“I swear the captain has forgotten my name. He now calls me Doctor, even if I consider myself more of an engineer at times. No big difference between both denominations, anyhow. Perhaps grief has caused the captain’s mind to fail him. Perhaps he never truly cared about using my name.”
—Doratev in one of his many voice records.
He didn’t know why he had crafted a ring out of dobermannite, but he liked to watch light get lost in the absolute blackness of the material as it clasped around his finger. Now The Doctor called at the entry arch of his chambers, denying him his precious time for sitting on the floor alone. “Come in; I am lucid.”
The Doctor, wearing his coat made out of metal flakes, approached from behind the captain and faced him, standing between his superior and the opaque window as he emphasized the pug he was carrying with a careful shake. “We found this one lost in the Retriever puppies layer, it has started to abominate.” A long finger of The Doctor pointed at a little protrusion in the dog’s head, the pathetic primordium of a horn. “I wish to study him, so long as he is safe to keep inside the ship, Captain.”
“No,” the captain answered, only briefly raising his gaze to regard the mutant pug. “Terminate it, dissect it, refine it, or send it back out. So long as it doesn’t become troublesome for the Corship, I don’t care what you do. But no breathing abomination will be accepted aboard.”
The pug wheezed feebly, and the scientist stashed the animal between his two left arms. “You may want to rethink the ‘breathing’ part of that statement, sir.”
The Captain’s eyelids lowered in frustration when he heard another set of steps climbing up the spiral of spheres that led to his chamber. Hurried steps. Feet that probably didn’t bring the news he awaited.
“You come running. Does this mean we found Dirofil?” he asked without regarding the news bearer directly. By the sounds of her body, the one at the entrance of her chamber had to be modelled after Lyssav.
“No, sir, we haven’t found the Fourth Imagined.” She advanced with shoulders forward, using two of her arms to crawl while the other three fidgeted worriedly, her back bent upwards in a way that the captain found unsettling. With three equidistant eyes she caught the captain’s stare, and he shuddered, remembering his last encounter with his sister.
“Then solve the crisis at hand, whichever it may be. Do what’s necessary for the Corship to remain safe. My brother still thinks, Lanidara. I can feel it in our eye,” he pointed at the one eye different from his other three, the one closer to his right bronze horn, the horn that faced forward.
“We cannot handle the Abominable Chihuahuas, sir. They breached the hull and are now invading the lower deck. We evacuated already, for everyone’s safety.”
Parvov groaned and erected his huge frame, casting the menacing white light of his core over his underlings and over the pug, which seemed not to mind awfully. “Damn plague that they are.” One of his twin-clawed fingers sprung forward, almost scratching the face of The Doctor. “You have until I crush the little pests to study that pug. But as soon as I am done, I want no abominations on board.” He lumbered a few steps in direction to the exit, rolled his shoulders in place and gestured at the news bearer with his left horn: the one that pointed backwards. “Give me some good news, Lanidara. How are our Puggum and Corgite reserves faring?”
“Low, sir: it would be in our best interest to set course towards a current to harvest fuel, and to head deep up, to the clusters, right afterwards.”
Parvov closed his eyes and counted to three in a low voice. “I asked for good news. But I am afraid truth will have to do for now. How long do you reckon we can keep on searching for Dirofil before the reserves fall down to critical levels?”
“Three tides to four tides. Even fewer if we don’t handle the Chihuahua invasion.”
Parvov kicked the lattice that served as the floor of his room, making it wave under his peers, who were used to the captain’s tantrums and therefore, to maintain balance in such a situation. “Tell me then, Lanidara. How are our chihuahuite reserves doing?”
“Topped off as always, sir!” she announced energetically, taking an arm to her forehead to salute the captain.
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“See? You had good news to bring to me. Gather those with strong cores round, bring them to the lower deck. And tell the others to keep looking for my brother.” Parvov’s massive right hand curled all ten matte brown fingers into a fist. “The eye doesn’t lie. Dirofil still thinks. The ocean hasn’t rendered him thoughtless, despite the fact that his spire must have fallen, if my calculations are correct. The Fifth and Sixth were lost even before we found you, Splinter of Lyssav. I won’t allow it to happen to the Fourth.”
“Why where they lost, if I may know?”
Parvov lowered his head a bit. “Morbilliv must have been taken by a Reaper. I doubt anything else could best him in direct combat. Maybe a Tunneler could have surprised him, but his spire stood far from their lairs. Babesi, the sixth and weaker of us all, could probably deal with Chihuahuas and not much more. Her cunning would prove nearly useless against creatures faster and stronger than her.”
“I don’t like most Splinters of Babesi, if I am allowed to voice such opinion. I find their form disturbing,” she said, and this made Parvov turn his head.
“Don’t make me see more of Lyssav than necessary in you, Lanidara. I will save her when the time comes, and that alone should be torture enough. Come, let’s handle the damn pests,” Parvov extended the invitation with an almost paternal tone. The Corship was a labor of love, and its crew the shining core that kept the ship alive. A safe haven for the thinkers whose towers had fallen, a bastion against the oblivion the ocean of dogs promised for his kin. And he would take care of it to his last idea. “If a mate is rendered thoughtless due to our tardiness, I will get mad. Very, very mad.”
Lanidara shot from her position and rushed down the sphere stair at the room’s exit. Parvov kept his firm pace. Sometimes a bit of rage was necessary to keep the community healthy. The sea of dogs was a cruel and ruthless thing, and he was the one with shoulders strong enough to answer in kind.
“I’ll find you, Dirofil. Bring you aboard and fix you up before putting you to work. And then, once you get used to the toil this new existence entails and requires, I will craft myself a new eye, and give you yours back. It’s a promise: so long as you think, your fate is by my side, brother. Not out there.” With a last glance towards the obscured window, he began clutching the spheres with his talons, descending the spiral. There were Chihuahuas to deal with.
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Eye assimilated, Dirofil stretched both his left arms and began joining them slowly. He wasn’t sure if he could do it with his new extremity, if the arms would be compatible. Closing the space between them, like a pair of scissors when it cuts, he relaxed the influence on his core on the upper skin of the lower arm, and on the lower skin of the upper arm. The transparent layer began to seemingly melt, slowly flowing onto the extremity under it like honey. Once several threads of skin connected both arms, he used his thoughtcrystal to pull from them, compressing both arms together until their colorless flesh melted and the metallic bones aligned, his fingers intermingling too, widening, and ending in two claws each. This was temporal: he could separate the arms once again if he wanted. Hell, he could separate only the fingers to get ten on his newly built hand. Hand whose palm and wrist had gained flexibility now due to the proliferation of elements equivalent to carpals and metacarpals.
One by one he curled and extended his fingers in front of his face. They answered flawlessly. “My gratitude is incommensurable, Leptos. And so is my sorrow, because this is our farewell,” Dirofil said, heading for the irregular wall that led to the spire’s tip with slow and heavy movements.
“Whether you fulfill your promise or fail to do so, I will never see you again, I take? Your aim is to recreate the world together with Shadiran, after all.”
“No. I don’t aim to recreate the world.” He joined his fingers, as if holding a snowglobe between his hands, and stared at the empty space between them. “To recreate would mean to repeat our imaginer’s mistakes. It would mean another Shadiran would wait atop the sea of dogs for another Dirofil. We want a fairer world. One where the time for thinking would never end. One where its inhabitants can rest without the worry of upcoming doom.”
“You won’t be able to, Dirofil. Even if both your core and Shadiran’s are intact when you meet her, my skepticism leads me to believe that you wouldn’t be able to envisage a paradise.”
Dirofil didn’t turn to look at the elder, who remained sitting in his throne, prisoner of its own thoughtcrystal. “I shall create a slightly better world with the help of Shadiran, then.”
“A slightly better world for who, Dirofil? Will you imagine people without troubles? Because that, dear brother, wouldn’t be people. They would be caricatures.”
“Caricatures,” Dirofil repeated as he examined the wall, seeking an irregularity to grasp onto and begin his climb. “Have you ever seen a rat, Leptos?”
“There are no rats, and you know it well.”
“Precisely. How is it that we know of creatures that don’t exist here? We can picture them in our minds, we can see their whiskery snouts twitch as they sniff the air. We can imagine them breeding, and their litters of hairless babies. We were created with knowledge from the world of our makers that’s useless here. Don’t we qualify as a caricature already?” his pitch betrayed his distress at the idea expressed. “Farewell, Leptos. I will add a statue of you in this new world. All six of us will have one. Of course, Shadiran could choose if her siblings get them too.”
“I will look forward to the day Lyssav visits me, yet rue it too: after she parts, I will be alone forevermore,” A cracking sound came from Leptos’ voicebox. Dirofil turned and closed his eyes in commiseration.
Beginning to climb the wall, Dirofil decided to ask a last question. “Will you enjoy that solitude in the end?”
Silence was the only answer.