FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

“Remind me how you talked me into doing this again?”

Will finishes adjusting their helmet, and looks over to Micah as the lights inside their visor click on to reveal their half-smile. “You’re a sucker for cutting-edge tech is how,” they remind him. It’s about as smug as Will can muster, but they’re in high spirits today.

“Yeah, yeah… I’m surprised Viv isn’t supervising, what with this being his prototype and all,” the bat remarks. Despite his attitude, he can’t help but be impressed with the close fit of protective membranes over his wings.

“His involvement in this is entirely diagnostic,” Will explains. “We’re so small, things like our sense of balance wouldn’t normally work properly–”

“Not the most assuring thing to tell your air support,” Micah interjects.

Will is undeterred. “--but through the neural uplink in the suit, all our missing functionalities get simulated remotely and streamed back to us.”

The bat shrugs, testing the way those rows and rows of electrodes pressed against his spine feel. “Alright, I guess I trust Viv’s work well enough, but what about this guy?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the wall.

“You can just ask me, you know,” comes a third party’s reply.

“Leaning on your mic switch there, Micah?” Will asks. In actuality, it’s just a little section inside their visor that responds to eye movement.

“Sorry, Jesse…” Micah grumbles. “Okay, so what about the other guy?”

“What’s there to distrust?” Jesse asks. “He doesn’t know a thing.” The brown hyena flicks his turquoise-studded ear, setting his earpiece to pass-through and mostly ignoring Micah’s further protests. That’s something Will can handle, probably.

Jesse’s hand dips into a pocket for a hand-length metal rod. He twirls it on the pad of a finger, a tricky but well-practiced gesture to activate the clipboard. From the long edge of the rod, a screen projects. No new messages from Derick yet, but it’s good to check in anyway.

“Hey, I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”

“I’m not even there yet, take your time,” Derick replies, surprisingly quickly. Jesse’s mind immediately goes to a visual of the other hyena still lounging at home, but even if that’s the situation, he’s coming here via inkwell, instant transportation.

Jesse approaches the guardrail at the edge of the rooftop plaza, gazing out into the sprawling cavern system that houses this city. The sky simulated on the countless panels that seamlessly form the ceiling is from Aenku today; dark, thick clouds, still illuminating the city below with the vibrant violet-red aurora dancing through them. There’s still about a thousand kilometers of Daybreak Station alone to go before the thin fog humidifying the cave scatters enough light to reduce the regions in the far horizon to basic shapes. Jesse is glad he doesn’t have to go that far. They’ve got systems just for the purpose, sure, and some people use them daily, but every time he thinks about it, the sheer scale of this place pulls at some primordial unease in him. Thankfully, his destination is somewhere close by. He queues up for a flotation channel headed downward.

He receives another message.

“What’s the place again?”

“It’s the food court near S15-4” Jesse swipes in reply.

“And that’s?…”

“I’m literally coming down it right now. I can see you, I’m waving at you.” Jesse lays eyes on Derick on one of the balconies below, a purple-eyed hyena squinting in his general direction.

“There’s like a hundred channels in that, I can’t see you,” Derick swipes.

“I’m the one waving!”

“They’re all waving man there’s like a bajillion people here to wave to”

“You’re one floor too high, it’s right under you, just get on an elevator I’ll meet you there,” Jesse replies in defeat, tucking the clipboard away once more.

“I wonder how it’s going out there?” Will muses, enjoying the altered gravity and floating past Micah. “You’d think we’d be in his drink by now.”

“It sounds so sketchy when you say it like that,” the bat shudders.

“It’s standard experimentation,” the opossum consoles. “At some point he signed up for testing, he just probably forgot it was scheduled for today, he’s still getting his stipend.” They take a moment to ensure their mic is off, their placid smile taking on a mischievous curl. “Jesse could remind him, but it’s more fun if he thinks this is some kind of espionage.”

“You’re—“ the bat almost blurts, but latches onto the forethought at the last second to switch off his mic as well. “You’re playing Jesse? I didn’t take you for such a menace, Will.” The words are scathing, but the tone is almost something like admiration.

“Hang out more,” Will chuckles, sticking their tongue out.

“And how are we getting Derick to take extract?” Micah asks, recalling the near mishap from last time.

“Blister packs all over our exosuits!” Will says, tapping an attachment under one of the armguards; a rounded, rectangular thing, the color of dark amber, and rigid under its own pressure . “If the suit detects a hazardous environment, it’ll deploy a concentrate. Actually it was my idea.”

“I gotta hand it to you, I guess constantly daydreaming about this has to push out a good idea here and there.”

Will puts a hand to their chest in mock offense. “So snide, Micah! And yet, you’re here too.”

Once again, Jesse waves to Derick, much closer this time as they both enter the open-air food court at around the same time. Imported vegetation forms a loose boundary, broad leaves overhead adding a cozy, natural feeling to the space despite the downright unreasonable scale of artifice all around it. Despite their snappy exchange on the journey here, the hyenas greet each other with a tight hug. Derick is always so pleasantly soft to the touch, and with a warmth to match the tones of his striped fur. It’s a little difficult to motivate oneself to let go.

“Thanks for meeting me today,” Jesse says, motioning his friend to follow him to a table.

“Yeah, thanks for inviting me!” Derick returns, happily joining him. “Sorry about the confusion.”

“No big deal, I’m still figuring my way around this sector too.”

“Really? But you live so much closer.”

Jesse shrugs. “It’s a little more upscale than my usual scene, but you can’t argue with the view.”

Derick softly chuckles at that. “You’re telling me. You don’t really get this down in the Basin. But anyway, before we get too chatty, did we wanna?…” He gestures broadly at the food court with a grin, one that Jesse reciprocates.

“First one to finish their half picks a table?” Jesse asks, not expecting an answer. In mid-sentence he’s already turning to go put together a feast.

Jesse begins his journey around his arbitrarily chosen half of the court. It’s all regional chains here, but the quality’s just fine, held to a higher standard assured by the union-controlled business model, something Derick’s boyfriend Ricardo would ramble on about in his impassioned way, if he’d been here. Jesse doesn’t think about it as much; as long as things like hunger, poverty, and preventable illness are things of the past, it’s all he needs to know. But ensuring all those things stay in the past requires research. And research requires testing. And testing requires volunteers.

Jesse uncaps the vial in his shirt pocket and tips it into Derick’s hibiscus tea.

“Brace,” Will warns the moment their surroundings begin to tip.

“Already there,” Micah assures, gripping two of the handles embedded into the inner surfaces of the vessel. At this scale, a drop of a few centimeters counts for a lot more; even if terminal velocity is low enough to be inconsequential, nobody wants to get tossed around like that. After the last time, it was enough to get Bern to sit this one out.

A shame, Will thinks, even as the endocraft lurches and plummets. They’re going so much deeper this time.

This isn’t his department, it’s not even his job. In actuality, Ricardo would have been the one put up to this, as he owed someone in the liminality department a favor, but upon taking some time off after a period of overwork, Jesse helpfully suggested he take it off his hands. All the better; had Ricardo been the one, he likely wouldn’t have agreed to do it, at least not so covertly. So Jesse thinks. In actuality, he probably would have just reminded Derick of his schedule and conducted the experiment in a much more clinical manner.

Jesse arrives back at the table slightly ahead of Derick to nudge the appropriate glass to his side, and begins spreading out his half of the bounty of food they split up to collect. He sets out some flaky flatbread, synthetic whale brisket, shredded vegetables, and a large basket of little gravy-filled triangular pastries. Derick joins him in short order, unstacking two baskets of sweet masa cakes and a long tray of steaming, savory fritters containing a thick slice of a porous root vegetable each, accompanied by an assortment of sauces. Lastly, he sets down a pair of small disposable cups of translucent broth, a visible layer of heavier-than-air gas settled on top.

The broth is the first thing either of them reach for, bumping them together like clinking glasses. Jesse and Derick exchange grins, one that seems to say “Oh, but you shouldn’t have,” and another that replies “Oh, but I did.” They both inhale through the nose, gaseous layer waking up their sinuses, and broth imbuing their tastebuds with heightened sensitivity. Appetite enhancers like this are one of the few things on offer in the food hall more expensive than the cost of expertise, but that’s hardly a deterrent at all when the plan is to absolutely stuff oneself.

“So, not that I’m not thrilled to see you,” Derick begins, interrupting himself with a bite into one of the fritters and attempting to cool it in his mouth, “hhhashahshahshah….”

“You good?” Jesse asks, nudging Derick’s drink even closer. It stems from a helpful instinct; the fact that it serves an ulterior motive is entirely coincidental.

The other hyena swallows, ignoring the beverage for the moment in favor of a chunk of flatbread. “Yeah, still too hot is all,” he assures. “Where was I… Right right, why’d you wanna meet up on such short notice?”

“Weeell, since you ask,” Jesse says, enthusiasm peaking as he assembles the perfect bite of bread and all its fillings, “There’s a story circulating and I was wondering if you’d heard all the details. Some friends of mine work with Ricardo and they told me the bits they knew, so—”

“Oh that? Get ready, this is gonna get weird.” Finally, Derick picks up the tea and takes a long, slow sip, preparing his throat for a long tangent.

“Goddddds finally,” Will exclaims, letting their eagerness break through their usually reserved facade.

Camera feeds display a panoramic view of the interior of Derick’s violet maw, the tea flowing like a rich red tide propelling them to the back. The hyena’s broad tongue rises, curving them up close to the deep grooves in his hard palate; deep, inverted valleys overhead.

“It’s a little bit choppy though,” Micah complains, staying braced in one spot. “Why are the engines idle?”

“They’re ultrasound,” the possum explains, “we don’t wanna risk any damage to these teeth.”

“You say, with such wonder,” the bat points out. “You a teeth person?”

“Huuush,” Will says with a dismissive wave of their wrist, not taking their eyes off the feed. “Here we go…”

The entire horizon unfolds as his tongue glides back. His throat dilates, uvula rising up like a final warning before the drop. It only lasts a moment, but Will holds onto it, before it all comes together and pulls down the last of the sip of tea, and the pair of researchers along with it.

Imperceptibly, through his uplink, Jesse takes control of the endocraft, sonic thrusters humming to life once they’re safely past Derick’s molars, keeping it level as he swallows. It’s a strange feeling, looking him in his purple eyes as he talks about… something, Jesse should probably tune back in before too long, but he’s trying to do his part as operator here. A part that requires him to be intensely focused on the way his friend swallows slowly, carrying the research team deep down…

“You good?” Derick asks through another mouthful.

“Ahh, sorry!” Jesse jolts, concentration breaking. His palms smack the table and it’s enough to startle Derick into a badly timed swallow.

“Are you good?” Jesse asks, prompting a raised finger from his friend, before that same hand reaches for more tea.

“What now?” Micah asks, staggering for handles closer to the pilot’s seat.

“Control’s off, peristalsis is about to catch up!” Will warns, strapping in. Their eyes flit to a rear camera as they nosedive, sighting the mostly unchewed ball of corn dough emerge from unfolding muscle to bear down on them.

Jesse shakes it off. He fears that if he’s not careful, Will’s fixations have a real possibility of manifesting in him too. “Sooo what were you saying?”

Micah switches his mic back on. “What was that, Jesse??”

“I zoned out on Derick while piloting you two,” Jesse’s thoughts translate. “It’s hard to juggle this and a conversation.”

The bat sighs. “Alright, I think you should know—“

The payload hits, rocking the endocraft as it drives it down faster. The crew grip their holdfasts even tighter as Jesse guides them into a flip, peeling them off the mass as they pass through the stomach valve.

“—that you’re doing great, Jesse!” Will encourages. “Keep your attention primarily on Derick, we’ll handle ourselves for the most part.”

“‘Menaaaaace,” Micah whispers.

“What was that?” the hyena inquires.

“Nothing, enjoy your lunch!” the opossum urges. Their expression softens into a gentle, pleading look, locked on the bat as they disable their mic again. “Man, come on, authentic experience.”

Micah sighs, joining him in privacy. “Fiiiiine.”

“Besides, we’re onto phase 2 already, check it out.” Will directs Micah’s attention to the feeds again, just as the cavernous space is illuminated by the endocraft’s microflares, and wandering scanner drones, charting a safe course for it as it lowers down into the deep basin of Derick’s stomach.

Teeth fascinate in their own way, but truthfully, Will is much more of a rugae person, their eyes tracing the paths the stomach lining naturally crease upon. They follow hidden lines of keratin scaffold into the red lake below, hibiscus tea already cloudy with enzymes concentrating at the introduction of food. A low, thundering gurgle fills the chamber in time with the rippling of slick muscle, as another bolus slides in, tracing the near slope on its way down and meeting the bath with a fizz.

“And… you wanna go down into that?” Micah asks.

“Yep!” Will enthusiastically confirms, coming back on mic. “Take us down, Jesse!”

“…and so,” Derick continues, wiping the edges of his mouth, “they got the guy configured, and they started routing folks queued up for regeneration through him instead of the Lurranic jar and for a little while it was even going well. So I’m told, anyway.”

“I mean that’s not new,” Jesse says. “Folks with the calories to spare set themselves up as the receiving end of a portal all the time.” He’s only half-paying attention to his other task at this point; the incident, as those present for it so vaguely referred to it, has had a stranglehold on his curiosity even with the few sparse details he’d heard from Bern.

“Yeah, but that’s one at a time, they were capacity testing this one,” Derick explains. “I guess the plan was to put this guy through their department’s inkwell and see if they could regenerate everyone through the vats at the clinic in a preset order.”

Jesse reaches for his drink as well, speaking with his snout partway into the glass. “Ohhhhhhhh right, so instead—”

“Jesse!” Micah barks.

The hyena sputters, splattering himself with the drink. “What?!” he silently broadcasts.

“Up!”

“We’re impacted nose-down, what are you doing??” Will adds with uncharacteristic panic.

“Sorry, sorry!”

Jesse takes control again, rushing the vessel upward, breaking out of the thick mixture like a boot being pulled from mud. It’s so fast, he doesn’t have time to correct course before it smacks hard into the ceiling of Derick’s stomach.

“You g—” The question doesn’t get to be asked for a fourth time; before it’s out of Derick’s mouth, a low belch takes over, loud even as he tries to route the tail end of it through his nose. It’s a futile effort, there’s an awful lot of tail to it.

Both hyenas share a long, awkward silence in its wake, even as the remains of Jesse’s tea stream onto his belly and lap, but he’s stunned for an entirely different reason.

“You maybe wanna strip down to your spray-on if you’ve got it,” Derick suggests, broadly indicating the deep red stains making themselves at home in Jesse’s outfit. “You kinda look like you killed someone.”

“Please wake up please wake up please wake up!” Will crouches in the back of the tilted vessel, pulling their crewmate from a pile of supply crates.

Micah, though unconscious, is thankfully found still breathing. Will drags him up the slanting floor and into the stand-in for a pilot seat to remove his helmet. They delicately peel open the lids of one of Micah’s eyes, before giving him a few tentative slaps on the cheek, but he doesn’t stir to consciousness.

“Please tell me you’re alive in there,” Jesse transmits.

“We’d better be! If we have to cycle, then rescheduling this will be a pain,” Will responds. “Down gently please, I need to be able to trust you to stay on task.”

“Below the surface?” Jesse asks.

“Save that for when Derick’s had a little more,” they instruct. “They’re still fresh out of the inkwell from their trip to get here, so that’s a nice clean intestinal tract to explore. We’ll double back for the stomach in a bit.”

“Right…” the hyena agrees, though his apprehension is clear. “Why am I the one piloting, again?”

“Structures are too simple at this scale for all the bells and whistles we’d need for the endocraft to be self-operating, we stream that in too, using your inner ear as an orientation model,” Will reminds him. “Are you ready to focus?”

“I’m so focused,” Jesse assures.

Jesse suddenly slams his glass back down the table, loudly declaring “I’m getting more food!” and rising before Derick can question it. Jesse slips out of his shirt and shorts with a little too much nonchalance, down to his dark green spray-on phycogel jumpsuit, standard attire to control shedding. He tosses the balled-up clothes onto the bench, not bothering to correct them as they inevitably tumble off.

This is a disaster, Jesse thinks to himself. He queues up in the longest line he can find, in range of Derick but, at least for now, no longer actively tantalized by the story splitting his attention. There will be time for that later. Right now, the small intestine awaits. The camera feeds take priority in his head and, as focused as he said, he navigates deeper.

Will continues their assessment of Micah, but, finding him generally stable, reaffixes his helmet and lets the life support in the suit take care of the rest. They turn their attention back to the feeds, watching the walls scroll by, lined with filaments that give it an almost furry texture. They’re short at first, but gradually increase in length the deeper they go. Though taming their fascination, Will still sighs. They’ve already passed the duodenum, a section they were medically interested in, but it’s one of those things they can come back to.

The endocraft rounds a wide bend, proceeding on a mostly horizontal stretch through Derick’s small intestine, swaying to automatically account for his subtle movements, and the autonomic motion of the tract. They’re mostly smooth, save for the occasional tremor brought on by the stomach at work not so far above. Its sound still fills the space, echoing down the villi-lined passage like an approaching storm.

It’s not long before the next descent. There’s a lot of small intestine to go, but it does end at some point. With that in mind, Will checks on Micah again, just in case, and gets to work re-securing equipment before they emerge onto the next horizontal section.

“Jesse, I’m heading out!” Will announces. “Send out a couple more scanner drones for me and keep coasting, but slowly, alright?”

“Gotcha!” Jesse confirms, feeling much better about his role by now.

Will checks and re-checks his suit systems, and leaves through one of the side hatches. Their visor fogs for a brief moment, assailed by cloying humidity, but it regulates quickly. With their vision clear, the little opossum gasps at a firsthand view of a territory they never had the chance to explore in such detail before. With the scanners floating autonomously, lagging behind the endocraft at a relaxed pace, there’s enough light to take it all in, but they could still get so much closer. And so Will leaps, falling a short distance from the hull into the field of villi coating every surface. It’s a gentle landing onto the elastic floor, but compensating for Derick’s occasional posture adjustments does require adopting sea legs.

For the most part, Will keeps pace with the drifting vessel, but pauses frequently to take pictures. The exact means of developing them is something they’re happy to leave in Viv’s capable hands on the receiving end, but it’s probably not too dissimilar from the wave-particle modulation maintaining their own clear vision. It doesn’t matter too much, as long as they get to take in every detail.

The long stalks projecting from the lining, violet near the base and fading into paler tips, come up to just below Will’s neck at their tallest. They slide easily off their suit as they walk, springing back up unharmed behind Will, their weight negligible. It would be like traversing a field of dew-slick grass except for the intense heat beginning to work through the opossum’s insulation. Despite that, they can’t help but have a nice frolic about it with an innocent glee that starkly contrasts the way they pulled Jesse’s strings. Will knows that. They’ll tell him after this is over. Probably.

The floor begins to slope, and they leap, hitting the incline with their center of gravity low to slide through the bowed stretch ahead. Their momentum even carries them a little bit of the way up the far side, until the curvature tends vertical. Will nearly slows to a stop, but flings himself forward onto all fours and begins to climb, gripping at the bases of villi; abundant handholds, though they’re so long they partially obscure their view of the endocraft gradually outspeeding them.

“Hey, wait!” they call. “Jesse!”

There’s no response, no reaction from the habitat leaving them behind. Their scanner drone still floats nearby, committing topography to memory. It’s improper use, but it might work. Not quickly, but if Will can get to the top of the next stretch, they can probably catch up on foot. They leap, arms outstretched, gripping the sturdy cellulose carapace of the drone with suboptimal traction; Derick’s microbiome has long since built up on their suit. It’s still not visible to the naked eye but the translucent film ripples and blebs like oil in water, imparting an uneven slickness. Still, Will manages not to fall off, and permits themself a giddy sigh of relief. They don’t get to savor it; their heart sinks as they feel their boots touch down. The drone can’t support their weight.

“Jesse!” they shout again.

“Come on…” Jesse grumbles, fighting the jammed automat door at the end of his route with a single hand. The other balances a tray with their other items, but the final one still waits on the other side of a defunct latch. Sweet, stringy cheese, flaky pastry, and floral syrup sits there, already paid for but still taunting him. And its textures become less and less discernible from one another with every minute spent under that heat lamp.

“You good?”

Jesse startles as Derick speaks up, suddenly beside him, nearly dropping the tray but thankfully his friend already has hands on it to save it.

“I’ll just hold this for a sec,” Derick insists. “There are service buttons at either end of the—”

“I don’t wanna bug em, I got this,” Jesse insists back. Hiking a leg up for leverage against the wall, he grips both hands on the handle and shakes.

“Come on…” Will growls, unaware of any of this as they tire themself just from pacing.

They clutch the drone in both hands even as it tries to rise, getting a feel for its buoyancy while committing the folds in the rising passage to memory. Pulling a sharp breath, Will gets a running start, propelled by the floating construct they cling to. They even make a fair bit of progress this way, but it’s not nearly enough.

Just like they estimated. They twist on a heel, springing at the opposite wall and clearing the gap; even if the drone doesn’t have the power to carry them upward, they’ve got more lift than they would have. They find the fold, plodding along the wall as quickly as they can, leaping again the moment they start to feel themself slip.

It’s an admirable effort, they even impress themself with it but it quickly becomes apparent they don’t have the stamina to see it through. One poorly timed kick off the wall is all it takes, and they lose all altitude, coasting down so steeply that they are bound to touch the floor again before the opposite wall.

They would have, anyway, if not for Micah, swooping down over the opposing incline high above. A membranous cover protects his bifurcating wings, flapping hard as soon as his hands are under Will’s arms.

“You’re alright!” Will breathlessly exclaims.

“Come on, we gotta get you hydrated, you’re sounding rough,” Micah chides.

The opossum proves to be about as much extra weight as he can manage, but holding the drone for extra flotation carries their joint effort to success. Micah lets Will down to the floor as soon as it is level enough to support him, and together they hurry after the endocraft.

The hatch membrane and UV-lit interior scour and neutralize any buildup on the way in, but they crowd into the circular decontamination zone together to be properly sprayed down before recuperating.

“You sure you can finish all this?” Derick asks as he and Jesse return to the table, victorious but exhausted. It’s not like Jesse’s appetite isn’t also considerable, but this is unusual.

“It’s a joint effort, right?” Jesse asks, getting back into his seat and re-gathering up his clothes. “Go ahead, dig in.”

Derick picks up another morsel, inspecting it between his fingers. “You know, if we wanna do something like this again, you might wanna know there was a spot serving for a few size classes up just down the way.”

Jesse chuckles. “Yeahhhhh, but there’s always some guy trying to get himself on the menu at those, unofficially anyway. Who wants to deal with that?”

“I mean…” Derick pops the bite into his mouth, swallowing quickly. “As long as I’m trying so many things anyway, it would be interesting to indulge them, if not for the attention it’d draw.”

That question stuns Jesse, briefly but undeniably. Would Derick have been up for this after all, if he’d been transparent? He feels relief when his friend begins to laugh.

“But can you imagine?” Derick giggles.

“Aaahaha sure can’t,” Jesse replies, monotone, nudging slightly too much bread into Derick’s jaws. The way they near-automatically open at much less than a command makes Derick reflect on himself for a moment, but, serenely unbothered, he decides to accept it along with the mouthful.

The exact second it’s out of his grasp, Jesse absentmindedly starts to pick at a helping of his own, switching focus back to the crew.

“Sorry, got a bit sidetracked, how are you holding up?” he asks internally.

“You been on autopilot or something?” Micah asks. “You almost left Will behind!”

“No more distractions,” Jesse swears. “They’re there, though, right?”

“Safe and sound,” Will says, reaffixing their helmet after a long drink. “You were gonna let me miss the large intestine?”

“That’s the part you were worried about??” Micah asks.

“Well… yeah. Jesse still has to turn it around, you would have come back for me.”

“Well that eases my concerns about extraction,” Micah chuckles.

They take it easy until they reach the end of the small intestine, somewhere in a low corner of derick’s abdomen. The passage widens into a larger space of a smoother texture, dominated once again by that deep violet coloring intrinsic to him.

“I guess we’re not going too far though,” Will sighs. “Let’s send some scanners along from here and we’ll start heading back up?”

“Sounds good to me!” Jesse agrees. “How exactly should I go about retrieving you two?”

“We’ll get to that when we get to that,” Will dismisses. “Just keep him busy for a little while.”

Micah filters his comms. “You’re gonna have to tell him soon, right?”

Will shrugs slowly, answering in kind. “It was fun while it lasted though.”

“That’s all I got in me,” Derick declares, beginning to package up the rest. “I think I got a little sidetracked, sorry.”

“Yeah, me too…” Jesse replies absentmindedly.

“I can tell you the rest in a bit though, if you like? I might get some shopping done while I’m in the area if you’d like to come with,” Derick offers, handing over the stack of leftovers wrapped in a phycogel bag. “These are yours, alright?”

He rounds the table as Jesse stands, but notes his friend’s movements are just a little sluggish, his expression tuned-out.

“Fighting that food coma, huh?” Derick chuckles. He gives his belly a gentle but firm thump with his palm. He knows his limits, but they’re still in a league above Jesse’s even at his most famished.

“Something like that.”

In truth, Jesse is hard at work, navigating all those twists and turns with just the kind of care and speed the liminality department had been hoping for when the task fell to him. The endocraft speeds past the last bend before the stomach, much to Will’s chagrin as it means missing getting to chart the duodenum again. Will understands the necessity behind it though; to breach the valve unnoticed they’ll need exactly the kind of smooth, fast motion Jesse has set them up for.

The passengers lurch as it hits the valve, slowing to squeeze through and gaining speed again as it comes free. It traces an arcing trajectory through the thick slurry ahead, finding the surface without issue. There’s not a lot of space left, but in what little does remain, the drones still doing their thing provide ample light. With no sense of urgency, the endocraft floats just above the surface, in the upper part of the chamber.

“Ready when you are, Jesse!” Will alerts. “Let him know and then bring us on up.”

“Are you sure?” Jesse asks. “Weren’t we supposed to be down-low about it?”

“I mean, for the duration, sure. I’ll explain it better once we’re out.”

“Oh… well, alright. Let me figure out how to approach that with him.”

“Take your time,” Will encourages.

Micah pulls off his own helmet, and takes a cellulose pod of water for himself. “Does that mean we’re gonna be sitting around longer than we have to again?”

Will and Micah end up waiting a while, during which Jesse and Derick venture all the way to one of the transit rings of the megastructure, finding their seats on a maglev connecting to an adjacent section.

Jesse fidgets with the crinkling bag in his grip for a little bit, trying to find the right words. How do you tell someone they’ve had a couple of people running amok through their insides all afternoon, anyway? Probably just like that, he decides. He sighs, ready to broach the situation, but Derick is focused on something out the window; a sprawling research campus, its boxy towers stretching down from an inverted foundation in the ceiling of the cavern.

“Oh hey, I can see where Ricardo works from here,” Derick says, amusement clear on his face. It’s only for a few moments though, and his eyes go wide with realization much too late for it to matter. “Ohhhhhhh I had something to do today!”

“…Pardon?” Jesse asks, puzzled, but suspecting he already has most of the pieces.

“I was supposed to help out with a test, some kind of deep internal scan.”

“O-oh, really?…”

“Yeah…. I hope they won’t be too mad if I reschedule, what do you think?” Derick asks.

Jesse sets the bag on his lap, and buries his snout in his hands, hiding the beginnings of a grimace of wry realization. “You know, I think it’ll probably be fine.”

“Sooooo,” Jesse transmits, “everyone knows except me, huh?”

“…What_ever_ could you mean?” Will asks.

“About the whole… exercise?”

“Yeahhhhh, I was gonna tell you after we got out,” the opossum admits, bashfully flattening their ears. “But it’s cool, right?”

“Ohhh yeah, super cool,” Jesse assures in a tone entirely incompatible with his words. “I’ll go through extraction with him in a little bit, but first—“

“Jesse, come oooooon,” Will objects, unheeded.

“But first, I’m gonna enjoy a nice afternoon with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. You two sit tight for a little longer. I’ll make sure you don’t sink.”

This time, it’s Jesse who cuts the line, leaving Will anxiously pacing on their own. They stop in mid-stride as they catch Micah leaning around the center console to look at them, one eyebrow raised in a knowing smirk.

“So we will be here a while, then?” the bat asks.

“Seems like it,” Will says, slinking toward the back. They take a seat on one of the crates, popping open another one nearby.

“Alright, what are you up to then?”

“I’m heading back out.” Will retrieves a pair of large, cleat-like attachments for their boots, for walking over liquid surfaces. “As long as the stomach is this distended, I’m getting a better look at those rugae.”

“Cool. I’ll just be here, holler if you need help,” Micah offers, but Will’s attention is elsewhere. He watches in amusement as the opossum exits through the hatch, leaving him to his own devices. He rests his eyes, and “hmph”s out two notes of a laugh, even more amused at himself. “How did they talk me into this, anyway?...”