Ногa

Semibiologicals are a big topic of study around here. I hadn't even heard the term before I left homeworld, but out here it's ubiquitous. Semibiological this and semibiological that. Oh have you seen the new aquatic plant samples? No, are they semibiological? They're semibiological! Oh my god, I can't believe it, another semibiological. Semi-fucking-hurray!

Honestly, I swear to christ I've heard someone screaming semibiologicalthrough the quarters wall at 1AM.

There's even a theory that the subjects are semibiological. Officially, we don't know whether they are or not, but unofficially... ; )

I never know what's going to set the audit system off. It's normally okay if you're oblique enough. It struggles with context.

The rabbits are semibiological. They weren't here when we arrived. The survey teams reported no fauna at all (apart from the subjects) on the scan & plan run a year before anyone set foot planetside. Then we touched down with a prefab base and six liters of generic all-purpose leporidae DNA, and within a few days rabbits started popping up out of the woodwork without any human intervention.

They didn't scan the fox DNA. They ignored the whale DNA. We didn't start finding mantis shrimp multiplying in the tranquil ponds. They took the bunnies and only the bunnies. Make of that what you will. Either it was a symbolic attempt at communication from the planet systems, or it was an aesthetic choice related to the rabbit's pastoral connotations, or it was a single species chosen at random from the experimental stock, in which case we are very lucky we're not up to our assholes in amphibious spitting cobras right now.

The first rabbit we cut open didn't have any blood vessels connected to its heart. It had been hopping around merrily, nibbling at its clover, going fucking silflay on its idyllic meadow with no functioning heart. The medicals went wild at that. Semibiological. Semibiological. Semibiologicaaaaal.

It was the only one we ever found like that. The rest were better put together. Things were still slightly off, but every discrepency was logged and noted, then completely failed to appear in any future sample. Some bright spark in the biology department tried filing a fraudulent report. Uh, uh, the rabbit doesn't seem to have venom sacs behind its teeth. The next one did. There was a lot of noise about that, and the venom sacks disappeared from future samples. Afterwards their anatomy continued wobbling towards normality, except now we felt like there was something looking over our shoulder. The med tech behind the venom report got sanctioned. He should have got a medal in my opinion.

Moving on to how semibiologicals taste. It's actually–

— Fragment of log, project HH015, recovered 2122039.

Director Piggot growled in exasperation.

"Problem, Director?" Armsmaster asked.

Piggot grimaced, "Lost my damn stapler."

"Allow me," Armsmaster stepped forward.

He headbutt the stack of papers, Piggot heard a click

Armsmaster heard Jack Slash speaking to Scion, trying to convince him to become something horrible.

He only had one shot at this.

Running up the ramp, he pulled off his right hand and held it out it in front of his mouth.

He screamed into his hands internal microphone, "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!"

High above, Scion couldn't really hear what anyone was saying, so he left.