Chapter 1
This is Morphic, a Pokémorph fanfic that I originally started in 2007 and completed in 2010. Ever since then, the story and characters have been living rent-free in my head, and I've been writing occasional extras and nursing an idea for a sequel. I have also, for a long time, wanted to rewrite the story: the original version was very rough, for reasons ranging from the fact I was seventeen years old when I started it but trying to write about adult characters and topics, to the fact I just wasn't a very good writer generally at seventeen, to the fact I had only the vaguest idea where the story was going at the start. (I started it under the impression it was going to be a tongue-in-cheek black comedy parodying the Pokémorph genre; by the end, it had become something very different and brutally depressing.)
I had been vaguely hoping to maybe finish the rewrite before starting to publish it, or at least have more of it written and ready, but it's Blitz, chapter one has been pretty much completed for a while now and I don't expect it to change too much from here, and I just sort of randomly wound up going and making some final edits to some lingering bits I didn't like. So sure, why not; let's post it. I can't make any promises as to when the next chapter will be coming, but hopefully you'll enjoy this one.
If you read the old version, the rewrite will feature the same characters and the same core plot, with some tweaks, but heavily revamped presentation. Some scenes will be familiar, others not. On occasion I've kept a line verbatim that I enjoyed, but otherwise everything is rewritten from scratch (I have a hard time even looking at the old version if I don't have to), with the aim of conveying character better, more actual setup and payoff since I actually know where things are going now, and generally a more focused and satisfying narrative.
As far as ratings go, this is an M-rated story; it contains a lot of strong language throughout, some fairly intense violence and unpleasant scenes, as well as tackling a number of political or controversial topics. Click the spoiler below for more information (contains only vague and non-specific spoilers).
Feedback preferences: Anything goes. I'm especially interested in thoughts on the characters, whether anything took you out of it or didn't feel believable, and whether you think I should be warning for more things. If you read the previous version, I'm also very interested in how you're feeling about what's the same, what's different, and the effectiveness of it.
When the brothers are young, their father explains to them what the Church stands for.
People out there, he says, they twist God’s word. They imagine a feel-good God, one who just loves everyone, forgives everyone, conveniently adapts to the attitudes of the times. But the true God, the one whose inerrant word is the Bible, is a vengeful God, one who visits the sins of the father upon his children and grandchildren. He destroys the heretics and unbelievers with terrifying might, brings down the city walls to the sound of trumpets, razed Sodom and Gomorrah and transformed Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt when she looked back. Even Jesus, much as they try to co-opt him for their message of infinite leniency, said over and over again that only those who believe in Him will be saved, that the rest will be cast into the lake of fire. The true God is a just God, but he is a God of might and fear and punishment. He will eternally reward those who are on His side — but most of those who call themselves Christian aren’t on His side, not really. They’re on the side of the God that they made up in their heads, the God that they want to believe in, and the Lord will reject them, as surely as He will reject any heretic. One day, they too will scream their anguish as the eternal flames of Hell consume them, while the true believers claim their place in Paradise.
Isaac pipes up as Jacob watches silently. So we must reach out and change them? Show those who have been led astray the true path? And Father says, No. They have made their choice. It was all there in the Bible, if they had just cared to read and understand it. It is not our job to save people from God’s judgment. They must save themselves, if they truly wish to be saved — but they won’t.
Following the true God, he says, is hard. Out there, he says, people will try to tempt you, to persuade you to believe in their easier God instead. The God who expects nothing from you but lip service, the one who’ll love you regardless of your sins. People like that thought, that they can sin as they like but will simply be forgiven. But that’s not the one true God. Some of them will even try to tell you that’s wrong, contrive interpretations of the Bible where anything they don’t like doesn’t really mean what it says. People do that, believe whatever is easy and convenient, and find ways to convince themselves that it’s true, simply because they want it to be.
But the Church, their church, knows better, Father says, flashing a rare grin. His boys know better. They’re willing to look the cold hard truth in the eye and side with God, over what’s easy, over what’s convenient. Aren’t they?
-------
Calm down now. Be cool.
Brian adjusted his tie for the fifteenth time, but it didn’t feel any less suffocating. He was already sweating in the three-piece suit; it’d only get worse under studio lighting.
He tried to straighten his posture in case it helped (maybe a little?), pushed his too-big glasses a little further up his nose. He wished he’d ever managed to get used to contacts, but it was too late now; he would be going in there looking like the stereotype of an awkward nerd and there was nothing he could do about it. TV crew scuttled around behind him in the mirror, the makeup artist giving him a weary glance that probably meant she wasn’t sure what more she could do for him.
He took off his glasses, wondering if the blurry flesh-colored blob staring back at him looked better that way, and imagined it probably did. Damn it all.
Tomorrow he’d give contacts another go. Tomorrow.
Brian sighed and resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he put the glasses back on. The makeup creased weirdly on his skin with every wince, gave him a desperate sensory urge to rub his face clean. Why was he here? Why was he going on TV? Why wasn’t it Dave sitting here, the picture of self-assured confidence? He could convince the audience black was white if he wanted. Why wasn’t it him?
(Because Dave was busy with an anniversary dinner that he’d insisted he couldn’t miss or she’d murder him, and everyone else had plenty on their plate too after the ruling, and it wasn’t truly going to change anything at this stage so why not send him? At the time, he’d somehow figured it couldn’t be quite as bad as it sounded. He was pretty sure, now, that it was going to be even worse.)
“Mr. Edwards?”
Brian jumped, whirling around to find somebody from the crew inclining her head toward the door. He took one last hopeless look in the mirror before following her out onto the set.
It was all so much smaller than it seemed on TV, a corner of a room fitted with exactly enough set decoration to fill the view from exactly where the cameras were placed and not an inch more. The crew member turned, adjusting and tapping Brian’s lapel microphone before disappearing. Brian squinted at the too-bright lights as the host — James something, Sullivan? — greeted him with a firm handshake and gestured to a chair.
The other guest, a professional-looking young woman in a pantsuit, was already sitting opposite him at the table. She gave him a terse nod, smiling the barest minimum of a polite smile. He raised a hand vaguely in greeting. Should he smile, not smile? Too late; whatever his lips had just done, he was stuck with it.
“On air in five.”
Brian looked sharply at the camera and the man counting down on his fingers. The camera? Should he be looking at the camera? The host? He settled desperately on the host.
“Good evening.” Sullivan didn’t miss a beat reading off the teleprompter. “It’s been a true rollercoaster of a week — the revelation of viable human-Pokémon hybrid embryos engineered in the name of medical research, a whirlwind of ethical debate, and yesterday the shocking ruling prohibiting the destruction of the hybrid fetuses. Here with me are Brian Edwards, geneticist for the team at Heywood Labs that produced the hybrids, and Hannah Mariani, representative of the Alliance for Life, which successfully campaigned for an injunction against destroying them.”
The host indicated the two of them as he spoke. Brian nodded vaguely towards the camera, trying to smile. The woman’s gaze stayed steady on him, accusation boring into his soul.
“Hannah, can you tell me why your group fought for the life of these hybrids? Isn’t there a can of worms being opened here — giving life to children with Pokémon DNA? For many people, even pro-life groups, there’s a line being crossed that’s perhaps unique — for religious reasons or otherwise. What’s your view on that?”
She finally turned toward Sullivan; Brian let out a tense breath.
“Well,” she said, “the Alliance for Life — when we say we are pro-life, we mean pro-life. Our members have diverse backgrounds and opinions, some religious and some not, but we all believe that the right to life and human dignity is fundamental and inalienable from conception until natural death, and that’s what we fight for. We march with the right against abortion and with the left against the death penalty, campaign for ballot measures against childhood poverty — we reject the standard political divisions in our honest mission to protect human life at any cost.”
“Well, that’s—” Sullivan began. Without a pause, Mariani held up her hand to silence him and continued.
“One of the particular things that we’re deeply concerned about, one of the things the pro-choice left refuses to acknowledge, is the systematic selective abortion of children with chromosomal abnormalities or other disabilities. The unborn are an especially vulnerable minority, who cannot speak or advocate for themselves, and we believe it’s our duty as human beings to advocate for them in their place, perhaps especially when they’re disabled or otherwise different from the norm. And these children, if they truly are viable — we believe they, too, deserve life and dignity and advocacy.”
The host nodded as she spoke, hands clasped together. “Well, as you say, we speak of human dignity, but when it comes to a case like this, some would certainly argue that these hybrids, half human and half Pokémon, by definition aren’t quite human. What’s your answer to that?”
Mariani gave a stiff smile. “Well, James, that’s not true; they aren’t half Pokémon. They’re human with a few select added pieces of Pokémon DNA, as I’m sure Mr. Edwards can confirm. But even apart from that, throughout history people have been eager to exclude certain groups from their definition of human to justify why they shouldn’t have rights. I think that history teaches us why that’s a bad path to go down. We should always err on the side of human dignity.”
The host nodded and turned to Brian. Brian snapped his gaze back towards him, from where he’d been staring at Mariani like a deer in headlights. “Brian, I think the question many are asking themselves right now is, Why is this happening? While the law has these controversial carve-outs for the use of human embryos in medical research, I don’t think anyone would dispute that what you did, creating human-Pokémon hybrids, is not exactly the kind of research those laws were intended for.”
Brian’s pulse pounded in his ears. Every word he’d meant to say had disappeared down the mental drain sometime while Mariani was speaking about human dignity and vulnerable minorities.
“We, ah…” He cleared his throat, frantically scrambling to pull together a response. “I mean, it really was promising medical research. It wasn’t about, I guess they are hybrids but it was a proof of concept for a method of, of, it’s a bit technical but…”
He was babbling. How was he supposed to explain genetics to a TV host, let alone to the audience? Sullivan was looking at him, brow furrowed, waiting. “We were basically testing a generalized method to, to make human and Pokémon biology compatible? In the future, with careful engineering, it could mean things like medicine for humans that lets us leverage Pokémon’s superior healing abilities. But that would be years away, and this was a, a simple way to prove that it works, in a generalized way. The point here wasn’t to create — I mean, we always intended to destroy them, as the law — there were never meant to be children.”
Mariani turned her steely gaze on him again. “Well, whether you like it or not, you created children. We oppose all intentional murder of the unborn, but here there is not even a pregnant woman whose body is at stake; they are growing in artificial uteri. They had already gestated for fifteen weeks, and they appear in many respects significantly more developmentally mature than an average human fetus of the same gestational age. Even the current law bans abortion after sixteen weeks, acknowledging a developmental stage where a fetus becomes a child, and scientifically, some of these children may well be considered to have already reached that stage. In court, not even these scientists, who created them, could say for sure that they hadn’t.”
Brian swallowed. “Yes, well, we all heard that argument, but…” But what? The judge had agreed, somehow. “Letting them gestate quite that far, it was… it wasn’t the plan, when we applied for funding, or anything. It was just when we saw the results, and that the method was working better than anyone’d dared to hope, we just… Dave wanted to see how far it could go before they were destroyed. And by the letter of the law, we… it was supposed to be fine up to sixteen weeks. Obviously we were going to—”
“Dave — that’s David Ambrose?”
Brian’s heart thumped as he stared at the host. Why had he said that? Dave was going to eat him alive. He nodded numbly at Sullivan, a drop of sweat dripping slowly down his temple.
“So you, the others on the project, you weren’t on board with this? If this hadn’t leaked to the press when it did, would you have reported this extension of the scope of the project to the ethical review board?”
Brian stared, deer in headlights again, and prayed to every available deity to disappear him from this Earth.
-------
Damn it.
Damn it all.
Fucking hell.
Brian pulled into his driveway at last, turned off the engine and sank back in the seat, hands shaking, his face clammy with sweat.
What a disaster. He was half surprised he’d even made it home in one piece, after the several red lights he’d nearly run on the way back to Taillow Springs, lost in a wretched replay loop of terrible halting answers to questions that had no good ones.
He dug into the glove compartment for a paper towel and dabbed at his face, but only succeeded in spreading the horrid caked mixture of sweat and makeup around. He should go inside and splash his face — no, probably a hot shower, or maybe a cold one, and then just go to bed and hope he didn’t dream more public interrogations, or at least wouldn’t remember them come morning.
His phone chose just then to begin vibrating in his pocket.
Brian exhaled, dragging a hand over his face in some wishful hope that it’d just stop ringing if he waited. It didn’t.
He took a deep breath and pulled the phone out as it continued to buzz. The caller ID said Dave. Of course it did.
For a moment he considered not answering, but ignoring calls would just give him even more to answer for on Monday, deepen the anxious pit in his gut. Maybe if he just quit, never showed up, moved to another city, and prayed he would never have to interact with anybody who’d ever known him ever again.
He let his head fall against the headrest and lifted the phone to his ear with a shaking hand. “Yes?”
“What the fuck was that?”
Brian let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing his eyes. “I told you, I’m not a public speaker. I should never have gone on the show.”
“No shit, Brian. Miss Pro-Life Two-Shoes staking out her moral high ground going on about human dignity and how very concerned they are about eugenics, and meanwhile instead of responding to any of that you’re there babbling about oh, no, we didn’t mean to, it was an accident?”
“The court already ruled in their favor,” Brian said miserably. “What was I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know, Brian, maybe the correct response to ‘You wanted to murder children’ isn’t, ‘Yeah, sorry, we didn’t mean for there to be children, but rest assured we definitely did mean to murder them.’”
He was right, wasn’t he. Of course he was right. Brian massaged his eyelids, wanted everything to just stop. “I’m, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to—”
“We fucking went over what to say yesterday. Where was half of that? Instead now the internet’s full of clips of you there awkwardly trying to wash your hands of it and rambling about how I came up with the whole thing while drunk. What the fuck?”
Brian exhaled. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just…”
Just what? He dug helplessly around in his brain for words, shaking his head, but found nothing. The dark silence stretched on for a few seconds.
“What did you think of what she was saying?” he muttered eventually. “That maybe they deserve life and dignity and all that?”
“Brian, what the fuck are you talking about? Hybrid or not, they’re a bunch of fetuses. Their brains can trigger a couple of automatic reflexes and that’s about it. They’re not people. You can already abort fully human fetuses, and it should be legal longer than it is. Get a grip.”
Brian’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. I know.” He sighed. “Yeah. She just…”
He shook his head again. The pause on the other end went on just a bit too long, just enough to become unpleasant.
“You know what?” Dave said. “You should take one. Maybe the goddamn Slugma, if it keeps on not dying. If we’re going to have to raise the fucking things, why should you get out of it?”
Brian’s heart stopped for a second. “Me? But—”
“It’s not like you’d be the world’s first single parent. Hey, with any luck you’ll barely even have to feed it. Maybe you can just leave it in a box with some sand, problem solved. What was that Mariani said? Just adorable little human babies with a teeny-tiny bit of Pokémon DNA? I would tell her to raise the fucking blob monster, but I don’t know, sounds like you had no objections either.”
His vision swam. “I, I can’t. Raising a child, alone? I’m…”
“I don’t fucking want kids either but this is where we’re at, Brian. You take the Slugma and we’ll call it even.”
Brian shuddered. The others did look mostly human. The Slugma one was a horrific vaguely quadrupedal lump with gigantic vacant eyes, still squirming away in an incubator after somehow surviving the umbilical cord withering and dissolving. Dave wasn’t offering him that one out of the goodness of his heart.
“I’m—” He took a small breath, rubbing the side of his face. What could he do? He’d screwed up. It might not change anything, legally, but in the court of public opinion, the internet was already tearing him apart. The others were already dealing with enough public uproar on top of trying to figure out what they were going to do with eight unexpected children they’d been declared legally responsible for. And now, the furor was probably going to get worse.
It was a punishment, but he probably deserved it. He definitely deserved it more than anyone else, right now.
He gave a tiny nod to no one. “Yeah. Okay.”
There was a pause on the other end. Maybe Dave hadn’t expected him to agree.
“Okay. You know what, that sounds good. Not going to undo the disaster we just witnessed, but at least we know what to do with the Slugma.”
Another pause. Brian stared at his garage door.
“Anyway, I’ve got about a billion other things to deal with right now, some of them thanks to you. If you’ve got any questions you can ask them on Monday.”
Brian nodded automatically. “Okay. Have a nice weekend. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Goodbye, Brian.”
“Bye,” he said limply, but Dave had already hung up.
Brian sighed and pushed the phone back into his pocket, a growing knot in his stomach.
Shower. Shower, and then sleep, and maybe he would feel a little better in the morning. Or maybe, ideally, he would wake up and realize all of this was a horrible dream, and none of it had actually happened.
-------
Jane’s eyes were red with crying and lack of sleep, her usually-pretty face puffy and contorted with anger. The baby screamed at the top of her lungs into the empty night air.
Dave couldn’t exactly say he hadn’t been expecting this. Ever since the research had gotten out, Jane’d been a simmering pot of anger and resentment. Longer than that, really, but that’d been an obvious tipping point. He just hadn’t expected the boiling-over to involve her dangling the baby over the side of the fucking balcony.
“I told you, I told you not to stick me with all the actual child-rearing,” she was shouting. “This thing should never have been born, but you’re the one who made it. And now you expect me to put everything on hold, my life and career, for your creepy monster child I never wanted?”
“Jane, come on, just put her down.”
She thrust her hand further out over the railing, to a shrill screech from the swinging infant. “See, now you care. You need your little research subject? Then at least do your fucking part keeping it alive.”
He spread his arms. “Look, we’re working on figuring out how the fuck their bodies even work. What did you expect me to do, just skip that part so I could spend more time at home changing diapers?”
Jane shook her head, lips pressed together, her mouth twisted into a grimace. “You can figure that out on your own. I’m sick of this. I never wanted kids, you know that? And now somehow I’m here taking time off my work to raise your goddamn science experiment, bleeding from its unholy monster teeth while you sit at the lab figuring out how they work?”
“You think I fucking wanted this?” he snapped.
She clenched her jaw. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you made them, Dave.”
Deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. Just get her back inside, away from the balcony, away from this teetering edge, somehow. “Look, fine. Whatever. I’ll pass some of it on to the more competent guys at the lab and just, I don’t know, read more papers at home. Okay? Now get back in here.”
She glared at him for a few more seconds as the baby screeched. Then she glanced to the side, wincing, shoulders slumping, and took the infant back into her arms. Without meeting his eye, she strode towards him, thrust the baby into his hands, and marched back inside the apartment.
“Jane—”
“I’m done,” she said, striding into the bedroom as he followed.
“Jane, come on. We can talk about this.”
“You say that every goddamn time, and yet all that ever comes of it is you explaining why you’re right about everything and I’m just being hysterical.” She snatched her purse off the bedside table, sending a lone tube of lipstick flying onto the floor, and wheeled back around, shoving past him on the way out.
He exhaled, stepping after her. “I mean, in fairness, dangling a fucking baby from a balcony?”
Jane whirled around. “That’s not a baby. It’s not even human. Have you looked at its teeth? You said yourself there’s a fire sac developing. What the hell is this thing? It makes my skin crawl. I just…” She shuddered, turning to pull her coat from the coat stand.
She was leaving. Heading out, like she did sometimes. Not new, nothing new, just one of her fucking moods. “Come on, it’s not like we don’t know just about what’s going on here. It’s just Vulpix, and we picked and chose, genes for particular structures, to test different things. There are still unknowns to how it all fits together but it’s not like—”
Her lips twisted in contempt as she wrenched the door open. “You based it on a fucking children’s book character, Dave.”
“Jane—”
The door slammed shut.
Dave blinked rapidly as her footsteps echoed in the hallway and faded away. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck!”
The baby still howled unbearably in his arms, a flailing, helpless bundle. For a wild, hot, flashing moment, he wondered if Jane’d had the right idea after all, imagined grabbing the thing by the ankle and just hurling it off the balcony, watching it sail over the trees in a smooth arc as the wailing receded into the night. Or, failing that, just swinging it into the fucking wall, a crack followed by heavenly silence.
A wave of nausea crawled up his throat, his pulse pounding hotly in his temples. He took an agitated turn to set the baby down on the sofa with trembling hands, then whirled around to wrestle the balcony door shut before the apartment froze over. He grabbed a couple of beers and the half-full bottle of formula from the refrigerator, then put the beers down on the coffee table. Shaking, he sat down and stuffed the battered teat of the milk bottle into the infant’s mouth.
Finally, quiet. He massaged his eyelids and then looked dully at the baby as she drank, his jaw clenched. Not even human.
“Yeah? I hope you’re happy, you little freak.”
He cracked the first beer open with his other hand and chugged down a good half of it. She’d be back. She always got over it, eventually. She’d be back.
-------
Dave awoke to muffled crying from the bedroom.
He was lying in an awkward position on the sofa, head pounding, more bottles on the coffee table than he remembered. He rubbed his eyes with a groan. Bedroom. Right. He’d moved her in there, at some point.
Blearily, he looked at his watch; it was one in the morning. He stumbled toward the bedroom and pushed the door open. The Vulpix morph was screaming at the top of her lungs, flailing helplessly in her crib.
“What do you want this time?” he said, voice slurring, leaning unsteadily on the doorframe. “Changing? More food? Greedy little bitch.” Literally — canine and all. Or vixen, whatever. He giggled vaguely. “Or do you just want your mommy, is that it? I’m not good enough for you, huh?”
He stood there for a few seconds, jaw clenched, before leaving the room, closing the door, and crumpling back onto the sofa. He dug his cellphone out of his pocket and punched in Jane’s number.
“Hello?”
“Jane?”
There was a long sigh on the other end of the line.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jane, I’m sorry. I love you. Just get back here, please.”
“It’s one in the morning, Dave. Are you drunk?”
Dave clenched his teeth, dug his fingers into his skull. “Look, what do you need me to do?”
“I’m sick of playing this game. It’s over. It should’ve been over a long time ago. You’re a pathetic, self-absorbed alcoholic. I don’t care if you make a bunch of creepy animal children in your lab, but I don’t want to spend my life babysitting them. I don’t want to be anywhere near them.”
“What if I get one of the others to take her?”
There was a pause. “I don’t love you anymore, Dave.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose, fingers clenching around the phone. “Don’t do this.”
“I already told you, I’m done. Look, I’m not proud of that episode on the balcony earlier. But it says something, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been miserable in this relationship for the better part of a fucking year. It’s time to move on.”
He took a measured breath. “I can—”
“Goodbye, Dave. I’m coming to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow. Don’t call me again.”
She hung up. Dave squeezed the phone, knuckles whitening, then tossed it at the back of the couch, where it bounced off and landed with a clatter on the floor.
That… that fucking whore. Good riddance. At least he wouldn’t have to suffer through any more of her endless fucking dramatics and unholy health food.
He stood up and marched unsteadily back to the refrigerator, but he was all out of alcohol. He kicked the trash can beside it instead and just about broke his fucking toe doing it, spitting out a string of curses until the pain had started to fade into a dull ache.
In the bedroom, the Pokémorph was still wailing interminably for something.
He stumbled back in there with his teeth clenched. He should’ve brought milk, or some distracting toy, or anything actually useful. Instead, he just collapsed heavily against the side of the crib, looking down at her.
“Guess it’s just you and me, huh,” he muttered. “Well, too fucking bad. She didn’t deserve you anyway.”
He hated babies. The crying and the changing and the infant formula and the waking up in the middle of the night, all of it.
But she wasn’t exactly a regular baby, was she.
She’d been born with more hair on her head than you’d expect, initially flat and white and smeared wetly across her forehead, only for it to organize itself into unnaturally orderly curls as it’d dried; by now it was darkening to yellow-orange, just as predicted. Her big, floppy, triangular ears, initially soft flaps covered with fine fur, would sometimes move on their own now, perk at new noises. The little white-furred tail flailed randomly, the curled end flexing and unflexing, all set to split into six over the next year or so by the looks of the X-rays. At least you couldn’t say that wouldn’t be interesting to see. Jury was still out on whether it’d make up for the fucking ordeal of the custom diapers, but it’d be fascinating.
Slowly, with an unsteady hand, he reached down into the crib and stroked the soft edge of her ear and the stubborn curls. Features never seen on any baby in human history, something new and completely unique that he’d created. And by some miracle she actually went quiet, soothed by the contact. He touched her cheek with a finger and watched her head turn reflexively, mouth automatically searching for a source of milk. God, those little fangs really were sharp. Vulpix genes, instructing a human skull to form canine teeth. It was a fucking breakthrough.
He’d been suggesting naming her after Jane. Some idiot idea of a peace offering, not that Jane’d ever appreciated the intent anyway. Wasn’t fucking doing that now. He looked at the baby blearily, idly stroking her cheek. “…J…ean?”
Yeah, real fucking creative. Whatever. He wasn’t in any state to have an original thought right now. Maybe he’d think up a better one later.
He stood up and went back to the kitchen to splash together more formula.
-------
Even with a private room arranged at the neonatal unit, Brian had had to bring the incubator from the lab. The hospital staff hadn’t exactly been keen on filling one of theirs with sand.
On the sand, under the red light of the extra heat lamp, squirmed something that looked at a glance like a giant orange slug or amoeba, a glob of glistening slime with flailing limbs, hooked up to wires and monitors.
Wild Slugma didn’t eat, per se; they simply absorbed sand and rock into their half-liquid bodies, the slime slowly dissolving mineral particles from the surface of the rock and digesting them. For the moment, the Slugma Pokémorph appeared to be able to do the same, sustaining itself largely on the sand. Without the heat lamp, the surface layer of slime gradually cooled and crusted over on contact with air — Slugma had to keep constantly moving, never sleeping, in order to keep their bodies from hardening. As it was, they’d managed to clumsily calibrate the temperature so that the squirming and flailing of the Pokémorph’s small body was enough to keep the slime at a healthy, lively consistency, more or less.
And yet, if the slime was to be at all healthy, the body temperature was just a little high for the human organs within, straining to operate under suboptimal conditions. There was no way around it; if the slime hardened much, that was also a disaster for the vitals. The mammal biology called for additional nutrients beyond the minerals, which had initially had to be provided intravenously; now that it finally had a distinct mouth that opened and closed, they’d begun to cautiously feed it liquid formula, instead. Everything was wild guesswork, Brian frantically reading papers on Slugma physiology and 2AM e-mails from Dave and consulting with vets to try to help the doctors work out what was even going on and come up with things to try. But one way or another, despite everything, the morph was still growing and surviving. A fighter.
Brian sat heavily down in the chair that he’d placed next to the incubator and gazed at the Pokémorph. His son. Gabriel.
The Biblical name was sort of an accident, just a name he’d always vaguely liked, with not much more thought to it than that. When he’d told his mom, she’d approved, though. Gabriel, the archangel: one whose presence may be frightening and incomprehensible to mortal men, but who brings a message of a gift from God. Brian hadn’t been religious himself for a long time, but it was a nice thought. She’d also said firmly that God had given him Gabriel for a reason. And again, he didn’t believe that, exactly, but she was wholeheartedly behind him in the middle of the storm, and that was what mattered.
There was a muffled noise from the incubator, a gasping moan, and Brian bolted up automatically, squinting through the glass. Gabriel squirmed, rolling back and forth, his large yellow eyes staring at Brian — for the first time, they appeared to properly focus, the child still for a second. Another gasping cry. Was he in pain?
Brian’s heart stung uselessly. For all he knew, Gabriel was suffering constantly because of what he was, what they’d made him to be. And there wasn’t much he could do about it, but he had to try.
Carefully, he reached his hands through the portholes, into the attached rubber gloves, and gently picked up the child on the other side of the glass. Slime dripped onto the sand below as Brian clumsily tried to rock him. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m trying. I’ll keep trying.”
After a quiet eternity Gabriel calmed, his huge eyes slowly closing, his slimy body going peacefully limp. Brian carefully placed him back down on the sand and let out a breath.
They still didn’t know how long he might survive. If his brain would develop properly. If his hybrid body was sustainable in the long term. Anything could happen.
All Brian could do was love him regardless, for as long as he had him. And even as he braced for heartbreak, after countless sleepless nights struggling to ease Gabriel’s suffering, he already did.
I had been vaguely hoping to maybe finish the rewrite before starting to publish it, or at least have more of it written and ready, but it's Blitz, chapter one has been pretty much completed for a while now and I don't expect it to change too much from here, and I just sort of randomly wound up going and making some final edits to some lingering bits I didn't like. So sure, why not; let's post it. I can't make any promises as to when the next chapter will be coming, but hopefully you'll enjoy this one.
If you read the old version, the rewrite will feature the same characters and the same core plot, with some tweaks, but heavily revamped presentation. Some scenes will be familiar, others not. On occasion I've kept a line verbatim that I enjoyed, but otherwise everything is rewritten from scratch (I have a hard time even looking at the old version if I don't have to), with the aim of conveying character better, more actual setup and payoff since I actually know where things are going now, and generally a more focused and satisfying narrative.
As far as ratings go, this is an M-rated story; it contains a lot of strong language throughout, some fairly intense violence and unpleasant scenes, as well as tackling a number of political or controversial topics. Click the spoiler below for more information (contains only vague and non-specific spoilers).
This story is set in a world that is intentionally far closer to the real world than to any Pokémon canon, and it heavily deals with real-world issues, controversies and politics. If you read Pokémon fanfic to escape the political realities of daily life — very valid — this may not be the fanfic for you.
That said, it’s not a didactic one; for the most part, the politics is there in the form of opinions held and expressed by characters, which are their own and frequently in opposition to my own. My goal here is just to write believable people with their own beliefs and opinions in a world where these issues are important; characters may rant, but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to agree with them, and if a character feels like a shallow caricature of a position instead of a real person, that’s a fumble that I would want to fix.
In particular: this story prominently deals with an abusive religious fringe cult and the sorts of debates on religion and atheism that were common in 2007-2010, so please expect to see that going in.
Other political/controversial topics that come up here include abortion, human experimentation and gene splicing.
Overall, this story has a grim tone and bad things happen in it; it includes major character death, blood, trauma, injury, grief, gun violence, attempted suicide, and in particular some of this happens to minors.
Discrimination and prejudice are a significant theme in this story. Expect to see characters hold toxic and unpleasant views, make callous and disingenuous arguments, and so on. It includes strong/crude language, including sexist language and occasional but infrequent slurs, and occasional sexual references in dialogue (non-graphic). Alcoholism is also a recurring theme.
Chapter one in particular features a nasty breakup, abusive/neglectful treatment of a child, and ideation about infanticide.
That said, it’s not a didactic one; for the most part, the politics is there in the form of opinions held and expressed by characters, which are their own and frequently in opposition to my own. My goal here is just to write believable people with their own beliefs and opinions in a world where these issues are important; characters may rant, but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to agree with them, and if a character feels like a shallow caricature of a position instead of a real person, that’s a fumble that I would want to fix.
In particular: this story prominently deals with an abusive religious fringe cult and the sorts of debates on religion and atheism that were common in 2007-2010, so please expect to see that going in.
Other political/controversial topics that come up here include abortion, human experimentation and gene splicing.
Overall, this story has a grim tone and bad things happen in it; it includes major character death, blood, trauma, injury, grief, gun violence, attempted suicide, and in particular some of this happens to minors.
Discrimination and prejudice are a significant theme in this story. Expect to see characters hold toxic and unpleasant views, make callous and disingenuous arguments, and so on. It includes strong/crude language, including sexist language and occasional but infrequent slurs, and occasional sexual references in dialogue (non-graphic). Alcoholism is also a recurring theme.
Chapter one in particular features a nasty breakup, abusive/neglectful treatment of a child, and ideation about infanticide.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes. I'm especially interested in thoughts on the characters, whether anything took you out of it or didn't feel believable, and whether you think I should be warning for more things. If you read the previous version, I'm also very interested in how you're feeling about what's the same, what's different, and the effectiveness of it.
Chapter 1
When the brothers are young, their father explains to them what the Church stands for.
People out there, he says, they twist God’s word. They imagine a feel-good God, one who just loves everyone, forgives everyone, conveniently adapts to the attitudes of the times. But the true God, the one whose inerrant word is the Bible, is a vengeful God, one who visits the sins of the father upon his children and grandchildren. He destroys the heretics and unbelievers with terrifying might, brings down the city walls to the sound of trumpets, razed Sodom and Gomorrah and transformed Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt when she looked back. Even Jesus, much as they try to co-opt him for their message of infinite leniency, said over and over again that only those who believe in Him will be saved, that the rest will be cast into the lake of fire. The true God is a just God, but he is a God of might and fear and punishment. He will eternally reward those who are on His side — but most of those who call themselves Christian aren’t on His side, not really. They’re on the side of the God that they made up in their heads, the God that they want to believe in, and the Lord will reject them, as surely as He will reject any heretic. One day, they too will scream their anguish as the eternal flames of Hell consume them, while the true believers claim their place in Paradise.
Isaac pipes up as Jacob watches silently. So we must reach out and change them? Show those who have been led astray the true path? And Father says, No. They have made their choice. It was all there in the Bible, if they had just cared to read and understand it. It is not our job to save people from God’s judgment. They must save themselves, if they truly wish to be saved — but they won’t.
Following the true God, he says, is hard. Out there, he says, people will try to tempt you, to persuade you to believe in their easier God instead. The God who expects nothing from you but lip service, the one who’ll love you regardless of your sins. People like that thought, that they can sin as they like but will simply be forgiven. But that’s not the one true God. Some of them will even try to tell you that’s wrong, contrive interpretations of the Bible where anything they don’t like doesn’t really mean what it says. People do that, believe whatever is easy and convenient, and find ways to convince themselves that it’s true, simply because they want it to be.
But the Church, their church, knows better, Father says, flashing a rare grin. His boys know better. They’re willing to look the cold hard truth in the eye and side with God, over what’s easy, over what’s convenient. Aren’t they?
-------
Calm down now. Be cool.
Brian adjusted his tie for the fifteenth time, but it didn’t feel any less suffocating. He was already sweating in the three-piece suit; it’d only get worse under studio lighting.
He tried to straighten his posture in case it helped (maybe a little?), pushed his too-big glasses a little further up his nose. He wished he’d ever managed to get used to contacts, but it was too late now; he would be going in there looking like the stereotype of an awkward nerd and there was nothing he could do about it. TV crew scuttled around behind him in the mirror, the makeup artist giving him a weary glance that probably meant she wasn’t sure what more she could do for him.
He took off his glasses, wondering if the blurry flesh-colored blob staring back at him looked better that way, and imagined it probably did. Damn it all.
Tomorrow he’d give contacts another go. Tomorrow.
Brian sighed and resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he put the glasses back on. The makeup creased weirdly on his skin with every wince, gave him a desperate sensory urge to rub his face clean. Why was he here? Why was he going on TV? Why wasn’t it Dave sitting here, the picture of self-assured confidence? He could convince the audience black was white if he wanted. Why wasn’t it him?
(Because Dave was busy with an anniversary dinner that he’d insisted he couldn’t miss or she’d murder him, and everyone else had plenty on their plate too after the ruling, and it wasn’t truly going to change anything at this stage so why not send him? At the time, he’d somehow figured it couldn’t be quite as bad as it sounded. He was pretty sure, now, that it was going to be even worse.)
“Mr. Edwards?”
Brian jumped, whirling around to find somebody from the crew inclining her head toward the door. He took one last hopeless look in the mirror before following her out onto the set.
It was all so much smaller than it seemed on TV, a corner of a room fitted with exactly enough set decoration to fill the view from exactly where the cameras were placed and not an inch more. The crew member turned, adjusting and tapping Brian’s lapel microphone before disappearing. Brian squinted at the too-bright lights as the host — James something, Sullivan? — greeted him with a firm handshake and gestured to a chair.
The other guest, a professional-looking young woman in a pantsuit, was already sitting opposite him at the table. She gave him a terse nod, smiling the barest minimum of a polite smile. He raised a hand vaguely in greeting. Should he smile, not smile? Too late; whatever his lips had just done, he was stuck with it.
“On air in five.”
Brian looked sharply at the camera and the man counting down on his fingers. The camera? Should he be looking at the camera? The host? He settled desperately on the host.
“Good evening.” Sullivan didn’t miss a beat reading off the teleprompter. “It’s been a true rollercoaster of a week — the revelation of viable human-Pokémon hybrid embryos engineered in the name of medical research, a whirlwind of ethical debate, and yesterday the shocking ruling prohibiting the destruction of the hybrid fetuses. Here with me are Brian Edwards, geneticist for the team at Heywood Labs that produced the hybrids, and Hannah Mariani, representative of the Alliance for Life, which successfully campaigned for an injunction against destroying them.”
The host indicated the two of them as he spoke. Brian nodded vaguely towards the camera, trying to smile. The woman’s gaze stayed steady on him, accusation boring into his soul.
“Hannah, can you tell me why your group fought for the life of these hybrids? Isn’t there a can of worms being opened here — giving life to children with Pokémon DNA? For many people, even pro-life groups, there’s a line being crossed that’s perhaps unique — for religious reasons or otherwise. What’s your view on that?”
She finally turned toward Sullivan; Brian let out a tense breath.
“Well,” she said, “the Alliance for Life — when we say we are pro-life, we mean pro-life. Our members have diverse backgrounds and opinions, some religious and some not, but we all believe that the right to life and human dignity is fundamental and inalienable from conception until natural death, and that’s what we fight for. We march with the right against abortion and with the left against the death penalty, campaign for ballot measures against childhood poverty — we reject the standard political divisions in our honest mission to protect human life at any cost.”
“Well, that’s—” Sullivan began. Without a pause, Mariani held up her hand to silence him and continued.
“One of the particular things that we’re deeply concerned about, one of the things the pro-choice left refuses to acknowledge, is the systematic selective abortion of children with chromosomal abnormalities or other disabilities. The unborn are an especially vulnerable minority, who cannot speak or advocate for themselves, and we believe it’s our duty as human beings to advocate for them in their place, perhaps especially when they’re disabled or otherwise different from the norm. And these children, if they truly are viable — we believe they, too, deserve life and dignity and advocacy.”
The host nodded as she spoke, hands clasped together. “Well, as you say, we speak of human dignity, but when it comes to a case like this, some would certainly argue that these hybrids, half human and half Pokémon, by definition aren’t quite human. What’s your answer to that?”
Mariani gave a stiff smile. “Well, James, that’s not true; they aren’t half Pokémon. They’re human with a few select added pieces of Pokémon DNA, as I’m sure Mr. Edwards can confirm. But even apart from that, throughout history people have been eager to exclude certain groups from their definition of human to justify why they shouldn’t have rights. I think that history teaches us why that’s a bad path to go down. We should always err on the side of human dignity.”
The host nodded and turned to Brian. Brian snapped his gaze back towards him, from where he’d been staring at Mariani like a deer in headlights. “Brian, I think the question many are asking themselves right now is, Why is this happening? While the law has these controversial carve-outs for the use of human embryos in medical research, I don’t think anyone would dispute that what you did, creating human-Pokémon hybrids, is not exactly the kind of research those laws were intended for.”
Brian’s pulse pounded in his ears. Every word he’d meant to say had disappeared down the mental drain sometime while Mariani was speaking about human dignity and vulnerable minorities.
“We, ah…” He cleared his throat, frantically scrambling to pull together a response. “I mean, it really was promising medical research. It wasn’t about, I guess they are hybrids but it was a proof of concept for a method of, of, it’s a bit technical but…”
He was babbling. How was he supposed to explain genetics to a TV host, let alone to the audience? Sullivan was looking at him, brow furrowed, waiting. “We were basically testing a generalized method to, to make human and Pokémon biology compatible? In the future, with careful engineering, it could mean things like medicine for humans that lets us leverage Pokémon’s superior healing abilities. But that would be years away, and this was a, a simple way to prove that it works, in a generalized way. The point here wasn’t to create — I mean, we always intended to destroy them, as the law — there were never meant to be children.”
Mariani turned her steely gaze on him again. “Well, whether you like it or not, you created children. We oppose all intentional murder of the unborn, but here there is not even a pregnant woman whose body is at stake; they are growing in artificial uteri. They had already gestated for fifteen weeks, and they appear in many respects significantly more developmentally mature than an average human fetus of the same gestational age. Even the current law bans abortion after sixteen weeks, acknowledging a developmental stage where a fetus becomes a child, and scientifically, some of these children may well be considered to have already reached that stage. In court, not even these scientists, who created them, could say for sure that they hadn’t.”
Brian swallowed. “Yes, well, we all heard that argument, but…” But what? The judge had agreed, somehow. “Letting them gestate quite that far, it was… it wasn’t the plan, when we applied for funding, or anything. It was just when we saw the results, and that the method was working better than anyone’d dared to hope, we just… Dave wanted to see how far it could go before they were destroyed. And by the letter of the law, we… it was supposed to be fine up to sixteen weeks. Obviously we were going to—”
“Dave — that’s David Ambrose?”
Brian’s heart thumped as he stared at the host. Why had he said that? Dave was going to eat him alive. He nodded numbly at Sullivan, a drop of sweat dripping slowly down his temple.
“So you, the others on the project, you weren’t on board with this? If this hadn’t leaked to the press when it did, would you have reported this extension of the scope of the project to the ethical review board?”
Brian stared, deer in headlights again, and prayed to every available deity to disappear him from this Earth.
-------
Damn it.
Damn it all.
Fucking hell.
Brian pulled into his driveway at last, turned off the engine and sank back in the seat, hands shaking, his face clammy with sweat.
What a disaster. He was half surprised he’d even made it home in one piece, after the several red lights he’d nearly run on the way back to Taillow Springs, lost in a wretched replay loop of terrible halting answers to questions that had no good ones.
He dug into the glove compartment for a paper towel and dabbed at his face, but only succeeded in spreading the horrid caked mixture of sweat and makeup around. He should go inside and splash his face — no, probably a hot shower, or maybe a cold one, and then just go to bed and hope he didn’t dream more public interrogations, or at least wouldn’t remember them come morning.
His phone chose just then to begin vibrating in his pocket.
Brian exhaled, dragging a hand over his face in some wishful hope that it’d just stop ringing if he waited. It didn’t.
He took a deep breath and pulled the phone out as it continued to buzz. The caller ID said Dave. Of course it did.
For a moment he considered not answering, but ignoring calls would just give him even more to answer for on Monday, deepen the anxious pit in his gut. Maybe if he just quit, never showed up, moved to another city, and prayed he would never have to interact with anybody who’d ever known him ever again.
He let his head fall against the headrest and lifted the phone to his ear with a shaking hand. “Yes?”
“What the fuck was that?”
Brian let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing his eyes. “I told you, I’m not a public speaker. I should never have gone on the show.”
“No shit, Brian. Miss Pro-Life Two-Shoes staking out her moral high ground going on about human dignity and how very concerned they are about eugenics, and meanwhile instead of responding to any of that you’re there babbling about oh, no, we didn’t mean to, it was an accident?”
“The court already ruled in their favor,” Brian said miserably. “What was I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know, Brian, maybe the correct response to ‘You wanted to murder children’ isn’t, ‘Yeah, sorry, we didn’t mean for there to be children, but rest assured we definitely did mean to murder them.’”
He was right, wasn’t he. Of course he was right. Brian massaged his eyelids, wanted everything to just stop. “I’m, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to—”
“We fucking went over what to say yesterday. Where was half of that? Instead now the internet’s full of clips of you there awkwardly trying to wash your hands of it and rambling about how I came up with the whole thing while drunk. What the fuck?”
Brian exhaled. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just…”
Just what? He dug helplessly around in his brain for words, shaking his head, but found nothing. The dark silence stretched on for a few seconds.
“What did you think of what she was saying?” he muttered eventually. “That maybe they deserve life and dignity and all that?”
“Brian, what the fuck are you talking about? Hybrid or not, they’re a bunch of fetuses. Their brains can trigger a couple of automatic reflexes and that’s about it. They’re not people. You can already abort fully human fetuses, and it should be legal longer than it is. Get a grip.”
Brian’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. I know.” He sighed. “Yeah. She just…”
He shook his head again. The pause on the other end went on just a bit too long, just enough to become unpleasant.
“You know what?” Dave said. “You should take one. Maybe the goddamn Slugma, if it keeps on not dying. If we’re going to have to raise the fucking things, why should you get out of it?”
Brian’s heart stopped for a second. “Me? But—”
“It’s not like you’d be the world’s first single parent. Hey, with any luck you’ll barely even have to feed it. Maybe you can just leave it in a box with some sand, problem solved. What was that Mariani said? Just adorable little human babies with a teeny-tiny bit of Pokémon DNA? I would tell her to raise the fucking blob monster, but I don’t know, sounds like you had no objections either.”
His vision swam. “I, I can’t. Raising a child, alone? I’m…”
“I don’t fucking want kids either but this is where we’re at, Brian. You take the Slugma and we’ll call it even.”
Brian shuddered. The others did look mostly human. The Slugma one was a horrific vaguely quadrupedal lump with gigantic vacant eyes, still squirming away in an incubator after somehow surviving the umbilical cord withering and dissolving. Dave wasn’t offering him that one out of the goodness of his heart.
“I’m—” He took a small breath, rubbing the side of his face. What could he do? He’d screwed up. It might not change anything, legally, but in the court of public opinion, the internet was already tearing him apart. The others were already dealing with enough public uproar on top of trying to figure out what they were going to do with eight unexpected children they’d been declared legally responsible for. And now, the furor was probably going to get worse.
It was a punishment, but he probably deserved it. He definitely deserved it more than anyone else, right now.
He gave a tiny nod to no one. “Yeah. Okay.”
There was a pause on the other end. Maybe Dave hadn’t expected him to agree.
“Okay. You know what, that sounds good. Not going to undo the disaster we just witnessed, but at least we know what to do with the Slugma.”
Another pause. Brian stared at his garage door.
“Anyway, I’ve got about a billion other things to deal with right now, some of them thanks to you. If you’ve got any questions you can ask them on Monday.”
Brian nodded automatically. “Okay. Have a nice weekend. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Goodbye, Brian.”
“Bye,” he said limply, but Dave had already hung up.
Brian sighed and pushed the phone back into his pocket, a growing knot in his stomach.
Shower. Shower, and then sleep, and maybe he would feel a little better in the morning. Or maybe, ideally, he would wake up and realize all of this was a horrible dream, and none of it had actually happened.
-------
Jane’s eyes were red with crying and lack of sleep, her usually-pretty face puffy and contorted with anger. The baby screamed at the top of her lungs into the empty night air.
Dave couldn’t exactly say he hadn’t been expecting this. Ever since the research had gotten out, Jane’d been a simmering pot of anger and resentment. Longer than that, really, but that’d been an obvious tipping point. He just hadn’t expected the boiling-over to involve her dangling the baby over the side of the fucking balcony.
“I told you, I told you not to stick me with all the actual child-rearing,” she was shouting. “This thing should never have been born, but you’re the one who made it. And now you expect me to put everything on hold, my life and career, for your creepy monster child I never wanted?”
“Jane, come on, just put her down.”
She thrust her hand further out over the railing, to a shrill screech from the swinging infant. “See, now you care. You need your little research subject? Then at least do your fucking part keeping it alive.”
He spread his arms. “Look, we’re working on figuring out how the fuck their bodies even work. What did you expect me to do, just skip that part so I could spend more time at home changing diapers?”
Jane shook her head, lips pressed together, her mouth twisted into a grimace. “You can figure that out on your own. I’m sick of this. I never wanted kids, you know that? And now somehow I’m here taking time off my work to raise your goddamn science experiment, bleeding from its unholy monster teeth while you sit at the lab figuring out how they work?”
“You think I fucking wanted this?” he snapped.
She clenched her jaw. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you made them, Dave.”
Deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. Just get her back inside, away from the balcony, away from this teetering edge, somehow. “Look, fine. Whatever. I’ll pass some of it on to the more competent guys at the lab and just, I don’t know, read more papers at home. Okay? Now get back in here.”
She glared at him for a few more seconds as the baby screeched. Then she glanced to the side, wincing, shoulders slumping, and took the infant back into her arms. Without meeting his eye, she strode towards him, thrust the baby into his hands, and marched back inside the apartment.
“Jane—”
“I’m done,” she said, striding into the bedroom as he followed.
“Jane, come on. We can talk about this.”
“You say that every goddamn time, and yet all that ever comes of it is you explaining why you’re right about everything and I’m just being hysterical.” She snatched her purse off the bedside table, sending a lone tube of lipstick flying onto the floor, and wheeled back around, shoving past him on the way out.
He exhaled, stepping after her. “I mean, in fairness, dangling a fucking baby from a balcony?”
Jane whirled around. “That’s not a baby. It’s not even human. Have you looked at its teeth? You said yourself there’s a fire sac developing. What the hell is this thing? It makes my skin crawl. I just…” She shuddered, turning to pull her coat from the coat stand.
She was leaving. Heading out, like she did sometimes. Not new, nothing new, just one of her fucking moods. “Come on, it’s not like we don’t know just about what’s going on here. It’s just Vulpix, and we picked and chose, genes for particular structures, to test different things. There are still unknowns to how it all fits together but it’s not like—”
Her lips twisted in contempt as she wrenched the door open. “You based it on a fucking children’s book character, Dave.”
“Jane—”
The door slammed shut.
Dave blinked rapidly as her footsteps echoed in the hallway and faded away. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck!”
The baby still howled unbearably in his arms, a flailing, helpless bundle. For a wild, hot, flashing moment, he wondered if Jane’d had the right idea after all, imagined grabbing the thing by the ankle and just hurling it off the balcony, watching it sail over the trees in a smooth arc as the wailing receded into the night. Or, failing that, just swinging it into the fucking wall, a crack followed by heavenly silence.
A wave of nausea crawled up his throat, his pulse pounding hotly in his temples. He took an agitated turn to set the baby down on the sofa with trembling hands, then whirled around to wrestle the balcony door shut before the apartment froze over. He grabbed a couple of beers and the half-full bottle of formula from the refrigerator, then put the beers down on the coffee table. Shaking, he sat down and stuffed the battered teat of the milk bottle into the infant’s mouth.
Finally, quiet. He massaged his eyelids and then looked dully at the baby as she drank, his jaw clenched. Not even human.
“Yeah? I hope you’re happy, you little freak.”
He cracked the first beer open with his other hand and chugged down a good half of it. She’d be back. She always got over it, eventually. She’d be back.
-------
Dave awoke to muffled crying from the bedroom.
He was lying in an awkward position on the sofa, head pounding, more bottles on the coffee table than he remembered. He rubbed his eyes with a groan. Bedroom. Right. He’d moved her in there, at some point.
Blearily, he looked at his watch; it was one in the morning. He stumbled toward the bedroom and pushed the door open. The Vulpix morph was screaming at the top of her lungs, flailing helplessly in her crib.
“What do you want this time?” he said, voice slurring, leaning unsteadily on the doorframe. “Changing? More food? Greedy little bitch.” Literally — canine and all. Or vixen, whatever. He giggled vaguely. “Or do you just want your mommy, is that it? I’m not good enough for you, huh?”
He stood there for a few seconds, jaw clenched, before leaving the room, closing the door, and crumpling back onto the sofa. He dug his cellphone out of his pocket and punched in Jane’s number.
“Hello?”
“Jane?”
There was a long sigh on the other end of the line.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jane, I’m sorry. I love you. Just get back here, please.”
“It’s one in the morning, Dave. Are you drunk?”
Dave clenched his teeth, dug his fingers into his skull. “Look, what do you need me to do?”
“I’m sick of playing this game. It’s over. It should’ve been over a long time ago. You’re a pathetic, self-absorbed alcoholic. I don’t care if you make a bunch of creepy animal children in your lab, but I don’t want to spend my life babysitting them. I don’t want to be anywhere near them.”
“What if I get one of the others to take her?”
There was a pause. “I don’t love you anymore, Dave.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose, fingers clenching around the phone. “Don’t do this.”
“I already told you, I’m done. Look, I’m not proud of that episode on the balcony earlier. But it says something, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been miserable in this relationship for the better part of a fucking year. It’s time to move on.”
He took a measured breath. “I can—”
“Goodbye, Dave. I’m coming to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow. Don’t call me again.”
She hung up. Dave squeezed the phone, knuckles whitening, then tossed it at the back of the couch, where it bounced off and landed with a clatter on the floor.
That… that fucking whore. Good riddance. At least he wouldn’t have to suffer through any more of her endless fucking dramatics and unholy health food.
He stood up and marched unsteadily back to the refrigerator, but he was all out of alcohol. He kicked the trash can beside it instead and just about broke his fucking toe doing it, spitting out a string of curses until the pain had started to fade into a dull ache.
In the bedroom, the Pokémorph was still wailing interminably for something.
He stumbled back in there with his teeth clenched. He should’ve brought milk, or some distracting toy, or anything actually useful. Instead, he just collapsed heavily against the side of the crib, looking down at her.
“Guess it’s just you and me, huh,” he muttered. “Well, too fucking bad. She didn’t deserve you anyway.”
He hated babies. The crying and the changing and the infant formula and the waking up in the middle of the night, all of it.
But she wasn’t exactly a regular baby, was she.
She’d been born with more hair on her head than you’d expect, initially flat and white and smeared wetly across her forehead, only for it to organize itself into unnaturally orderly curls as it’d dried; by now it was darkening to yellow-orange, just as predicted. Her big, floppy, triangular ears, initially soft flaps covered with fine fur, would sometimes move on their own now, perk at new noises. The little white-furred tail flailed randomly, the curled end flexing and unflexing, all set to split into six over the next year or so by the looks of the X-rays. At least you couldn’t say that wouldn’t be interesting to see. Jury was still out on whether it’d make up for the fucking ordeal of the custom diapers, but it’d be fascinating.
Slowly, with an unsteady hand, he reached down into the crib and stroked the soft edge of her ear and the stubborn curls. Features never seen on any baby in human history, something new and completely unique that he’d created. And by some miracle she actually went quiet, soothed by the contact. He touched her cheek with a finger and watched her head turn reflexively, mouth automatically searching for a source of milk. God, those little fangs really were sharp. Vulpix genes, instructing a human skull to form canine teeth. It was a fucking breakthrough.
He’d been suggesting naming her after Jane. Some idiot idea of a peace offering, not that Jane’d ever appreciated the intent anyway. Wasn’t fucking doing that now. He looked at the baby blearily, idly stroking her cheek. “…J…ean?”
Yeah, real fucking creative. Whatever. He wasn’t in any state to have an original thought right now. Maybe he’d think up a better one later.
He stood up and went back to the kitchen to splash together more formula.
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Even with a private room arranged at the neonatal unit, Brian had had to bring the incubator from the lab. The hospital staff hadn’t exactly been keen on filling one of theirs with sand.
On the sand, under the red light of the extra heat lamp, squirmed something that looked at a glance like a giant orange slug or amoeba, a glob of glistening slime with flailing limbs, hooked up to wires and monitors.
Wild Slugma didn’t eat, per se; they simply absorbed sand and rock into their half-liquid bodies, the slime slowly dissolving mineral particles from the surface of the rock and digesting them. For the moment, the Slugma Pokémorph appeared to be able to do the same, sustaining itself largely on the sand. Without the heat lamp, the surface layer of slime gradually cooled and crusted over on contact with air — Slugma had to keep constantly moving, never sleeping, in order to keep their bodies from hardening. As it was, they’d managed to clumsily calibrate the temperature so that the squirming and flailing of the Pokémorph’s small body was enough to keep the slime at a healthy, lively consistency, more or less.
And yet, if the slime was to be at all healthy, the body temperature was just a little high for the human organs within, straining to operate under suboptimal conditions. There was no way around it; if the slime hardened much, that was also a disaster for the vitals. The mammal biology called for additional nutrients beyond the minerals, which had initially had to be provided intravenously; now that it finally had a distinct mouth that opened and closed, they’d begun to cautiously feed it liquid formula, instead. Everything was wild guesswork, Brian frantically reading papers on Slugma physiology and 2AM e-mails from Dave and consulting with vets to try to help the doctors work out what was even going on and come up with things to try. But one way or another, despite everything, the morph was still growing and surviving. A fighter.
Brian sat heavily down in the chair that he’d placed next to the incubator and gazed at the Pokémorph. His son. Gabriel.
The Biblical name was sort of an accident, just a name he’d always vaguely liked, with not much more thought to it than that. When he’d told his mom, she’d approved, though. Gabriel, the archangel: one whose presence may be frightening and incomprehensible to mortal men, but who brings a message of a gift from God. Brian hadn’t been religious himself for a long time, but it was a nice thought. She’d also said firmly that God had given him Gabriel for a reason. And again, he didn’t believe that, exactly, but she was wholeheartedly behind him in the middle of the storm, and that was what mattered.
There was a muffled noise from the incubator, a gasping moan, and Brian bolted up automatically, squinting through the glass. Gabriel squirmed, rolling back and forth, his large yellow eyes staring at Brian — for the first time, they appeared to properly focus, the child still for a second. Another gasping cry. Was he in pain?
Brian’s heart stung uselessly. For all he knew, Gabriel was suffering constantly because of what he was, what they’d made him to be. And there wasn’t much he could do about it, but he had to try.
Carefully, he reached his hands through the portholes, into the attached rubber gloves, and gently picked up the child on the other side of the glass. Slime dripped onto the sand below as Brian clumsily tried to rock him. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m trying. I’ll keep trying.”
After a quiet eternity Gabriel calmed, his huge eyes slowly closing, his slimy body going peacefully limp. Brian carefully placed him back down on the sand and let out a breath.
They still didn’t know how long he might survive. If his brain would develop properly. If his hybrid body was sustainable in the long term. Anything could happen.
All Brian could do was love him regardless, for as long as he had him. And even as he braced for heartbreak, after countless sleepless nights struggling to ease Gabriel’s suffering, he already did.
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to see what you’d eventually come up with for the rewrite. And I wasn’t disappointed! While this first chapter follows roughly the same beats as the one from the story, it’s just Better in every way.