Cali stopped outside the exam room where she’d left her patients. She swept her tentacles from her face, and then she flipped through her clipboard. Again. These tests, and these results... this was impossible. It must be some malfunction with the scanners. No one in this hospital—no one in the Underground, as far as they’d been able to reach—knew anything about any processes of this magnitude. Their only expert on SOULs, the royal scientist herself, had no explanation for this. It would have involved a massive amount of power and equipment. There would be no way to keep this secret. And yet... it was as though they’d come out of thin air, and they’d always been here. Cali didn’t have teeth with which to chew the lip she also didn’t have, but she fidgeted all the same. She forced herself to knock. No answer, but she didn’t really expect one. She slipped inside the room.
The small room was cold for her, and Cali was used to water temperatures around Snowdin. How was this chill possible so close to the Core? She wished there was some way she could comfort them beyond what she’d already done in giving them more comfortable chairs and blankets; they’d seemed ill at ease with the exam table. They’d taken over the same chair, sitting piled together like they could only find comfort in each other.
She began to pace, but the lack of space and her patients’ apparent excitement or fright—she just could not, for the life of her, read them—put a stop to that; that shaking seemed to be endless. Instead, Cali knelt beside them to lean on the spare chair. She focused on her clipboard again.
“W-well,” she said. “Well, based on these reports, given our samples… it seems that, at one point, there was only a single member of your species left.” She paused, but they kept staring at her. “The genetic similarity just doesn’t happen, otherwise. It’s—cloning, basically. Your SOULs are fragments of the same whole. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what your… progenitor had to do to make it work, to stabilize it. It, it’s amazing!” She glanced up at her patients. Her flesh went pink in a wave as she blushed.
“…ly unethical,” the doctor continued. “We just don’t know what this means for your SOULs. What happens if you continue the fragmentation down the line. And the physical consequences…”
Her patients stared at her from the seat where they clung to each other. She watched the smaller one's face vibrate off of its head.
“hOI!!!”
The small room was cold for her, and Cali was used to water temperatures around Snowdin. How was this chill possible so close to the Core? She wished there was some way she could comfort them beyond what she’d already done in giving them more comfortable chairs and blankets; they’d seemed ill at ease with the exam table. They’d taken over the same chair, sitting piled together like they could only find comfort in each other.
She began to pace, but the lack of space and her patients’ apparent excitement or fright—she just could not, for the life of her, read them—put a stop to that; that shaking seemed to be endless. Instead, Cali knelt beside them to lean on the spare chair. She focused on her clipboard again.
“W-well,” she said. “Well, based on these reports, given our samples… it seems that, at one point, there was only a single member of your species left.” She paused, but they kept staring at her. “The genetic similarity just doesn’t happen, otherwise. It’s—cloning, basically. Your SOULs are fragments of the same whole. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what your… progenitor had to do to make it work, to stabilize it. It, it’s amazing!” She glanced up at her patients. Her flesh went pink in a wave as she blushed.
“…ly unethical,” the doctor continued. “We just don’t know what this means for your SOULs. What happens if you continue the fragmentation down the line. And the physical consequences…”
Her patients stared at her from the seat where they clung to each other. She watched the smaller one's face vibrate off of its head.
“hOI!!!”
I'll admit I've never played Undertake, so I don't know enough to give decent feedback, but it's written well!
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