Duarte's protomolecule serum is a special drug based on modified protomolecule-infected stem cells commissioned by Winston Duarte.
Background[]
In an effort to preserve his vision for Laconia for eternity, High Consul Winston Duarte commissioned Paolo Cortázar and the University of Laconia, to develop a special drug based on modified protomolecule-infected stem cells to reshape his human physiology with custom synthetic organs and processes, designed by the best experimental physiologists on Laconia and implemented using knowledge gained from studying the protomolecule, to allow for immortality. The project succeeded in this endeavor, but had unexpected side effects due to to the protomolecule being poorly understood by Laconian scientific and technical personnel, and furthermore that the protomolecule itself was a sapient being with a will of its own. It was actually exerting its own influence on the procedure to carry out its plot to resurrect its long dead Ring Builder masters as a species. It enhanced Duartes physiology more than necessary, eliminating his need for sleep and giving him telepathic powers in order to recreate the Ring Builders' hive mind. (Once the Hive Mind was built it would presumably download the information within The Library of the Adro Diamond, which contained all the memories and knowledge of the Ring Builder Empire. This would resurrect the Ring Builders' Hive Mind completely, albeit on a different "hardware system", of human bodies.) All the while it gradually suborned Duarte's mind, until, by the end of his life, it controlled him completely, having slowly convinced him that recreating the Builder's Hive Mind was the correct and indeed only course of action to secure all of humanity's survival and future. This slow brainwashing process was rapidly accelerated to completion upon Duarte's incapacitation by the Ring Entities' anti-Builder weaponry. Upon physically recovering from the Ring Entities' technology and awaking from his coma, Duarte seem to think, feel, and act as he was before the incident, but in truth, his mind was completely gone and only the protomolecule's influence remained. This was shown when he tried to kill his beloved daughter, Theresa Duarte, something completely previously unthinkable to her once protective and loving father, when Theresa tried to free him from the Hive Mind. Shortly afterwards he was physically dismembered and destroyed in a gruesome battle by his erstwhile Laconian military subordinate, Colonel Aliana Tanaka, and the protomolecule's plans were thwarted and the interstellar human community freed from their parasitic influence.