CHAP 12: Moving

I stood inside the observation room.

"What are you doing?"

"The next test involves me, and I'd prefer to do this one without anyone watching. I'm actually really shy, you know?"

"Bullshit, this sounds like you're planning to do something dangerous."

"Don't worry, dearie, I'll be fine. Now, I'll probably be naked for this test, so can you please go away?"

"I won't move until you tell me what you're doing."

I took off my coat, and then my shirt.

"You were serious about that?!"

"Yes, stop screaming. Bea, girl, can you please convince little Alice here to go play with you?"

"Yeah! Alice, let's go hunt, all that loud noise made me hungry!"

"See? Go take care of Bea for me, dearie."

"This won't work."

I started unbuckling my pants.

"Okay, okay, I'll go."

I disconnected my vision from Bea when I saw Alice had left, and sat down, getting to work. First things first, I need to model my little flies, the fungus has some common flies I could use as a basis, but I need to know how much the transceiver will weigh, and take that into account. I tuned into the fungus and saw the current prototypes weighed about 0.17 ounces, which, while impressive, wouldn't work, since I can't have my little UAVs dying from overexertion, I could fix that by utilizing nanogenerators to power the wings, but I should still look into making the transceivers lighter.

It took a while, but I managed to make the transceiver lighter after some modifications to the material, and I already had an idea of how to make it light enough for there to be no weight problems, the only flaw in said idea was that I had to manage to find a way to make a triple layered circuit which would be moving at high velocities not tear apart, and be acoustically isolated.

I sent this idea to Anita.

(I don't think that's possible, at least not now.)

"I think so as well, but it's an idea to keep."

(Definitely.)

I got back to working in more simple terms, as much as that word has lost its meaning now. I couldn't make the wings into an FBAR, so I had to settle for a crystal oscillator, which weighed considerably more, but with the changes I'd already made, I could manage. I moved on to aerodynamics, which would be in a lot of ways harder, which is why I needed the flies as a basis.

The little guys flying is proof that nature can be incredible. The systems looked simple at first, but when you looked at them from a mathematical point of view, they became very complex, and after realizing that their thorax oscillates naturally and noting that I can use that as an oscillator, I started running simulations.

It took a lot, and I mean a lot, of tries for me to get my flies to fly, this came from the fact that I needed them to be faster, and have a more efficient way of flying since some of their energy would be used to power the transceivers fused into them. In the end, they weighed about 0.06 ounces, the transceiver alone taking about half that weight.

I weighed 154 pounds, multiply that by 16, and we have 2,464, divide that by 0.06, and we're talking about forty-one thousand flies, pretty scary, especially since each one of them is one-fourth of an inch long, so it's around 10,250 inches of flies, if you consider each of them a cylinder, and that their diameters are 0.08 inches, and I'm moving up the psychological warfare value of this since that's close to one-fourth of a gallon worth of flies.

Flies ready, I needed to modify part of my body in order to be able to control them. Now that I think about it, why could I connect wirelessly to Bea? This type of technology was not even close to being part of the fungus by then, so there was something else at work, it would be safe to assume it is in some way or form related to hell, and my blindness, but you once again you fall into the pitfall of 'what hell is and how exactly did I get here?' type of question. By now, I'm inclined to believe some kind of magic or soul bullshit happened, especially since every kind of examination I made shows nothing wrong, biologically speaking.

I connected a transceiver to my medulla and tried to transform one of my fingers into flies again. This time it didn't tingle, and when I tried moving that digit, I could feel that the flies maintained formation, it felt as if it had become fluid, I tried moving each drone independently, but it was harder to control them than it was to control the human bodies, definitely because of the unfamiliarity. After moving my 'finger' around, I felt comfortable enough to transform another one of them, and I continued this pattern until my full right hand was 'gone'.

Transforming them back was strange since my own hand started feeling alien, after opening and closing my hand a few times, I got used to them again. I transformed my whole arm this time and started moving the flies around independently, testing if using them to dodge would be possible, sadly, my control over them was not refined enough for me to accurately dodge anything, but it looked feasible after some training.

This time, I transformed both of my arms, then I did the same with both my legs, then I did the same with the four of them. My 'body' was just a torso and a head, but it didn't feel like that, probably because I was getting used to the feeling of being a bunch of small beings. I finally turned myself fully into flies, and that felt very jarring. My thoughts were being broadcasted repeatedly throughout forty thousand beings, and my control over every single one of them felt very different than before since they stopped feeling like one of my limbs and just became another individual body I was controlling.

I imagine a hive mind feels similar to this, but not with only one voice being repeated. I moved to another part of the room and reformed myself into a singular body again, the transition being once again very jarring, and I fell down from the sudden change of my whole sense of balance, taking my time to regain my surroundings.

Okay, I've identified some problems already. First, changing from one form to the other is confusing and puts me out of commission for some time, I can try to diminish the backlash somehow, but the most feasible way of diminishing the whole problem is getting used to it, I guess. Second, clothes and flies do not go hand-in-hand, something I had already identified, and the reason why I did this naked, so I have to find a way to make my clothes into flies or so they get destroyed and reconstructed when I get back into human mode. Third, dodging an attack that would cut my torso in half is impossible if I don't fully turn into flies, but I don't there's any feasible solution for that, unless I make some of the flies maintain my torso in place.

I'll get to fixing those after I test the secondary purpose of the flies, which is transporting mass to and from the fungus in order for me to fully shapeshift, so I fully turned into flies again, but instead of getting back into human form, I tried making myself into a chair. It worked, but the differences between being a swarm of flies and a chair are very evident, and the backlash from changing from one to the other is even worse than changing to a human, definitely because I'm at least accustomed to the human form. The good news, the flies worked as intended, and I managed to get the excess mass into the fungus.

I spent some time changing into different smaller forms, a cane, a gun, a mug, and a small rock. When I got back to human form, I never felt a worse migraine, it was like that of a very bad hangover multiplied by fifty, so I didn't even feel the pain of hitting the ground because my sense of balance was completely shattered, the dizziness and motion sickness hitting me hard.

"Anita, please give me the best analgesics you have."

I felt some pills hit my hand, and swallowed them. Sadly, the relief wasn't immediate, so I suffered a bit until the painkillers started taking effect.

"Thanks."

(I could try modifying your proprioception and your equilibrioception.)

"Please do."

I turned over to the best of my abilities and felt my sense of pain numb down after the fungus injected anesthesia into the local, and I was cut open, the modifications being too sizeable for the internal fungus to do. I lost my sense of time, so I had no idea how much the surgery took to be finished, I just know that by the end of it, I wasn't dizzy anymore, and I very clearly could hear my blood travel through my veins, the same with my heart beating, it felt very peculiar. I got up.

"You changed my hearing?"

(I was already changing part of your auditory system, so I decided to better it as well.)

"So I'll be hearing my own heart the whole time?"

(No, your brain will get habituated to the sounds your body makes once again, it'll just take some time.)

"Good. Time to test changing into bigger objects."

This time, I made the fungus release a lot more mass in the form of flies and joined them, controlling a bigger swarm than before, then I changed into a car. If I made some changes to the design, it would be fully functional without a driver, and possibly useful in combat; Changing back into a human, this time without such a horrible migraine, just a minor one, and with the backlash of changed perspective being greatly diminished, I decided to do some fine-tuning.

First things first, making the transceiver connected to my nervous system better, since the current one didn't allow for as delicate control as I expected. When I was fully in fly form, the system worked better since each of them worked as a signal repeater, but since the one inside my brain was individual, that feature didn't work correctly. I knew a way of fixing both this and the clothes problem at the same time, basically by making the cloth into living tissue and weaving nano-circuitry into it.

Since it would be made into living tissue, this meant I needed to make sure its regeneration worked correctly and didn't fuck up the circuit, which was easier said than done. This wasn't a problem with the flies since they are very small, which means their durability would never be that good, and regeneration is ultimately useless to them, I should make it so they self-destruct after a certain damage threshold. Back to the clothes, the circuitry of the shirt would connect to the circuitry of the coat, and both of them would act as signal repeaters, creating a better connection to the drones, and allowing for some more upgrades in the future, aside from being able to be turned into clothes themselves, fixing the 'naked' problem. I made the fungus consume my clothes and started working on the new ones. Anita received my plans, and we started working on it.

It took a lot of time, especially because of the difficulty of maintaining fully organized regeneration, but they were done, I made some gloves as well since it seemed I'd start taking things into my own hands soon. Donning my new clothes, I transformed one of my hands and gloves into flies, and the control was much better, not only that since the gloves were made into drones as well, both of the current features were working as intended, I made my whole coat into flies, and the repeating signal of the shirt was enough to maintain the control as it was, I finally made myself fully into flies, then reformed with my clothes, and picked up Rose.

Since this little project was done, I moved the glass out of the way and left the observation room, when I finally made the modifications to my guns, I'd make sure to make them able to transform into flies as well, I picked up Thorn and started going up the stairs, getting back to the lab. I left the lab, hearing the heartbeats and slight breathing of both Alice and Bea, they seemed to be sleeping on the couch. I've been pondering if I should stop utilizing Bea in order to get more used to blindness, but I find myself hesitating on that decision, I remember hearing that people blind from a young age can develop a sense of echolocation, and since my hearing quality has been exponentially increased, such a sense would be very useful.

Not only that, I find it unfair to Bea that I get to use one of her eyes and she doesn't get anything in exchange, it'll take some time, but it would make my blindness less of a problem, and diminish my dependence on the little fox. I sat down on the kitchen, and started tinkering with the railgun design, since I found this to be the next most important thing I needed to finish before I really started my company's aggressive expansion.

The good news is I didn't need to make it into a mobile design, which simplified the project a lot. Railguns are not made to be mobile, unlike what most fiction would lead you to think, and the ones who are mobile provide no advantage over simple gunpowder as a propellant other than being more flashy, since they don't have the size to accelerate enough, the fungus allowed me to simply create one of these anywhere I wanted as well, which made portability redundant, and unnecessarily troublesome.

I didn't have the pleasure to infiltrate the US military research on railguns before they were shutdown, but I managed to get all of their schematics and some other military secrets after pulling some strings, and some good ol' blackmailing. Anyways, this gave some pretty good idea of their limitations and their strengths, the limitations being rail durability, because of the repulsion between them and the sheer heat, and sustainable power supply, the strengths, or strength, being that the projectiles could theoretically reach the speed of light. Of course, in practical use, that was impossible, but I think Mach 10 is good enough.

The schematics made it a lot easier to design mine, but the problem was putting it to the test, since this thing was loud, big, and obviously very destructive, this put a wrench in my plans, since I couldn't work by simply running simulations. I put a stop to this project and started working on the nanogenerators, which I believe would grow to be a very important development. My work was cut short after I heard the couch move, and the steps of someone coming to the kitchen. I noticed that the tuning in and out was a lot more smoother than before, maybe because I was getting used to it.

"Oh, you've finally finished doing your little test?"

"Yes."

"And you won't tell me what you were doing?"

"You sound a lot like my past wife. Our marriage didn't last long, she told me I was insufferable, or maybe I killed her? It was such a long time ago."

"You were married?!"

"Yeah. More of a business decision than anything, though."

"Hmm."

"Anyways. If you want to know what I was working on, here it is."

I stuck my hand out and sent out a fly.

"Flies?"

"Correct. The symbol of rotting."

"Why did you need to be naked to do that?"

"So they could fly off, of course."

"So now you can send flies off from your body, how useful."

I transformed fully into flies.

"What?"

I reappeared behind her.

"See their usefulness now?"

"That's... Yeah. Wait a second, are you naked?"

"No, I modified my clothes to transform with me."

I transformed into flies again and got back to the table.

"So you can teleport now?"

"No, since it's not instantaneous. It's just moving fast with a slight twist."

"Alright, you've made all this. What now?"

"The fungus expands, and we wait until the next part of the plan. Or we can go travel right now, setting up the shipping company."

"I'd like to travel."

"Good, because I've been itching to actually do something that isn't staying in a lab."

"So what are we waiting for?"

"Well, I assume you have things you want to take with you, we won't be coming back in a while, after all."

"Right, right."

I heard her go back to the living room, and started packing up myself.

"Anita?"

(Yes.)

"Can the bodies work without input?"

(It should be possible, I'll work on it. What do you want them to do?)

"Harvest the crops and sell them to Fillipu at a cheaper price."

(Alright.)

"Thanks."

I started packing up as well, I made a case for Thorn, and a suitcase, where I put some packs of seeds and the bottles of vodka, encasing them into pelt so they wouldn't break. The only clothes I had were the ones I was using, so I put the case on my back and picked up the suitcase, then went to the living room. I could hear Alice on the study, probably taking some of the books, so I went there, and created two suitcases for her.

"Here, it's better than using a sack."

"Thanks."

I went back to the living room, hearing the slight breathing of Bea, who was still sleeping. I put her on my lap, and started petting her slowly, she adjusted her body to get more comfortable. After some minutes of moving around, Alice stood in front of me, and I assumed she was ready to leave. I put Bea around my neck, and stood up, hearing her yawn.

"Gray?"

"Yes. We're going traveling."

"Yay! Where to, the human place?"

"No. We're going much farther than that, to the center of the continent."

"What's a continent?"

"A big piece of land people gave names to, and arbitrarily divided into countries."

"I see, but I don't understand!"

"It's one of those confusing things humans like, little fox."

"Ooooh, that's why it doesn't make sense."

I smirked.

"I guess you could say that. Anita, are they ready?"

(Yes, want me to make them?)

"If you could."

(Done.)

I could sense the humanoid bodies made of fungus standing in the kitchen, waiting until the crops were ready to be harvested to start acting. I went outside and created a carriage, and after that - utilizing the knowledge of what Anita had just developed - I made caribou that would follow simple commands.

"Alright, let's go."

Driving means having to see, so I connected one of my eyes to Bea, the working of this feature still being a mystery, and we set off.

After three months, we reached Romania, passing through a lot of countries, some of which were not actually countries by now, with me stopping by and selling some packs of seeds and signing contracts. I chose Romania to settle in for now because of its localization and the amount of usable land, which would allow for quite a lot of plantations, and for arguably easy transportation. I'd entered the forest with a pack of the seeds, and after some time waling, I crushed it, getting a mass of dormant fungus which I connected to, awakening it, and made a hole into a tree, where I put it. The fungus will utilize the nutrients of the tree to grow, and then I'll make it into a minor core. I propped myself against one of the trees close by.

"Now, we wait."