This family is parasitic exclusively on other families. There are species of family it finds more attractive than others, but it does not limit itself only to these. All families and their sub-variants are seen as potential resource. This expansion of interests to include all family fauna is directly correlative to specific over-developments in physical make up: the father-part’s immoderately amplified seed (each with protruding spinelets and thick, hooked combs of metanotum, a useful side-effect of which is strategic choking), the mother-part’s inverted sinus and vented breast tissue, the daughter-part’s deep circular depression situated between her eyes, the collective’s near-translucent heads and lighted brain activity (the codec of which is known only to them). There are more. Families with 2-3 children and pets, where contentment levels regularly exceed mid-range, are enough to sustain this family for a minimum of six months, but can if approached with due economy last anything up to a year. Such is their rarity, however, that it invariably has to make do with larger quantities, less rich in their nutrient base. This lean but proliferate diet has obvious downsides, made all too clear when calculating optimum unit-expenditure:unit-capture ratios for families of commensurate size. Any one of the two son-parts can survive with no distress to its mother and father parts on no more than 1.6 versions of itself per month. For this family such goals prove consistently doable. Five or six small-scale extractions every week are enough to sustain the entire working unit. The most successful family will remain inward-looking at all times, erected codes ceasing to be cognizable beyond its perimeter. Son-love or mother-love or father-love or daughter-love must be restricted to the parts of which they are also part. If any of these configurations exceed the unit-limit, the future integrity of the family will risk potential life-threatening compromise. But a balance must be struck. To see a recognisably similar family sucked clean of its haecceity-as-family and not experience some degree of emotive anomaly directly associated with ordinarily inward-looking practices is itself hazardous to the internal structures of the family body. Balances of this kind, when successful, act themselves out beneath the surface of household behaviour. The younger and more female parts of the unit may use up an allowance of tears on the debilitations felt by those outside only as long as their root cause remains largely inexplicable. These techniques are perfected in absentia, by the zeros’ family-parts, when functioning at or close to full capacity. Casualty-families may for a time appear to continue as if unaffected by their being fed on by another predator-family. This is good for spirits within the unsubdued predator-family, but the façade will eventually break down. The father-part will molest and attempt to impregnate the younger family-parts, while the mother-part will promote suffocation as a remedy to those same parts. All parts will become progressively dissipated until death occurs. The best family is able to cultivate a high-order disgust for such familial implosion. This family is almost a template for one that will with due diligence from its parts soon become best. When the father-part looks at his wife-part, his son-parts and his daughter-part, he sees only himself, a thing too large for any fewer bodies. This way of seeing is instilled into all eyed-parts until even distribution, or its nearest approximation, is achieved. The family’s sight is to be considered almost as a part itself, and must in lieu of this status be closely monitored. The daughter-part should be able to feed from another (alien) family’s daughter-part without reservation, the father-part from alien child-parts, the mother-part on those same parts. The sight must survive itself. The identities must expand and contract to accommodate the demands, nay the necessities, of seeing—of sight as family-member, as household entity. It’s required that the daughter-part know the outcome: the alien father-part in her likewise daughter-part, the alien mother-part encasing all alien breathing-parts in increasing thicknesses of towel. It’s required she know and know by seeing. The family that cannot embody its defeated versions, through sight, cannot move beyond them. The destruction of those inferior versions of themselves stimulates growth in what is seen, until a sight is created that supersedes all former parts once called that, a sight where the family is its own lens, instantaneously connecting to itself all other inferior versions, so that it may become impossible to see what is not its own accomplishment.
