resided this mystical organ known to the wise savages of elder times. It was the pineal gland of which I was so familiar!

Immediately I set to work, creating various chemical mixtures which I administered under the guise of pain suppressants. The effects were promising, with several men experiencing intense bouts of hallucination in which they recited the most interesting experiences. Even Tom, to whom I admitted the goals of my experimentation, demonstrated remarkable inspiration and began composing works unheard of in scale and complexity, but whose variances and tempos gave it the most intricate and beautiful blends of sounds as I have ever heard; almost otherworldly were the tones that reached my ears, if indeed I heard them through my ears. However, the unfortunate side effects of my concoctions resulted in paralyses, blindness and loss of other senses, and in the worst cases, death. Tom was spared, of course, due to greater diligence and an unwillingness to attempt the more experimental doses on him.

It wasn't difficult to imagine believable causes and afflictions to conceal my efforts from official reports, and as those invalidated by my failures were returned to their families, new recruits poured steadily into the mining installation in orbit of the gas giant Xedillian. After months of trials and refining my solutions, I reached the extent of what pharmacology could produce: a semi-lucid state akin to lucid-dreaming, and recorded the mixed results from the far-away ramblings of my test subjects. Most imagined themselves floating through the spectral nebula of the Kereth system, attesting that they could feel the cosmic gasses against their flesh; others wept as they sat in an empty void without light, smell, sound or sense of direction. It wasn't enough, not by far, but I would not fail in my task. This was not simply to brighten the lives of my patients, but to pioneer the next stage in human evolution. The next step, then, was surgery.

Coming up with excuses and reasons to operate was easy at first, the workmen completely trusting of those with higher education, particularly physicians who knew the mysteries of the body, but management became concerned. Too many men were resigned to bed for recovery, while the amount of fatalities was beginning to reach worrying levels. "Hard to hire people who think of you as a death sentence," was how they put it, and implored that I should be more careful at the operating table, as if they thought me a second-rate thug with a knife who did not make every incision precisely and with the utmost care!

I decided to start small: synthesizing connections between the pineal gland and the common sensory organs, with mixed results. Some men experienced nothing, while others reported hearing strange sounds or seeing vague impressions superimposed upon reality. A strange tingling sensation, as if of static electricity, was a common complaint. Spurred on by this early success, I became bolder in my approach, subjecting the pineals of my semi-conscious patients to various direct stimuli. Just as with those reptiles and amphibians whose third-eye sits outside their skulls, the human pineal gland was very photosensitive, and almost all patients reported having strange visions as I cycled through various light spectrums. The only mar against my efforts was a tendency for my patients to either faint, scream in abject horror and loathing, or suffer strokes and brain hemorrhages if I continued my experimentation beyond thirty minutes.

The breakthrough came not more than thirty hours ago, when I was working on a man who had come in with a crushed hand. Tom happened to be in the other room, his newest concerto filtering into the room through a speaker system he'd rigged so that I could listen while I worked, and after anesthetizing my patient, repairing his broken hand and beginning my experiments within his brain, I had become so enraptured by the melody that I had completely lost track of time. For two hours did I listen to the man describe a cosmic vista to me as I stimulated his pineal gland. He spoke of a strange land of cyclopean proportions, whose strange geometry did not provide one with a sense of up or down or even forwards of backwards. It was enough to drive a man mad, the things he whispered to me in his far-away, drug-slurred speech, and yet he kept saying how it was alright, how everything could be navigated by following the music. It wasn't until Tom stopped playing that everything changed. The poor man's eyes suddenly became alive with fright, his body began to convulse in spasmodic jerking, and from his mouth was elicited the most inhuman cry of anguish that I have ever heard. You must remember it, for it was that very scream that brought you running into the office at that unlucky moment. There I was, with a dead man whose brain was revealed despite being in for a crushed hand.

Obviously I had to work quickly, before you could summon the installations security and have me detained. They would surely execute me for the supposed crimes of murder, ignorant of the greater picture. I'm sure you do not even see it now, despite all I have told you. So I did what I had to, fashioning a nerve gas which I injected into the air filtration unit to be distributed throughout the entire facility. Only Tom and I were immune and able to take precautions against the drug which rendered everyone else unconscious and in deep, peaceful sleep. I had entertained the notion of staying there, simply keeping you all asleep and waking you one by one as the situation called, but it would never work. Transports would arrive with crewmen and holds to be filled with cargo. Investigators would be called. So I did the only thing I could: I sent out a coded message to any of the nearby pirate organizations in the area. You know as well as I that Kereth swarms with the vermin; they've even taken a few of our own shipments destined to the Consortium's markets. It was an easy sell, what with an entire mining installation and its equipment and haul sitting ripe for the picking with everyone already neutralized within. They came quickly, spread throughout the station collecting all that they cared for, including the few young courtesans that appear anywhere large congregations of men are trapped far from home with their paychecks, and payed me handsomely for the take. They even provided me with this ship as a thank you, though some thanks it is. A small, decrepit transport that will likely break apart any minute now. But I really can't complain, for my purse is large enough to commission a small facility of my own, the hold is full of Whately's workers, bound and ready for my unhampered experimentation, and I now have rough contacts adept at concealing my whereabouts and activities.

I'm sorry, sir, but I've stalled long enough. Do you feel this? No? Good, that means the solution is adequately dispersed within your bloodstream. Now in a few moments I'm going to ask you what you see, and no matter what you see, hear, smell or touch, don’t forget to follow the music.