“ ‘Today I saw Negri bodies in the laboratory, Shei. Picture them, little lumps of proteins and viruses depositing inside your neurons., making you fear light, water, and siring in your mind the desire to go around biting people.’

‘Love, sometimes I think you choose your career to admire the illnesses, rather than to bring wellbeing to animals.’

‘Did I ever deny it?’”

—Conversation between the creators.

Doratev and Babesi were discussing important matters when a slow knock on the door interrupted them. The one lower in the pecking order slapped their wriggling cape upon the examination table and crawled to the silvery door, before opening it with her tendrils.

“Hello Diro, how did Lyssy treat you?”

“I will absolutely murder her one day, Babesi.”

“Nuuuh…” she said, her voice slowly turning to a deflated whisper.

Dirofil blinked twice. “I… let’s change subject. Doratev, need a ball of Corgite?” he said, producing a sphere of the material from behind his hipbone. He weighed him in his hand enticingly, an attempt to emphasize his point.

“No. I don’t need it. But I’d wager Babesi wants it.”

“Yes I do! Gimme!”

Dirofil needed no moment of consideration before handing the material to the explorative tendrils of his sister.

Once Babesi was properly hypnotized with the shiny implement and extended on the floor as she played with it, he carefully stepped over her form and got close to Doratev.

“Doratev, I need… what Morbilliv has,” he said letting the suggestion hang in the air, unwilling to speak boldly in front of Babesi.

“What Morbilliv has, encased in glass?” Doratev didn’t let the chance to rhyme slip by him. he adjusted his coat at the neck and shoved two hands on the pockets as he watched Dirofil nod with severity. “I can process the Samoyed’s drool. I can make a vial about… three eyes of volume, if you wish. Should prove plenty for your intents.”

“Quite the suicidal intent, you want to say. Go ahead. Spew it.”

Doratev gestured with his free hand and forwarded a comment, but not the one Dirofil expected. “That’s not concerning, considering you are in the nude.”

Dirofil looked over his shoulders, one shoulder with each eye, and then behind his head with both ocular implements. “The cape…” he lamented softly. The memory of Lyssav leaving with his garb on tow came back to him, and elicited a fleeting worry. “Ah well, I’ll find it hanging around somewhere. She has no reason to cast it outboard.”

After a few seconds of wondering why he hadn’t noticed the lack of weight, he realized the wings were to blame. Despite sporting hollow bones, and despite the added weight of the teeth the cape had acquired since his early tides aboard the Corship, the sole feeling of a load on his back mimicked the sensation of having the cape somewhat. For most of his life it had laid there, no matter his position, no matter his state. Aware or meditating, he was draped in it, embraced by the colony of chains, advised by the silent council of links. It was no more an inanimate object than part of his being, a duality that anyone else would have considered the bud of madness. It was made of a brazen alloy, but so were his arms, his ribs, the scaffolding of his eyes, the talons on his feet and the tail on his rear. Each link deserved the classification of bone just as much as each spondyl of his spine did.

He blinked. It wasn’t time to mull over the nature of what a body meant for beings that amounted to little more than a thinking crystal and its load of sensitive mucus. “Get me that, Doratev, and—” They got interrupted by the sound of a heavy Splinter sauntering up the hall. A Splinter of Morbilliv, their steps unmistakable, hurried up to them, possibly carrying an unconscious Splinter for Doratev to examine and determine if any body parts needed replacement.

The miner butted in unceremoniously, his big frame barely fitting through a door Morbilliv itself had had trouble crossing back in the tides where he still had his own body. What he carried in his green-plated arms made Dirofil avert his gaze, turn away from the scene as he pretended to inspect a pile of broken recorders Doratev had lumped together against the wall.

“Long time I don’t see extremities like these. Fit for jumping rather than climbing. Was she wearing any sort of dress?” The Doctor advanced, poking the spotted flesh with his index. “Leave her over the examination table, she seems deep in meditation. Do you have a name?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Dalvari,” he answered, and glanced at Dirofil, wondering if it was only polite to regard the Original, which he considered a bit of a cunt.

“Hers, not yours, Dalv. How many times have I replaced your knuckle plates by now? Do you think I’d be prone to forgetting the name of such an illustrious crewmate?”

“I am sorry, Doctor,” Dalvari lowered his head in a small bow, and then proceeded to carefully place the rescued Splinter over the examination table.

“I will go fetch my cape,” Dirofil said, hurrying by Dalvari and getting his shoulder caught by his huge hand.

“What do you fear, Fourth Imagined?” He asked roughly, not considering what the others in the room could think of him.

“Time. I cannot shake off the sensation that I am running out of it, and she,” He vaguely gestured at the unconscious Splinter sprawled over the metal lump they called a table. “is a ticking clock.”

“The fall of sands is not the fault of the hourglass, Dirofil.” Doratev commented while he raised the fingers of the Splinter one by one, checking their flexibility.

“Since the first tide I arrived here I haven’t ascended a meter past the Mauling layer, Doctor. And now Lyssav lurks among us, another obstacle that demands to be negotiated somehow. But it is not my sister’s teeth that clatter forebodingly at the edge of my mind. It’s Shadiran’s stalking pessimism. I am running late, and she may think me dead. If I had a way to send her a message, to make my sole will cross this malignant tumor of dogs we call an ocean, I’d find solace. But no, neither my words nor my hands can reach her.” With a movement many would have considered disdainful he swept the hand from his scapula. “I’ll go search for my cape. You tend to Shadiran’s Splinter, and please, tell her I am sorry whenever she wakes up.”

“Sorry for what, Diro?” asked Babesi, who was unknowingly abusing her talent to stand in the way without even trying.

“Just sorry. The rest will in time come, both to me and to you, Babs.”

He carefully stepped over Babesi’s crouching form and disappeared down the hall. It wasn’t long until Dalvari followed, and then seeing Babesi start to grow bored, Doratev ordered her to go and bring some Pointerine from the storage room. She rushed out before even asking what Pointerine was or how it looked.

Once reassured nobody was staring at him, he turned to Shadiran’s Splinter slowly. He got closer with a cautious step, hands outside of his pockets, and fingers contracted into claws at the ready. “Why are you alive?” He hissed with a voice loaded with poison.

The Splinter of Shadiran stirred to life, harrumphed needlessly, and spoke as she sat. “And I thought I was good at playing dead. Missed me, my Dorado?”

“The only golden or gilded thing here is your medal to most obnoxious non-Babesi Splinter, Seloma!” Doratev clawed his temples, the fingers sinking deep in the slime. “I survived the arrival of Babesi and now I have to deal with your bullshit. I hope you get assigned mining duty and die out there.”

“Oh, come on you grumpy thing, it’s not so bad out there. I think I remember one or two tides where nothing tried to murder me,” Seloma said, her eyespots arranging in her face to imitate a smirk. She didn’t turn around, but her spots did move all over her skin. “Nice place you have here. Is this meant to be a sort of garage for your experiments?”

“This is the prestigious laboratory of the miraculous Corship, the only subcanine traversing Cynothalassa.”

Doratev is a friend.

“Yes, Corship, thank you. It came to life and it talks via mind links now. So get acquainted”

Hi Corship! I am Seloma. I am friend too!

Hi Seloma… Chihuahuas ahead… Hi Seloma!

“Creators cruel, what a colorful team has assembled here.”

That’s when Doratev gave up, slumping onto the seat-cube, arms dangling to the sides and head back like a Splinter of Leptos on legsteering duty. His stare got lost in the ceiling, most of it unwebbed due to the rotating nature of the laboratory. Being the only room in the Corship that could stay straight if push came to shove, the laboratory had no need for extra expenditures that could get damaged during the routine… puggum-adjacent investigations, so to speak.

“It smells funny in here.” Seloma noted, and as her feet dangled from the table and she swung them back and forth, Doratev stared in disbelief.

“It… smells? The Shadiran model cannot smell. What did you add to your body that I cannot see, you faceless bitch?”

“I carved out the olfactory epithelium of a Chihuahua and assimilated it, like Dirofil must have done with those sexy-sexy wings he carries on his back. Thinking about it, the Primeval Lovers probably share this talent to assimilate body parts of dogs. And if they do, why haven’t you done so? Or are the new parts hidden under the coat?”

Doratev caressed the Lyssav-model eye inside his head with a single finger. “As long as I have the materials, I can make upgrades for myself and the crew. I don’t mind the original deciding to choose the easy way and directly assimilate the parts. He feels he’s running out of time, and I’d agree, were I someone who cared for his mission. But nobody knows me if you don’t, Seloma, so…”

“So there’s no need to restate your solipsist ideals. I had my fair share of time to grow tired of them.” She hopped off the table and began prancing around the lab, examining the trinkets spread on the desk and the pile of recorders against the wall. “How long did it take to build this all?”

Doratev paced around without staring directly at her. He already knew her form, and it brought no joy to take any more of it in, so why would he bother? “Tide after tide of endless refining with the initial crew, under the orders of Captain Parvov. From the fall of the first Spires to the fall of one about twenty kilometers past Babesi’s, the five of us worked tirelessly. We tested materials, we gathered in transitory cavelike formations in the bottom of the collie layer, we set out on exploratory excursions to bring back dogs and find out how to exploit them. Prior to that, I must admit, refining was found fortuitously while Parvov fooled around with Golden Retriever hair. The Corship would have never been without his childish desire to become a giant Retriever-fueled lantern to climb deeper into the sea without wasting thoughtenergy in illumination.”

But when the doctor turned to address her once more, Seloma was gone, such that he shrugged and returned to working on the hybrid eyes for Morbilliv. A reasonable mirror of him on the loose wasn’t something that ought to concern him. She would peek around, ask questions, annoy the others, maybe get murdered by Lyssav. Commendable work, in his expert opinion.