Lev’s analogs

Lev’s analogs, Gordon and Tyenna, are artificial animal-like beings whose uncanny bodies unsettle familiar categories even as their evident enthusiasm makes them part of domestic life. In the garden they confront Conner as a pair, then tumble over him in play; their design is strange enough to suggest predators, but their attachment to a human martial-arts instructor is presented as an ordinary household fact.

Identity and Appearance

Gordon and Tyenna are introduced together in Lev’s garden, where they face Conner side by side. Their bodies invite comparison with dogs, but the resemblance does not hold: their unusually long jaws and musculature seem less canine than usual, while their rigid tails make the mismatch particularly conspicuous. The narration imagines them as carnivorous kangaroos wearing wolf outfits with Cubist stripes, an image that captures not a clean imitation of any one species but an assembled, unsettling animal form.

Their faces sharpen that unease. As they snarl, the peripheral features seem to show more teeth than the two creatures possess between them. The excess is an effect of their appearance rather than evidence of an attack: the same teeth that make them frighteningly expressive belong to bodies whose behavior in the scene is playful. The design therefore keeps animal recognition unstable. Gordon and Tyenna look enough like familiar creatures to invite comparison, yet every comparison—dogs, kangaroos, wolves—falls short of accounting for them.

Play with Conner

When Netherton sees them through the kitchen’s mullioned doors, Conner is on his hands and knees, snarling at the pair. They face him as if ready to spring. They then lunge at him simultaneously, knocking him down between them as he flails and wrestles with them. Their response is accompanied by a high-pitched, repetitive coughing sound, an odd vocalization that adds another point of difference from ordinary domestic animals without interrupting the scene’s rough play.

Lev, busy at the stove, says that he does not know what Conner is doing, but that the analogs love it. The answer establishes their response as pleasure and attachment rather than hostility: Conner’s mock challenge draws them in. Once the play ends, Conner gets to his feet and walks toward the house, with Gordon and Tyenna hopping after him together on their hind legs. They follow him to the entrance and continue watching as he closes the door behind him. Their coordinated pursuit carries the play from the garden to the threshold, making their interest in Conner visible even after the wrestling stops.

Animal Resemblance and Domestic Life

Conner’s own attempt to describe them—like possums crossed with coyotes—adds a second, more conversational layer to their composite appearance. He remarks that they smell somewhat like possums and asks whether they can get tuberculosis, reasoning from the disease’s association with possums and their dwindling numbers. The exchange places the analogs alongside real animals in everyday talk, but it also makes clear that their resemblance does not guarantee shared biology: Lev answers that they do not get tuberculosis and asks why they should.

The conversation turns from disease to design. Conner asks why they are not built to eat, treating a capacity for feeding as the obvious feature missing from their animal-like bodies. Lev replies that they can be built that way, but doing so is much more expensive; it is unnecessary in a martial-arts instructor. The practical answer makes their construction dependent on purpose and cost rather than on an ideal of complete biological imitation. Their apparent animality is selective: they can play, move, make sounds, and attract human attention without possessing every bodily function that Conner associates with animals.

Attachment and Narrative Significance

The scene presents Gordon and Tyenna as more than decorative oddities in Lev’s home. Lev’s brief observation that they love playing with Conner, their shared leap at him, and their synchronized hopping after him all show a relation expressed through repeated physical action. The two creatures are not given separate temperaments or independent histories here; instead, they appear as a closely coordinated pair whose attention converges on Conner.

That attachment sits beside the discomfort of their engineered form rather than resolving it. Netherton finds their teeth and bodies alarming, and feels grateful that they lack hands, recalling the more disturbing drop bears. Yet the same creatures provoke Conner’s curiosity about disease and feeding, and they take part in a playful encounter that Lev regards with amused acceptance. The passage holds artificial construction, animal resemblance, and companionship in view at once: Gordon and Tyenna are not simply realistic pets, but neither are they treated only as frightening objects. Their place in the household emerges through what they do with Conner, even as their strange bodies resist a familiar name.