Krill had seen everything.
He knew he had said that before, and by this point he was sure he was going to say it again, but this time he was reasonably sure it was true. He was an attending physician on a world primarily comprised of humans, and the entire culture of Arcadia heavily revolved around war and combat sports: war, combat sports, and newly forming interspecies couples.
These combined facts led him to a lot of interesting cases and diagnosis , and more than a few headaches. When he had worked for the Omen crew exclusively, he had seen plenty of stupid things, but generally speaking there was a sort of intelligence hurtle one had to cross to become part of the crew. This was not so when it came to regular immigration, and he had met some people who were either completely daft in the head, or they just never paid attention to anything.
He wasn't entirely sure which it was.
And then there was his own offspring to think about. Through their rapid development, he and Riss had become well aware that Vrul were, apparently, just as curious as humans when not conditioned otherwise, and more than a little prone to getting themselves into dangerous situations. The sheer amount of times he had almost had an aneurysm on behalf of his own offspring was..... well
They might as well be human.
He was in between major medical incidents right now, and so headed down the hall towards the nurse's station where he could hear voices.
"I can't force you to do anything, but I feel it is my duty to say that I think you should consider a human course of prenatal checkups for your health and the health of the baby, but that's it, Ive spoken my peace"
Krill came around the corner to find Dr. katie and Sunny standing just outside the nurse's station, or more accurately, Katie was sitting on the counter and Sunny was standing next to her. From what he could see of the Drev there were no physical indicators of the creature that was growing inside her, but Drev didn't present as obviously as humans. Their skin and muscle wasn't nearly as stretchable, so the body compensated by pressing the organs upward into the chest cavity and thinning out the connective tissue that held the armor ins place.
This fact was the primary reason that Female Drev became less aggressive during their gestation period. Their armor was weaker, and more brittle, their lungs were compressed causing them to get out of breath easier, and compressed digestive organs led to common digestive discomfort .There were other possible side effects of course, but those were the most common.
"I appreciate your concern." Sunny was saying, "But I have given up my entire life and culture to be more like you humans. I have used your technology, I live the way you do, I have given up leadership of my clan, and I am not as much of a saint to them as I ought to be, so I think I will keep the traditions of my ancestors in this one.
"And if you lose the baby..... and it could have been preventable?"
"Then I lose it. You of all people should know that sometimes that can happen. Sometimes the child is not compatible with life ."
"What about preventable diseases, or.... Deformities."
"I am not a believer in genetically altering the child in the womb. That seems a bit too much like playing the Architect for my liking, and if the child is to be born with an illness or disability than so be it. Drev society has become far more accepting of such things, and with Dzara I think I can manage."
Katie closed her mouth then, clearly wanting to say more but knowing that anything more could strain their friendship.
Sunny had refused all prenatal care. There were plenty of other members of the staff that thought she was crazy, deluded or even stupid to refuse. Some saw it as withholding medical intervention from her child, though Krill had talked to her and learned that she had no issue with medical intervention after the child was born, but in her own words, she was going to do it the way of her ancestors and not so distant family, and if they didn't like it they could keep their damn mouths shut.
Krill didn't like the idea of not knowing what was to come, but she was by no means negligent. She was taking care of herself to the best degree she knew how, following all the studies on the subject, and the diet which he himself had recommended. She was more than willing to take the supplements, as long as they were native to anin – which was fine either way because they were the best for Drev. Hijan was her primary instructor during these times, giving her all the known advice that she could about sustaining a healthy pregnancy and berthing a healthy child.
Krill had secretly looked into the Drev practices and found them to be sound advice.
The only thing Sunny would not submit to was exams, ultrasounds, and she adamantly refused that she would not give birth with the help of a physician. He had been given permission to be close by, but she would do so in private, as her people tended to do.
And this was true enough, Krill had never delivered a Drev infant.
He had examined them plenty, even minutes after they were born, but he had never witnessed a birth, a fact the had in common with the males of the species. He didn't know a Drev male alive who had ever been witness to such things either.
The only thing he had managed to convince her into, was letting him sample a small amount of DNA from the child in order to create a species profile. A Drev male is always required to nurse the baby after it is born, but Sunny had no Drev Male, and even if Adam was here there was certainly nothing he could do about the subject.
I this case her offspring was going to have to be fed on formula.
Drev Milk and human milk, while serving the same purpose, was not all that similar chemically. In fact they diverged quite dramatically, It would be important to know what percentage the child was human and what percentage it was Drev, in order to know what sort of chemical concoction he was going to have to make. Sunny did not wish to hear the results of his singular test, and he did not offer them to her.
The child was a 70/30 split human Drev hybrid, more human than it was human. He was not sure what that would mean, but it seemed that human formula would be a good base to start with. Adding some extra vitamins and compounds that would be found in Drev milk was not dangerous or inadvisable.
"My shift is over." He announced to the two of them, "I will be heading home."
Katie gave him a wave and Sunny gave him a nod as he passed out the doors. Once upon a time krill had rarely taken breaks from his work, spending most if not all his time working himself to the bone, like he thought was his life's purpose. For the longest time he assumed he was part of a hive society wherein all pieces worked together to keep society running.
It turned out that was not the case.
Vrul were designed to be highly individualistic, and actually received many benefits from personal pursuits.
Krill was doing his best to cultivate such interests. Through sheer force of will he had developed a liking for and an ability to withstand certain types of human music, primarily relegated to those types of music that did not have an overly noticeable drumline. Instead he busied himself with the classical music pursuits, and was even trying his hand at a little composing, though he kept that fact to himself. He would not show anyone until he was quite sure that it wasn't horrible. Aside from that he was cultivating a new interest in landscape photography, and, though he would never admit it, Competitive online gaming of the PVP variety.
One might ask if it should be considered cheating to play with two controllers each set of arms separately controlled by two of his four cortical hemispheres, but Krill saw it more as a natural genetic advantage.
Using this strategy his supposed "Team" had ranked competitively in several online matches.
Little did they knew it was actually one Vrul playing by himself. Krill idly wondered if he could modify a controller to be used in a single hand, so he could play a four person team all at once and decimate the online servers.
His idle thoughts were interrupted when he stepped into his room at the spiral tower, and immediately felt eyes on him.
It was dark, so he couldn't see what was going on, but he knew enough to know just exactly who it was.
"Grubs." He demanded.
There was a soft buzzing noise from in the darkness, and gentle radio waves caused his antenna to vibrate. The lights flickered on and the triplets scuttled from where they had been hiding,
Krill had developed the uncanny sense to know when he was being watched, just like humans did, and the grubs found no end to enjoyment in testing his abilities.
Looking at them now, they were practically full grown, and under his own tutelage, along with Riss, they were becoming competent, and intelligent, very, very fast. Krill was beginning to suspect that their little ring leader Atropos had the intelligence to become a generation defining genius if she ever stopped mucking about and trying to play pranks on him.
"What did you do?"
Atropos pulled her antennae back in a look of contrition, "We didn't do anything."
"I'm not stupid, you always do something, now what is it that you have done. Have you TPd my desk, have you replaced all my writing utensils with jumbo pretzels, have you pasted googly eyes to all of my personal affects.
If Vrul could giggle, they would have, but even so their antennae vibrated In amusement.
Krill sighed, "I wish you would find some other pursuits to occupy your mind. At your age I had already been assigned my train and was working towards my studies as a doctor. I am sure all three of you could have made soemthing of yourselves by now."
"But Riss says that a childhood experience is important." Clotho pointed out
Clotho was.... Perhaps... the least clever of the three, which still made her alarmingly clever compared to other species, but she did have this way of cutting through basic conversation to the most important facts.
She tended to leave people speechless and struggling to figure out how to respond.
Krill sighed, "It is good that the three of you did not grow up on our homeworld.
The three of them clustered around, their interest peaked. They had not been allowed to hear about the Vrul homeworld for some time now, so they would have an unbiased development, but now it seemed was a good time to tell them.
"Why is that?"Lachesis asked
"Because you would never have developed personalities . As much as your continual mischief drives me to insanity, I am pleased to see that you are separate individuals with your own minds. It took Riss and I years to develop personalities, and it was only after our introduction to humans. Riss less so than myself as he met humans at a very young age. I on the other hand went through a lot of trials to be what I am.
More amused radio static, "is that why you are always so angry."
"Yes." He could be honest about that.
"I may have been different were it not for how we were raised."
They circled him, "and how was that."
Krill had not intended to give an impromptu history lesion but sighed and gathered the grubs into a small circle so he could speak, "As far as Riss and I can tell, the history of our world goes something like this." He settled himself in for his speech, "More than a few Eons ago, Vrul lived in small loose villages all across the central belt of our planet. They were mostly individualistic and banded together only out of logic, as being in a group is safter than otherwise." They were looking at him with rapt attention and he was somewhat pleased.
"Riss has a theory that the spore Virus was Vrulmade rather than naturally occurring. It is a sort of fungus that goes in through the lungs and then spread through the brain to alter behavior. Pustules develop on the surface of the skin that burst and put more pollen into the air. The mind is completely taken by the need to spread, and intelligence is snuffed.:
They were in awe now.
"We believe it was then that a council of Vrul came together, after the population was mostly decimated, and proposed the creation of central cities to house what remained of our dwindling population. They succeeded and the cities were built. At first things went well, but over time a growing population forced the council's hand and either by force or through volunteers, they began instituting termination protocols to reduce population numbers. It did not take long before their power corrupted them, and they learned that, controlling the population would be easier if they were born in the city and new nothing about previous life. So all others were terminated."
They looked on with appalled but rapt attention.
"IT is unknown the true lifespan of a Vrul, but I believe it is almost indefinite. I believe that the councils that sit in their high towers today are the same ones that proposed the cities, and over the years they have exerted more control on the population through propaganda, Eugenics, and brainwashing." The Council specifically interrupts the incubation period of their own offspring to create mindless drone workers to run their city. When Alphas and betas are born they are put through rounds of correctional behavior modification to reduce curiosity and increase obedience. Through fear they rule, and when you become a nuisance, or useless, they put out a termination order."
Atropos spoke now her antennae vibrating in anger, "How.... Did you escape?"
"Humans, showed me my true nature. I refused a termination order, and they sent an assassin after me which I determined was clear evidence of a plot. I had planned to deal with the council and free the other Vrul one day, but.... Things did not turn out the way I thought they might.
If only Krill could have known what was in store for him.
But who was he to know what his words would lead to .
The grubs were about to upgrade from mild pranks, to revolution.