Chapter 54

Porrim and Kanrki were back at Porrim's world, breeding the last of the frogs and caring for the Genesis frog. They had placed it in a glass tank Kankri had alchemized for themselves, where it swam with the others. The frog was red on its back and head but blue on its lower body. In the middle it turned black, and sometimes when it swam she could see specks of white on the black part of its skin.

They're stars, she realized. The space player has to make it for a reason. Otherwise, though, the frog behaved like any other. It swam with its ancestor frogs in the tank, it ate the flies that were sucked in from outside, and sometimes it just sat there with the others. Porrim didn't like admitting it, but it didn't feel very special at all. Suddenly, she felt a disturbing buzzing sound in her head.

Porrim, thisch isch schtich. Can you hear me?

"Stitch? I haven't heard from you in a while. What is it?"

I can schee your Geneschisch frog. It looksch healthy, but there is a problem. A very…bigproblem.

"And that is?"

You're not going to like my newsch…well, here goesch. The frog is stunted. It's not schupposched to be asch schmall asch it isch. It'sch schupposched to encompassch an entire universche inschide of itschelf. But it can't because it'sch juscht a normal frog—permanently.

Porrim knew what this meant, but hearing it from Stitch felt surreal. It was all game terminology; the frog was small, no new universe, a genetic malfunction of some sort. An error—an error that would screw over their game soon.

"I…I see. Stitch, what am I supposed to do now?"

That'sch juscht what wasch going to tell you. There is a way out of thisch. You can reschet the game. It will lead to death for you and your fellow playersch, but you can do it. Stitch's last explanation had stunned Porrim, but now she was shocked.

"No, please! I can't just abandon everything! There's got to be some other way out of this!"

It'sch not my choice to make. It'sch yoursch and your teammatesch. I merely came to tell you about it. I would schtrongly schuggescht it. You schould know that even if the Geneschisch frog wasch correctly made, it schtill wouldn't schave you. The Black King isch quite powerful, Porrim. He hasch juscht killed a very important ally, one that could have killed him if he had been schtronger. You never even got to meet him, but it doeschn't matter now. He'sch dead. Not even Meenah could schtand up to the Black King.

"The king Kankri told me about? I remember him, but I can't believe I just forgot about him so quickly. I guess that's because it wasn't my job to fight him. I've just been working on this frog-breeding stuff for a while."

He will kill the White King schoon enough, juscht asch he isch programmed to if the playersch fail to asschischt the White Army.

"So, basically, we're screwed, aren't we, Stitch?"

Yesch. Unlessch you reschet the game.

Porrim sat down in defeat and sighed. Not only did it all seem unreal, it also felt unfair. Who was Stitch, her Exile, to tell her when she was defeated?

"Stitch? Can I ask you a question?"

Go ahead, Porrim.

"Where are you getting this information from? What makes you so certain that our Session is screwed?"

I juscht know, Porrim. I want what'sch bescht for you.

"I don't believe you."

What do you mean, you don't believe me?

"I said, I don't believe you! You heard me the first time. I think you're making this all up. I remember what Sawbuck said about there being a Team Apathy or whatever."

Schawbuck? Don't lischten to him. He'sch meddling in your game way too much and it could jeopardize everything!

"Like what, your plans or something?"

I don't have any plansch. I don't make the plansch.

"Then who does?" Porrim was met with silence. "Answer me!"

Goodbye, Porrim. I alwaysch thought you were a worthy individual. Schorry I have to leave you like thisch. There isch nothing more to schay. Porrim felt that buzzing sound in her ears again.

"Stitch? Stitch?" There was no response. Porrim continued to sit for a while, resting her head in her hands. Kankri appeared in the doorway of her hive.

"Porrim…did you get the same message I received just prior to now? I couldn't quite understand Itchy, naturally. He said something about scratching something, and the Black King. Oh, and doom. He used that word several times. His rhetorical skills certainly need improvement. He also has some serious articulation deficiencies."

She wanted to shut Kankri up right now but she was too frustrated to want to do anything at that moment. "Stitch told me we're screwed," Porrim explained. She told him what happened at let him think over it for a while.

"Disturbing," he remarked. "And very disheartening."

"Disheartening?" Porrim stood to her feet. "We're facing an existential crisis where not only we could die but our entire universe and race, and you think it's disheartening? Kankri Vantas, what is wrong with you?!"

"Porrim, I didn't mean to trigger you with the…inappropriate usage of my language," he protested. "I was only trying to lighten the mood, and leave the major decisions and thought-processing regarding this matter to you."

"To me? Why me? You're the Seer. You should have known this! You should have seen that our deaths—you know, bloodshed and stuff—is coming. And yet you did nothing, and you probably knew nothing, too!"

"I apologize deeply for not tending to all of my duties. I was only trying to spend more time with you, to help you with the Genesis frog. But it seems that that prospect is a fruitless endeavor."

"Not entirely," Porrim and Kankri heard a voice call out from just behind the front door. They opened it to find Aranea there.

"What's going on?" Porrim asked. "If you have a message, you could have just trolled us."

Aranea didn't meet her gaze. "This—could be the last time we ever see each other, if we fail. I wanted to use this as a way to strategize…and say goodbye. I'm not as close with the others as I am with you, plus I can't have everyone meeting up in one place again. Too risky."

"Well, what have you come to tell us about the Scratch that we didn't already know?" Kankri asked.

"There's a way out. I don't know if Stitch or Itchy told you, but Clover has been honest with me. He's one of the good guys. Latula, Horrus, and Mituna all have helpful exiles. Meenah either used to have one or never had one to begin with. Anyway, Clover said that while we can't make a new universe with our stunted Genesis Frog—"

"How did you know about that?" Porrim interrupted.

"Clover told me, it's not important. The Exiles all know tons about the game, and he was one of the few willing to share with me. Now, as I was saying, the Genesis Frog can't make a new world. It can't reproduce; it's sterile. But we can take its genetic information and transcribe it, and then send that copy elsewhere so that the good aspects of our frog's genetic code is safe and can be used in the next session."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Porrim asked. "You're not making any sense right now, Aranea. And how would we do this in the first place?"

"It's simple if we all stick to our tasks!" Aranea insisted. "I am going down to your planet to find your Denizen, Porrim. Her name is Echidna, and she has two needles we're going to use to scratch a structure in Damara's world called the Cardinal Movement."

"I have two objections," Kankri objected. "First, I fail to see how needles and scratching co-relates to genetic replication. They sound like mutually exclusive activities. Second, this is Damara we're dealing with. I doubt she'll be receptive to our intrusion."

"I'm getting to all of that. Look, all we need to do is get someone, maybe Damara herself, to scratch that thing in her world. That will send a message to Skaia that the world needs to be reset. Skaia controls the portals that send the meteors to Beforus, so it can use those portals to send the meteors at another time, and in another universe. Meanwhile, someone stays down here to help with the genetic transcription; that someone will be Porrim, who's going to have Latula helping her. Rufioh will wrigglersit." Porrim growled.

"Just because we're women doesn't mean we'll need a sitter! What kind of self-hating female troll are you?"

"No, I meant for Mituna. Rufioh will babysit Mituna. We can't have him wrecking things up over here, but she can't just leave him alone."

"Kankri, you're going to be doing something a little weird. Have you ever heard of ectobiology?"

"I'm not familiar with it."

"Good. I knew I typed up that technical document for a reason!"

"You have a technical document for me?" Kankri's eyes lit up. Long, boring walls of text were his favorite thing to read!

"Yeah, it's in a PDF file on your computer. I trolled it to you before I came here." Kankri immediately started out for the gate back to his world so that he could read the whole thing in the comfort of his own hive.

"Well, now I know the best way to get Kankri to leave a room fast!" Porrim remarked. "Now how am I going to go about doing this?"

"You'll need some microscopes, some pheromones to get the frogs mating, some paradox slime, some alchemizing tools, and—"

"I mean, what am I looking for?"

"Very specific genes. Latula is a gamer girl, so she should know a thing or two about coding. Genes are essentially expressed in 'codes'—certain proteins in DNA. All you have to do is find the right ones and transcribe them onto RNA, forcibly. The frogs are all doing that on their own, of course, but you're looking for certain things in the Genesis frog that will lead to a better universe."

"But how will I know what's good and what's bad?"

"Latula will convert the code into a picture of sorts. I don't really know how it works, but she showed me this stuff once back when were in this redrom. Long story. Anyway, just pick the genes that you think will help the new universe we're making, then translate those genes onto a different frog. But it can't just be any frog; it has to be one reproduced sexually, not with paradox slime."

"What do you mean, reproduced 'sexually'?"

"Like with sex."

"Huh?"

"Two individuals combining genetic material?"

"Like with—uh, pail filling?"

"Yes, but instead of having an intermediary grub, which the universe should produce on its own if you do things right, we'll have the female frog's eggs fertilized by the male."

"Fertilization? Stop using weird words!"

"Sorry. Just use the frog pheromones and wait for the female to start laying her eggs. Before they hatch, replicate the RNA you extracted from the Genesis Frog and inject it into each frog. The new proteins synthesized by the RNA should cause all of the 'perfect' genes to be expressed in the new frogs, whom we'll call the Exodus frogs."

"Exodus frogs?"

"They're going to escape our universe and be sent out into the Furthest Ring, where they will be protected when this universe and our world get destroyed in the Scratch."

"Oh…I guess that makes sense. In some weird way that only you understand."

"I don't know, it sounded cool when I tried to find some synonyms for 'escape'. Thesauruses are great!"

"Sure, whatever. Now, anything else I need to know?"

"Horuss will be creating a pocket universe for us to hide in, or try and contact the HorrorTerrors in the Furthest Ring to see if they will shelter us when the universe gets destroyed."

"Horuss? Can't you have me do it? I'm so much more polite than he is."

"He's a Void player; he has to do it."

"Fine. Well…good luck with everything, Aranea. And if I have any questions, I can contact you, right? Where will you be in all of this?"

"After I get Echidna's needles and find somebody to give them too—probably Meenah—I'll try and reach out to our lost friends." Aranea started to leave the hive when Porrim asked more questions.

"Do you mean Cronus, Damara, Kurloz and Meulin? I don't know if it's a good idea. They seem beyond reasoning at this point."

"We can't let them die, Porrim! Not even if we really want them to. They were in this Session with us, and like it or not, they deserve a better universe, too. One where maybe they won't have feel the need to turn evil."

"I don't know if it was the environment that made them evil, considering they were kind of weird even before we started Sgrub, but that's not something worth discussing right now. Anyway…are you really going away, Aranea?" Just then, Kankri re-appeared.

"I had a feeling you hadn't quite left yet," Kankri remarked. "I correctly predicted that Porrim would spend time pestering you with questions about semantics and processes of genetics."

"How sexist of you, assuming that just because I'm a woman I needed more explanation then you did!" Porrim sneered. Aranea gave her and Kankri a hug.

"No, he just came back to say goodbye," she told Porrim, hugging both of them. "I don't want to think of this as the end. But considering how many things can go wrong, for all intents and purposes…"

"…We'll miss you," Kankri muttered. Everyone remained quiet for a few moments before going their separate ways.

AN: This had a bit too much dialogue in it, I believe, but what matters to me now is getting the content out there. The RNA/DNA analogy comes from the fact that all of the trolls' handles have A,C,G, and U in them (U being for Uracil, the one protein found in RNA that isn't seen in DNA, which had the letters the kids and post-Scratch trolls had handles based off of). I figured I'd extend the analogy here, and it will come with its own metaphor. For the most part, the Scratch will be the same, minus the tumor since that literal cancer was only in the B1 world (Karkat giving the human universe cancer caused it to be there).

Assuming that I get everything done right, there are only 6 chapters left in this story.