Albia grants mercy, but not too much

 [Originally written November 22 2020]

The session started off slow. I loaded in with Greg selected and not much memory of what I’d been doing when I left off, so I bonded a bit with the Grendel, got him to eat some carrots, and assessed the state of the world. Verania was hanging out in the computer room with a life force of 50%, but there’s not much I can do about that since I can’t instruct her to eat. The other creatures were split into their typical social groups: Julia, Tiberius, Lucius, and Augustus were in the kitchen, while Eudocia, Gaius, and Quintus soaked up some rays on the island. Greg decided to join the kitchen gang, and seemed to be having a good time, so I headed off to the island.

Eudocia’s life force was lowest at the time (not counting Verania), at 51%, and she was too busy playing with the other Norns (and eventually Greg, who rode the submarine over) to eat the coconut pieces, so I wrangled her down into the bubble, where I finally convinced her to eat some honey and coconuts. 

With her life force on the rise, I checked in on the next two lowest values on my list, Lucius at 61% and Julia at 63%.

As always, Lucius and Tiberius were inseparable, and much more interested in each other (and Lucius’s odd obsession with going left) than in food, so I decided my time would be better spent coaxing Julia to eat.

I had my work cut out for me. I alternated between trying to get her to eat food directly, which she’d happily pick up and carry but refuse to put in her mouth, and from the cheese plate vendor, which she was inexplicably terrified of. She would repeatedly walk over to it, look at it, and then run away with a sad expression. Eventually I got her to eat some cheese, though she never overcame her vendorphobia. I decided that was a battle for another day, and checked my observation kit to see where I was headed next.

Eudocia had just laid an egg, and the pregnancy took its toll on her, bringing her down to 50%. Her life force continued to dip as I struggled to convince her to eat, and eventually I got her away from the island boys by bringing her down to the submarine bay, where Augustus arrived with her underwater uber. Once I had them over in the jungle, they were more cooperative, though there wasn’t much food around, so I had to bring some over from the garden. That was when I noticed Lucius was flagged as being sick.

My heart sank when I found him still hanging out with Julia (who was pregnant) and Tiberius, and more so when the whole flock migrated out to meet Eudocia in the garden. But I didn’t hear any coughing or sneezing, so I opened up the science kit for a diagnosis. Albia granted me one small favor – there were, indeed, no histamines present. The disease, consisting of Antigen 1, an unknown toxin, and sleep toxin, was not contagious. That didn’t mean I didn’t have to isolate Lucius, of course, since he wasn’t likely to listen with anybody around, so I led him to the treehouse.

I did everything I could. Lucius fell into fits of sleep brought on by the toxin, and eventually started whimpering, but simply refused to eat anything. I watched the antibody graph slowly climb even as his life force drained, but he still hadn’t fought the disease off when his life hit the single digits, and I knew he was a goner. I kept pleading with him, but it came as no surprise when the sickness claimed his life. Such must have been the price for the mercy of noncommunicability. There was nothing left to do but move on, so I checked the observation kit for the status of the world, and spent a little time getting Julia’s life force up to reasonable levels.

But where one life ends, another begins, so it was time to bring another hatchling into the world. Next on my list was Marcellus, son of Julia and Gaius. He has only one mutation of his own, which was autocorrected back to its natural value on opening the Genetics Kit. His mother, Julia, of course, has no mutations, but Gaius passed on both of the mutations he’d inherited: one that links female fertility to anger, and one that adds need for pleasure as an input in the glycogen-to-glucose conversion reaction. I also updated Marcellus’s genome with the life kit changes.

Verania was still hanging out in the computer room, but Marcellus didn’t seem to mind that his classmate was much older than him. He learned what he needed quite quickly before Eudocia arrived via teleporter to escort him to the next stage of his education, where Greg joined to helped teach him his adjectives, as per tradition. After that, I introduced him to the typical array of important nouns, and taught him how to eat food, use the vendor, and follow the hand. He seems a quick study so far, so it’ll be interesting to see how he grows up.