Spider Heaven
“God damn it, Bartholomew, you weren’t supposed to die ’till Friday.”
Cordelia’s pointed scowl moved from the dead spider to the following three specimen containers. Thulsa, Radagast and Dragomir weren’t looking to be in prime health either, and by not looking to be in prime health she meant they were dead as door knobs. Delia reluctantly collected all four arachnids and placed them in clear capsules before pulling out her pod.
“Arachnida specimen A, Solifugida, Amblypygi, Aranea, Palpigradi. Conclusion: batch 863 is unsuccessful.”
Six rows of floor-to-ceiling experiment shelves divide the laboratory, each housing hundreds of creatures from tadpoles to monarch butterflies. Organized meticulously, each species had its own row, each row has its own chart and each chart had sections for the individual specimens.
She must have had a few lucky stars because thankfully the remaining subjects in Lab 12 were alive and as healthy as they were the previous day.
Running through her list of tasks, she made her way down the rows collecting blood samples from the mice, changing the filter in the minnow aquarium, and checking the temperature in the snail terrarium. Glad to be on the last row, Cordelia turned down the Ave aisle to find Solange hunched over the lab station amongst the birds.
He glanced up from what she saw was a young singular-winged quail cradled in his fingers and nudged back his headphones with a shoulder when he saw her.
“How’s it going?” A grin played connect-the-dots with his ears.
“Is that a serious question?”
He snorted, his brown curls falling in front of his goggles as he leaned back over his work, amongst a pile of discarded 3D print supports, screw drivers small enough to substitute for needs, and an array of miniature screws. “I’m being polite.”
“How’s Vincent?” she nodded to the bird.
“He’s almost outgrown it.” Solange said, lining up the biomechatronic wing on the bird. “It’s still fully functional though so I didn’t want to print a new one. All I need to do is finish adding to this metacarpal…” he picked up a metal joint, “And add a few longer primary feathers, then he’ll be good to go. With the occasional repair, this one should last him a few years."
Cordelia nodded. "Barth passed."
"Always a good omen."
She returned his grimace. "They can tell us to treat it like any other day as much as they'd like, but it's not, and I feel like I'm going acting like it is. Soon I’ll be conspiring that the butterflies are flapping their wings in morse code to gossip about the way I walk or something.”
He paused, crouching to return his feathered ward to his enclosure above his head. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
She shrugged. "It's been a day."
Sol passed his coffee towards her “And it’s only getting started.”
Cordelia nearly gagged when the room temperature liquid attacked her taste buds. "This is nasty.”
He raised the mug when she passed it back. "To Bartholomew."
"To Bartholomew," she agreed.
"Rest in spider Heaven, little guy."
Cordelia snorted. "If there's an afterlife, that little fucker isn't ascending anywhere."
"He's probably tired of being in the sky anyways."
"Projecting much?"
He held up a half-hearted hand in surrender. "One day."
"Like that helps."
“One of us had to be the optimist."
He yawned again, draining what remained of the coffee. Cordelia wasn’t sure if he thought this would make the bags under his eyes any less obvious but she was fairly certain that adding caffeine to forty-eight hours without sleep did not cancel out to equal perfect health. Optimist indeed.
“I hope you’re still thinking so positively when you’re sanitizing mollusk containers.”
Solange grinned, looking even more like a mad scientist with the wide smile and goggle-marks that framed his eyes. “No, you hope I’m miserable while you get to run off on EVA’s.”
“Touché.” Delia glanced between her pod and the end of the aisle. “We should start getting ready soon.”
“We have six hours.”
“You can never be too prepared.”
“You can,” Sol countered, “ -and you are," but he followed her from the la.
