“Humanity faces its darkest hour, and there won’t be a new dawn. Not for us, not for the trees, not for the bacteria in the puddle of my porch. And in this dusk of all life, the Lottery has chosen a couple of students. The girl who won, and the veterinarian boyfriend. Their idea for a new world is nauseous. Slimy creatures assailed by an army of curs — an ocean, according to this… pair. The Lottery confers a right akin to the divine. There’s no arguing it. But there can — and should — be a lament about it. Humanity could create a wonderful world, the perfect heritage. We could grant them wondrous demiurges of love so pure, an afterlife that makes life worth living, good deeds worth doing.

Yet we have these… little shits, playing around, building a world as if for a weird book it were. But this new world is all that there will exist after our end. Little candlelight of creativity amidst a sandstorm of dull darkness. And they created these unfortunate machines, knowing of the simulacrum of a ghost they carry in their chests. And these poor dogs, denatured, deprived of their freedom, clustered together. We have left creation in the hands of psychopaths.”

—Musings of a Detractor, Page 1

Doratev, perplexed, couldn’t take his eyes away from the shining object he had found after removing one of the ceiling plates. He had dropped the metal lump unceremoniously as he steepled the fingers of two hands and used the third to scratch the side of his tilted head. “This is an original’s thoughtcrystal, I think? I don’t see… flaws,” he mumbled to himself as he inspected the spatangoid-shaped object. “Oh dear, there are no flaws. Parvov’s dead, Lyssav should be in her spire. Leptos too. Dirofil… this isn’t his, despite his disappearance. I think he jumped off,” He said with an unwarrantedly casual tone, his tail flicking behind him, sweeping the floor as he thought. “It has to be a Thinker of the Edge. Desmodus is dead. If this were Shadiran’s core I am positive Dirofil would have found it first. That leaves five others. It’s not strong enough to be Vedala, possibly too weak to be Mardhaka, too. Maybe…” He popped his hand in his head and fished out one of his ears, approaching it to the mysterious core to see if it took it.

Nothing. Whoever this was, they didn’t want to communicate. He attuned his core to different channels, carefully filtering each thoughtstream, every frequency. The whole ship was submerged in a strange mix of relief for the departure of the Reaper hours prior, and concern for the malfunctioning of… well, everything. Malfunctioning that most likely was this thoughtcrystal’s fault. But the thing seemed to emit nothing intelligible.

Captain Morbilliv, I have found the problem. Lower deck. About four o’clock from Loretta. Come.

Morbilliv took a second to answer the mental prompt. Ass or head as a reference?

Liver.

How am I supposed to know where…

Mental silence. Doratev wondered if Morbilliv was asking around in which side of the body dogs had their liver. He could answer that with ease. Hell, their memories from the world before the world contained that information, if one took the time to think about it, to interpret them.

But luckily he didn’t need to provide an answer, as soon enough another thought from Morbilliv coursed through the lattice of minds.

Right side, got it. The horns are pretty good for dissecting Chihuahuas.

You could have used the claws, sir.

Party pooper.

Doratev sat on the floor and basked in the light of the mysterious core. His coat of little metal scales trapped under his hips, he didn’t bother to tug it off. “Who are you, I wonder?” He asked just as a Splinter of Lyssav crawled by.

“Lanidara, Doctor.”

The doctor startled and turned suddenly. “Not you, them.” He pointed emphatically at the core shining inside the ceiling of the corridor. “I take careful stock of my fellow Splinters on board. Of everyone on board, truly, but it should go without saying that we outnumber the originals by a wide margin. Everyone knows when Dirofil is on board. Everyone knows when Morbilliv gets off the ship. I don’t know if the ones that were deep in meditation during the last crisis have noticed the absence of Filbaros yet. Maybe they never will.”

“We should organize another funeral. For Filbaros.”

Doratev Shrugged. In his opinion, funerals where worthless, a waste of valuable resources. “FIlbaros won’t know nor care if we perform, or not, such a ritual. Parsimony dictates that preserving the status quo is optimal in our situation. That settled, could I get your opinion on this? An original core.”

“Ah, yes.” The Splinter of Lyssav said as she stretched her neck to examine the crystal up close. “This must be why the ship is aching as of late. We found it weird, thought it could be one of the legsteerers spreading their consciousness too thin. Not a newly-formed thoughtcrystal.”

“Newly-formed?” Doratev hadn’t considered the possibility, and his eyes begged Lanidara to explain herself.

“What else could it be? We more or less know where all the Thinkers of the Core are. The Thinkers of the edge cannot cross the Mauling layer, no? The simplest explanation is that this thoughtcrystal is...” Then she whipped her head to the side just as Morbilliv descended a flight of sphere stairs. “Boss.”

“Lanidara. Doratev —” he regarded, and immediately shifted his focus to the thoughtcrystal embedded into the fabric of the ship. “What is that?”

“It’s load-bearing.” Doratev deadpanned.

“That won’t stick this time, Doratev,” Lanidara spoke both her mind and Morbilliv’s.

“It was worth a try. Morbilliv, your opinion?”

Morbilliv restated his initial question.

“An Original’s core. A new one, according to Lanidara. Some Thinker at the Edge, I believe. No idea who, though.”

Parvov’s horn greeted the newborn face to face, four eyes not belonging to the ghost in charge of the machine projecting a tired stare into the newly-formed heart of the Corship. “It’s weak, too weak to be from an Original, Doratev. This has to be a Splinter.”

“Yes, sir, but it has no Flaws. The energy flows homogenously through it. It’s very demanding to correct a flaw in one’s core. Dangerous, even. Just because I did with mine, it doesn’t mean others would dare try,” Doratev explained, the fetid thought of the Originals never needing to go through the excruciating process nesting in the locus of his mind.

“We have no proof of splintering necessarily resulting in flawed thoughtcrystals, Doratev.”

“We have no proof of there being no cats in the sea, and I would bet against anyone that claimed that he or she would find a cat and bring it here. This is an Original. Either a Thinker of the Edge or, well…” Doratev found himself not wanting to say what he had thought, but not for fear of Morbilliv’s reaction. He had never feared Parvov, and Morbilliv couldn’t compare to the tantrums of his big brother. Even while being mauled by the captain Doratev had been able to observe such reality.

“A new Original? But then we would begin to find Splinters of him or her in this sea.” Morbilliv joined Parvov’s hands behind his back. The voice of the captain dropped low. “It would be a tragedy, though, if it were true. They would be confused. Shaken to the core by a world so wronged. The time to be born ended long ago.”

The two Splinters nodded with warranted gravity.

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“It’s not a world to be born in. But maybe it never was. Yet alive we are.” said Lanidara. “And it isn’t that bad here in the sea.”

“I don’t believe your kind can hold a sufficiently unbiased opinion about suffering and its merits, Lanidara,” replied Doratev in a mellow tone. “Should we render it thoughtless?”

Morbilliv turned suddenly, head tilted back, four eyes drilling into Doratev’s gaze. “Not in a billion tides. Your kindness is Dirofil’s, that of a mercy killer.”

“If it’s a crime bringing someone to life, it sure must be a good deed taking them out of it, no?” Doratev argued. “Or, at the very least, a corrective measure. After all, this thoughtcrystal may have coalesced from the remainders of the abundant energy we all spend on our daily duties. A child of the Corship’s crew.”

Morbilliv returned his attention to the crystal. “A child of many minds.” Two-clawed fingers caressed the surface of the crystal, and in it Morbilliv could feel an unknown presence. “Yes, I believe it could be. If we caused this, we should apologize.”

A web of slime suddenly shot from the unnamed sibling, attaching to the panel Doratev had removed to uncover the core. It pulled from the metal sheet in pulses, dragging it back as Morbilliv stepped aside to give it space to accommodate.

“It would seem like someone doesn’t want to be bothered. Doratev, any idea on how to proceed? Any… request to run some tests?” Morbilliv peered at the doctor over Parvov’s mistreated shoulder.

“Indeed, sir. I suspect the refusal of this new one to communicate is due to interference. Imagine you had several other souls inside your body, tugging on your legs and fingers, seeing through your eyes, psycholocating endlessly. Wouldn’t you feel overwhelmed?”

After a few instants of stillness, Parvov’s head bobbed up and down. “I see. I’ll tell everyone to take a break from their tasks while there’s calm to be had. Personally. Make the rounds, decongest the telepathic channels.”

“Decongest?” Doratev scoffed. “A curious way to betray your name, Capt.”

“They named us like illnesses, Doratev. Only in name I am Distemper. Only in name was the rightful father of the Corship a virus. Dirofil may want to honor his name. Naïve. There’s glory in a symmetrical battle.”

Doratev leaned against then wall, shrugged with a single shoulder, and then remained silent.

Morbilliv relaxed his posture in defeat. “You are thinking about explosives in warfare, aren’t you?”

“Pugs are my favorite dog breed. I have even developed some small scale guns… without telling you.”

Morbilliv sauntered up to Doratev, the massive form of Parvov dwarfing the flimsy Splinter of Dirofil. However, and as Lanidara could attest, Doratev looked up at the captain as if he were an equal. The senior crewmates had told her that Doratev had known how to be almost a brother to Parvov, a suitable replacement of Dirofil. It wasn’t surprising, then, to see him defying Morbilliv so often, despite both his core and body being far weaker than the Original’s. To hurt Doratev was to cross the ghost of Parvov. And it resulted curious to the Splinter of Lyssav, in her pragmatism, how something inexistent had learned how to so consistently loom over every nook and cranny of the ship.

“You should have told me. I would have encouraged the project. So long as you didn’t blow the ship up, that is.”

“There’s ample registry of my extremely careful handling of puggum. Any other Splinter would have blown the laboratory twice as often, at the very least. But, ah, the guns are now, and their stability is nearly guaranteed.”

A single finger with twin claws intruded once more Doratev’s flesh. “Let’s make sure to solve the newborn crisis for now, shall we? Try to communicate once every other soul on board is muted.”

“You inhabit his skin, but you are not your brother, Morbilliv,” Doratev then made a long pause. “Say please once in a while.”

The casual tone of the Doctor made the captain take a step back. “Be more normal once in a while!”

They kept on bickering while Lanidara took upon herself the task of informing her crewmates that they were to drop whatever they had been tasked with and take a deserved rest for the time being.

----------------------------------------

Of all the things Dirofil had ever forgotten, the most baffling of them had to be how difficult it resulted to maneuver inside the puppy layer. Gone was the mindset he fostered the first time he faced the sea, of Cynothalassa being this mysterious and dangerous mass of deadly wonders. Now he knew the light of the retriever puppies was no gentler than the darkness above. That the constant symphony of beating hearts was the victorious march of the enemy and its army of core-eaters. That there was a layer he couldn’t cross, who knew how deep, between him and Shadiran. And to top it all off, the only way he had found to survive had been to drink from the polluted stream the sea offered, to taint his soma with the essence of his enemies. Where once had kissed and intermingled the very spirit of Shadiran a cursed eye slept. The eye of the Reaper had no doubt saved his life, maybe the lives of the whole crew of the Corship. And yet, as he wiggled from side to side to dig in the tightly packed puppies, he could only find scorn and hatred for the thing.

Now he had to drag his image in front of his elder siblings, to be pitied by Leptos and judged by Lyssav, and he wouldn’t be able to hide the eye, the lungs, and definitively not the teeth of the cape. As he grabbed onto a loose pup and tried to pull himself under, he couldn’t stop ruminating about this contamination. Lyssav, in all her ugly perfection, would mock his incapacity to breast the sea with the strength of his soul or mind alone. And to appear weak before her, unparalleled disgrace.

He drew himself lower, head down, pushing through another cluster of densely-tangled puppies. It was amazing how tightly could the little things hold onto each other when they put their young minds to it.

Dig, Dirofil, dig. He didn’t know how deep he was already, nor how thick the retriever layer would unfurl in this part of the sea. Yet he had to endure, to drag himself lower. Illuminated by omnipresent puppies, he clawed at fluffy butts and pushed against soft bellies, aiming to be vomited by the sea that had once swallowed him. He wondered if he would crumble. If the sight of his spire half-sunken into the floating sea would spur some deleterious feeling. Out there the world was ending, and a new gaze upon it would alter the picture engraved in his mind. Oblivion without a paintjob. Naked. Bared for him to see, that’s what he would find.

But wasn’t he aware of it, though? Of the fact that whether he reached the Zenith or perished in the way, the Thinkers as a species were doomed? Doomed to repair and crew a ship as the sea made their numbers slowly dwindle, doomed to be erased so a new world would thrive, or doomed to be Lyssav’s tortured puppets. Or, if he could allow himself a sliver of hope, doomed to live in whatever way one of Shadiran’s siblings envisioned. Not Vedala, as hers was a faithful reflection of Leptos’ way of thinking. He had never got along with Mardhaka or the others, so he didn’t know if they had plans for the end. Probably not. Seeing the sea come from below meant the hope was to climb, maybe to raise the floating palaces. It was when it trapped you between the noxious core of the world and itself that you knew there would be no way out unless you carved one.

He would not perish. He would make a world without end; and if every world had to have an end, a world without time; and if every world had to have time, a world where the end would be a reason to celebrate!

Stretching further, trying to maximize the length dropped with each tug, he soon began finding older dogs interspersed among the puppies. Flat coated, Curly coated, Labradors, a lone Chesapeake Bay Retriever with their wooden color, and a red and white Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever puppy. Most of the dog mass, though, was still composed of Labradors and Goldens.

Puppies grew, and grew scarce too. Dirofil could feel it: he was getting closer to the lower surface. His endeavor paid dividends, his escape from the Reaper about to culminate. Freedom from the sea, temporal, possibly terminal, waited nearby.

Reached for a tail. Reached for a leg. Clasped onto a mouth with little, needle-like teeth. This nematode would wiggle his way out the sea, not from the side he wished to, but from the side he needed to.

His vision gradually got diminished as the orange smoke announced its presence. Due to the intense retriever light he had failed to notice it until then. The breath of the dark core of the world permeated the retriever layer, thin and barely perceptible, but with its characteristic sting on one’s mucilage still present. The psychosarc — the flesh of the soul, the slimy matrix that held Thinkers together — recognized the atmosphere of his home.

The thought of the air of the sea’s depths, as humid as it was, being limpid caused his bones to shudder and his whole self to cringe. The cleanest part of the world, where spheres danced one around another and silently watched over his dates with Shadiran, had been the first to be swallowed.

Pushing a bit further, he emerged. His head popping out amid countless snouts and butts. No known spires were in sight as he turned on his own axis. But there were splinterspires there. They had been weathered, their tops amputated by the tides and shaved off smoothly. Their tops were rounded, or so they appeared through the thick exhale of the dark core of the world. He faced the tallest spires, those that were bound to be closest to the center of creation, and as he came out the sea he grabbed onto the wiggling tails of the sea, swinging on them. Like a monkey flying from branch to branch he maneuvered from dog to dog.

This little shadow that had swallowed a star balanced over and among ruins licked tot the ground. In the cadavers of the towers eh could recognize smidges of color, of personality. This one was a Splinterspire of Lyssav, in its red hues and rotten boulders. A Splinterspire of Leptos, white and flawless where it remained intact. That one had belonged to a Splinter of Babesi, violet, full of curved shapes that one would think unstable, but standing proud all the same. And walking in the air between two crumbling Spires, a six armed figure of white light, staring at him intently.

“Leptos!” Dirofil regarded the wandering avatar of his brother.

Arms leaning back like ribbons of some soft fabric, and head hanging to the side as if unsupported, the Avatar of Leptos answered. “I saw you coming from afar, Brother. Follow me, Lyssav is currently visiting my spire. We could have a family reunion, if it would please you, dear.”

Dirofil almost lets the tails go, which would have been a very unfortunate development. Lyssav was free. Perhaps Leptos had woken up and released her from her watery purgatory. That would be the best case scenario.

He didn’t want to think about the worst one.