“Parvov doesn’t know that I know. I have studied every part of his through Splinter carcasses. I took the liberty to assimilate some. I will tell him later. I may lose the head. Again.”
—Doratev in one of his recordings.
Through the one eye of the Corship Parvov watched the border collies lazily drift by. No crisis assailed the crew at the moment, no Reaper wandered nearby. Thus he sat in front of the circular window, and gave orders to the head of the Psycholocation team and the Legsteerer currently in charge of communication. They were both Splinters of him, as often where those shoved into leadership roles aboard the Corship. It wasn’t an indulgence of his, an act of self-aggrandizement, no: Parvov knew how to be a utilitarian when the situation called for it, and shared a unique understanding with his Splinters.
“How close are we, Lurgas,” with a deep voice reserved only for his Splinters he asked the head of the psycholocators, whose core shone bright while he called for the minds of his team to relay the information to him.
“A few minutes away, sir: four to eight, depending on how the ship manages to maneuver the Rough Density Lumps.”
Parvov nodded in silence.
“How are your men and women faring, Tiervol?”
The leader of the legsteerers joined his hands before speaking. “The collie layer is always a mess to traverse, with its varying density and whatnot. We are managing, but cannot guarantee speed, sir.”
“I expect safety, not speed. In other word: Good.” Parvov stood from his sitting position and examined the ceiling of the room, fitted with the same lattice of flexible dog-based materials as the walls and the floor: The Corship was designed to be able to function no matter its orientation in space. The dissimulated scratches on the window were evidence of the times it had been front-down. Despite this, an effort was constantly made to keep it straight, as the crew was used to it, and the few unattached belongings they had were often misplaced and their falls became a source of minor structural damage. Repairs could always be made, but they costed materials, and materials meant refining and mining: activities that costed them thought energy. And thought energy was the premium currency of the Time to Move. It supported their lives as it kept their cores from collapsing. Parvov didn’t know that once Leptos had told Morbilliv that the cores and their energy where like gills and water, in the sense than the first breaks down without the second. But if he had known, he would have approved of the metaphor, and would have used it with his underlings. For the thought energy was needed for everything onboard, it was the lifeblood of the Corship as much as it was that of the thinkers. And since many tides ago they were in a deficit. Slight, but hanging a clock over their heads all the same. And the main purpose of the Corship, the reason to be of said construct, was to abolish deadlines. To end the Time to Move and begin the Time of Equilibrium. The world was ending, but the Thinkers could endure forever in the right conditions. “Any news of Dirofil, Lurgas?”
“A search as fruitless as a fern, sir. Someone, that I refuse to call out, told me that we should entertain the idea of a mutiny, if you insist on wasting precious resources on it,” Lurgas informed flatly, knowing what Parvov’s reaction would be.
“Tell them to go ahead, and entertain the idea, it’s not a crime. But when the time to act on it comes, remind them that it will be my pleasure to test how many rebellious Splinters I can render thoughtless before they finish spouting their damn slogan. Whatever slogan they may choose, that is,” Parvov leaned forward and joined the fingers of both of his massive hands. Hands made to crush, to pummel. “Is the rebellious one a Splinter of Morbilliv?”
“Of Babesi, sir. But I am not giving you any further information about her.”
The raucous laughter of the Captain could be heard resounding through almost the whole ship.
“She’s clearly delusional! What a lovely way to honor my sister’s memory. Send all Splinters of Babesi not performing urgent tasks to meditate until low tide. As for Dirofil…” he tapped the glass of the eye he had taken from his brother with a single finger. “…He thinks. And if he thinks, we search.”
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“Farewell, Bab.” Dirofil said, caressing the tendrils of her face with delicate movements. “Thanks for everything.”
“Will you come to visit?” Babesi asked, her eye open wide and expectant.
Dirofil’s shoulders slumped. “Don’t make it harder than it is, Bab. Either the sea takes my mind, or I fulfill my promise and make a new world to replace this one. Neither me nor you, at least in our current forms, will be there.” He began ascending towards the end of the tunnel, where among the Retriever puppies one could see long haired tails, black and brown and white and red. “We have shared all we needed to share, Babesi. It was a blessing to get to see you once more when I already thought you gone. But our spires have fallen. It’s not a time for family, is not a time to enjoy or a time to speak or a time to laugh. It’s not a time for goodbyes. But it is a time for farewells.”
She hurried to slither in front of her brother, and did so with incredible haste. “You cannot leave old Babesi alone and say you will never come back. I cannot be alone for the rest of time.”
“Lyssav or Leptos could keep you company when the sea swallows their spires, Babesi. Be good, and care for the monster sausages as they care for you.” Dirofil carefully pushed his sister to the side as he ascended the pile of pups.
“Lyssav or Leptos are not you!”
Dirofil didn’t look back. “I know. Maybe they won’t leave.” He said before sinking his hands into the mass of puppies and tails, and starting to disappear inside it.
The Fourth Imagined ascended in mourning silence as Babesi, too scared to leave the Tunnels, shouted her core out for his return. “Farewell, Sixth Conceptualized.”
Gradually the Retriever puppies got replaced by jovial Border and Rough Collies, the space between dogs increasing little by little. Tails plagued by long hairs sometimes hit Dirofil’s face out of nowhere, as some dog spun over its own axis or curled to lick its parts. He didn’t wonder why they floated: The whole sea had been flying over his head a tide or two prior. Floating dogs distributed seemingly at random in an open space was not something that would surprise him. At least the collies had no issue to support his weight as he jumped from one to the other, and he could see a bit between them: he didn’t depend solely on his psycholocation anymore. But soon he would, because as the retrievers grew scarce, so did their light. Each Collie he climbed shrouded him in a denser murk.
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That was how seas were, Dirofil thought, both in the world and in the world before the world. Dark, unbecoming. Maybe not as fluffy where the creators had lived. But this sea, this one was his fate, the one he would end once he reunited with Shadiran. Long gone where the oceans of water, or maybe never gone, if they had never been in the first place. None of his siblings nor none of Shadiran’s knew if the memories were real or a fabrication. Such doubt assaulted them all from time to time. Not even Leptos had a recollection of the beginning of their world. Like every one of them, the moment the First Pictured opened his eyes for the very first time, he was already sitting on his throne. He already donned the title of the oldest brother, on the first second of existence. What they all agreed was that the world had begun “In medias res”, that from the moment Leptos awoke, or maybe a little bit earlier but not much, the world had… been.
Another thing he considered was how monotonous of a task climbing dogs in the dark was quickly becoming. And then, his mind couldn’t help but return to his family matters.
“Farewell, Babesi,” he repeated as a mantra, as if doing so would lift the mantle of loss that had settled upon him, as if it could afford him her forgiveness. But he couldn’t bring her here. She didn’t belong in the sea, and if she had found a safe haven among the puppy-worms, he had to trust those creatures would have long, fruitful lives. Or long enough for him to finish his climb of the sea, at least. Anything scheduled to happen after Shadiran and him ascended the Zenith of Concepts wouldn’t occur. There wouldn’t be farewells in the new world. Not even goodbyes. There wouldn’t be chronic pains. There would be life, undeterred and unending. Life without death, without restraints. A world where every dream would be considered a nightmare, because nothing could ever be as perfect as being awake and aware of the marvels around oneself. No pain, no grief, no vile ocean of canines.
Jumping from dog to dog was getting more tedious as the space between them grew larger. It wasn’t like grabbing onto the floating spheres, that had stable orbits and didn’t kick you or protest when you clawed them. It’s not that he hurt them or drew blood as the Collies, so far, seemed to be as resistant as the puppies below. No, they just got scared by his sudden movements, by the force of his landings upon them.
He turned with warranted urgency when his core detected something that was definitively not a shepherd dog. Spheres attached to a tapering bough… no, a tentacle, coming in his direction. Spheres that shone with light of their own, sky-blue and otherworldly. It took a second from him to realize that it was a multitude of eyes, obscured only by the bodies of the dogs between him and the approaching mass of…
His legs reacted before his consciousness, and soon he began to rush from dog to dog, not caring if he descended, like a rat escaping through the rooves.
Death, it was a mass of death, he knew that. The eyes saw him, and the tentacles came for him, and he couldn’t help but panic and run from it, from what he didn’t know had a name, and that name, given by a crew of Thinkers that should have been dead, was Reaper.
Maybe it was a Siberian Husky. That would explain the blue eyes. He thought that and immediately cursed his core for spawning such a stupid concern. Almost blinded by the dark and avoiding to look back, he kept on bouncing from dog to dog. The sounds that reached him were nothing short of ominous: Squelching, howls, barks, cries from the dogs caught by whatever seemed to be pursuing him.
He began to gather energy in his core. If he got caught, he would send a powerful shockwave out, far stronger than the ones he had used to forestall Rita. He imagined it as some sort of wood chipper. For dogs. Dogchipper. Yes, that was an appropriate way to think of the impending doom with blue eyes.
And what did the Reaper think? Well, it considered that Dirofil’s core sounded delectable, and that it would soon taste it. So it extended its tentacles, making them shoot though the space filled with Collies, with such force that it shoved them apart, just enough so one of the pedunculated eyes could curl around Dirofil’s tail.
Cold. Then panic. Panic as he scratched uselessly over dogs that spun under his claws and provided no safe grip. Panic as he looked back and saw the mass of eyes draw closer, dog by dog. Panic before he remembered that Leptos’ tail was modular for a reason.
Relief as he sent the signal for caudal autotomy from his core to the appendage. And like a gecko’s, the severed piece of the tail kept on squirming as it got dragged into the main mass of the monster.
But that didn’t buy him much time. He kept on bouncing from dog to dog, the contact of his hands and feet with each so brief that one could almost call his movement a chaotic flight.
And this, still, seemed to not be enough. The eyes were coming; the tentacles were coming.
He suddenly took a little deviation to the left when his core detected a difference in the mass of dogs. Ahead of him there seemed to be a river… no, a current or beam of fast moving dogs. If he could get there and dragged away, the huge thing would be unable to follow. Hopefully.
He was close, so close! But the reaper was closer, so much closer! He exerted his core and his articulations to the max. He felt the hinges would blow from the stress and wear.
Mere centimeters away from touching the pug current. That’s when an eye shot and wrapped its stalk around his right arm, the weaker arm. Dirofil had a good grip on a Collie a little too fat for an entity that floated amidst a foodless landscape.
He entertained the idea of letting his arm go for a moment, but soon realized that would be selling tomorrow to afford today. He infused his arm with the energy of his core, so it would keep its integrity. Yet he had not much time to wrestle: an army of stalks and some tentacles was coming.
A wild idea crossed his mind. What if he wrestled the very control of the eye stalk from the thing, if he infused his soul into it as he did with parts of his siblings? It was a gambit, but so it was provoking a wild explosion with his core, which would likely render him too weak to fight back if the thing persisted its attack.
He battled with the mind of the Reaper as his coated the eye and stalk. Serve me, answer to my will and not theirs, eye. That’s what he commanded with the authority of the desperate yet unyielding. His core flared wildly as he pumped more and more energy into his adversary.
And after a few tugs, the eye listened, and obeyed. The stalk began ripping as the thing intruded his flesh, like a worm eating through his arm and finding a home around his metallic bones. But he had no time to watch it happen, to indulge in the burning pain, for as soon as his arm was free form the monster’s grasp, he jumped, hands extended and ready to grab onto a pug of the current.
It felt like jumping straight into a wall as some of the high-velocity dogs collided against him and threatened to let his articulations blow loose. But he had managed to grab into one of the flowing pugs, his left hand like a starfish clasped around the panting dog’s stupid face. He observed with growing calm how the little blue eyes became smaller and smaller as the torpedoing pugs made their way in their slanted path towards who-knew-where.
He struggled a bit to ensconce himself into the current, to sheath his body safely in among the brachycephalic dogs. But when he did, the need to think overcame him, and listening to the stressed silent cries of his core, he closed his eyes.
His eyes, but one: blue and inserted on the upper side of his right hand, the Reaper’s eye was now his, and as the flesh turned to an amalgam with metal, it became more and more integrated with the structure of his bones.