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The chimera king sat in his study, shuffling papers around on his desk. He wasn't organizing them. He was moving them around for the sake of the rustle and the distraction. He was nervous.

He and his friend had been up all night many times, pouring over these very papers. Checking how monsters were doing while being confined underground, casting out inquiries in the form of questionnaires about policies. Most of them came back blank. As long as everything was more or less peaceful, people didn't seem to care what they did. It was somehow more nerve wracking not to have any feedback. How was he to know what reactions would be if . . .

He had contemplated in how many different ways his proposal could go wrong, and how many different ways it could go right. He was driving himself up the wall with this.

The soft click of the door opening appeared magnified in the soundproofed room. With him completely lost in his thoughts, it might as well have been a bang.

Issstedl walked in.

In the future.

Anachronistic Arachnid Number 84 Log

_Hello all. I am Doctor Wing Issstedl. _

_I am a physicist and a programmer- well, Renaissance man, really- in service to King Gorthorn, Dragonkin. _

_This is for the benefit of any humans who want to know the truth about monsters, so I must ask my monster viewers to bear with me as I explain a few things. _

First of all, sapient animals and elemental beings are referred to as 'monsters' by humans.

_Most monsters you encounter will not mind if you call them such, as we have reclaimed the term for ourselves. However, there are also a few that will take great offense. Or at the very least ask you not to use 'monster' as an insult to your fellow humans as a basic courtesy. _

Wing is my English name. Issstedl is my spider name. I have four others, but they are not important at the moment.

_See, in dealing with so many different languages, sapient animals often have more than one legal name. Whatever language we are conversing in or contracting in- be it bear, otter, or mouse- we use a name we choose to take on in that language. We do not deal in surnames as humans do. _

_I am a spider monster. We are, as you can see in this video, 'humanoid'- though philosophically that's a problematic term in some ways- as it's human-centric. We are quite a bit bigger than our non-sapient counterparts, ha, though all of us would qualify legally as midgets under human law. Yes, that is a real designation, one some Doctors embrace. For those dimensions who have managed to integrate with humans peacefully, it proves useful. For myself, it can't matter, at least not presently. _

I was magically corrupted a while back. I won't bore you with the details just yet, but suffice to say, it was a very, very, very weird experience and I am glad to be back in one piece and among the living again. My daughter Harper Uetm tells me that people got glimpses of me as a big gloppy black pile of spirit stuff. Ew.

My wife, the Duchess, snaps all six of her hands and says, well, at least I can give you a one person audience for your spoken word poetry again, eh, dear?

I love that woman to bits.

Get it, bit, like a computer?

Zing!

The graceful spider slipped in, closing the door almost as softly as he had entered it. The insomniac- Gorthorn forcefully stifled the triply alliterative word insect from his thoughts. 'Insect' was a slur against spiders, though it did pop up in his mind sometimes. People just didn't care what the difference was.

"My Lord?" he inquired quietly. "What's on the agenda for tonight?"

At the innocence of the question Gorthorn almost lost his nerve.

In the future.

Anachronistic Arachnid Number 84 Log

We may have escaped our confinement, but every day there are new challenges to be met and new discoveries to make.

_We've almost cracked how to get the machines to retain recordings from futures. Humans have done experiments where quantum particles can be sent back in time with stored information. My assistant Alexee and I have been working tirelessly to reproduce those results. All of them have gotten garbled in translation so far, but the point is that something is coming through. _

_Something that didn't exist in the 'original' past. _

_Maybe I'll be able to rest my mind at last. _

_She calls me a pioneer _

Her eyes shine bright and clear

_Despite . . . oh man, about three different major things that should be bothering her but for some reason aren't. I can't make heads or tails of it. _

_Our situation is dire, but that pressure and responsibility must be weighed against the dangers of tampering with the timeline too much. That is an absolute last resort, not a convenience to be employed whenever it strikes our fancy. _

_Speaking of which, I've just had a very confounding conversation with one of my other quantum dimensional selves. I actually haven't had any mutual contact with him before this, he was just one I happened to glimpse seconds of in a trance. He's not exactly in a pocket universe, but he's also not very nearby. But then, all of our universes play by slightly different rules. He contacted me and excitedly tried to tell me that he'd found a way to avoid both the magical accident and being split apart. I'd heard this all before, and it wasn't true no matter how much he wished it were, but he was insistent. _

_Ugh, Silicon thinks re-meeting people he'd already introduced himself to was tedious? Try explaining to yourselves over and over your travails with time tinkering. Then talk to me about tedious. _

I've actually started recording videos of myself as sort of "required reading" before they ask me any questions. So I don't have to repeat myself so much.

To make things more complicated, we can't actually talk in person. It's always either a mental sync in my mind, or talking to someone through a computer that we've tuned to each other's frequencies.

_When Number 67 catches up to me, he'll wish he had hair to tear out. _

When he was put back together, his form didn't grow his back.

_Forget the fact that I've had the debate about influencing the free will and determinism of other dimension's selves with myself in my own head, having it literally with myself . . . ugh. _

_Despite what all the personal histories and stories might influence you to think, no one relationship can, reliably throughout all dimensions, alter your life's trajectory in the 'right' way. Or even turn out positively itself. Way, way too many butterflies. I wish I could munch on them as easily as literal butterflies. Stick to your own dimension, your own decisions, and don't interfere with others' lives unless you've got both really good reason and rock solid probability ratios gathered on your side. That's a lesson I've had to learn more than once. _

_I am happy that you are happy, Number 20. _

_Only a little under half of the Doctors I've met are. _

_I'm not sure if I'd count myself as one of them. _

Gorthorn breathed a couple of times and swallowed. He tried to keep his voice even. "I'm been hearing rumors," he started haltingly, "that men who lose their wives in childbirth are . . . turning to each other for, eh, fulfillment."

As comprehension dawned on him, the lavender spider's blush was purple.

But in a wink, it was gone again. The five-eyed man straightened and said brusquely- instead of 'blush-ly'- Gorthorn's mind supplied- "Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, do they not?"

He raised an eyebrow. That wasn't how he would've phrased it, but the spider did have a point. He tapped a couple of feline claws on his desk, thinking.

Confined to this cave system, almost everyone was paired up, and there was nowhere else to go for either suitors or prospects. As in human prisons, people were making due with what they had, though blessedly it was not a coercive arrangement as it was there. Maybe same gender schools and curiousness was a better comparison.

Wing wasn't one to get straight to the very heart of a matter. Usually he liked to look at it from at least two different angles, and ramble. Maybe the discomfort with the topic had prompted him to be tight lipped.

"So you don't think I should punish them?" he asked.

"My opinion does not matter, My Lord," he replied humbly. "I am merely a sounding board."

Gorthorn smiled at the rhyme.

"Board . . ." Wing repeated, eyes distant.

It took the part-dragon a moment to figure out what he was remembering. A bit of wordplay from before his son's death drifted vaguely to his mind.

That was not a place he wanted to go, especially tonight. "I am asking for your opinion," he said a bit forcefully, to chase away the ghost.

The spider immediately reacted to the authority in his voice, though he hadn't meant to chastise him. "Well, drawing attention to them would cause a stir in the first place, wouldn't it? Letting them lie-" He paused, obviously tempted by a play on words, but seemed unsure whether that was appropriate for the situation. Or maybe he didn't even want to go there.

"-in their beds?" he added helpfully.

At the pun, Wing sucked in a breath and let out a long, high baritone laugh, cradling his belly with all six hands. When he had enough air again he said, "Oh, oh, oh don't do that to me Sire, I'm going to get a stitch." He coughed once, twice, almost regained calm, but lost it again.

The part-dragon sat back, satisfied with his mischief. He stretched languidly, claws coming out and back in again. He had noted that, often people laughed even more when uncomfortable, as if it were a defense mechanism for dealing with it. Regardless, he was glad he had finally broken the awkward tension. "Well, how am I supposed to be held responsible if you can't control yourself?" he teased.

At the statement the spider suddenly slumped his shoulders.

"What did I say?" he blinked.

"It's . . . nothing, Sire," he said in a tone that clearly said the opposite of the words.

Gorthorn stood and walked around the desk. "What's eating you?"

"Everything eats spiders," the doctor dodged dejectedly.

Gorthorn chewed on that sentence for a moment. Was it a dodge, a play on the more literal meaning of the phrase and a reference to his tiny relatives, or a reference to a spider's place in the social hierarchy? Many times the Doctor liked to be oblique or metaphorical about things.

"It's nothing," he repeated, eyes down.

When pressed, sometimes the philosopher would get defensive, so he decided to . . .

. . . he got a bit irritated when his brain filled in "let it lie."

A few more minutes passed, and per usual the spider seemed to appreciate the silence. He relaxed.

Then, he said, "Your father would've punished them. But, in so many ways," he said reverently, "you are not your father. Ah-" he caught himself quickly, "and I mean him no disrespect, of course."

"Why must you always walk on eggshells?" Gorthorn took a step towards him. "I thought we'd have moved past that by now."

"It befits my station," the spider replied simply.

"Your 'station' is that of my closest friend," the fire monster said warmly.

The spider's look was not quite surprised, yet not quite at ease, either. The five eyes locked with his for a few moments.

Surely that truth was past obvious? Gorthorn asked himself. Was it just that the spider had a hard time believing it? Even after all these years? They'd had their differences, but there was no other advisor he trusted more. Was the spider just uncomfortable hearing it aloud, with such sincerity? What was the hangup?

Maybe he was taking it too personally. The doctor, though he stepped and spoke with grace, was bumbling in one area: sentiment.

He and his wife had always been able to take off that proper mask of presentation when not entertaining or inspiring. They had dealt it damaging blows, very intentionally, by showing softer sides of themselves to the people, unheard of for dragonkin.

"My father . . ." He used the mask, of course. It was still important. But it seemed to be the other way around with Wing. He was caged by it. "In some ways I wish I could be him, but in others . . ."

"Isn't it like that for everyone?" the spider managed a half-smile.

"Not everyone."

"Oh, so there are people out there who completely want to be carbon copies, and people who want absolutely nothing to do with their legacy? Poor souls." The spider paused, tilting his many-eyed head and then narrowing them. "I don't think I've ever encountered the former. The latter has cropped up, though, I suppose."

The royal's manticore tail twitched, almost a wag, as he chuckled. The doctor could dance philosophical circles around him. Suddenly he had the oddest thought, that he wished the doctor would start dancing literal circles around him.

Chapter 2: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1102545