The detailed study of the somewhat shameless black coccolith specimen took place in Dr Lyndon’s clandestine laboratory below his pleasant and inoffensive villa on Lake Constance. The images, generated by reflected electrons instead of light, revealed all kinds of anatomical details of the subject in question: a hard blackened exoskeleton, proof of its aversion to sunlight; a swath of hair that gives its movements a spectral air; a bluish chest, fruit of its mono diet based on comb jelly; and two tiny pincer-shaped arms, with which it pinches at miniscule eels and captured mermaids from the darkness. We prefer not to talk about the state of its mouthparts.