Firstborn, Intro v1

I was the firstborn, so I had the distinct pleasure of being the Doctor’s pet. My siblings were cared for, as well, but the Doctor favored me. He didn’t share his plans with anyone, but he let me see his work. There are many creatures for which there are no names, and most of them were in the Doctor’s care. He let me follow on his rounds, and gave me treats at bedtime.

As all children, we wanted to know our parents. He called us the First Hatching, and I was Firstborn. I learned there were supposed to be eight of us, but only six of us survived infancy. We had a nurse for some time, to the point we could care for ourselves. We were in our eighth year, as the Doctor reckoned things. Food was brought to us, and the suite of rooms (sleeping room, playroom, eating room) kept clean for us.

I tried to speak to the person who cleaned, but the Doctor laughed at me. He said he didn’t program the robot for speech. He proceeded to explain the nature of robotics. He used them extensively instead of servants, for their loyalty. I didn’t understand it then, as I do now, that servants had their own minds and could sell him out to the authorities. He couldn’t use slaves since he experimented on them and he couldn’t trust them not to let everyone out. It was for their own good, he said, to keep them from fighting. My sibs and I fought often, so I believed him.

Following the Doctor, I learned about the other residents of our underground lair. There were dozens of them. The Doctor didn’t even know all their names. I learned later he only named the ones he liked, or the ones who had names before he got them.

One day, not long after my tenth year, the Doctor relented. I would meet my parents. It was a bargain he struck with me, as the female of my siblings. I would have children for the Doctor one day, but until it was time he would allow me to meet my parents.

I was disappointed, I suppose, to meet the Human. She was shorter than me, without the fur. She had pale blonde hair and round blue eyes, nothing like my own mane of russet and slitted golden eyes. I stayed and learned her ways. She named me Audrey. It was a strange name to me, but I had always been known as Firstborn. I supposed I’d get used to it. She didn’t have wings or any spectacular gifts. I think I bothered her. She was always smoothing my fur. Her tears stained her face. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I stayed with her four weeks. The Doctor let me leave after that. The human couldn’t take my presence any longer.

He took me next to the Biagdan. She was much different from the Human. The russet color to my hair I think I got from her. The eyes, though, were different. She did have wings. I liked her wings. She liked the Human’s name for me, and kept using it. She was very feathery. She said she missed flying the most of all the things she’d left behind. I asked her why she couldn’t go back, and she laughed. The Biagda are slaves now, one and all. Four weeks again, and then I was taken to my sibs for a time.

They were full of questions, of course. I liked the Biagdan, at least she didn’t cry. The Human, though, I had little use for at the time. They wanted names, too. I told them if I saw the Human again I’d ask. But now they always called me Audrey. They seemed to like it more than Firstborn.

The Doctor only left me a month before he introduced me to my third parent, the Jorei. He was smooth skinned as the Human, in his way. He was dark as the Human was light. His skin was a little scaly and rough, and his eyes were slitted and green. He tried to murder me in my sleep, and the Doctor created a forcefield to split the cell in two. I still had to stay for the month. After the first night, the Jorei ignored me. I missed the Biagdan worse now that I’d met the Jorei. He only spoke to me the day I was brought in – I was an abomination, a horror, unnatural. He had many half-healed injuries that spoke of his despair, and he beat himself against the wall every night until I left. The Doctor explained he was only recently civilized and had trouble making the adjustment. And I believed him.

I was then moved to visit the Tual. I immediately recognized where I got my fur. Though the color wasn’t exactly right, it was a near shade of auburn. The fur was longer, but no less soft than mine. Her eyes held no color, they were wide and black. She sniffed me, and I wondered how she perceived me. She accepted me as hers, though I could tell by now none of my parents were particularly pleased with me. The Doctor had briefly warned me she might, like the Jorei, try to kill me. She didn’t. She did explain the difference between the slaves and the freeborn. She was freeborn. The Jorei was freeborn, though his people were slaves now. Her people fought the Doctor’s people. She had been captured in battle, and given to the Doctor. She refused to accept defeat. I admired her for her courage, her determination, but wondered what defeat she was refusing.

I realized when I was returned to my siblings the Doctor was away. Periodically he traveled; this must be why my visits were disturbed – to prevent harm befalling me while the Doctor was away. My siblings were glad enough to see me, to hear the tales of the new parents discovered. The Doctor told me there were eight to visit; I had completed half the journey.

When the Doctor returned, I was to visit the Rhonquain. I was nervous to visit new places of the Doctor’s domain. The Rhonquain did not breathe air like the rest of us. The Doctor fitted himself with apparatus to breathe, and we entered an airlock. It was uncomfortable, but I could manage. The Rhonquain was striped in creams and reds and blacks and browns. The Doctor said it was a she, so I believed him, not understanding enough of her to see that for myself. She was spiderlike, yet only six eyes and six legs and some odd webbing between that looked like wings. She didn’t know what to think of me, either, so I suppose we were even. She couldn’t abide by the air standard, which was why her people were rare off her home world, though they had been slaves for many generations.

After the Rhonquain, I had come accustomed to the air difference, and I was uncomfortable again to be removed from it. The Sizen was next. It was a water dweller, though he could breathe the standard air when he chose. He had built an interesting home underwater, and I almost drowned before learning my lungs would not take in water. Fortunately, the Sizen was not inclined to kill anybody. His people were peaceful, and made neither good slaves nor good rebels, and were left to their own devices for the most part, on an enslaved world. His world was closest to the Doctor’s, and he was not nearly as far from home as the others were. I did not understand this concept. The Doctor’s lair was our home.

Enslaved worlds, home worlds, far from home: these concepts made as little sense to my siblings as they did to me. There was only the Lair. Thirdborn, was the first to put words to it, but where does the Doctor go when he is not here?

I tried to ask the Doctor when he returned. He never answered, always ignoring any question he did not wish to answer at the time.

I asked the Vier where the Doctor went. She didn’t know, but said she was always happier when he was away. She was newly enslaved as well, and I figured she needed more civilization before she could appreciate the Doctor. My mistake was telling her so. Her green and blue mottled skin grew ashen and her golden eyes flashed in anger and pride. She informed me she was freeborn. They had not been enslaved by the Greonteo – just a few of the outlying posts that were far from the protection of her home world. Showing my ignorance to her again, I asked her what a Greonteo was, I had never seen one in all my days in the Lair, and was informed my precious Doctor was a Greonteo. From her I learned what I was, a captive, an experiment, a horror of science and magic. I had trouble with this, and fought her notions every day I spent with her. She never gave up, however, accepting that this was part of my heritage and her duty to teach me. It was what I most admired about her.

Finally, the Doctor took me to the last parent, the Ixi. It, for they had no gender and no singular – just Ixi for one and all, was transparent, a shape shifter, and glowed violet toward the center. I was amazed by her. Now I understood the science and magic part that the Vier had tried to explain. The Ixi was the most magical being I had ever seen. It shifted to a copy of me, russet fur and golden slitted eyes, my exact height, width. It was better than a mirror, it was a 3D complete replica. Then it taught me to do just that. I was limited, however, I could never manage to change my shape entirely the way the Ixi did. I had limits, the limits of my size and mass and my need to breathe and eat. It also taught me to speak mind to mind, a thing I hadn’t known possible. A month was not long enough to master all the Ixi’s teachings, but I had a good start. It was also good with maps, and showed me where all the peoples I met in the Lair were from. The Greonteo were close, the Sizens and Rhonquain and Jore were in nearer sectors, the Biagda and Vier and Humans were great distances, and the Tual and Ixi were so far apart it was rare to find a person who had visited both in a lifetime. But they were free peoples, and the Greonteo had a vast empire that spanned almost the entire distance between them. My last question to it was how I came to be, since from her mind, all Ixi looked like her with variations, and all Tual looked like each other, and all the others, but I truly looked like none of them. Its answer, overtoned with sadness, was magic and science. I suppose only the Doctor truly knew.

My siblings were overjoyed at the new knowledge I had gained. I felt set apart, however, since I couldn’t explain to them how we might truly be abominations, horrors. Only the Doctor knew how to create us, so where did we stand? Was this our home world? What was such a thing? My outings created too many questions. And the Doctor came to see me, after my month of rest and his month of travel; it was time to bear young.

[Still need to physically describe the ‘Doctor’ at some point in the introduction.]