Support this comic

6.Running

15 years ago

Juni awoke to learn that its dream had come after a major seizure, and that of course Tamu and Sasha were not telling Dr. Goldberg about the circumstances surrounding it.

Some time later, Tamu and Sasha came to visit Juni in the hospital. Sasha, being a Campon, communicated through an electrical-impulse translator, and Juni, being a Kayohash, could detect the electrical impulses before the translator could handle them. Responding before this took place finally let it slip how Juni had been perceiving what it had been — Kayohash have the ability to sense electrical currents. [Editor’s note: By now, given both this fact and Juni’s dream, it should be obvious that Kayohash are descended from the noble platypus, which also had this ability.]

As always, learning new information led Tamu to get over-eager to learn as much as possible, and Juni, having no reason to understand why this revelation was a big deal, got defensive. After a brief escalation between them, Tamu realized he was getting a little too passionate, and he and Sasha left Juni to rest.

Juni was not content to rest for long, though, and it discharged itself from the hospital. With a new clarity of mind, it decided to visit Sam and Cynthia, who were both taking care of Cynthia’s recent litter of pups (as Cynthia had recently divorced her husband). The other two members of Sam’s litter (of identical quadruplets, like nearly all Aikengyu), meanwhile, were off with their new husband. Cynthia continued to joke with Sam about his decision to live as a male, which was clearly a sore spot for him, much like the sensitive nipples on his overworked udder.

At this point, Juni had regained much of its memory. In particular, it could remember the people and places and things around it, and was able to remember pertinent events, but it was still unable to form a personal timeline of events.

While taking a walk and discussing the future of their relationship, Sam was startled by a sudden near-miss from a sniper assault, which turned out to have been fired by Agent Tanya Harris. In trying to figure out what to do, this jogged Juni’s memory of a nearby network of tunnels through which they could get to anywhere else in Unity, thanks to small personal spacecraft used by the humans to observe Unity’s exterior. With Juni’s confusion about its personal history, it ascribed this to having been down there during its school years, but Sam found this explanation to be quite dubious.

Sam had no choice but to follow Juni’s instructions.

Comments

Before commenting, please read the comment policy.

Avatars provided via Libravatar