FSE

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Dr. Mauro held tightly to Freddie's hand as he led him down the hallway to one of the nondescript doors. This particular one had never held Freddie's interest, mainly because it had seemed to open onto an empty room, with nothing but a small folding table to commend it. Once they went through the door, however, he noticed that the room was merely the transition into another long hallway, this one partitioned every so often by a set of glass doors that whooshed apart whenever someone approached, accompanied by a puff of oddly odorless air. Neither Dr. Mauro or the people with him seemed to notice, however.

The group continued on, past the first partition, and Freddie glanced at the doors on either side. They were spaced much further apart, and instead of being made out of normal wood, they seemed to be composed of enameled metal, with a thick, black line of rubber sealing them tight against the door frames. They all had the same sort of keypads, though, although when he reached the desired door, one of Dr. Mauro's assistants punched in a much longer sequence of numbers, fast enough that Freddie could only make out a few of the numbers he pressed. The door opened slowly, air hissing loudly as it escaped around the seal.

As the door slowly eased itself open, Freddie could hear Dr. Mauro's assistants breathing quickly. One of them flipped a pencil around between his fingers, back and forth, while the other traced her fingers through her hair. Freddie began to feel slightly uneasy. Something big was behind that door, and as it swung fully open, he almost hesitated to see what was on the other side.

Strangely enough, the only thing present beyond the door was a small, square room, with odd circular grates mounted in the walls and ceiling, and a similar door, still sealed shut, on the other end. Dr. Mauro led the group in, and Freddie glanced around as the door closed smoothly behind them.

"Just hold still, Freddie, this will only take a minute," he said, as the door finished pressing itself back against the seal. "One minute more, and you'll be able to see what we've been working on these past few weeks." Dr. Mauro's hand clasped tighter around his wrist, and Freddie wondered whether it was to to anticipation or anxiety. The doctor's face looked serious, his muscles taut, but his eyes gleamed, seemingly eager to betray his unspoken excitement.

A short electronic buzz sounded as soon as the door finished sealing, and a line of lights appeared above the opposite door, tracing slowly from red to blue. As the lights began their slow march across the door, the various grates surrounding them puffed, one by one, and a fine mist emanated from each to cover the entire party. The mist was scented with something that he couldn't quite figure out, and the scent only barely took away the harsh, chemical edge that permeated the spray. Freddie sneezed as soon as the first wisps hit his nostrils, and he quickly held his breath, trying not to breathe any more of the noxious stuff in. Even so, he could feel it settling gently all over his fur, slowly seeping down to his skin. It didn't burn from the outside, though, and a few moments later, the lights were halfway across, to the sound of another buzzer. The mist cut out, followed quickly by strobing bursts of intense, violet light. The light felt warm, but in an unusual way - it seemed to warm all of him at once, almost from the inside out. Then the light shut off, and it was followed by powerful blasts of the same odorless, purified air as before, which puffed out his fur and evaporated away the last vestiges of the mist. Freddie gulped in the air, eager to exchange it for the acrid remnants of the chemical spray still lingering in his nostrils, as the light strip finally finished its journey to blue with the sound of an affirmative bell.

"Are you all right?" Dr. Mauro asked, as the door at the far end of the chamber unsealed and began to crawl slowly open. Freddie nodded, not quite sure what to say about the unusual experience. "I know it's not the most pleasant thing, but it keeps the environment clean, and prevents any germs or outside things from contaminating our work. I'll explain how it all works in detail to you sometime, if you like, once everyone is a little less busy."

Freddie didn't reply, as he was too busy taking in the impressive room before him. In a sense, the room was similar to his earliest memory, of some kind of science lab - except that this one seemed to stretch on and on, a long, low room that looked to stretch even farther than the hallway they had just traversed. And while one side of the room was devoted to a number of pieces of equipment that Freddie couldn't even begin to understand, the other side was dominated by a row of floor-to-ceiling capsules, of the type he had emerged from. Each one was mostly cylindrical, but with squared-off metal boxes on the top and bottom that glowed with panels of buttons and digital readouts. In between, each capsule was sealed with a layer of thick plexiglass, which refracted the light strangely through the almost fluorescent blue liquid contained therein. And, as Freddie looked more closely, each one contained a person, floating in the liquid - people who looked very much like him.

For a moment, Freddie simply stared wordlessly at the capsules, filled with a strange mixture of fear and anticipation. This must have been what Dr. Mauro had meant about the rest of his family, but... up until now, he'd been alone, which wasn't the best feeling, but he at least knew more or less what to expect. And while he understood the concept of siblings, more or less, he didn't quite know what to make of it. In most of the books he'd been given to read about families, there were usually two children, three at the most. But this many - there were fifteen capsules in all, each one occupied - he didn't even know where to begin.

His thoughts were interrupted when Dr. Mauro put a hand on his shoulder. Freddie looked up, hesitantly, and Dr. Mauro looked back - happy, but with a hint of nervousness as well.

"I know it's a lot to take in, Freddie," he said, looking back towards the row of capsules, and Freddie followed his gaze. "But you need to remember that no matter how many there are, I will always love each and every one of you the same."

Dr. Mauro scrutinized one of the capsule's displays as he continued. "Of course, strictly speaking, relations in this case are... well, you're all my babies, if you ask me. I'm the one in charge of this... project... but of course, the genetic strains were arrived at by a number of my colleagues. I think you met Drs. Tenerret, Regfield, and Maartens a while back, and in truth, we all sired four each, more or less. You came first, to convince all of us that what we were planning was working out correctly, and now, we're just about ready to get everything started. My other colleagues are just performing a few additional checks, and then we'll be underway. All right?"

Freddie nodded, although he only followed some of what Dr. Mauro was saying. Freddie knew, from his books and the knowledge already in his head, that whatever his family was, it was far from typical. Still, Dr. Mauro was his father, without a doubt... and even if the people in the capsules weren't exactly family, at least he would have some friends. His knowledge said that this was important, but... being alone, for the most part, was all that he knew so far, in reality at least. He hoped that the knowledge that he had would be enough to figure out what to do with fifteen new people his own age.

Dr. Mauro had wandered off toward one of the banks of machinery, his explanation complete. Freddie wandered closer to the bank of capsules, squinting through the reflections on the plexiglass to get a closer look at who was inside.

The first capsule, the one nearest the door, held a child who was about Freddie's size, as best as he could tell through the plexiglass and the semi-transparent liquid. The child was naked, as he had been, and since he looked roughly the same, Freddie surmised that he was a boy. His fur, though, seemed to be covered in some sort of darker spots, and his tail was longer but thinner, floating listlessly in the liquid. The boy had his eyes closed, and floated alone in the capsule, barely moving at all. The only really strange thing was the thick plastic tube attached to his belly button, through which a darker liquid seemed to circulate, the tubing curling around the boy's back and up to an connection hidden somewhere in the capsule's opaque top.

Freddie walked down the line, looking at each capsule in turn. Seven of the capsules contained boys, but in the other eight, the bodies were slightly softer in their contours, and didn't seem to have anything between their legs at all. They must be girls, then, but he didn't really understand the difference - everything came back to those confusing anatomical drawings with no context. Even so, they had to have some way to pee... Freddie put the thought aside, deciding to ask one of them once they emerged - he hoped it wasn't through their fingers, or something weird like that, though.

As he looked at each of the capsules, he also came to another conclusion - each one of them was mostly humanoid in shape, but they all had features that seemed similar to some type of animal, either the ones he had read about in the book, or ones that his knowledge made him aware of as he walked down the line. The first one, he realized, had features like some sort of leopard, and most of the rest were similar types of fuzzy animals - jaguars, cats, a few different types of dog, a rabbit, and a few, like him, who looked vaguely like foxes. There were also a few that he didn't immediately recognize, but the knowledge tried to fill in the gaps as best it could.

He stopped to look closer at one that seemed much like him, with a flared, two-tone tail, but as he leaned forward one of the many machines behind him began to sound a low, insistent alarm, along with a flat voice that repeated the words "Nutrient Wash Flushing Initiated." The sound was accompanied by something that sounded like water flowing, and the liquid in the chambers suddenly became turbulent, obscuring the figures inside. The people around him started moving much more rapidly, tinkering excitedly with the banks of machines, and one of them nearly tripped over Freddie in his haste. One of the more observant assistants quickly grabbed hold of his arm and guided him back through the strange sets of double doors, which sealed behind them as they left, but without the pulses of light and noxious mist. They walked back to the hallway, and the assistant left him next to the folding table. "I'm sorry, but I think it's best you wait here for now, 'kay? I know Dr. Cattanzo wanted you to see what was going on for a bit, but things are happening quickly and I don't wanna see you get trampled." He hustled back towards the double doors, and Freddie walked back towards his world of familiar corridors, a bit disappointed that he wasn't able to see what was going to happen next, although he already had a good enough idea as he'd gone through it himself. Freddie walked back to his room and waited, glancing at some of his animal books. The clock on the wall ticked off hour after hour, and eventually Freddie got hungry and grabbed a handful of crackers from the room with the eight-nine-three code - they weren't as good as meat, but at least they were something. Usually one of the assistants brought him a tray with food on it, but he guessed they were all too busy to consider that at the time.

Freddie had finished the crackers and was about to find another book to read when the door beeped and quickly swing open, to an energetic cacophony of fur and noise. Freddie's fifteen siblings, rather than being quiet, abstract figures in a row of tubes, were now suddenly in front of him, dressed in the same kind of loose, white shirts and pants, talking to each other and looking curiously around the room. Some of them climbed up onto the beds and started bouncing around on them, one with yellow striped fur picked up a book from the pile and started flipping through it, and a canine one with blotchy fur plopped down on the floor in front of him and stuck his muzzle up close to Freddie's face.

"Hi! I'm Tommy!" he said, grinning. "Have I seen you before?"

"Uh..." Freddie was momentarily taken aback, as he was still coming to terms with the rapidly changing situation, and distressed at the sudden cacophony. He pulled back against the bed as far as he could, the fur on his neck and scalp suddenly standing on edge, his lip quivering as he felt himself on the edge of crying out in fear. Tommy saw his expression and started to look distressed as well, glancing around rapidly. "What's wrong? Is something bad gonna happen?"

"Huh? N-no, I don't think so..." Freddie responded, realizing that his new sibling thought his fear was due to something else, and not just the new situation. "I- I've just been alone for a while, and now everyone's here, it's kinda scary and I don't know what to do..."

"Oh..." Tommy's face quickly transitioned away from fear, his ears drooping. "I'm sorry. Everything's so new, and I wanna see everything, and you're new, so..."

They sat in silence for a moment, neither of them sure what to say. Freddie could tell that Tommy felt bad about startling him, but he didn't know whether to try to say something else, or just jump back onto his bed and curl up under the covers until things settled down. However, the silence was quickly interrupted when one of the other kids mis-timed a jump and bounced off a nearby bed onto the both of them, knocking the three of them over into a furry heap.

Freddie could hear Tommy yell "Glah!" from somewhere off to his side, with the weight of someone else on top of him. A fuzzy hand planted itself on his muzzle as the person tried to scramble off him, but lost their balance and rolled over off of him and onto Tommy, who pushed them back. The kid finally ended up pushed up against his side, their face almost in his armpit. Freddie went to untangle himself, and sat up to see the other kid looking at him.

The kid looked more feline, with alternating white and dark brown fur, similar to a cat that his mind referred to as a "siamese." The face looked slightly softer than his, and he noticed that the kid's clothes had bright red pips on the shoulders, unlike the blue ones that he and Tommy had. He guessed that meant the kid was a girl, but she didn't really look all that different. In any case, she was rubbing at a wet patch of fur on her side, before tugging her shirt back down. Meanwhile, Tommy was coughing, spitting bits of fur out onto the floor. "Sorry 'bout handing your face," she said.

"Hey, say sorry to me too!" Tommy said. "Your whole body landed on my face!"

"Yeah, and you pulled my fur with your big mouth, so we're even!"

Tommy turned away, ignoring her. She shrugged and wandered off to go bounce on one of the other beds.

"So, uh..." Freddie said, still halfway bewildered. Tommy turned back to him.

"Maybe we should go somewhere where people aren't trying to bounce off of us?"

"Yeah, that sounds good..." Freddie got up and walked over to the door, opening it to see one of the lab-coated assistants looming over them.

"Hey, Freddie," the assistant said. "Getting to know your new siblings?"

"Um... are they always so... jumpy?"

The assistant laughed at his statement. "Don't worry about that - everything's so new to them, like it was to you last month, they just need to take everything in. Tell you what - I think Joey's making some sandwiches in the break room, why don't you go hang out there for a while?"

"Okay," Freddie replied, and the two of them walked back over to the eight-nine-three room, where the door was still wide open. Another of the assistants saw them come in, and built them sandwiches with big stacks of sliced meat between two squishy white pieces of bread. Tommy made a face when it was handed to him, but after watching Freddie eat, he took a tentative bite, chewing slowly. Then he sniffed at the break, frowned at it, and set the top slice down on the table, sticking his muzzle directly in the meat and gobbling it up hungrily. He looked up after a moment, dots of yellow mustard speckling his nose, grinned, and yelled "Meat!" Freddie couldn't help but laugh at the sight, and soon they were both giggling. By the time they had finished their sandwiches and headed back to the room, Tommy felt less like a frenetic stranger, and more like a friend.

The rest of the kids had settled down, and there were now a number of assistants in with them, most with a kid cuddled up to either side as they read a storybook to them. A few of the more energetic ones played in a corner of the room with a couple of other assistants, taking turns caroming a big red ball off the walls and ceiling. Another assistant brought in food for the kids who hadn't had a chance to eat yet, as the lights began their slow dimming that signaled the approach of night. After everyone was finished eating and another round of stories were read, they were lined up in single file and led across the hallway to the bathroom, where most of them learned how to brush their teeth. Freddie already knew how, and finished before them, making silly faces in the mirror to the amusement of some of the nearby kids. Then, once everyone was finished, the assistants tucked them into their individual beds, as the lights finished dimming to a faint glow.

Freddie turned on his side, getting ready for sleep, when he heard a faint whimpering off to his side. He looked over and saw the shape of one of the kids, though he couldn't figure out who it was in the darkness.

"What's wrong?" he whispered, and a wavering voice returned, one that sounded like the girl that had landed on him earlier.

"I'm scared... It's dark, and I don't wanna be alone."

"But you're not alone - everyone's still here, right?"

"Yeah, b-but..." Her body seemed to shake. "It's cold, and everyone's so far away... I felt better when we were reading and were close together, but now everyone's alone and I'm scared."

"Y-yeah, me too," Tommy said from the other side, and he could hear the other kids whispering the same things up and down the row of beds.

"But... aren't we supposed to be in bed like this? That's how Dr. Mauro said I should sleep," Freddie said.

"Well, I don't wanna!" whispered one of the other boys a few beds down. Freddie could see him jump over the side of the bed, his silhouette standing up in the dim light, pulling the comforter off the top of the bed and tossing it down on the floor in front. He jumped down on it, curling up, and was quickly joined by two other kids who curled up beside him. In a few minutes, most of the bedding was piled in a ragged oval on the floor, with fifteen fuzzy bodies curled up happily in the middle. Freddie stayed in his bed, because that was what he was used to, and the the pile of kids on the floor soon became quiet except for the soft sound of breathing, as their new configuration seemed to make them comfortable enough to drift off to sleep. Freddie fell asleep soon afterwards, waking up to a semicircle of researchers staring confusedly at his siblings snuggled together in their impromptu nest of bedding.