Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

"How do I look?" asked Jinx, his antlers flaring a crimson I knew from metamedium shows meant excitement.

"Very muskophallic! How about me?"

"Brain coral goddess!"

The G– Gnome clapped his hands together, and we knew he was eager for us to leave.

"I'm glad you're pleased. Remember, removal is a rather more time-consuming and costly process."

"Oh, we'd never want to get rid of them!" I said.

On the way out, Jinx had a little trouble with the door-ribbons catching on his rack, but aside from that, everything went superstring.

Until we got home, of course.

Jinx came in with me, and my poohs just lost it.

I will never ever forget the sight of them that day. They kind of scared even me, their own daughter, who should be used to them.

My dads are biological brothers who were in the same IMF assault unit during the last Short War. They were lying in a trench together, under enemy fire, when a shell was lobbed in on them.

The weapon contained some weird parazyme that no one's ever quite figured out yet. What it did was to fuse my dads together everywhere they were touching, as well as introduce a lot of collateral damage and changes, right down to the mitochondrial level.

The bonescrapers patched them up as best they could. Ironically, they had to use a couple of bulgy remora-cords to join them even more symbiotically, since Alvin and Calvin had to share a lot of cytokines to stay alive.

When they were demobbed, their experiences led them to join the Moderationists, for whom they became instant and effective spokesmen.

I came along as a teratoma.

My dads kept developing these squelchy growths all over their bodies, which the bonies kept removing. One of the growths had more than usual baseline human structure to it, and my dads got the idea that it would be nice to turn it into

a daughter. It cost a lot, both in eft and in compromise of their noninterventionist principles. But they were really kind of lonely, and I guess the Moderationists finally relented on the dogma part.

Naturally, I'm glad they did.

So anyhow, there my Siamese dads stood, linked by flesh and remora-cords straining fit to burst, shouting their heads off at me and Jinx, whose spike growths were turning green with contrition and purple with sorrowful anger at how innocent kids like us always got quenched in the end.