“Twenty-two hours ago I uploaded sketches and a list of bullet points about Lyssav’s design to the forums. Today, I woke up to tragedy. Notifications. Fanarts. Her image forever soiled in my mind. They have desecrated my child, my little rabies. Stapled boobs on her chest. Granted her hips. Wide. One even stylized her in the way of eastern drawings, turning her into a young human, providing her with a red cap that declares her as a, and I quote: ‘soul eating autist’. I feel dirty. My creation has been defiled, outside and inside my mind, and I just hope the end hastens its arrival.”
—Tidbits of our Creation, page 26
Parvov’s ghost glared at Morbilliv from the safety the mirror provided, and the latter felt the reflection of his brother was judging him harshly as he sat in Parvov’s throne and struggled to deal with the Corship.
No, no, I want you to walk backwards, not jump to another branch. He insisted, sitting on his throne, twenty digits poking in his chest, pumping the flesh one by one like little pistons activating in a series.
The Corship shook like a dog trying to dry off its fur. Morbilliv dug Parvov’s claws onto the armrests of the throne as he struggled to remain sit. As that? The young Thinker, still challenged in its use of language, spoke.
Not necessarily. Let’s go over the basics once more.
Morbilliv stood and paced a bit around the throne, circling it twice over. He made sure the Corship’s psycholocation could take very good gander at his anatomy, at how he moved, from every angle. Walk.
Then Morbilliv did the same, but counterclockwise, and facing away from the direction his feet took him to. Walking backwards.
The Corship begun turning in place, managed to tangle up its legs, and toppled forward, butting against a column of Bernese dogs. Morbilliv sat up and shook Parvov’s horns from side to side. Let the friends steer your legs until you learn how to follow orders, shall you?
No.
The Captain grunted. Of all the possible members of the crew that could start a mutiny, it had to be the newborn ship, and inadvertently. It wasn’t that the Corship intended to bother or harm them: it just didn’t know better. This was tolerable rebelliousness, but it still got on Morbilliv’s nerves. So far the thing had managed to stay safe, and the fact it fended for itself helped the crew tackle the deficit of thought energy. But if… no, when something big came, Morbilliv feared the Corship would panic and endanger everyone on board.
And yet it was hopeless to try to accelerate its learning process further. They had been born with a wealth of inherited knowledge, the thirteen Originals. He suspected the Corship didn’t enjoy such benefit. They were children of a mind or of two. The Corship was a child of everyone on board. Had it inherited a mélange of information, mismatching or even immiscible? If so, poor confused thing.
As for the Corship, it liked Morbilliv. That complex and deep were its feelings back then. But the legs? His. Nobody else would steer them, no no.
Morbilliv descended the stairs out of the captain’s chambers and headed down to the laboratory. There wasn’t much he could do in solitude, and there were other matters to tend to besides the Corship’s newly found life. Matters that interested him in a personal level.
Doratev was tinkering with a recipient containing a tiny amount of puggum and a shard of dobermanite when he heard the steps of Morbilliv—with their readily recognizable tempo, one that fell short in its attempt to imitate Parvov’s strut— approaching. The search for an explosive and durable material would have to wait.
“Hey, Doctor, are you busy?” Morbilliv’s voice boomed before he even set a foot into the Laboratory.
Doratev stood from the cube he was sitting on. “I am always busy, Captain. How may I help you?” he balanced on the tip of his toes, two hands in the pockets of his coat, and one behind his back.
“You built Dirofil a hybrid tail, you said. The best of both the Leptos and Dirofil’s models.”
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“That’s a matter of fact. I did. Do you want one too?”
“No.” Morbilliv answered, pushing past the doctor to check the things over the table. “Will this blow up if I touch it?”
Doratev shrugged. “Possibly, sir.”
Morbilliv rolled Parvov’s shoulders, and wondered how many more times he would do that in his long life. Few, he hoped. “I wish to benefit from the hard work of everyone onboard. Egoistically, Doratev.” He slammed his hands over the working table with only enough care to not crack anything under them and, staring at the polydactyl structures, sent the order to split the arms back in four. Parvov rarely joined his arms together. Humeri bid adieu to each other and slowly disentangled, straightened back into their original shapes. Radii and ulnae divorced from their equals with a sudden snap, letting the flesh of the soul fill in the space between homologs before cutting all connection between zeugopodia. The last to split were the wrists and the hands: the multiple elements, carpals and metacarpals and phalanxes, rushing chaotically around each other, an arrhythmical bubbling the music of their reorganization.
The upper hands raised on, reaching for the dim lights. The lower ones remained rooted to the table. One grabbed onto the twisted right horn, and another clasped the screwed, backwards pointing one.
Four eyes, none of his. A skull he aspired to rip off and place on a neatly-manufactured pedestal. His soul flared white and cold, possessed by metamorphic ecstasy. It was in the moments he changed when the somatophobia peaked, when the idea of returning to a body that wasn’t there anymore freed itself from the reins of logic. But he had to battle against it.
To strive. To dominate over the hatred and rejection so intrinsic to the hyperparasitic condition he had been forced into. To overcome the all-encompassing presence of a brother that wasn’t there, and whose body he was snatching. “I need…” he dribbled out, “I need a new body, Doratev.”
The lightning hands of Doratev snatched a recorder from under the working table, a mesh of ear and voicebox, and infused his soul into it. “I’ll need some metals from the reserves. Any specifications? Parvov ears by default, of course. Anything else?”
“Everything.” Morbilliv said, letting his brother’s horns go and allaying the stuttering of his voice. “Everything beneficial.” He corrected, and gestured to the brazen wall in front of them. “Out there, Doctor, out there lights don’t shine. The air is humid, there are no systems to keep the warmth of their breaths away from us. Hearts resound like war drums. The jaws take every form conceivable but Lyssav’s. You have the archives, Doratev, you know the sea in the cold and methodical way I expect you to. I know it in the heat of battle. Make me a body worthy of Morbilliv.”
Doratev blinked twice and pointed to a spot next to the drawers. “The ACCU is right there.”
Morbilliv lowered Parvov’s four arms, and let the weight of the left horn tilt his head back. “Why are you like this?”
“Because you get so reeled up you are going to break the line in your sanity fishing trip. And it’s not like you have a spare one, sir,” Doratev said, satisfied with himself. There was pleasure to be found in the act of derailing the captain’s fantasies, no matter who was in charge. “So you want me to concoct a chimaera of the six original models?”
“Not necessarily. I want it to have two arms, two legs, and at most three tails. I want it to be green, Morbilliv green. I want…” The captain curled four fists that didn’t belong to him. “Eyes that see like Babesi’s in a well-lit environment, and like Lyssav’s in a dark one. I want tails able to extend, to grasp, to detach and stab. Fingers with claws I can retract or ply backwards to strike with blunt force if needed, or slash and pierce if the situation calls for it. I want an armored core. The disposition of exoskeletal plates of my original body felt comfortable enough, perhaps adding a few more in the weak spots. I want…” he scratched Parvov’s so-called chin. “Yes, I want horns like these too. And jaws like Lyssav’s. And wings, of course. And guns, if you can include them. The more bang, the better.”
“I have a model for a puppy cannon I want to test,” he informed helpfully, reaching for the cube to sit onto.
“No. I am not going to keep puppies around to use as ammo. And, please, a last specification: I don’t want Splinter parts. I want newly made ones. Without the imprint of any soul.”
They both exchanged stares in silence until Doratev broke it. “It’s going to require a lot of resources. What will the crew say?”
“If the Corship learns to follow orders, we will have a surplus of thought energy. We will thrive as long as we are safe.” Two right hands raised two index fingers. “Keyword: safe. That’s why I want a body that’s an avatar of bellicose purity. I want to become the nightmare of the nightmares. No previous owners, no sentimental value, no distractions in the moment of murdering the aberrant, Doctor.”
“Big if, Captain. Big if.” Doratev turned away and carefully placed the recorded over the metallic surface in front of him. “A name. We need a name for the project.”
Morbilliv let out a small rumble. “Whatever. A mere word won’t keep the jaws of Cynothalassa at bay. But the right weapons… they can bring forth a utopia for us.”
“Seloma. I will call it Project Seloma,” Doratev mumbled.
Morbilliv shook his head. “Sea shanty? Your sense of humor in these dire moments is admirable.”
Doratev glanced at his captain over his shoulder. “Dirofil’s fine. Probably. And no, I have other reasons, and it’s Seloma, not Saloma. And it has nothing to do with coelom. You are dismissed.”
Morbilliv recoiled with slight indignation. “I am your Captain; you cannot dismiss me!”
“It’s my laboratory. Shoo. I need to think.”
Morbilliv reluctantly obliged, releasing a barrage of insults directed at the Doctor as he marched out the door.
Doratev didn’t mind. Once he made sure he was alone, he muttered to himself. “Seloma, for we already have the forsaken child to sustain this utopia of yours, Morbilliv.” He stretched his back as he stared at the wall, commiserating the newborn.