Chapter Text
On September 13, 1848 of the human historic record, a male human by the name of Phineas P. Gage is described as surviving, a 3-foot 13 pound tamping rod shot through the left side of his face, frontal lobe, and out the top of his skull. Reportedly he spoke within minutes of the accident and walked away from the scene, though extreme personality changes were also noted after the accident.
-
Dr. Krill became aware of the transmission as a frantic buzzing in his right lateral antennae. The sensation was neither pleasant nor unpleasant but sent a shock of awareness through his body encasing both his dorsal and ventral trunks in an eruption of fizzes, tiny bubbles rising uphis insides.
In response, Dr. Krill sent out a shortwave radio burst to accept the transmission as he stepped in to check on yet another of his patients. He performed a quick scan of the unmoving figure with his thermal receptors noting the proper interior heat before turning to survey the Tesraki's injuries. The patient's prognosis was poor, but that was common for those beings whoinitially survived intergalactic slavery rings.
As he was finishing his examination and stepping from the room, a second transmission burst through him bringing the earlier fizzing to a buzzing inner static.
Dr. Krill to the Emergency Bay, Dr. Krill to the Emergency Bay.
Overhead, the internal lights of the bustling medical center lengthened to a critical red. The slight adjustment added an air of urgency to his movements as he turned towards the docking bay calling up one of the railed floor transports which quickly whisked him away, down and onward towards the emergency medical docking bay.
"Preliminary Report?" he inquired as he was pulled swiftly around a corner and down another long hallway. Medical personnel stepped aside for his passing, each barely looking up from their lab results, reports, or patients as he flew past. As the primary trauma physician aboard the intergalactic transit center, he was known to always be in a hurry.
Doctor, we have an emergency SOS from the U.N.S.S Harbinger requesting immediate medical assistance.
Dr. Krill had never heard the moniker U.N.S.S. The sounds were alien to him, in no language that he understood, and he was fluent in many languages and dialects. Even his translation equipment could not decipher the first little bit, but the second part came through.
Harbinger: an entity or thing that heralds the arrival of another.
Quite strange, most GA ships had numbers, not names, and such a strange name to have he thought as the transport took another corner leading him through the optics ward and out onto the central thoroughfare between the two buildings. Resting medical workers and doctors sat under an inky sky lit only by the light of their towering, neighboring gas giant whose massive red and blue surface dominated the greater part of the night sky.
Before he knew it he had passed into the second building, that much closer to his destination. A distant sound of engines roared above in the night sky, the ship drawing ever closer.
"Species?" he ordered as he took another corner.
He didn't have to wait long for the information to come through. A spotty, and somewhat unfinished, biological map of...wait...
"What species is this?" He asked, letting the question hang on the air as he tried to piece through this unfamiliar information set before him.
"Human biological map. 23% completed, data restricted."
Humans?
Dr. Krill had never seen a human before. Sure he had heard about them, who hadn't. Their discovery and eventual involvement in the Drev war had been legendary. The stories that had been brought to them by way of transport vessels and the galactic news feeds had been unbelievable, legendary and almost supernatural. For this reason, Krill doubted many of the stories. As a Vrul, he was a creature of reason, logic and science and he didn't subscribe to impossibilities, rumors or fabrications. If he were to believe anything, he would believe the knowledge gathered by his own senses.
While traveling to the EMB, three of Krill's independent cortical hemispheres had been analyzing the biological map. The information was so sparse he wouldn't even attempt an autopsy if it came to that. He glanced down to see who had collected the data: Dr. Kedd.
Interesting, he had never heard the name before, though it sounded Vrul or Gibb perhaps, not that it mattered.
As he drew closer to the emergency wing and its attached docking bay, Krill began to feel the rumbling. It was a powerful sensation that shook the floors and the walls as if they were experiencing a worldtremor. The transport dropped him by the doors leading into the emergency bay and he scuttling across the floor as fast as his legs would consent. The door ahead opened with a sharp hiss bathing him in a mist of microbial decontaminants. The rest of the trauma team were already assembled and prepped. The doors to the docking bay had been thrown open to give them a view of the outer docking field.
And what a view it was.
A peculiar alien ship was descending from the sky on a pillar of fire, a massive black monolith supported by flames and engineered in sharp, violent metal lines which seemed to claw at the sky as if intending to rip its way through space. The sound it made was deafening, like the roaring of the stars translated from the vacuum of space directly into the engines. A few of the medical crew backed away as the ship lowered itself on its pillars of fire taking the weight of the ship as it eventually settled into a deep hunch against the ground, powerful and malefic against the dark night sky.
As soon as the engines cut and space was plunged back into its relative silence, light spilled from the interior of the ship. It was bright white and filled with oddly moving shadows darting quickly back and forth as the ramp lowered towards the medical bay deck. The hydraulic hiss it made as it lowered was deep and chilling, echoing across the bay like a warning call from one predator to another.
A swarm of shadows rolled to the edge and then spilled off the ramp. Silhouetted by the bright light from behind, the ship's creatures were an amalgamation of churning limbs. The doctor was fascinated by the way the humans moved: quick and lithe one moment and then sharp but fluid the next, every movement a flowing masterpiece of muscle, sinew and bone. They were bipedal creatures, their gate precise and balanced.
He tore his gaze away from the approaching group and back towards the sterilization field which made his senses stiffen with dread as if a powerful predator was behind him. Is that what humans were?
He spread his appendages into the decontaminate field which enveloped his proffered limbs in a sterilizing, hardening gel. Behind him, one of the medical assistants activated a sterilization drape and cast it over him from behind. The field fell over his body and conformed to his shape sucking tight against his thick exterior, sealing over his eyes and mouth to prevent contamination.
He turned from the spot just as the creatures were pulling to a stop. He could hardly tell where one creature began and the other ended. They were just a mass of revolving multi-colored derma.
Krill's eyes registered the intense radiation of a bright long wave light: so much red. By Sanctum's rings, he hadn't seen so much red in a long time, where was it coming from? The mass of writhing limbs was separating, pulling apart like creatures dragging themselves from the sticky pool of mud.
He was left with a ... strange sight. The creatures stood in a loose open circle, towering over the doctor by a good three feet in some cases. As he looked on, they turned to face him ... strange: a solid, bone frame held together by a bulging mass of tissue that absolutely writhed and churned like thousands of worm's pulsing together to create the creature's movement. At the apex of their trunk a thick round protrusion sat on a short, thick stump.
Glowing orbs which glittered with a gelatinous slime stared at him from the recesses of their rubbery stumps as the worms below their derma contracted and released pulling the derma tight on a surprisingly malleable face, the biologic map reported the human word. An orifice, mouth,sat below two cavernous holes, eye sockets, in the head. The mouth opening and closing wetly like an exposed gash. These open wounds stretched back showing the horrific sight of beigetinged bone coated in slime.
Their thick upper limbs ended in a pentad of spidery protrusions that twitched and wriggled with their agitation. These creatures could not stay still.
The noises they made were deep and booming to his ears, dropping into the lower register of his hearing. Their breathy, gravely, nasally and guttural primal grunting raised in agitation and engulfed the room with their raucous and disorderly vocalizations.
He extended his upper limbs in a placating fashion, though, deep down he could feel fear and trepidation boiling up inside him threatening to send him retreating in the other direction. He felt his translation equipment engage.
"Where is the injured creature?"
The group grew unusually still. Little black spots at the center of their glowing eyes contracted like they were focusing in on a target.
"Are you blind?" One of the creatures boomed, throwing a bulging limb wide in a strange and aggressive gesture. The doctor stepped back in trepidation, these creature was volatile. The way its eyes darted about the room was jerky and unpredictable. It rocked back and forth just on the verge of movement and Krill felt like it might strike at any moment.
With one limb still outstretched, a dangerously low growl erupted from the open cavity in its elastic face, "Help him!"
Another spidery hand reached out, one of the other creatures gripped the first by the outstretched appendage in a show of dominating force, "Calm down Lieutenant, its ok. I'm ok."
Dr. Krill turned to examine the creature that spoke. It was standing --rather unsteadily-- at the center of the group, supported by no less than three of its companions: the source of the bright red wavelengths. Unlike its counterparts, it was very still, staring forward though only one eye was visible in the face as the other was obscured in what Krill considered a strange fashion but having no knowledge of humans he was unsure as to what was normal with their species.
The doctor did a quick once over. The location of the trauma seemed to stem from the right ocular socket, however he was somewhat skeptical about severity of the damage as the creature was coherent, speaking, and supporting itself rather well. It appeared just like the rest of them, maybe a little pale in color perhaps with near translucent derma to match its tawny fur, though that might have been normal, "I am sorry. I am not familiar with your species, what exactly is the problem?"
A cacophony of bellowing sounds assaulted his tympanal membranes.
He almost ran, and even then he couldn't stop the high-pitched keening that broke from his mouth as the creatures snapped. Their voices raised in powerful bellows of rage that rattled him in place. They stalked closer in their anger.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Somebody find a real doctor!"
"KNOCK IT OFF! THAT'S AN ORDER!" This shout was so loud it cowed the incensed creatures causing them to curl inwards in submission and stalk backwards though their eyes still remained trained upon Dr. Krill. Their large dark pupils threatening to pull him in like a planet succumbing to a black hole.
"You haven't seen a human before, have you?" The creature at the center said conversationally. Out of all of humans, he seemed the most sober and calm and yet the other humans continued to support him.
"I have not, but I assure you I am the best trauma surgeon in the galaxy and will help if you could explain the nature of your injury."
"Well, I am going to give you a quick human anatomy lesson." The human raised a limb and motioned towards his face, "This, this right here sticking out of my face... let's just say it ain't a fashion statement."
The doctor moved forward a little to get a closer look, but the human was a much taller making it difficult to see. "Are you trying to tell me that the object protruding from your face does not belong there?"
"You're quick Doc. So you think you can help me out because I think I have something stuck in my frontal lobe, which might cause me problems down the line?" Not once did the human's voice waver or crack.
Dr. Krill had the medical team move the human into position on a transport stretcher while he tried to decipher the bio map and the human's words.
He leaned in close to peer at the human. It was very, very strange. A bipedal endo-skeleton operated by a series of contracting and lengthening fibers, triggered by electrical pulse, and insulated by a runny stew of fluid kept in place by a smooth sack covered in tiny sensory cilia. The more he looked, the more the bio map began to make sense. A large muscular pump in the center of the trunk pushed life-sustaining fluid through its body. Fascinating.
"Hey doc, you plan on doing anything at all about the screwdriver in his brain?" One of the humans snarled from his spot on the other side of the room.
The doctor turned to look at him as his translator fed him the conversion. Had the human spoken wrong? He was a trauma surgeon in one of the largest hospitals in the known universe, and he had never seen any creature survive cerebrum trauma. That was medicine 101: brain injuries are terminal, "I think you might be exaggerating just a bit," he said tilting the human's head carefully this way and that.
"That screwdriver is eight inches long and half of it is inside his head."
"He would be dead."
"Well, he isn't"
"He would at least be incapacitated or..." he said brushing the human off with a wave, "The trauma seems minimal judging by the behavior."
Something gripped him tightly about his upper appendage. He felt a jolt of fear shoot through his trunk as he was pulled face to face with the human whose large green irises and the black void at its center froze him in place, "I won't be this calm for very long doc, luckily for you the human brain can block pain signals in dire emergencies, but it isn't going to last forever and then we are all going to be very, very upset."
Now that seemed like an outright lie, "Are you sure your cortical zone is located in your head because....."
The human's face churned for a moment, pulling its maw down at the corners, "I think I would know where my own brain is."
"If that was the case then this would be a very serious injury," the awareness was coming slowly. Krill had trained his entire life for this position, as all Vrul did, but this-
"Yeah, accidental lobotomies tend to be kind of serious, that's why we came here as an emergency instead of slapping a bandage on it and calling it good."
Behind the translation, he could hear the modulation in the human's voice raising a few octaves as it spoke. It may have been a barbaric system of speaking, but it was quite complex and quite fascinating.
The realization struck him.
By Sanctum's Rings!
He suddenly realized what he was looking at. He hadn't seen anything like this outside of the death rooms. Red spilled down the front of the creature's face from the remnants of the destroyed orbital socket. The optical orb was completely ruined and the red -- which he now understood as blood, an essential human body fluid -- ran freely down the human's face and neck before dribbling onto its chest. Finally understanding what he was seeing, he couldn't fathom how the human was still standing. The small nerves that ran through its face and head bone should have been sending absolutely blinding pain signals to the appropriate cortical area, but here it sat calmly eyeing him with that remaining orb, its spidery hands sat folded in its lap.
As the information continued to flow in he got to work, completely fascinated and half horrified by the scene before him. The rest of the medical staff --unaware of the dire situation-- moved sluggishly until galvanized by his shrill orders which sent them scurrying to and fro like a pack of Kinlits searching for food.
"Alright everyone we have a prefrontal, deep-cortical trauma."
"Deep cortical?" They had never treated a cortical injury before. Those were generally treated out back by a furnace or a freezer before being launched into space with the rest of the medical waste.
"Yes deep cortical trauma, try to keep up please." With a quick burst, he partially inflated the helium sack at the back of his head, neck and shoulders, giving him buoyancy and height as he rotated around the human calculating the precise angle of entry. Angled as it was, it had destroyed the eye but could it have lessened damage to vital cortical tissue?
Comparing his estimates to the biological map in his notes, he determined that there was a very high likelihood the object had actually slid into one of the cortical folds. Of course, even a little bit of damage to the brain should have been instant death, but what should have happened did not matter now. What mattered at this moment is what did happen and what it would take to keep this human alive.
"Prepare the surgical suite," he ordered, "and get the rest of them out of here before they contaminate the entire floor."
As he re-examined the human, he found the color of the dermal layer to have lost its rosy tone. It would be important to keep him reactive as long as possible. The aperture of the eye would be an important indicator of neural function his notes suggested.
He shined a light towards the eye, "Does your species give you names, human?" He asked as the dark aperture shrunk at the touch of the light.
"Captain Adam Vir," the human said, voice growing distant though his pulse was still strong and the bleeding around the wound had ceased.
Interesting, humans had more than one name like the Tesraki, and a title like the Rundi.
"Tell the techs to bring in some imaging equipment to the operating room." While giving his orders, he was still examining the bio map. With so little data it was difficult to understand, and the classification system was an absolute wreck, but he four separate cortical hemisphere working together to puzzle out the issue-- so he thought he understood.
The human would require a spinal block for paralysis, and surgery required the human be unconscious for the duration which involved a chemical shutdown of the frontal operating cortex. The method was either applied directly into the bloodstream or by gas to the breathing organs, lungs, which brought oxygen into the blood. He would send this information to their resident chemic immediately. Of course, he could have whipped up a batch of the chemical himself had it been required, but he preferred to keep his talents in the realm of medicine.
He quickly barked orders and before long a drug tube was inserted into one of the human's fluid tubes, veins, a clotting agent was applied to the wound, a respiratory kit was acquired, a nerve block was administered and the magnetic fields were generated. He would need to keep the human semi-erect to restrict the object from sliding further into its cerebrum. Once the body was secured; he would introduce the medication for unconsciousness, secure an airway, acquire the necessary imaging, and then begin the operation.
The human was moved quickly from the emergency bay and into the operating room. They would need to monitor the chest pump, heart, the breathing, and the gas levels within the blood if they wanted to keep him alive. Additionally, he wanted cranial wave readings.
It wouldn't do if he went and added more damage to what had already been done.
Their chemic arrived a minute later with the proper formula.
The human's remaining ocular orb rolled listlessly in its socket. It was not a good sign compared to its earlier activity, it was growing rather lethargic. Dr. Krill decided to order the imaging first, and was immediately rewarded with a direct feed by way of radio signal. The image... was surprising: the object had definitely gone into the brain, but it had cleanly broken through the back of the eye socket severing the optic nerve before sliding miraculously between two of the gyri causing as little damage as one could possibly have hoped. Of course, removing the object was complicated and could result in supplementary damage.
Any other doctor would not have hoped for much of an outcome, but Krill wasn't just any doctor. He was the premier trauma surgeon in the known universe.
His team of surgical assistants moved forward now. The chemic introduced a precise dose of the chemical agent to the human who immediately sagged and then fell listless. Simultaneously,members of the surgical team applied the spinal block and calibrated the magnetic fields which supported the human in the proper position for the surgery. Bloodied clothing was removed and discarded as medical waste as the human was thoroughly sterilized.
The doctor stood waiting as his medical team established a controlled airway on the human before opening the surgical floor to him. He wouldn't need more than his own four limbs and a single assistant for this operation.
Filled with newly acquired human anatomical knowledge and a proper view of the human in a controlled environment, he couldn't help but be captivated. The more he looked, the more fascinated he became. He had not been this excited about his work in quite a long time.
This thing, this creature was like nothing he had ever seen: both frightening and thrilling. As he began the surgery, he suddenly became aware of his extraordinary and unique position in the galaxy. He would be the first Vrul, nay the first entity in the known universe to perform a cortical operation on a trauma patient. He was once again at the forefront of medical science. He was going where no doctor had ever gone before. He would be the first to publish on cerebral surgery.
He had been so focused on the injury to the head that he had not had time to thoroughly examine the rest of the body. One of the lower appendages had a dermal layer covered in coarse threadlike strands, but the other appendage... there was no other lower appendage. The human's mass stopped halfway down and was socketed under a sleeve which cupped to a simulated appendage.
The human was living with a missing limb! Not only that, but it had been replaced with a reproduction. A cursory inspection revealed the counterfeit limb was a mixture of metals and fabricated tissues. Cord-like structures inside the metal casing mimicked working tissues while fine hair-like wires imitated the nervous system. He had never known a creature to survive without its limbs. He knew of species that regenerated parts of their anatomy after removal and still others that were born with genetic defects but they never lived longer than a few years and their quality of life was inferior. It appeared that was untrue for a human.
Krill should not have been surprise since the human was still alive to undergo the current procedure. His practiced hands removed the object from the brain through the broken socket, and out to a waiting tray. After the wound had been packed and bandaged and equipment put into place to monitor intracranial pressure, the human looked almost whole.
It was still breathing, and that powerful pump inside its massive chest was still thundering away. It was nothing short of a miracle, and the doctor didn't subscribe to miracles.
Returning to his office after overseeing the stabilization of his patient, he was overcome with astonishment at what he had just accomplished. He had saved a human's life. He had performed brain surgery and the patient was going to live. He was going to be the foremost researcher the medical field had ever seen.
But it was not just the knowledge he had gained, or the information he would soon be able to share; no, there was something else... gazing at the tranquil surface of their neighboring gas giant, he realized he was not in awe at the procedure that he had performed, but for the human he had performed it on because what kind of creature can survive multiple traumatic wounds?
What kind of creature has the right to defy fate?
***
He was beginning to understand.
Dr. Krill floated in the center of his office suspended in an eclectic constellation of projected medical charts, and 3D anatomical scans all taken from his most recent, and only human subject.
He spun in a slow circle taking in the virtual explosion of information. He had not planned on such an extensive project. It had all started with a simple curiosity regarding the human's visual system, but once he had entered he had been sucked in like a beam of light caught in the event horizon of a black hole.
He steadied himself and spun in a circle towards the origination. He cast his appendages to the side causing all the projections but one to scatter towards the periphery of his visual field where they bunched together in a tightly packed group. The remaining diagram was a scan he had taken, and then refined after significant study. He wanted to begin with something simple.
As it turns out, the human nervous system was remarkably similar to the Vrul. The executive cortical structure was housed in the uppermost structure of the body. The human itself had only half as many cortical hemispheres as did the Vrul, and the two hemispheres were extensively interconnected. He could not be sure what that meant for the human, but he suspected that humans may not have the ability to use each appendage independently as the Vrul did.
He reached up dragging an upper limb slowly through the projection. In response, the human hologram spun in a slow circle, showing only the dense fibers of its nervous system. In some areas, these sensory fibers were packed quite densely: the face, the hands, and the groin, while in other places they were almost non-existent.
The second most similar structure to the Vrul was the scaffold, or the skeleton, though the similarities were in function only. Here he swiped a skeletal overlay onto his hologram. The Vrul had a skeletal structure that was much lighter and encased their entire frame protecting all important structures by tucking them inside, except for weak points where joints allowed their bodies to hinge. The human skeletal structure on the other hand was encased in their softer more vulnerable tissue.
The skull was an acceptable design as was the structure of the cage which encased vital organs, but some hung suspended without proper protection. The trunk of a human was significantly more complex than it was in other species. He supposed the spine was also acceptable: a well-engineered complex array of protective bones that still allowed humans a great measure of flexibility that was non-existent in a Vrul.
Surprisingly, additional simulations he had run on the interior structure indicated that human bones had a power to weight ratio that made it almost five times stronger than certain metal alloys. Disbelieving, he had to run his numbers again, and after the fifth time receiving the same results he could only conclude that the science was accurate. The frame of the Vrul sacrificed weight and strength for full protective coverage, while the human skeletal system sacrificed coverage for weight and power.
In fact, it was a simple case of the worst luck that had allowed the human to sustain a brain injury in the first place. Had the point of the rod been driven against any other part of his skull or at an oblique angle, it may have been deflected. Doctor Krill was not himself an engineer, but the general structure of the skeletal system frustrated him more so than the nervous system.
In a bout of frustration, he selected another overlay hoping the additional information would help him make sense of the mess that sat before him.
Overlay number three was where the human structure completely diverged from that of a Vrul ruining the doctor's hopes of simplicity. As a consumer based creature, the human had a complicated energy-consuming system of tubes, organs and fibers that must have required a great deal of energy to run. The Vrul required only the light, and a reasonable supply of carbon to survive. Humans required oxygen in order to survive and circulated that gas through a pair of sacks in the chest which provided it to the liquid supply of vital fluid that was pumped through the entire body by way of a massive pump inside their chests.
The Vrul had analogous structures to those of the human's lungs and heart though the resemblance was only passing. Krill found himself marveling at both the lungs and the heart. A Vrul 'heart' needed to beat a few times every minute in order to circulate the proper chemicals throughout the body, but the human heart was forced to constantly pump vital fluid through a vertical structure, with enough power to shoot blood vertically at least four feet up. The Vrul were generally no more than three feet tall, so circulation was not that big of an issue.
As for breathing, Krill was quite surprised to learn that human breathing could be both automatic and manually controlled. In fact, their unique vocalizations required them to have just that ability. If a human really wanted to, they could just ... quit breathing.
In fascination, he activated the next overlay. He supposed the muscular system did explain much of why the humans had such a minimal skeletal structure. Where the organs were exposed, a thick fibrous layer of muscle tissue enveloped or encompassed them and the squishy tubes, keeping them safe from impact or injury. The muscles were surprisingly strong and he supposed if the fibers were flexed during impact, they might be able to stop the interior from being damaged. Of course the Vrul had muscle, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to move around, but it was minimal when compared to a human. If his calculations were correct, a human was capable of lifting 130 % of his own weight comfortably, but pushing the skeleto-muscular structure to its max.... 500 % of its own weight.
With another fascinated wave, the doctor called up the last overlay finally coalescing these alien sets of biological systems into one single living creation ... the human. This seemingly chaotic and mesmerizing structure of nervous system, skeleton, smooth muscle tubing and organs was held together by one last layer: a thin porous casing or membrane—pale in color--patterned with delicate cracks and minute craters like the heat-cracked surface of a desert planet. The dermis was remarkably flexible and waterproof, but delicate enough that he could see the thin veins of blue spidering underneath.
He floated away from the image as if distance would give him a different perspective while helping him to understand this intriguing creature. The sightless shell stared down at him with its large, wide eyes and the more he stared, the more he was overcome with a visceral feeling of imperfection. He couldn't explain what it was, but there was something ... missing in the image.
Drawn by the desire to explain the feeling, he floated forward across the floor, and adjusted his buoyancy coming face to face with the human's projected image. Looking into its eyes he was gripped by the sudden impression that he had reached the edge of the universe itself and peered into nothingness. The feeling was so gut-wrenching, so absolutely repulsive that he pulled back and ordered the image away upon reflex.
The void-filled eyes blinked out of existence leaving him alone and trembling in his empty office. He released some of the helium in his sack and floated back to the floor reaching for something to touch, something to connect him to reality and away from the abyss of those eyes. This didn't seem right, sure he had been scared of the humans the first time he had seen them, but they hadn't made him feel so... petrified.
He berated himself for such silly notions. It was a simple image, nothing more than photons interacting with his eyes, and it held no inherent danger. He had plenty of reasons to be afraid of the humans. They were omnivores but their wide, forward-facing eyes marked them as predators. They had not attacked him despite being the only sentient predator race in the known galaxy. They did seem to be rational creatures.
He beat back the absurd fear using logic as a blunt weapon. With his newfound determination he commanded his research back into place standing amidst a storm of swirling projections as they returned. The human image leapt back to life and then erupted into its separate components far less disconcerting broken down, like how a building could be imposing, but those same architectural plans were just lines.
If he could just...
His lateral antenna buzzed and the bubbles erupted down his sides in response, "May I come in?" the transmission queried.
Recognizing one of his colleagues, he responded in the affirmative and quickly cleared his research to one side of the room as the wall dissolved.
A fellow Vrul floated into the room and was immediately drawn to the jumble of research. "You have been busy," the doctor sighed and came to stand next to his colleague. Together they scanned the wall of information.
"I see you haven't managed to shake yourself of this fascination," he stated flatly, reaching out and idly rotating one of the overlays.
"I cannot let it pass," the doctor returned feeling a sensation prickle inside him. It was a ravenous feeling, like requiring starlight after long hours spent in the dark. "These humans are nothing our galaxy has ever seen before, so strange and quite amazing. We can learn so much from them. With a little more time we could-"
"Does the director know about this little side project of yours?" The other Vrul cut in turning his back to the research and scuttling across the length of the office to stand before the viewing field. Outside their gas giant hung brightly in the night sky. As bright as it was, there was hardly a need for any artificial light.
The doctor felt himself deflate slightly, enthusiasm draining from the pads of his appendages as they settled on the cold synthetic floor. He remained where he stood, "No, I-"
"You have neglected to speak with the director?" the Vrul turned, antenna humming with disapproval. "I must be blunt with you doctor. It seems to me that you think because you are the highest ranking galactic surgeon that your actions are always acceptable." He walked past the doctor and paused again before the research.
"You are here to satisfy the Vrul's duty to the Galactic Assembly." He rounded on the doctor who stood statue-still in the center of the room, "Your previous actions have already been a cause for concern. First, you leave our home world without being ordered, which is unprecedented. Then, you are constantly involvement with the intergalactic medical community at the expense of your home world and now your fascination with humans."
The doctor felt exasperation and resentment build up inside him like air in a bottle under extreme pressure, "My 'involvement' in the medical community is nothing more than completely logical. We cannot just stand by and keep our knowledge from those we have sworn alliance with."
"That is not your job doctor. Your job it to protect and further your species. This insatiable curiosity of yours creates discord and disunity. This is why the council has been sent to evaluate you on so many occasions." The two floated across the room away from each other, as physically passive as their words were aggressive.
"You need to let this go. You are too concerned with your experiments, with your research, and with those papers you are so intent on writing. You are here only to fulfill the treaty with the alliance and once your duty is over you will return to our world where our species belongs. You should not be wasting your abilities on those not of our species!"
The slight bubbling in Krill's body had now turned to a frantic humming and as the anger grew, the static only grew worse. "You are invited to leave," he said stiffly, floating over to hover before his research. Behind him the overlay of the human's skeleton loomed silently, disturbed only by reflected light beaming in from the observation field.
The other held his ground for a moment though a quick glance over Krill's shoulder had him scuttling quickly from the room as empty eyes from the hologram bore into his back.