Chapter 1 - Woman’s Best Friend

The headline flashed in garish colors from the handheld’s screen:

Bio-Tech Exec Murdered by Frankendog!

At the sight, Kim made an incoherent sound, halfway between a gasp and a growl, from deep in her throat.  She just barely resisted the urge to throw the small computer at the wall, settling instead for giving it a disgusted flip in the air.  The device spun end over end as it dropped, until it bounced on the office’s carpeted floor with a muffled ‘thump.’  

“Those vultures!”  With her hand on her forehead, she leaned back until her shoulders braced against the corridor wall.  Breathing heavily, she fought to hold back the angry tears welling up out of the corners of her eyes.  She allowed herself to slide down the wall until she sat beside her handheld on the corridor floor.  “It’s only been hours since they found Uncle Ted, Rosie!”  As always, the neodog was at her side.  Kim reached out and wrapped her arms around the animal, pulling Rosie close.  “What if family members still hadn’t been notified?”  Rosie twisted in Kim’s arms so that she could lick her human’s face in the same way she would comfort a distressed puppy.

Of course, the analytical part of Kim’s mind reminded her, there were no more family members to notify.  “I’m orphaned again.”  It was a plaintive whisper, too quiet to be heard by a human ear.

“I will take care of you, Kim!”  Rosie licked Kim reassuringly as she spoke, the two activities being independent for a neodog.  One arm snaked from the canine’s back to retrieve Kim’s ruggedized handheld.  The small computer had taken worse beatings under considerably lesser provocations.

“Thank you, Rosie.”  Kim’s eyes stung as she thumbed the touch screen.  The ugly word “Frankendog” leapt to burn itself into her retinas one final time before she could close the web browser.  

She needed to find somewhere private; one of the labs.  Somewhere she could wrap her mind around what had happened.  Yesterday had been so normal.  Yesterday, Uncle Ted had still been alive.

Less than 24 hours earlier the walls of the small rectangular room that served double duty as Kim’s combined office and lab shook with her neodog’s excited barking.  The room’s acoustics were terrible; the reverberation threatened to rattle loose the thumb-tacks that supported a motley collection of schematics, soccer posters and technical papers pinned to the walls.  An outsized printout of a genetic chart, cryptic portions covered in bright highlighter colors, finally gave up and dropped behind the cluttered lab bench that ran along one of the longer walls.

From her seat at an oversized desktop screen under the only window, Kim caught the chart’s abrupt descent out of the corner of her eye.  “Alright! That’s enough!”  Exasperated, she spun her chair around, “Stop it Rosie!  I’m hurrying, I swear.  Don’t bark so loudly.”  She made a show of lifting her hands to her ears, but her best stern look dissolved in a moment and, despite herself, she broke into a musical laugh.

When Kim turned, Rosie had thrown herself to the floor, rolled over twice and then bounced up onto her feet and into an excited doggy jig - dancing, spinning and barking.  The black, wavy-haired neodog knew nothing would happen any faster no matter what she did; she simply enjoyed showing off for her person.

Kim rolled her eyes, but could not wipe away her grin.  “Settle down, baby dog.  Honestly, people will think it’s an earthquake!”  Holding in another laugh, she turned back to her work station.

Rosie knew what a real scolding was, and she knew she was nowhere close to getting one.  She continued her clowning, dropping down on her front legs in a dog’s invitation to play, scooting from side to side with her head low and her tail end high.  She did not completely ignore the ‘settle down’ request.  She did not exactly go silent, but she did at least stop barking at the top of her lungs.  There was still no letup from her in her excited prancing and play-bowing and scooting around the room.

Kim pushed her thick auburn-red hair behind her ears as she leaned over her outsized full-desktop computer screen.  She squinted at the half dozen charts and progress bars on display, using her fingertips to drag the windows around the touch screen.  Satisfied, she spared a look over her shoulder at her four-footed companion.  

At a casual glance, Rosie was a medium sized dog, about twenty-five kilograms with a black wavy coat.  She closely resembled her source breed, the Portuguese Water Dog, although with an oddity that would have raised eyebrows at an American Kennel Club dog show.  Rosie’s cranium was noticeably higher and more elongated than any normal member of the species canis lupus familiaris.  

When Rosie realized she again had her human’s attention, she paused long enough to look back adoringly, the picture of an overgrown puppy.  Her head tilted well over to one side as she wagged her powerful tail in broad sweeps.  In her way, the neodog thought of the twenty-two year old woman in front of her as ‘her girl;’ the person the she loved best in the world.

‘Rosie’s girl’ was a little taller than average, athletically built, dressed in soccer shorts and a company logo polo shirt. Humans often remarked on Kim’s unusual copper red hair, but Rosie’s color vision was not up to appreciating varieties of human hair.  

For Rosie, it was her girl’s scent that was rare and special; a subtle mix of love and comfort that spoke of redwood forests, ocean spray and grassy fields on hot days.  It was a scent that told Rosie she was home, no matter where the pair was.  Her black nostrils flared as she inhaled that aroma, and her tail wag escalated into a whole body wiggle until she had to spin around in happy tail-chasing circles.  

“Silly dog!  Can you please settle down?”

After several excited full body turns, Rosie slowed; her oversized brow became furrowed and her head tilted to the side. In a very un-canine display of body language, she closed her eyes, lifted her nose, opened her mouth and took in a deep, long breath in a kind of inverted pant.  Mouth half open, tongue hanging over her teeth, she slowly pushed the air out of her lungs while lowering her head and chest into, not so much a play bow, but, rather its namesake:  a calm, yoga-style ‘downward dog’ posture.  With another long slow breath, she settled her tail end until she was flat on the floor in something like the yoga ‘child’s pose.’  Her wagging tail stilled during her deep cleansing breaths, but resumed its rapid tempo when Rosie lifted her head.  Otherwise, she managed to stay still, except for a mild quiver.  

Kim smiled, her eyes crinkling, before she refocused on her display and its windows of progress bars.  If she enjoyed the relative peace and quiet, her pleasure was short lived.  Rosie’s fidgeting might have dropped down to little more than a broad tail wag, but only moments passed before the silence proved too much for the neodog.  She began to vocalize from deep in her throat in a kind of doggy mumble, “Ruhr, rhurr row row roh.”

“I know, I know.  Just a couple minutes more.”  The human had the exasperated tone of a mother grateful for whatever patience she could get from a toddler.  Under her breath, she mumbled, “At least now I can hear myself think.”

Brown eyes narrowed in concentration, she lightly tapped and slid her finger tips across the display, dragging and resizing windows.  A professional full-desktop monitor, the screen was a good meter by a meter and a half and could be tilted at any angle from flat to vertical, like a drafting table.  Her indulgent uncle kept Kim in good equipment.

A surprisingly thick data cable ran from a port on one side of the desktop to a device on an adjacent lab bench; a vaguely oval ring supported by a pair of three-toed legs.  The object had the flat-looking finish of a rubberized or water-proofed coating in a dark green.

As she leaned a little further forward, Kim’s long hair fell in front of her face.  With one hand, she fumbled in the pocket of her shorts and produced a hair tie, while her free hand dragged another window to one side.  “One more down,” she said in an encouraging tone while fixing her hair back in a ponytail.

“Rahr roo aroo,” Rosie’s commentary went up in pitch, before settling into a steady, throaty mumble.  Her tail maintained its steady wag and she began to knead the floor with her forepaws, projecting a feeling of desperately wanting to leap up and shout, “Oh, please hurry up!”  

At long last, the final progress bar in the final window completed and the screen flashed Upgrade complete.  No errors.  The human turned to the canine with an indulgent nod and a gentle smile.  “All right Rosie, it’s finished now.”  

This news set off a positive fit of excited barking and leaping about from the animal.  The other half of the pair could only laugh as her neodog’s antics threatened to bowl them both over.  Kim had to squeeze right up to the lab bench to edge out the dog and disconnect the data cable from the two legged ring.  She grasped it in both hands and had to haul the thing over her own head in order to turn around without hitting Rosie.  “Okay, okay!  Back up for a second, you crazy dog!”

Vibrating with excitement, Rosie stepped back and allowed the object of her enthusiasm to be placed on the floor in front of her.  As soon as it touched ground, the canine lunged to slide her head inside the ring.  As her shoulders contacted the device, or perhaps just a moment before, it responded to the neodog’s presence as if it were a living thing.  

The ring portion wrapped and contoured itself around Rosie’s chest and shoulders.  The ‘legs’, which anchored at the top of the ring and were no longer needed for support, curled up and over her head, becoming a pair of mechanical tentacles sprouting from canine shoulders.  The tentacles waved back and forth in the air for a moment, resembling drunken sea serpents as much as anything else, until something seemed to settle and their movements became crisp and precise, exuding a sense of purpose.  The three ‘toes’ at the end of each tentacle flexed to form articulated pincers; both sets clicked repeatedly.

 A flood of words issued from a speaker built into the chest portion of the ring-become-harness:  “I have my arms back!  I love my arms!  I love to talk!  I love you Kim!  Can we go play now?”

Grinning widely, Kim knelt beside her neodog.  She reached out to scratch both of Rosie’s ears.  Her eyes sparkled; no mother ever took more pride in a clever child.  “We need to go see Uncle Ted first; then we can go play.  Today is Frisbee day!”

At this news, Rosie barked more loudly than ever and chased her tail with excitement for several spins, before turning to the exit.  Still barking from her mouth, she also shouted “Frisbee!  Frisbee!” from her chest speaker.  She ran to the lab door and reached up with one mechanical tentacle to grasp and rotate the doorknob with her pincer.  Swinging the door wide, Rosie the neodog bounded into the expanse of office cubicles in front of her, barking her joy.  Her girl, Kim, followed.

Neo or not, like any dog, Rosie understood deeply and instinctively that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing at a run.  She dashed ahead, charging through the forest of cubicles, advertising her progress with happy barks.  

She rounded a corner into a comparatively open area.  Without slowing down, she passed a woman sitting at a long desk and thundered through an open office door.  A wall plaque  read “Edward Hardy, Chief Technology Officer.”

She glanced around to be thorough, but her nose had already told her no one was in Uncle Ted’s office.  Her head tilted to the side as she considered her options.  She began to drop her nose to the carpet, but changed her mind and instead trotted to the long desk in the outer office.

From her chest speaker, Rosie addressed the blonde woman seated behind the desk, “Hi, Sharon.  Do you know where Uncle Ted is?  We have to go see him.”  Her tentacles uncurled from their resting position on the neodog’s back and waved in the air, “See my arms?  Kim just fixed them!”

Sharon Reeves had the slightly glazed look of someone not in the here and now.  She tapped the phone bud in her ear with a finger, and focused on Rosie long enough to say, in a southern drawl, “Just a minute, sweetie, I’m on the phone.”  She tapped the ear bud again, then made a broad circle with her arm, inviting Rosie to join her behind the desk.

When Kim strode around the corner, she found Rosie enjoying a tail scratch from Sharon as the woman was wrapping up a phone conversation.  With an approving smile, she crossed her arms and leaned against a nearby file cabinet.

“… just remember, ya’ll don’t get to spend the whole time here drinking beer on Ted’s deck.  You have to take me out to dinner too; I want to hear all about Mars!”  Sharon paused, added a flirty “I’ll hold you to that,” and pulled the tiny phone bud from her ear and tossed it into a little ceramic dish on her desk.  She favored Kim with a grin and a “Hey, sweetie,” while rotating in her chair to grant Rosie the highly desirable treat of a two-handed tail scratch.  

Kim replied with a pitch perfect North Carolina, “Heyy.”  She harbored the none-too-secret opinion that Sharon had been in Northern California long enough that the older woman must practice in the shower every morning to keep up her childhood accent.  So far, solid evidence eluded her.  She moved to sit on a clear spot on the office manager’s long desk.  Cocking her head to one side in a very canine posture, Kim asked conspiratorially, “And just who was that?”

Sharon fluttered her eyes in a look of utmost innocence, “That, my dear, was a terribly handsome old friend of your uncle’s.  A dashing soldier only recently returned from Mars; one Kermit McCullough.”  

Kim snorted, “Kermit?  Really?”

Scandalized, Sharon stuck out her chin and turned to shuffle some paperwork, “It’s a fine Irish name.  Don’t be such a pill.  He is a very nice man.”  

“Well, he’d have to be.”  

Sharon turned back and made a sour face, but Kim ignored it, “On the other hand, I would love to go to Mars.  Can I meet this guy?”

Rosie interrupted, brown eyes wide, “Kim, we have to go see Uncle Ted!  So we can go play Frisbee!”

“You’re right, Rosie, but I didn’t mean we were going to Mars right now.”  Kim bent down to give Rosie a reassuring pat on the head.  Looking sideways at Sharon, she asked, “Is Uncle Ted still in that meeting?  He wanted to see us right after Rosie’s upgrade.”

“He is sweetie.  He doesn’t want you to wait, said you should join them.  I think he wants to show off Rosie and Gabby interacting.  They’re in the ‘Asta’ conference room.”  Off of Kim’s skittish look, she added, “Oh, just go right on in!”

“Isn’t this kind of an important meeting?  Aren’t there government regulators in there and what not?”  Kim’s back went stiff at the thought.

“Yes, but don’t worry about it; after all, they’ll only be interested in Rosie.  You aren’t a brilliant example of the finest genetic engineering in the industry.  You’re just a mutt.”  

That remark earned a dirty look.  Kim could do wonders with a raised eyebrow, but the other woman was not easily intimidated; she just stuck her tongue out in reply.

Spinning and scooting her chair toward the printer/binder behind her, Sharon said, “Rosie, I have some papers you can bring to Ted.”  She turned back with a stack of packets, covers emblazoned with a blue and white star logo and the words “Sirius Bio-Engineering, Inc” in a rakish font.  She handed them to the eager neodog who accepted with reverence and carefully positioned them on her back, atop her arm harness and held in place by cybernetic pincers.  Rosie wiggled to convince herself she had a good grip on her delivery, then turned and dashed for the conference room, calling “Come on Kim!”

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 - Sirius Business