“How long have you been lying there listening to phonograph records?” Dorian had come home from work in the evening to find Ariana on her couch. That was nothing new; with her constitution destroyed, the couch was where she spent most of her time. However, it was usually her habit to dress and groom herself in the morning. She always said that being able to accomplish at least that much in a day made her feel better about her life. Today was different. Her hair was still pillow-rumpled, and her loose, peach-colored nightgown still draped sensuously over her pale shoulders. He gathered her chilled hands up in his warm ones. It was cool for a day in late spring, but she hadn’t bothered to get a robe or an extra blanket.
She smiled weakly and kissed his hands. “It seemed like the thing to do.” They held onto each other while the strange, forceful music of Rupture Effect filled the room. On its face the song was about natural enemies locked in an eternal struggle, but there were always multiple layers to the meanings of their songs. “I just need to be able to think,” she finally said. “I’ve been trying to think all day, but every time I try to approach this logically, all I can think is that I’m tainted. My blood is poisoned. That thought takes over my mind, and I can’t think about anything else.” She laughed bitterly. “The worst part is, I don’t even know for sure if that black slime is what ruined my health. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and all that. So far there’s nothing conclusively pointing to it as the cause. All I know is that it isn’t supposed to be there. That’s as far as I can think.”
Dorian gently covered her in another blanket. “You had the opportunity to meet someone you admire very much, and not under the best of circumstances. He asked you to take on a project that he hinted could be very important, maybe even world-changing. As a result of that project, you discovered something very abnormal about your body. That would be a lot for one person to cope with in only a few weeks, even if that person had the constitution of an ox. Which you don’t.”
She nodded, then glanced at the phonograph. “Well, since I can’t think, I decided I would just feel. Let the music wash over me and bathe in the emotion.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Emotions about predator-prey relationships?”
Another weak smile. “Sometimes.”
He held her face close to his and kissed her temple. “Did it help?”
“I don’t know. It felt nice for a while. I felt strong for a …” Her voice trailed off. Her gray-blue eyes, which had been soft and tired, suddenly looked like they were trying to pierce the space between her and the phonograph. She spoke quietly, but her lips clipped the words like a pair of wire-cutters. “I have it!” Her eyes locked on Dorian. “I will look those little devils in the face and see exactly what they are!”
Dorian looked at the phonograph, puzzled. “How?”
“A phonograph needle drags over grooves in a record. Bumps in the grooves create fluctuations in a proteoid channel running from the needle - ”
“Yes, I know how a phonograph works.” Dorian reminded her.
“We can do the same thing with a sample. We can immobilize the sample on a plate, then draw a needle across it. If the needle is fine enough and our entropic channel is sensitive enough, it should be able to detect variations in the depth of the sample! Tinier variations than we can see with a microscope!”
Dorian nodded tentatively. “I’ll see if I can get the entropics to do what you want, but I don’t know anything about preparing samples. If you want samples immobilized on a plate, you need to figure that part out.”
Ariana nodded. “Fair enough. I should also see if there’s anything I can do to analyze what it’s made of.”
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