A set of colour bars wavered and gave way to a hand covered in thick grey fur.
"Stop goofing around," said a voice - my brother's.
We had removed the items from our heavy backpacks... a tripod, a microphone and a pair of headphones, which had fitted snugly upon Izak's head. Delicately, I took out two silver machines, jewel-like in their design, and milled from solid blocks of aluminium.
The first, an Ampex VPR-5 which I had purchased on Earth more than fifty subjective years ago, and which had been lovingly rebuilt at the SAIA Being Technology department a number of times since then. I had recalibrated it myself that very morning. The second was a Nagra 4.2 loaded up and ready to roll.
The Nagra was used to record the soundtrack at a higher quality than the linear soundtrack on C-format videotape would allow, although it made editing a little more complex.
I chuckled, remembering how Izak's sensitive nose wrinkled in disgust as I broke the seal on a fresh reel of 1-inch videotape - by contrast I had breathed the scent in with a smile, and reinvigorated, began to lace the tape upon the recorder.
A few moments later there was a cut and I saw myself standing there, composing myself for what I was about to say.
"This morning we are coming to you from the hills of Crow Valley, a strange and beautiful place which is believed to have been created by a deranged Fae. And it is here, as the year begins to draw to a close, that we can find among the damp leaves, some of Furrae's most appalling fungi.
"Here on this branch, for example," I continued, "is the rare, worm-eating slime mold, which is actually capable of moving around and devouring prey.
"Over there, and I dare not get too close, is the fearsome death-cap mushroom, which, if consumed, kills within hours. Indeed, the toxin is so poisonous that it can cause sickness at a range of up to six feet. The only known cure is magical regeneration of the affected organs."
As I spoke, Izak zoomed the camera in upon an otherwise unremarkable-looking white toadstool.
"Even worse than the death-cap is the giant Doom puffball. If disturbed, it will explode, which can result in serious injury."
Upon the screen, my miniature self picked up a small pebble and threw it at one of the round, white blobs for effect. The blast knocked me flat and left a green stain upon the screen where the vidicon tube had been overloaded. The blast had been fearsome - even seeing the replay made me cringe.
Shortly after that, Izak had turned off the camera for about five minutes, giving the smear time to fade, and myself time to recover and unruffle my feathers.
I would also have to remove some choice swearing in the editing suite, although I was sure that the outtakes would be shown around the Academy again and again.
I made a note of the timecode, and then swore again as I remembered that we had left the Nagra running. That was going to mean re-synchronising the audio and video after the cut.
Ah well, I thought to myself, where would the fun come from if it was perfect every time?
There was a cut as the tape began rolling once again, showing an image of me pausing to sniff the air before donning a pair of night-vision goggles. Having caught this spectacle on tape, Izak had put on a curious helmet containing its own internal video display, simultaneously plugging it into the recorder's monitor line using his wing-tentacles. This was taking place behind the camera however and the only visible sign was when he knocked it slightly causing the image to wobble. We could soon edit that out, though.
"Now this fungus," I added by way of explanation, "is so deadly that we cannot even look at it directly."
As I spoke I searched through the heather until I came across an oddly-shaped rock, which I picked up and held before me.
As the camera zoomed in, it became clear that the rock was in the shape of a large feral brown rat.
"We are looking for the Reaper mushroom, which occurs only in this particular valley. It is so deadly that if you so much as glance at the mushroom's gills while the moon is visible in the sky, it will immediately turn you to stone - as this poor rat has discovered the hard way.
You can usually locate them from the stone corpses found nearby.
"It is a truly remarkable, and very, very appalling fungus."
So saying, I was striding towards a large stream. Izak kept the camera steady upon me. Removing the goggles, I stared intently at the water, and then, with a flash of wing-tentacles and a spray of water, I brought out a small fish.
Replacing the goggles, I had returned to the spot where I had found the rat. Banishing my tentacles lest their heads also gaze upon it, I cleared back the heather so that Izak could get a good picture of the deadly thing.
Slowly I placed the writhing fish upon the ground under the large mushroom, whereupon it immediately became grey and stopped flopping around.
"Isn't that appalling? Now, if we look over here... yes... the grey radshroom.
These are usually found very close to the Reaper mushroom."
Izak handed me a small Geiger-Muller counter. As I held it over the fish, it began clicking furiously.
"As you can see, the fish, having been transmuted into stone, is now highly radioactive. But the radshroom absorbs the radioactive energy for food, like so.."
With a stick, I prodded the stone fish closer to the grey mushroom. As I did so, the Geiger counter began to ease off, and the mushroom slowly began to change colour from grey to green. Taking the stone fish, I snapped it in two, revealing the now-calcified internal organs and showing them to the camera.
Again there was a cut. Once we had sufficient footage of the Reaper mushroom and its hideous effects, Izak and I had moved the camera rig bodily to the bank of the stream where I had caught the fish.
"Finally," I said, standing before the camera with my goggles removed once more, "we will be looking at something slightly less appalling, the Crow Valley song-algae. Here you can see the algae, on the bark of this fallen tree. Notice that it grows in distinct clumps.
"Now, the fascinating thing about this algae, is that if it is struck, it will emit a sound. Each clump will emit a different tone, depending on its age and species. By finding a log with a variety of different algae, it is possible to play songs on it. Izak?"
Izak came back from behind the camera tripod, to be relieved by myself, as I donned the headphones and took over recording duty. On seeing my signal, Izak strode into the centre of the stream, and suddenly exploded into a hedgehog of arms and tentacles, each clutching a small rock taken from the bottom of the stream.
So armed, Izak stood before the log and poked each section of the algae in turn, causing it to squeak. With a sly grin, he began frantically bashing at the log with all his arms and tentacles, capturing the sound of 'Greensleeves' on the microphone.
This done, he handed the mic back to me as I stood once more before the camera to record the farewell.
"Next week, we are hoping to have an interview with the legendary Crow Valley panther. From Jakob and Izak, good day."
I froze for a few moments, giving us enough material to fade or cut to the credits.
"...aand cut!" said Izak. Moments later the screen went grey as the noise suppressor kicked in.
I gazed sightlessly at the test pattern as the tape ended, pondering over which segments to keep and which to edit out. Suddenly my reverie was interrupted as Ashley knocked and entered the editing room, two pairs of wings protruding from his back and from his head.
Despite the fact that he was part-demon, these wings were coated in the same grey feathers as I was, one of Daryil's changes.
Daryil himself had readily agreed to assist in joining Ashley to our Clan, having experimented with 'cubification himself in the past. His sole proviso had been that the lynx have the words "by appointment" etched in magical tattoo beneath the clan symbol which now glowed proudly down the side of his chest.
Ashley could easily have concealed this marking, but he was still immensely proud of his newfound 'heritage' and dressed like most of the other male students - flamboyantly and naked to the waist.
"I can lend you a shirt," I said, my conservative dress sense somewhat offended by his insistence on such skimpy attire.
"Ha ha," he replied, rolling his eyes. "Fa'Lina wanted me to let you know that we're about to bring the fourth generator on stream."
"Ah! Excellent! I'll be right over."
One of my first tasks in reconstructing the technological peak of Ha'Khun was to provide a power source. Hydroelectric power was not practical within the Academy, but there were alternatives.
Wilson would not have been impressed by the means I eventually settled upon - atomic fission. Nonetheless, it was the most suitable and thinking about it he might even have agreed in the end, since we had no interest in nuclear weapons and as the radshroom aptly demonstrated, magic could even stabilise the radioactive waste through transmutation, rendering it safe.
Having been forced to wait for about four hundred years to hire me as a lecturer, Fa'Lina was extremely disappointed to discover that I was actually pretty useless at it. Nonetheless, as far as I am aware there was no-one else in Furrae who knew as much about humans and their world, let alone their technology.
Eventually we found a compromise - I wrote course material and did my best to teach my fellow lecturers what I had learned, so that they could teach it themselves and do a better job of communicating it to the students.
Fa'Lina had offered me tenure to pursue my own experiments with technology, but I declined, preferring to remain a freelance agent. This was how it went in theory anyway - in practice I was pretty much free to do as I pleased, the only real demand being that I was expected to help run the technological infrastructure.
To begin with I worked on direct conversion of magic to electricity, and some of the converters I designed were used to supplement the experimental reactor. I still preferred hydroelectric though, as the sheer size involved was impressive. Once you'd seen a giant dam feeding a cathedral-sized hall filled with mighty turbines, anything less seemed pretty feeble by comparison.
My big break had come when I had brought back a 16mm print of an educational nature film shot on Earth. Fa'Lina had immediately seen the potential and requested that I look into the possibility of filming our own. 'Cubi are good actors, and I was no exception, having put these talents to questionable use during my wicked reign of Ha'Khun.
Perhaps Fa'Lina believed that by making these films I would eventually make a better lecturer, but either way my first attempts had been well-received and I had been commissioned to produce many more - a task I was only too happy to perform.
"I think she wants to talk to you about the computer as well," Ashley added.
Damn...