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(o) This is someone's journal. It's never explicitly stated a name so far, but it does have within it a rather detailed account of the hatching growth, and problems that come with having a Pikaia gracilens named Albedo skulking around. Chances are very good that whoever's taking these notes is going to be very, very angry with anyone who writes in them without permission. And may feed the offender to the pikaia in small chunks.

now with bonus cocoon as of 12/03/05

A day of rest should be a day of rest, but this one has yet to be terribly restful. After successfully neutralizing one of that damned Institute's mad pawns and her abomination, returning home has been welcome. Theory: pikaia gracilens may be omnivorous, and shows a particular fondness for abomination flesh.

I believe Albedo may be putting on another growth spurt. As per usual, I offered food until it was rejected, and his current girth must be twice the size it usually is. I'm currently monitoring him for any signs of indigestion or trouble, but so far he seems as active as ever. Whoever told me pikaia are small creatures obviously have never seen an adult of the species. Given his apparent fondness of round objects, as seen by his intention to play with the eyes before consuming them, I have purchased several brightly colored balls for his tank. After a failed attempt at eating one of them, he seems to have realized they are toys, and is at this particular moment pushing them all into one corner one by one.

The shell of the Yohoia tenuis will stay inside his tank for now. It is a more natural hiding place than the artificial rock I had previously purchased, and will give him something to chew on if he gets hungry and it is not yet feeding time.

Why can't I have a normal pet?

To infinity and beyond.

Or some equally trite phrase. Work continues apace; I find my nights not terribly restful these days and have tried to work around it with failure. I had been used to the occasional strange dream (common, I am told by my superiors, while tending to a Pikaia), but they have been exceedingly frequent and equally bizzare. If not even more bizzare than usual.

I believe I may have been spending too much time studying the survivors of the Institute's coterie. These dreams are filled with talking monstrosities and tea. I pray it is not the onset of madness, and is as I have been told, ordinary. I will in the upcoming days seek further advice for how to get one damn night's sleep. I keep finding myself doodling the infinity symbol in the margins of my work.

I intend to trade shifts with one of my compatriots for the upcoming week so I can better keep tabs on Albedo's waking and sleeping schedule. Unfortunately this means I will be rerouted to the occasional beach patrol to get rid of any of the Institute's brainwashed lackeys. Perhaps I will find some other exotic treat for Albedo to try, he seems terribly fond of the other creatures I've fed him. He continues to be active and as far as I can tell, healthy. Should he continue growing I will have to find a larger tank. Perhaps some form of built in toy will keep him entertained longer. The most recent game seems to be throwing things at me by swatting them out with his head or tail, knowing I will fetch them for him soon.

One night's undisturbed, normal sleep would be a nice thing.

It's still raining, and those worthless females are still on the beach, fighting and perhaps dying. I don't really care. That little idiot should have simply destroyed the eggs herself instead of luring some other girl onto the scene and tempting her with them then threatening both. Disgraceful. If she is nothing more than hired muscle then she should be not sent on that sort of mission. How difficult could it be to tell her 'find eggs, destroy them'? It's not my problem. My problem is wondering how things got this pathetic to begin with. Still, a wolf won't eat wolf, and I'll leave them be.

For now.

I should be driving home instead of writing in this tedious little electronic book as if it were the most important thing I have to worry about. This weekend, or the next, I will return Home and speak to Mother about aquiring an apprentice. I am not as young as I used to be, and will have to begin teaching my replacement while I can still keep up with him, as my master taught me when I was young. There is more gray in my hair these days than black. I think my cousin's oldest son is of the appropriate age, and seems strong and fast enough to learn my trade.

But first I will go back and check on Albedo. My mind is filled with emotions and images that aren't mine. Mother had warned me that this would be expected with a Pikaia as a pet, but its intensity is beginning to disrupt my work. Maybe I need to find him different toys. He seemed strangely active this morning.

Where once was an active white pikaia in a large tank happily playing with toys, now there was a softly luminant golden ball marked with nothing more than the sideways eight of Infinity, toys shoved to one side of the tank far away from it. Of everything Juste had thought he'd find upon returning home, this was not it. And like anyone who paid attention to the news, he recognized what it was and what it meant.

I suppose I won't have to ask Mother for an apprentice after all.

It also explained, to his irritation, where exactly the foreign imagery and emotion had come from. He didn't like being affected that easily or that greatly, but supposed there was nothing to be done about it. He had been taught, as had everyone else associated with Pikaia's Children, exactly how useful it would be to kill a monstrosity in this stage - though helpless, both it and its caretaker dies. Which meant getting rid of it wasn't going to be possible, and he was going to be responsible for a child 'of his own'. He scowled, pacing through his livingroom like an irritable cat, sidestepping a small stack of reports he wasn't supposed to have to scrutinize the cocoon up close, and on impulse reached into the warm water and brushed his fingers along the surface. To his faint surprise it wasn't gelatinous as it looks, instead hard and smooth, even slight pressing didn't even mar the surface.

Touch brought a riot of images and emotions to the surface as well, of long and bitter winters as familiar as the long warm summer days of California were to Juste. The graying man swore, quietly, and drew his hand back.

Obviously, he was going to have to protect the thing. Speak to Mother about whether or not Pikaia are allowable monsters, and whether or not he should sacrifice himself and it to prevent another inhuman beast from wandering. He didn't relish the idea, some part of him suggested it would maybe be better to simply run and take the cocoon with him ... no. He would do what is required of him. A short email will ask what questions he needed to, and is written on his small laptop on the couch while dinner heated itself in the oven. The reply was faster than expected, simple and straight to the point:

Consider this your apprentice and child. I expect it to be trained and taught like you would one of my own children. Pikaia gracilens are our distant cousins, and although monstrous as well, will be treated as the kin they are by all. I will see to it that none in this organization harms your child. You will find the cocoon is resilient enough to be removed from water indefininitely, you do not have to fear dehydration as with the egg. I hope my trust in you is well-founded.

Love, Mother.

Well, that settled that. Juste doesn't care much for most of the people in Pikaia's Children, content to remain little more than a dangerous satellite to the same, but Mother was to be obeyed at just about any rational cost. If she expected him to raise this ... thing, then he would do his best. But he couldn't stay locked in his apartment for weeks while he waited for it to hatch. Juste kept an ear out for dinner's alarm to beep, and stepped into his closet to grab various belts, straps and suspenders he had hanging there, returning to the livingroom to work on cobbling together some kind of carrying net. If it was resilient enough to be out of water, then he wanted to be able to take it with him. He could protect it much better if it was physically nearby at all times.

And once satisfied with it, he carefully extracted the cocoon, dried it off (and silently, unwillingly marveled at the smoothness of the shell it seemed to have), and wove it into the network of leather and buckles. Once satisfied that it couldn't slide out, fall out or otherwise escape into disaster, Juste took it and its new carrying case onto the porch to watch the sun set.

"Welcome to Earth, boy," the man murmured quietly. "Get used to it. You'll be here a while."

Pikaia won.

Its decendants were long of claw and sharp of tooth, and hunted in packs when mammals scurried in the foliage no bigger than rats and mice. The glancing strike of a comet which would have obliterated the whole of the age of reptiles instead caused an ice age, plunging the world into terrible cold. Those that couldn't adapt died. The saurians who could shake the ground with their steps, mammoth in size and appetite, to a species was slaughtered by the cold and by hungry roving predators. Of these predators, Deinonychus antirrhopus was the most successful, small and feathered and able to tolerate the cold as well as live in coordinated family groups to bring down meals to feed their hatchlings, their terrible hooked claws as useful for gripping ice as piercing the hides of their prey - contrary to popular belief, the great killing claws worked like fish hooks and not razors, for puncturing and gripping so powerful jaws could grab throat or spine and crush, not slash open to disembowel. Time and natural selection thickened their fluff and encouraged intelligence, and gradually chasing prey on foot was abandoned in favor of first weapons.

With the advent of weapons and shortly later fire, evolution changed course, beginning to select for intelligence and further manipulative skill over sheer power and the ability to break necks in one's teeth. It favored larger heads, which forced balance changes and a more upright stance, adapted forelimbs and hindlimbs to provide better efficiency. Raptors were well on the way to becoming an intelligent, self-aware culture.

And then a meteor smacked right smack dab into the middle of what we'd call North America, obliterating 99% of the population and setting them back thousands of years in progress. This would become something of a significant event, as it repeated itself seemingly every single time the population grew over one million; a meteor would strike, and most would die. It became ingrained in the memories of the species, and looking to the sky for ill portents was not the superstition it is for modern man. Luck allowed them to progress further, weakening their claws as warmer climates began to dominate, fueled by their own expanding meager technologies. Modern intelligence and life finally got its foothold and stability as the predicted comet or meteor delayed itself by a good fifty thousand years, allowing progress straight into industrialization. The world seperated itself into nations that added up in total to just over six billion people, and growing every day. Their nationalities weren't perhaps so different from ours. They identified as Americans and Chinese, as Brazilians, French, German and more. The architecture was different, their religions in the hundreds but different from our own, their food and culture familiar to ours and yet so strange. The greatest achievement of the century was putting a crew on the moon and returning them safely home.

And then an asteroid the size of Maine smashed into India, setting off a catastrophic nuclear winter that killed all but a few hundred million in the course of a few years through starvation and dramatic weather shifts. The planet glaciated, and war broke out; those nations nearest the impact zone fought most savagely for new homelands, and Russia and America allied themselves simply for the survival of the species, their leaders enacting a very strict breeding program made to draw back to the fore their race's latent natural adaptions to the cold - strong claws, warm, thick fur, and many other adaptions to handling snow and ice.

Modern life is ... interesting. Technology-wise, they don't have much in the way of medical care, preferring to be able to tough out most illnesses and deal with life as it comes, but they've got home heating and air systems that make modern efficiency look like old wood burning stoves in comparison. They have music and television not entirely different from modern life, with perhaps some similar stars and icons, and the population stands stable at somewhere around seven hundred million scattered through Africa and north and south America. Neither males nor females dominate the governments (though the current president-elect of the Americo-Russian States is a female getting on in years). There are laws, rules and regulations for most things meant to keep people from killing themselves or eachother through stupidity, at least in first world countries, like drinking and driving. Third world ... well, you fight for what you can get and if there's a government at all, great! Even in the ARS, there is a different set of social laws that keep most people from stepping out of line: simple blood feuds.

Everyone watches out for everyone else, knowing everyone is doing the same for them, and if someone steps over the line, their own family stops them from bad behavior before it can become anything more than an embarassment. Why is this? Because when you do harm, the family of the person you did harm to has the right to hunt down someone in your family and do the exact same thing to them. It is justice, and people look the other way when it happens. If the crime is bad enough, such as rape or murder, only the most powerful person of the other family can settle the debt, and will become the target of assassination. Even if that person is the president, if the president has a cousin who raped someone else, the president may be killed ... and even his own secret service won't stop the slaying. It's justice, and everyone nods and gets on with life. After all, he wouldn't have died if his family kept the wrongdoer in order.

But in such a brutal culture where murder and violence aren't exactly uncommon, there are strict social mores that seem designed to diffuse hostile situations before they begin, and the main two are tea, and questions. Namely, there's tea for everything, for any situation there is a proverb and it's rude to directly ask a question. The latter isn't all that difficult to comprehend, and simply takes a bit of mental acrobatics to work out; save in school where questions are required for learning, one is encouraged to be very roundabout in their methods of finding out information, and in the process perhaps learning more than you'd intended. It promotes thinking as well as politeness, which goes hand in hand with ... tea and proverbs. Tea is big, though that might be an understatement: almost every situation imaginable has an almost ritualized tea that goes with it. There is morning when you get up tea, going to bed tea, tea you have at the office with your boss, tea you have tucked under your car seat in case you get into a crash, tea you bring to the front lines of war and share with your foes before trying to kill them. Sitting down over a cup of tea has diffused many, many hostile situations over the past countless years, and has kept them from driving themselves extinct.

There is tea for everything, specific types and flavors for specific situations. Tea is always safe. You can drink tea with your hated enemy and KNOW it's not poisoned, and while it may be bitter and unpleasant tasting or sweet, it is not lethal. Nobody will so defame tea. They'll poison the biscuits instead. For every tea and situation, there's likely a proverb as well, old wisdom handed down through countless generations. It might strike modern humans as odd that a race so violent could be so firmly rooted in traditions that seem almost noble and elegant in comparison.

Wars keep the numbers even despite a plentiful birth rate. Tea doesn't prevent that.

Species name: Chelovek
Sex ratio: approx 1 to 1, males slightly more common.
Average height: Varies; male average 5'-6', females on average 6" taller.
Average weight: males 150-200 lbs, females 170-250 lbs
Lifespan: 100-300 years barring sudden murder.
Appearance: Although skin, fur, hair, eyes and markings all come in different colors, the average Chelovek is a bipedal semi-digitgrade organism that is strongly humanlike in general appearance. They often have mobile, furred ears, vertical-pupilled eyes, and sturdy, well-muscled bodies. Their hands and feet are both clawed, though most file their handclaws blunt, their feet strongly dromaeosaurlike even now, possessing four toes per foot, four fingers per hand, and long, muscular tails. Thick double-layred fur is common across the shoulders, bellies, backs, arms, legs and tail. Some develop horns made out of keratin as they age, slightly spiralling and vaguely reminisctent of an oryx's. Simply much smaller. Stance is often leaning forward more than human balance would allow, sometimes appearing almost slouching.

Common eye colors: Blue, brown, green, gray, more rarely purple.
Skin colors can be any normal human hue, from dark to pale, although the current dominant skin color is black (actual black, not dark brown). Likewise fur colors have a wide range, though most common are shades of brown, white, gray, or red. Skin and fur can both bear markings, stripes and spotting being the most common, colors varying.

Children are born live, hairless and furless, helpless for the first several years of their life. They are not born with their claws or teeth grown in, developing these at approximately the age they learn to walk and are weaned off of their mother's milk. They ARE more or less fully mamilian, as mothers nurse their children for the first year or two of life or have formulas to do the same. As they age, fur and hair begin growing in, and it's often not til a child is five or so before it's easy to discern what colors and patterns a child will sport. Full coats, claws and teeth are not grown in until late adolescence. An adult Chelovek's natural coat is often thick enough to allow him or her to tolerate even the most atrocious weather with little more than a teeshirt and a pair of shorts on, their claws sturdy and strong, making navigating ice-slicked sidewalks, rocks, and paths relatively secure.

Natural Perks in comparison to Humanity: Chelovek aren't sprinters, they're endurance runners. Muscular, on the small side and not particularly leggy, their strength is sheer stamina, the ability to simply get up and keep going mile after mile. Their natural weaponry gives them an added edge in combat, their claws strong enough to grip and crack ice without breaking. Tails are counterbalance, making them exceptional climbers and leapers. So too are they rudders when running; though top speed in a few moments' burst is somewhere around thirty five to fourty miles an hour, travel speed is only a light jog, and their sprints leave them overheated and tired due to their insulating fur and lack of many design features to /lose/ heat instead of retain it. Their world does not have ready access to magic, and most don't bother believing in it, though most believe in God and miracles. Mental powers such as telepathy, telekinesis and empathy are known but extremely rare.