A video starts, showing a graying wolf man leaning a bit too close to the camera as he squints at his computer screen through his bifocals. “Is this…? Okay, yes it is. Damn, I need new glasses.” He clears his throat, sitting back in his chair, revealing a couple of shelves behind him full of photos. The camera itself appears to be connected to a laptop sitting on a desk beside the wolf’s phone and his hands.

Said hands are raised in a greeting as the wolf speaks, “Uh, hello! My name is Doctor Elijah Baker. Today is March 14th, 2056. I was the lead engineer and programmer on the project to bring a technology-based synthetic being to life. I am aware that the official report I gave input for came out… twenty or so years ago, but I wanted a more personal note on these events.

“I don’t know what kind of stories people tell about it, but just in case: we were not an exemplary team of the best of the best, nor were we funded by any government. Not at first at least,” Elijah chortles, adjusting his glasses. “The funding came after we made progress. But, really, we were just a bunch of idiot kids fresh out of their first degree throwing stuff at the wall. We figured it might work, so we tried it. It was about…”

The wolf gestures aimlessly as he thinks, muttering under his breath. “...It was about the third or fourth try at intelligence that we really started getting attention. Because it wouldn’t… it would come close, but it never really got to sapience for a while. But trying something like this? In spite of the way magic’s been doing it forever?” Elijah laughs ruefully, shaking his head. “Half the attention was calling us idiots.”

“And then Sal had the idea to model the intelligence after ourselves.”

Elijah sighs, shrugging as he continues, “I mean, it makes sense, and, most importantly, it worked. I… I had the idea of making a body to resemble one of us, too.”

The wolf’s face turns dreary as his ears fold back. “So, we… we built a makeshift body. Cameras we jury-rigged as eyes, robotic limbs with simple movement, and somehow we made it vulpine-esque. Sal even threw in a speaker to talk with a then-vain hope. As for the basis of the intelligence? Steph joked we were cheating by using magic as our way to copy a personality, but it’s all we could do. And the blueprint of that personality?

“Me. I volunteered to be the imprint.

“I turned out fine, of course. Obviously.” Elijah leans forward, resting his forehead in his hands as a deep sigh leaves him shuddering. “But when we hooked everything up, taught them some basic stuff, they… They panicked.” He shakes his head, not looking back up at the camera. “They couldn’t understand why they were expecting all of these organic feelings, but had basically nothing instead. They… They asked if they were in hell. As they panicked. They tore themself apart just to be free. We had to shut them down just to keep them from annihilating themself.”

Elijah sighs again, sitting back up and wiping his eyes of the wetness building in them. "No matter how many times they assure me that they don’t blame us or even remember it, I’ll still carry that guilt to the end of my days. I know I will.”

Clearing his throat, he gets back on track, once more looking into the camera. “That’s when we finally started getting funding. Despite the… awful tragedy, the project still worked. Unfortunately for our little scrap body, a much better way of building one was done at… basically the same time. A magic-based synth, but their body was built to almost exactly replicate organic bodies. So, with all this funding and attention, that’s what we did. From top to bottom, a replication of a Vulpes sapien vixen. We kept the intelligence from the first try, set them up in the systems of the vixen body and… tried again.”

Elijah lets a warm smile come to his muzzle as his voice turns thick with emotion. “And it worked. They woke up without freaking out and then they… came into the world. The first of their kind. They… really took a liking to me, too,” the wolf laughs. “Guess being based on me does kind of make me their dad. Something I’m… still grappling with sometimes, honestly.

“As for where they are now…” Elijah turns around, grabbing a photo off the shelf to his right, looking at it fondly. “They really only let me say this once, maybe twice a year, but…” He turns the photo towards the camera with a proud look.

Standing there in the photo is a vixen with green lights dotting their feminine form near their joints, in a close embrace with a hefty striped skunk woman, both wearing long, white wedding gowns. “That’s her,” Elijah croaks with a sniffle. “That’s my baby girl. Ainsling.”

The photo is pulled back, and Elijah just looks down at it, a wide, happy smile splitting his muzzle, accompanied by the sound of his tail thumping against his chair.

“And I’ll always be proud of them.”

Elijah jumps as his phone suddenly rings, and he sets the photo back on the shelf. “Th-That’s them actually, heh. I gotta go.”

The video ends abruptly, with Elijah squinting once more at his computer as he stops the recording.

_{Written February 15, 2022}