O: For this reason, he spent a few more generations breeding the she-wolves to be hardier before traveling back to our home planet to campaign against thehunting of humans for food, and to formally request they become a protected species.
Me: And how did that go?
O: It is ongoing as we speak. Fenrir Zero did not share about the hybrid he had mated. He had little proof of her existence, as he ashed her body in a fit of grief after her death, and he was so infatuated with her that he did not log her DNA. He failed to be a good scientist in this regard. He also could not provide a sensible explanation for how she came to be in his time period. Or why his fertility portal remained in hers.
^Ask about definition of ashed.
+Translation: Ashed = He fireballed her. Drakkon death ritual (see Dorie 999’s notes on Fenrir Zero) and then had nothing left to prove she was ever real.
^Ask about O’s definition of “good scientist.”
^Ask why F0 had fertility portal in his interplanetary flyer.
Me: So Fenrir Zero and—I guess we’ll call the original version of me Dorie Zero—were able to communicate?
+In Orpheus’s numbering system, the original version of me is also called Dorie Zero for reasons that will become evident as the interview goes on.
O: Yes, they established a mind bond after her heat that allowed them to communicate without the aid of translation. Still, finding out she was from a time period several thousand rotations beyond his own raised more questions than answers. After her death, Fenrir Zero had enough sanity remaining to know that people might accuse him of having made Dorie up.
As it was, the court who heard his case could tell that he suffered from some form of madness. As a result, I, Fenrir Prime, the copy of the Royal Geneticist,was decanted, and together we engineered my variants especially for this 1,000-year mission to substantiate his claims about the potential for human civilization.
+Cloning was F0’s original field of science. From what I can tell, he was at the far end of the Drakkon’s nascent steps into cyborg design for interstellar travel and developed several versions of “seed populations” to travel to and inhabit other planets.
+The last 10,000 years he spent creating my race? Considered a light retirement project. Insert mind blown emoji here.
O: I did not think the mission would yield favorable results.
Me: Wait, so you’re his copy, but you didn’t believe him?
O: I did not. Having no concept of the bonding affliction your kind refers to as love, and having worked closely with Fenrir Zero, I assumed he had gone insane and started hallucinating true interpersonal connection where there could be none.
Me: Like a shepherd left alone too long with his sheep.
O: I do not understand this reference as I do not know what a sheep is. But if you are alluding to the inherent unethical nature of engaging in sex with your lab subjects, you are correct in your assessment.
For several moon cycles, there was no evidence the primitive beings Drakkon wished to hunt were anything more than upright animals with crude tools and a method of communication that mostly consisted of grunts and hand signals.
+This only sort of checks out. Hominids, as the Drakkon call us, have a very small inventory of speech in comparison tomodern humans, with a lot more hand signals. Can see why it appeared to the Drakkon like we could only grunt and sign.
O: I believed my work would be a straightforward few years of filing reports that matched Fenrir Zero’s before this supposed advanced she-wolf was issued through his fertility matching portal.
However, just a few moon cycles after our mission arrival, another she-wolf named Dorie Scotswolf fell from the sky. With the exact same story.
^Not hyphenated?
+No, in all the timelines where my father survived, I took his name completely.
O: The newly arrived she-wolf went into heat at the very next moon cycle, and to my great shock, my male works dropped.
+Hindsight being 20/20, really should have clocked that moon cycle detail, but…
Me: Your male works?
O: Our Drakkon genitalia.
+HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT. Not enough room in the margins to explain male works. See Dorie 1000 journal for a multi-page explanation with rough sketches.
O: Our male works do not present until a viable candidate for mating appears. Therefore, a drakkon may go his entire life without having sex if a viable female candidate does not present for mating.
