Two cages were placed side by side in a large room. Two men walked down the warehouse of cages while barely glancing at each of them before moving on. One suddenly stopped and took a long look at one of the cages.

“This one” he said.

While the man might’ve been nonchalant about picking which research specimen he wanted, it was an entirely different story for the moles inside each cage.

“Ahhh no! Please don’t take me away! No! Jonathan! Save me!” 

“Nicky! Don’t worry! You’ll be fine! You’ll be fine!”

“Ahhh…”

And with that the mole’s pale skin was grabbed onto by a claw encased in metal and formed from straight lines that lifted away the mole.

“Dear God! I know I haven’t been pious or even believed in you at all. I’m sorry for always questioning your word, but if you’re out there god, I hope you can listen.”

“I pray for Nicky, who was just taken away and for him to return safely, even if he has been roughed up a bit. I hope I’m not asking for too much God.”

“God… If I may, I wish to pray for the rest of us here, that you may send your shepherd forth to lead us onto the path of freedom and salvation.”

“If I may go on further, I do pray for the rest of my nest and for our mother, for she is the cornerstone for us all and that no harm may fall upon us.”

“Amen.”

“Geez, I wonder if God really can hear me. I sure do hope he will!” 

“What if God can’t hear me because I’m buried beneath all the sins! I must repent! He must hear me! My people must be saved and delivered from the horrors of humanity!”

“May the holy bible protect us. Although you may be far away in our nest, guarded by only the best guards, your influence reigns supreme throughout the world. Even now, I feel your power and I pray to you, that your holy power may be used to save us all.”

“Hah… what am I even doing… Have I become insane? Praying to god? That’ll never work.”

“I’ve always been the one to question the holy book. I’m the one who sparked a protest to bring out the holy book for everybody to see it. I’m pretty sure God hates me now.”

“Whew, I didn’t even know what I was saying to Jonathan! I mean, is he really going to be fine? I don’t know! Does God even exist? I don’t know! Arrrggghhh! This is driving me insane! I need to tell myself whether God exists! Does he exist? This is too much of a dilemma!”

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“Fine. I know. If I get out of here I will spread God’s word, but I don’t, then well, I guess I just die then.”

“But what’s happening to Nicky! He could very easily be dying right now!”

“Can God save him?”

“Eh, maybe I’ll devote myself to god later when I see a sign.”

“I mean, God would understand, right? I can’t see how God would punish me for questioning him a bit.”

“But yeah what was I thinking? Praying to God? How would that work?”

“God can do his own little thing up there, but I’m gonna do my thing down here.”

“Wait what are we even doing?”

“What am I even doing now?”

“I need to get out! How do I get out of this though!”

--Outside--

“Hey, we seem to be running out of space! We’re expecting a new shipment of animals from the Husado Foundation!”

“You mean those lab-grown animals? Those are worthless compared to these animals! We don’t even know if they’ll survive in any environment much less thrive! We have actual animals! These are proven to thrive! What’s important right now is feeding them!”

“But if we just dump slag down there it’ll contaminate the container! Then we’ll need to replace the entire thing once we’re done! How about we stuff maybe 10 moles into each container. They have enough space as it is and normal mole rats are pretty social animals so wouldn’t keeping social animals together prevent them from dying?”

“If that’s the case then we can capture more!”

“I don’t think we can study them all though, and if we can’t study all of them, we’d just end up giving them away! We’d quickly turn into just distributors and not researchers!”

“We’d still be researching! We’d have the largest variety of samples! What about that cockroach and parasite! And that worm! Those are unique! No one can gain an advantage over us in researching those!”

“... Whatever. Yo boss! Can we shove the moles into cages of 10? We’re running out of space! We got a shipment coming in!”

“Do they have enough space?”

“Yeah! Plenty! They love living together too!”

“Sounds good.”

“Hey John, looks like I’m getting my way!”

“Whatever… I’ll go run the standard tests on the mole rate blood for now. I’ll have how they compare up to other animals soon.

“Hah! How much you want to bet that the mole rats are the ones with higher blood pressure! I mean just look at them! Over half of them were violent beating against the walls! And they still are! So energetic!”

“Nah I’m not taking you on that. I mean just look at them! Veins are bursting out! Full of muscle! I wonder how they get that energy!”

“Hey, if that cockroach has that much energy then why’s it not moving around so much!”

“Could it be being drained that much by that parasite? Why hasn’t that parasite matured and reproduced yet then!”

“What if the cockroach eats so often! We can’t starve it right? Our shipment of waste from the power plant is coming in only tomorrow! We need to go through so many hoops to get that waste too! I gotta get to work!”

“Welp, I guess it’s time for me to do the boring work.”

--Inside--

“Hey, you good?”

“Alejandros… I don’t actually know what to do right now. I mean, what if we’re stuck here forever!”

“Don’t worry, we can’t get out anyhow so all we can do is wait.”