At the fog-choked edge of Bleaksville looms a castle that leans into the horizon like a rotten tooth. Inside resides Dr. Nefarious — once a man of respectable biological acclaim, now let's call it "professionally compromised." His undoing: a guppy named Fido and the question Why shouldn't you become everything?

The experiment did not go well. But grief curdled into obsession, and obsession into "well, I've already started, haven't I?" Once a month he descends to his laboratory and binds creature-parts together with dark energy — not stitched, not bolted, just cohabitating unwillingly.

"It is," as he notes in his journal, "technically still a success."