Kel moved past medical to the workshop, dropping off the helm. He would get to hacking on it later. On his way, Lee reported in that Seph had Light-Finger’s body in her keeping and they were to come to her to retrieve it, urgently. You’d think she was more comfortable with dead bodies lying in her office.

Ril, the Sci-fi Barbie Doll, was stretching and rolling her shoulders outside the capsule when he pushed open the door. Her motions were doing weird and wonderful things to her chest.

“Boob man are you?”

“There’s no way I’m giving such valuable intel to the enemy.”

“I’ve used sight trackers on your feed, you know.”

“Did that give you any hints?”

“Either you are a strange man, or you’re well trained. It differs for each person you look at, and even then it varies. One of the many enticing mysteries of Kel. What’s his kink?” Lips parted into the thing’s angelic smile.

“Did you really have to come down here with shimmering hair and sparkling eyes? Being drop-dead gorgeous, I can forgive, but you understand how hard it will be to move around with you unseen, right?”

“I was just dressing up a bit for you, Kel. Can’t a girl have her fun?” A most innocent pout formed on the Alpha’s face. She could probably get away with genocide.

“Is there at least an off switch?”

“I’m afraid coming this far down limited my options to largely static ones.” Her shrug at least looked sympathetic. “Although I confess, I wanted to see what you’d do.”

She shifted to catch his gaze. “Ah, I see it your eyes. You’ve already thought of something, haven’t you?” The ecstasy displayed was unmistakable.

“You’ve no idea how much people pay for that. That spark of creation, it can’t be optimised or mass-produced. Birthed in impotence and constraint.” She came forward and placed her arms over his shoulders. ”And you’re doing it just for me. I think I’m getting wet, Kel.”

The tension between them pulled taut like steel cable. Hierdie meisie is fokken mal! “Enough of that, are you feeling well? No? Alright, I prescribe at least a week of bed rest, just in case. See you then!”

Disentangling himself, he pretended to leave for the door.

“I’m perfectly healthy, Kel. Thank you for your concern, and I believe it’s Sorting Hat time!”

“Horrible comparison, and that universe has terrible world-building mechanics. How’d you even know of it?”

“Interest in you extends to interest in your world. Art across the universe diverges faster than data corruption near a pulsar. We’d have it no other way.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. Right, let’s fuck off to the HAS.”

Kay met up with them as they moved to the rift room; furtively stealing glances at Ril. “One sec,” Jon put up a finger. “We need samples.”

Five minutes later they were in all in the HAS with the seats folded back. It was touring somewhere over Ireland at the moment. Ril sat cross-legged in the centre.

Before her, was an Ultraman figurine, a cup of coffee—his, in fact—a pneumatic piston, a fluorescent bulb flashlight, and Kay’s book.

“Why such odd items, Master?”

“Variety is the spice of serendipity!” said Jon.

“By which you mean?” Kay continued to puzzle.

“I’m fucking about, but it’s not entirely pointless.”

“Ah, so you are being an imbecile again.”

“It’s not as frivolous as you think, Kay.” Ril eyed him covetously “for one, his eccentricities will bring in the ratings. For another, it’s part of his process. Throw in discord and the irrational, and out of the soup the new is born.”

“No one wants to know how the sausage is made,” said Jon.

“You say to the two girls who most certainly do want to know,” Ril smirked.

“I am amazed you passed up the opportunity for innuendo.”

“Too easy.”

“Might we move this along a bit, Master.” Kay’s features were what a mix of irritation and embarrassment must look like. “I also need to inform you of the arrow.”

“Oh, you two have been busy? I’ll have to check the feeds.”

“Kay has a point,” said Jon. “Please, Ms Ces, guide the pretty puppet through the process of finding her affinity.”

Jon leaned back on a bulkhead while Kay guided Ril through the process of sensing and manipulating her ‘aura’. Who was he kidding the pre-scientific name was probably gonna stick.

Finding Ril’s aura was far more elusive than Kay’s, but it was unmistakably there. His much larger field of sense found a kind of blind spot whenever approaching stuff with its own resistive space: living stuff.

Ril’s clung to her so tightly—just like her clothes—he gauged it barely covered her 'garments', scant as they were. Although, it did follow the material’s contours and extensions with about a centimetre border.

His aura, by comparison, was an effusive mess. Flimsy and bleeding off him like omnidirectional smoke.

Kay’s aura had an intermediate rigidity and fluidity to it. Comfortably batting his out of the way wherever she needed to project it. While his was pervasive, hers had purposeful and undeniable morphology to it.

Ril’s did not appear to extend anywhere, and they needn’t have bothered with samples past Ultraman. The moment she picked it up, the arms started twitching and rotating. Unperturbed she moved on to the other samples but to no avail. She moved the piston well, but not with air, rather in spite of it.

At last, she came to the book. Picking it up, she huffed and strained as she focused, the veins and muscles tensed and rippled beneath the pearlescent skin of her neck. Nothing.

“It appears you are an Earth Mage Ster-sun, congratulations!” Kay made the call.

Ril’s sigh was notably disappointed. “I think I need to come down again.”

Why would she… “Oh, you absolute cunt! You didn’t, did you?”

Ril’s guilty glance was brief but unmistakable.

“You did! Nooit, Ril you stick with what you’ve got, just like the rest of us.”

“I do not understand, Master. Ster-sun is dissatisfied with her affinity I see, but there seems to be more.”

“You tried to copy her, didn’t you?” Jon thumbed in Kay’s direction, and Ril’s silence confirmed it. “Wow.”

His break had finally come. “You see Kay; every living thing has an essence if you will. A long song of but a few notes played in a specific order and unique, even among identical twins. It can be found everywhere in your body and blood.

“We call it DNA. It is why I am ‘fixated on dead bodies’ as you put it. We have methods of reading and preserving these songs. They too represent a kind of valuable knowledge.”

“You took my blood in the White Room, I recall,” said Kay.

“Yes, I did Kay. I am partly to blame for this, but your blood may show up many diseases and ailments as well. Having it for the one vital task makes it available for the other. Your DNA is very valuable, being a new type of long-living hominid, but it’s also locked up, tight. Only people right at the tippy top would have access. Alphas are rather particular about cloning you see.”

“Kloaning?”

“The copying of your essence into a new life. The person would be as your twin but born at a different time.”

“You could make me again?”

“Nah, it wouldn’t be you. Not the same life experience and memories. They would look almost exactly like you, though, and therein lies the problem. A hundred Kay’s running around gets very confusing and counterproductive very quickly. It is also a lost opportunity for the unique. Alphas abhor uniformity most of all.”

Ril added more. “Your DNA is covered under your human rights, ‘elven’ in your case. You own your DNA’s copyright for your life span and a hundred years thereafter. Non-extendable.”

“So Rilian has copied me? But she looks so… different.” Kay was self-conscious for a moment.

“No one knows DNA as well the Alphas,” said Jon. “She likely copied parts of yours from the sites that comparatively changed on mine after the virus. There was no guarantee that’s how it worked. A sample of two is not nearly enough. Not even for the Alpha gods.”

“What I copied was well within fair use.”

“But it wasn’t even in public domain! If you weren’t in the Divers Organization, you would have no access. Hell if you weren’t playing god with me, you’d likely never have laid eyes on it.” He turned back to his elven partner. “No way about it Kay, she took what was not hers, without permission, because she wanted to be a Life Mage like you. Not illegal, not moral either. Worse still, now she wants a character reroll. She wants to fucken try again!”

“Is it true, Ster-sun?”

Ril was wordless as she remained on the floor, a little dejected, but only a little.

“I feel… wronged in some way. Is that sane?”

“‘Violated’, the word you’re looking for is ‘violated.’” Jon broadly advertised his satisfied grin.

She had come all the way down with flawlessly chromed genes, but only now was she perfect! Praise be to gods everywhere; she actually is a bitch!