Chapter 212: Glamour Shot

It didn’t have a name.

It didn’t really have a strong grasp of self, only Mate, Food, and Invader.

Those last two were interchangeable.

Not that it would understand the concept of ‘interchangeable’.

The capera stalked along the edge of its territory, on a constant watch for all three. The mating season was vibrating through his spine, and he was sure his massive range would prove irresistible.

But in order to maintain it’s girth, the capera needed to patrol it, marking his territory and converting all Invaders to Food.

The talons on it’s immaculately armored feet were the perfect tools with which to do so, and it’s maw full of serrated teeth made the task of pinning down Food and Mates all the easier.

Truly, I am the perfect lifeform, it thought in vague impulses and smug superiority.

The capera bent low to sniff the ground, carefully rolling the scents around in the oversized nasal passages on it’s upper beak, giving each whiff several passes across the sensitive organ.

No mates. No other males.

The capera hung its head.

It didn’t fully understand its own emotions, but if it had been able to, it would’ve realized that it felt somewhat disappointed that it wouldn’t be able to kill or breed anything today. Like a child who’d missed the ice-cream truck.

Wait.

The capera perked up, its head raising as it took a deep breath of the desert air.

It effortlessly sorted through thousands of uninportant scents until it settled on one faint cocktail in particular.

It was a foreign scent, an odd odor that didn’t align with anything the capera had ever experienced before. But under the strange metallic and acrid scents, it could tell from the faint smell of mammalian sweat on its skin, bacteria in its armpits, and food on its breath…it was alive.

Alive and on his territory!

INTRUDER!

The capera snapped to full attention, turning toward the scent, questing side to side and taking slow, snuffling breaths until it found what it was looking for.

That way!

The capera was flooded with gleeful adrenaline as it sprinted in the direction of the Intruder (soon to be Food). There was nothing more joyful than tearing apart an intruder and filling one’s belly with the bloody aftermath.

Except maybe breeding.

…No, killing was definitely better.

It didn’t take long to find the Intruder. It was a strange-looking creature, walking on it’s hind legs, something like a capera, but it had these weird dangly-things swinging by it’s sides that seemed to be attached just under the neck, and it stood far too straight.

It noticed the capera as it crested the hill, turning towards it.

There was no fear, no twitching, tensing, bolting, or fear-stink.

It just stood there, watching the capera like a baby chick might watch it’s mother. Completely devoid of fear…

Or perhaps like a greater predator might.

The capera came to a hesitant halt on the top of the hill, taking one cautious step forward.

Something about the two-legged thing’s lack of response put it on edge. Didn’t fit in the capera’s convenient Mate/Invader/Food categories.

Something about the creature’s unnatural green eyes, the way they remained unmoving, like a brilliant green stone pretending to be an eye…spoke of death.

But the capera had only one response to fear: Swift Murder.

He let out a ferocious ‘HONK!” and charged the impudent little thing, growing in confidence as he closed the distance and it revealed itself to be many times smaller than the capera himself.

The capera put on more speed, it’s jaws wide open to snap the impudent little mammal in half. It couldn’t wait for the hot red gush of coppery flavor as the Invader turned to Food in it’s mouth.

How could it possibly have been scared of something as small as-

***Paradox***

The capera’s limp body slid through the desert sand behind him, crunching dust-covered shrubs under its bulk.

Perry shook the tingles out of his palm.

“You just punched a capera. To death.” Charles said, stepping out of hiding and gawking at the horse-sized creature’s limp body.

“Slapped,” Perry said, turning to inspect his haul. “Slapped a capera to death. I didn’t think a fist would have a wide enough surface area to properly transmit the force to its neck and kill it humanely.”

“Right.” Charles said.

“Besides,” Perry said, glancing up at his uncle. “Don’t wanna spend a spell on it when I don’t need to. Sometimes the simplest method is the most effective. Now help me take samples of this bird so we can calibrate my high-tech plucking laser.”

Perry handed him the sampler and began looking for a feather to match the reality-scattering one he’d woken up with in his hand.

There we go, Perry thought, pulling a piece of plumage out that was nearly identical in shape…if drastically smaller.

Gorm plumage is nearly identical to capera plumage, albeit a lot bigger.

And the capera was horse-sized.

Gorm must be about the size of a post-Tide American Bison.

Perry set up the reader while his uncle handed him samples.

The sampler was basically a hole-punch that cut out a cylinder of the bird’s skin and the plumage above it.

Perry ran the samples through an analyzer to develop an accurate algorithm to adapt to the thickness of gorm plumage it would have to scatter light through.

He couldn’t study the gorm directly but he could study their lineage.

Capera were kinda cute, in a fugly sort of way. Their necks weren’t very long for birds, nearly disappearing into their puffy plumage, with oversized upper beaks and big, bulgy eyes.

When you closed their tooth-filled mouths and hid their body-builder-like necks under plumage, then viewed them at an angle that obscured the keratin-armored legs with razor-sharp talons longer a foot…they were cute.

“Get some samples from all around the body.” Perry said as he began feeding the little seran-wrapped samples of plumage density into the machine.

They worked in silence for a good hour.

The concept of calibrating an algorithm running a laser with the gorm’s closest relative was simple enough that even Charles understood why they were doing it.

“We’re almost done with the portal. All we need is for you to flip the switch and it should punch through the barrier.” Charles said. “So why are we doing this?”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Perry asked, matching the capera’s foot to the trio of faint scars on his chest. smaller spread, but same pattern.

“The laser?”

“No, the portal. What if we ring the biggest dinnerbell on the planet and then there’s no door to escape through?” Perry asked.

“Or worse, what if the weakness between the dimensions allows one of the gorm to tag along to Earth and begin to proliferate there?” Perry met Charles’ gaze. “What if my kids wind up having to deal with that bullshit because I just bailed? What if Marigold has to pack them up and find another planet? I could see her leaving their moms beside. Nat and Heather are just a byproduct to her.”

“Nah, screw that,” Perry muttered, “might as well kill ‘em now. I’m not the dad that brings home drama. I’m gonna be the dad who brings home pizza.”

Perry’s eyes hurt. Might’ve gotten a little close to home there. He changed the subject.

“Speaking of food, the meat right there is nice and fatty,” Perry said, pointing it out. “Cut some out and we can set up some barbeque while we work.”

After recording every physical characteristic Perry could think of and training the algorithm on a battery of simulated gorm feathers based on the single gorm feather he had and the capera plumage data he’d gathered.

All they had left to do was build the laser and test it.

The building part was easy enough. Perry made it into a stationary turret drilled into the ground so that it was as stable as possible.

If the gorm destroyed it, that was fine. it was just a proof of concept anyway.

All they needed to do was remove a tiny patch of the reality warping feathers. Burn away just enough to slip something a little bigger than a photon between the damned bird’s ribs.

If it worked, Perry could build a better one. A portable one. And they could start the laborious process of exterminating the malignant species…If it didn’t work…

He’d figure something else out.

On the coast of the continent they lured in a small horde of gorm and tested the laser on it.

The results were…disappointing.

A single gorm feather could scatter light.

A thousand thickly layered gorm feathers seemed to make light forget it was light.

Not having a whole lot of mass (an understatement), the reality warping effect was significantly diminished against light.

But, as it bounced around inside the layer after layer of interlocked feathers, the light quickly forgot what it was doing and dripped to the ground, sizzling against the stony beach they were running the whorls scattered reality around.

“Well, that’s disappointing.” Perry muttered from the deck of the flying observation platform.

“I can’t see, what’s happening?” Charles said, averting his eyes from the gorm so as not to suffer an aneurism.

“The light’s getting distracted after a few layers and turning into a liquid,” Perry said, scowling.

“Liquid light?” Charles asked. “You-“

“Way ahead of you,” Perry said, holding up a hand. “I’m already instructing some drones to collect some.” Might as well make lemonade.

Perry wasn’t going to pass up on a unique material no one else had ever gotten their hands on.

‘cept maybe Hardlight.

The super who specialized in light-constructs would probably come in handy right about now too, because Perry had realized that not only did he need to blast the gorm with thousands of beams of highly concentrated light in order to bounce a tiny fraction of them back together against the monster’s skin, he also needed to beam instructions to that light in order to remind it what it was doing. And instructions for the instructions, and so on and so forth.

Basically, he would need to include self-correcting code that could resist the reality-warping in the light itself.

Perry was both frustrated and impressed that he’d found something that was actually beyond his current capability.

Note to self, send this algorithm and the turret schematics to Hardlight if we get back and haven’t destroyed the gorm yet.

After several hours of observation with his Nerve as high as it would go…Perry noticed a pattern.

The gorm were identical. It wasn’t the passing superficial identicality of animals the viewer was unfamiliar with.

It was true identicality. The way they moved, the way the light whorled and looped around them… even the way the terrain wobbled underneath them as they passed. It was wild and crazy, so complex and difficult to perceive that a normal human would never have any hope of making that guess.

Are they really identical, or is my brain just playing tricks on me? Was it just wishful thinking on his part?

Following this train of thought, Perry switched tactics and began taking pictures.

Of course the camera couldn’t actually see the gorm, but proper recording equipment was able to corroborate the identicality of the side effects of the gorm passing by.

There was…almost no variation.

There seemed to be two distinct subtypes of gorm, and the difference between the two could only be measure by a machine.

Hmmm.

In the depths of his frustration at the laser not being a viable solution, Perry had a sudden realization.

We could still get some use out of the algorithm that powers the laser, and all the study that went into it.

The algorithm was meant to calculate the path of scattered light through reality-distorting plumage. All Perry had to do was change its primary function a bit, and…

“Ta dah!” Perry said, motioning for Charles to come check out the picture.

“Oh, dear god,” Charles said, peering at the screen.

The picture showed a horde of slavering capera roughly ten feet tall, charging toward them with their gaping maw of serrated teeth open and ready to slice through prey.

The background of the picture was eerily blurred out as the algorithm tried to make sense of non-scattered light, while the birds stood in stark relief, the only things real against a non-real background.

I wonder if that’s how the world looks to them, Perry thought.

The birds were light and crisp at the edges where the algorithm was able to make sense of them, and dark over the thickest areas of the plumage, where light couldn’t escape at all, or if it did, it was rambling nonsensically.

“That one’s going on the fridge,” Perry said, pressing the ‘print’ button.