Crysalis: Merrill's Tale

Good Boys...Sometimes...

Once I had them in tow, I had to decide what to do with these redhaired scream-factories. I couldn’t keep them—not that I wanted to. My nurturing instinct stops at the instant anything or anyone interferes with my mission. Or my reading. Or my sleep. And though it would probably if not certainly have been the default decision of any of my brethren from the Brainery, I didn’t want to take the boys back there. I knew what would happen to them: they’d be bundled into a nursery and raised as I’d been raised, to be whatever kind of scientist or technician was next on the to-be-filled list. I’d been lucky since I liked what I did; anthropology is something I get and studying the different cultures of Tredecim fascinates me. I still get the shudders sometime to think how I might have ended up being trained as a doctor, even though I’ve been wrestled into doing the inoculating thing lately. Blood and I: not a good match. Or I could have been an engineer, but luckily not: math isn’t my best subject.

Or, even worse, they might have decided to make me a judge.

Back then, though I was on an early adventure, I had already made contact with the folks in Muttville, so I knew someplace safe I could dump the boys. Once I got back on the grid, I headed there fast, hastened by the encouragement of two screaming, s**t-and-piss-manufacturing bundles of smells-and-yells.

It took way longer than I’d hoped to actually get to Muttville, and by the time I neared the outskirts, I was second-guessing myself. Maybe I should take the smelly twins to the Brainery after all, turn them over to the crèche attendants there. Maybe I should find them some norm foster parents in a small settlement somewhere. Beta Sector wasn’t out of the question either, or even Alpha. But for some reason, Muttville stuck in my head as not only the best but the only possible solution for my problem, even though the boys weren’t obviously physical mutts themselves, at least as far as I could tell without detailed further examination using equipment I didn’t have.

But even then, on what was very fresh acquaintance, I could tell there was something different about these two. They’d cry in unison but they’d take turns sleeping; they’d both stare at me as if they could read my mind and seemed to understand what I said to them. Not that they ever actually did what I asked, of course.

That for sure hasn’t changed over the years.

So instead of my other options, I decided on Muttville.

And that’s where the boys found a home. I dumped them, in indescribable relief, on a friend of mine named Granther. He—or possibly she, depending on something I’m not quite sure of but suspect may be related to hormone levels, as Granther is hermaphroditic and alternates genders at random times—welcomed them into his cave and taught them the fundamentals of humanity. She raised them with love and the occasional slap, both of which they deserve in abundance, and taught us all three legerdemain, juggling and magic tricks. Granther has four arms, so it all comes so much more easily to her, but we picked things up as well as we could. The stuff she’s taught us has come in handy more times than I can count.

Granther also makes the best shroom soup on Tredecim.

She, or perhaps he, even helped me pick out names for them: Darwin and Newton.

We scientists like to honor our own. Though what Mr. Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton would have thought of their sneaky little namesakes, I cannot imagine. Wild, clever, witty, fierce, intelligent, certainly telepathic and probably certifiably insane, the twins kept Granther amused and me on the edge of destruction more times than not.

Still, they’re good boys. Sometimes.