D -->

The bauplan of this creature is like nothing known on Surrogia, or indeed, in any database you can find cataloguing life forms within the known Empire.  According to the instruments you have, there is no explanation for a being like this to exist at all, let alone survive.  Still, it does, and it makes soft noises not entirely dissimilar to the squeaks and cries of the grubs you dimly recall Konali tending, sweeps ago.

You came prepared with a variety of potential foods, in case it hatched ravenous, and you're relieved when it sets on a bowl of finely-chopped native fruit without delay.  While it eats, you scan it slowly, kneeling there beside its odd form, and finally allow yourself to touch the strange, soft fur with a restrained hand, gauging your own strength most carefully and avoiding the circling orbs on instinct.  It must exist slightly out of sync with this dimension, you suspect, based on the unusual readings you get from it, but otherwise, it appears perfectly healthy and ordinary to the best of your ability to determine such cues.

During the hours you spend under observation, clearing it for external safety as an alien to your environment, it alternates eating with singleminded intensity until its belly is visibly rounded, then clambering onto your leg to sleep, the rotating orbs passing through obstacles as if not entirely there while it drowses.

When you finally do emerge, it is with the creature carefully tucked into a soft sling-pouch you have fashioned to carry against your chest.

The first thing your assistant asks you is what you intend to name it.

You haven't the faintest idea.

The surface of the egg seems to shimmer on its own in the containment unit its in, and the shell vibrates until it hums, like the soft chime of a bell. There’s a wiggle, once, twice, then thrice, and the shell starts turning an ashy black, starting from the narrow top and going to the broad bottom. The moment the color encases the entire thing, the process begins anew from the tip, however, the egg begins to disintigrate into light in the air.

Curled up to the shape of the egg, shivering, there’s a blue creature with large orange beads pressed to its belly, clutched there between limbs. It collapses without the support of its egg and lets out a pitiful baby-noise, the beads making a metal noise as they clatter and roll away. Fur only fluffy in patches and soft like crushed velvet over the rest of it, the animal looks like a tinker toy, held together by springs and magnets, the head not connected at all.

But it lives, oh it lives. Defying known laws itself, its limbs are solid enough to shakily allow it to get to its paws, stumbling forward, eking out another pitiful call. The orange beads that had rolled away start coming back to it, flickering a softer yellow color, before leaving the floor entirely to orbit its empty neck.

The short velvet hide flickers, briefly matching the color of the surface it stood on before going to an off color, a chameleon effect by a baby who can’t control it. And then, a pair of eyes open. The eyes look around, trying to find something living. And then, a second pair of eyes below them.

This creature is chaotic good, and the mun is free to determine what this means for the creature’s personality, as well as its gender.

Upon seeing the creature, the owner will be filled with knowledge of what it is and how to care for it.

You have found yourself inordinately busy, as of late.  Not only with the obligations of your positions, both as head researcher and as an informal liaison of sorts between the Temple and the secular population, but also with tending the curious egg that appeared when you ran your highly experimental equipment, some weeks ago.  No one has been able to offer any kind of identification of the strange egg, since then, though nearly everyone can agree that it clearly contains a developing creature of some sort.

You have been getting odd impressions in its vicinity, for the past few nights, and while you are devoid of psychic affinities, yourself, you can at least pick up on outwardly broadcast cues with some degree of regularity.  If you are not mistaken, it seems to be preparing itself to emerge. Thus, you have made the necessary arrangements to isolate yourself in a chamber with the egg, under observation, in case it turns out to pose a threat to those outside.

There, you wait in silent meditation.

It takes six hours to transfer the data from the cachelog to the prototype's buffer, even as fast as your computers are able to decrypt and scan for corruption.  The prototype itself is located in a shielded bunker chamber that is rated to withstand and contain power bursts up to Omega Helm-class psionic eruptions at 65% capacity. Considering 100% capacity has been known to knock moons out of orbit, you are fairly confident in the structural integrity of your lab, even if there is an unforeseen error in the tuning.

Still, you ensure all other staff have cleared the facility, first, just to be safe--gone home to rest, after their hard work.  You've adjusted your algorithms, run calibration checks three times, and now you stand behind the observation pane, faintly conscious of your own pulse.

You pull the primary lever to engage the quantum tuner.  There is a distinct, bone-rattling VWORP of sound, the flicker of an abrupt power drain, and a spectacular flash of unlight, just at the edge of the visible spectrum and keenly reminiscent of the temple sanctums, which sets your white wrist ID glowing brightly in the otherwise darkened blue-tinted room.  Then, the generators compensate for the drain and the regular lighting kicks back on.

There is a large, oval object sitting in the center of the platform, innocuously.  It looks, to all intents and purposes, like an egg.

It is not emitting any form of harmful radiation your sensors can detect, but the faint play of light over the oddly scaled surface reminds you of an oil slick on water, or a soap bubble.

You venture inside the chamber, still in your safety gear.  It neither moves nor reacts to your approach in any way, and finally, after another round of thorough scans with your handheld monitor that reveal quiescent life signs within, you dare to reach out and touch it, with your usual care.

You can just barely feel warmth through your gloves.  Not intense or burning--just living-warmth.  You've encountered enough of your cooler-blooded compatriots with chucklevoodoos to feel the odd little tickle at the edge of your mind that you associate with the sensation, but your natural psychic resistance has always been impressive, and it does not feel malicious in any way.

Still, you make a note to have yourself scanned for untoward psychic alteration, tomorrow, and return your attention to the egg.  It seems you will need to do some research on how to determine the optimal conditions for an unknown creature's larval form.  In the meantime, your best guess is to set the room's environmental controls to maintain the core temperature it held at the moment it appeared, and rig up a couple of drone sensors to monitor those life signs for indications of distress.  In fact, you have no pressing reason to leave the chamber for the next few hours, and here is as good a place as any to review the data that comprised it.  It was structured quite elegantly, and you need a better look.

The first order of business, of course, is not your pet experiment, even once you regain access to the building.  It's not until some 30 hours later that hallways have been mopped, broken windows replaced, walls stripped and re-sealed to avoid fungal infestations, and wiring tested, through the concerted efforts of your entire staff.  Then, finally, and only after a shower, you find yourself keying into the subbasement level where your private lab is located, to run through your own set of calibration sequences and check every inch of the machine before you risk warming up the array.

You do not, however, expect to encounter a sizeable data dump in the logs, during your check.  You would dismiss it as an electronic error and wipe it, but... it's far more data than any amount of ordinary communication transfer could account for.  The size of the log cache, in fact, is commensurate with some of your projections for matter-transmission technology.  The technology you have been working on for the past couple of sweeps, first as a side project, but increasingly intently.

You are Equius Zahhak, the Acolyte Tri%hot, and you are both exceptionally renowned in your particular field, despite your tender age, and inclined to treat inexplicable happenstance with the faith and respect it deserves.

You are the only person on the planet--in the whole of the Empire, to the best of your knowledge--with a prototype quantum field tuner in development.  You have thus far been unable to coax it into tuning energy into anything more complex than featureless green cubes of unknown composition, but as you scroll through tens of thousands of lines of data on your visor, you have the STRONG sort of intuition you have learned not to ignore.

You've been admittedly busy, since the unseasonably severe storm that saturated the hills north of the city with rainfall and triggered landslides in several regions nearby.  Your primary laboratory, and the site of your %dimensional transmission array, was unfortunately in the path of one of said mudslides, and has been inaccessible for approximately a week while you and the rest of the staff, as well as a crew of laborers, work to clear the soil away from the entrances and test the structure for damage.  

The facility itself, from what your instruments tell you, remains stable--it is merely a matter of removing tons of mud from the site, once priorities like local residences and the temple have been verified structurally sound.

The array spent the duration of the storm offline, as you shut it down carefully before the evacuation began. You expect you will have to spend a considerable amount of time recalibrating the equipment before communications can be reestablished.

D --> Still, my account remains

D --> Unfortunately, not Her Imperious Condescension herself, merely a minor member of the oceanic court and her entourage

D --> They do not tend to appreciate this planet’s bounties

wait r u trickshot or trixhot or trickhot

color me confuzzled

im roxy!! or cody if u kno 2 many roxys lmoa

D --> The first is most accurate, if one removes the inf100ence of my quirk

D --> I hope that clarifies adequately

D --> Greetings D --> I seem to have missed receiving any appropriate notification of your ‘follow’

Mucho gusto :o)

As for me, Skully be fine.

D --> Then I will address you as Skully, as you wish