Rising Tide
Time passed. Mano, working in her sub's lab and garden, came up with an empathy drug, the same one that would be used by Rakim and Ogun when they'd first meet. She hoped to do it as a tribute to Eli, to contribute to creating the more empathetic...
Uncarved Block
'Thou shalt not carve any graven image.' (Ten Commandments) Clients would come to Mandrake for help - he wouldn't seek them out. People would hear about the fact that he'd been someone who'd listened to people, so when they'd had problems that...
Dead Trees
She derived such a sense of peace from this place. Taking a look around, she saw nothing but shelves and shelves of books everywhere around her. Every table was covered in stacks and piles of books and pieces of paper, scattered all over the place as...
Common Ground
'I don't need God. All I need is an amoeba!' (Greater Than One) Mandrake had had a complex relationship with his father when he'd been growing up. His father had been both a prominent psychologist and a deeply pious Jewish man. It had therefore...
Fear to Tread
Life had been strange for Klein after he had moved back to North America. His trip back on the boat with Bridges had gone swimmingly. He'd known what to expect, and he'd had to deal with none of the stress of having started out as a stowaway the way...
Do No Harm
"So, you're here for a month, then?" Klein had sometimes wondered just how much you could and couldn't tell about people based on what their living quarters had looked like. Sometimes, it could be easy to jump to conclusions based on assuming too...
Share Alike
'Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.' (Newton) He could almost feel it starting. It could be a vicious cycle. Sometimes it only had to start from a very small doubt as to whether or not he'd be going to be...
The Sincerest Form
Boko's lair had been unlike anything that Klein had ever seen. They'd gone down through a trapdoor in the forest floor and climbed down a ladder into a large, open, cube-shaped room underground. Inside, there had been stairs on the floor, but also...
Saltwater
Mano had tried to have been just as optimistic about them moving from the Middle East to Brazil as she'd been about them having moved from India to the Middle East in the first place. Cephalopods were relentlessly curious creatures, always exploring...
Promised Land
Eli's parents had disowned her for having moved away to the Middle East with Mano, but Eli hadn't cared. If anything, she'd been only too glad to cut them out of her life as well. Mano missed her parents sometimes, but children grew up, pursued love...
Feeding the Clothes
Klein had been a weird kid. He didn't have a 'type A personality,' whatever that was. He was never going to be an 'alpha male.' He didn't enjoy team sports. He wasn't a team player. He was the strange, weird kid who would sit in the corner trying not...
Sources
Eli had always had body issues because of her shitty upbringing. Half sea turtle, half hermit crab, she suffered from the intersecting stigmas of fish, reptiles and hybrids alike. She needed to breathe but also to stay moist to be able to stay alive,...