//Writing Soundtrack: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3x6jgeF1LzdQQUvZnLU564?si=a2e84ccd307d474e
Waking up was a strange experience. Mainly because I woke up twice, and at the same time. What was even stranger was that, while I was waking up twice, it was also not me the second time. It sounded stupid to say, but it was the closest I could get to vocalise the feeling I got.
The first thing that stood out to me was that I could still retain both perspectives, if I focused on it. I was also aware of the thoughts of the other me, and from the context I got from those thoughts he was aware of mine. In a way that was good, I could keep myself in check, but it also didn’t bottleneck me by having to control two bodies with the same mind.
My memories remained shared between us, all the way to our split, but even then it was following the same mental timeline, just with two perspectives. It was trivially easy to figure out what my other me did at any given time, even if I was not actively paying attention to it.
Strangely, that seemed to reassure the other me greatly, while personally I wasn’t feeling too bothered by the entire situation.
The reason for that became obvious a moment later, when I paid attention to which of the perspectives belonged to whom. I was now the copy, so to say, the newborn.
Having an external perspective made inspecting myself a lot easier.
In general, my new body was very similar to other normal [Hexclaw Hatchlings], although there were some major differences.
First was the lack of claw arms, which was very obvious. I had no clue if that would be good or bad, but considering how easily I gained and lost limbs when selecting different [Evolution Paths] I wasn’t too bothered by it.
Secondly was the difference in body structure and armour. While in general I looked very similar to other Hatchlings, this body seemed to have more femininity to it, by which I meant the bone structure and posture. The proportions remained roughly the same, although a bit flatter around the bust, but this new body was a lot leaner and more in line with a traditionally human female physique, while still retaining quite a bit of musculature. Any human from the twenty first century would have easily recognised me as based off of human physique, even if they would be freaked out by the changes.
The other thing that was different was my chitin armour, although I wasn’t even sure if it was still chitin. I had a lot less, offering a lot more agility. Only my breasts, my crotch, my tail, and my lower legs were armoured. It gave me the appearance of wearing some kind of boots with sports clothing.
The armour itself was also different, instead of the normally pale chitin that other Hatchlings had, mine was a lot harder and silvery, almost metallic. I wasn’t quite sure what it was made of, but it was quite robust.
The last major thing was that I had lost the poison stinger on my tail, instead I possessed a biocybernetic data port that I could change at will to fit with any interface port.
Well, there was one last thing that was different, but I considered that one a downgrade, instead of an upgrade. My face was no longer covered in chitin, instead it was mainly the same pale white, almost translucent skin that the rest of my body had. At first you would think that was awesome, since it looked a lot more human, the issue was that I still retained my three pairs of eyes and the utterly ridiculous wide mouth filled with sharp teeth. The end result was that I strangely looked even less human and a lot more horrifying.
Body check complete I looked over at other me, who seemed a bit torn at my presence.
“Hey, me!”, I said with a friendly smile and a wave. Well, it was supposed to be a friendly smile, the end result was a lot more horrifying than I had intended and both of us flinched.
“Oh… uh… sorry”, I said meekly, shivering at the memory of that sight.
“Hey… me… You are a lot different from what I expected. Guess I should have paid more attention when designing you, sorry.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Bit strange, sure, but surprisingly I am actually not that bothered by it. Anyways, you wanna go ahead and do some R&R as planned while I try to get a crack at this whole database thing? If possible I want Orion to help me get my feet wet before I damage something. I got our knowledge and my instincts, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to have an expert on the matter helping.”
“You got a connection to him? He said he can’t contact you”, my other me asked, sitting down and obviously trying to recoup from the experience of laying my egg. That thought brought me back to reality, and I looked at the remains of the egg next to me, making my stomach growl as I observed the nutritional fluid in it.
My other me’s alarmed and disgusted thoughts brought me back to reality, and I quickly mentally replayed his last comment.
“Uh… No? I don’t think so, but I can quickly fab up some implant if I find the mats. It’s rather basic and doesn’t need much.”
“Good… I’ll, uh… I’ll be relaxing a bit and maybe help Gamma out. Maybe you can lay some eggs later, just for a change of pace.”
“Me?! You are the Prime here!”, I retorted, grasping my chest in mock shock.
“I mean we both are, aren’t we?”, he asked, looking a bit confused.
“In a way, sure, but I actually feel like I need to obey you, which makes you the Prime. Honestly, that’s a really disturbing feeling. Please don’t abuse it, yeah?”
“No worries… That sounds horrible… Maybe check your status?”
That was actually not a half bad idea, and within moments I had my status page open.
NULL
Tier: 1
Species: Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence
Evolution Path: [Cybernetically Enhanced Hexclaw Hatchling] [99+ options available]
Cybernetic Enhancements: [ERROR], [Digital Interface Port], [Cybernetic Eyes], [Non-Conductive Alloy Armor]
Cybernetically Enhanced Hexclaw Hatchling
A newborn Hexclaw Hatchling that has been altered and enhanced by Cybernetic implants and technology. Unlocks Cybernetic Evolution Path’s.
NULL diagnosis:
Level: 1
Physical Adaptation: 79.2%
Mental Adaptation: 100.0%
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Cybernetic Adaptation: 100.0%
Skills:
[Universal Language Adaptation]: Enables you to understand any spoken and written language, although speaking them may take time to adapt to, depending on your vocal organs.
[Cybernetic Body]: A combination of old and new, you are the first step to a proper Cyborg. As a result you are a being of both the biological and digital world, with all that entails.
[Codeling]: Born with knowledge of the digital, you are a being of code. You are capable of quickly understanding, creating, and destroying digital code.
[Wisdom of Life and Death]: The basis of life is science, the basis of science is logic. Amidst the life you find yourself in, logic seems a fleeting thing. Where logic fails, imagination must shine. You hold remnants of lifes you do not understand, yet they might just turn out to be your salvation.
[Limited Self-Enhancement]: With understanding comes wisdom, with wisdom knowledge. You have gathered enough knowledge about the materials around you to enhance your own body. Enables creation of Limited Cybernetic Enhancements in your own body.
As I had expected, I didn’t have [Chosen Prime]. My other Skills were quite interesting though, especially [Codeling].
“That is weird…”, other me said, but I didn’t share his sentiment.
“Think about it, every hive has one Prime. And in our case, that is you. Yes, I am part of you, but I am also my own person. So it would be kinda weird for me to also be the Prime, no?”
He thought about it for a moment, but nodded eventually, “I mean, it is reassuring. No need to worry some other future hatchling will start to overtake me. Anyways, let’s get to work. I’m really curious to see what you can dig out of the Interface.”
With a laugh I waved, mentally organising the materials I needed to build the implant to contact Orion. “Patience, oh ancient one. I need some practice before I can tackle a project like that. Let me grab the mats I need for the implant and then I’ll get to it.”
Although I said that, I was already planning to get a feel for things while I waited for my [Limited Self-Enhancement] to get the implants ready.
Finding a fitting port wasn’t too hard, I did remember the layout from when other me helped Orion repair it all, and changing my data port to something fitting also wasn’t too hard. What awaited me when I plugged in was a console in my vision that I would have to compare to the very old DOS consoles from a certain PC OS. It was very simplistic, but also informative, and strangely I could edit the overlay however I wanted to get the maximum amount of usable information out of it. I could even have the entire console running in the back of mind, leaving my vision open for other tasks, although I had yet to achieve the mental acuity to actually use this for multitasking.
While I was able to type out all that I needed mentally, I missed a good old Desktop and Keyboard somewhat. Maybe I would have Orion build me one, just for the heck of it.
Anyways, the databases the fabricator had access to, it was the machine I was currently connected with, were, as was logical, exclusively crafting blueprints. I didn’t know the OS that the entire thing ran on, but it seemed rather intuitive. It didn’t take long for me to understand how most of the basics worked, although it would take me some time to get the grasp of the details.
Strangely, I suddenly received a mental ping from Orion. My implant wasn’t done yet, but as we were both connected to the network he was able to send me some texts.
ORION-501: Glad to meet you, I am Orion-501, administration and fabrication intelligence. You said that you would like my help with your task?
NULL: Hey, Orion. Yeah, I’m a copy of the Prime, somewhat. I’m connected to him, although the details are bit hard to explain. In any case, I have a lot of Skills that are relevant for data manipulation and I thought maybe you could help me get a good grasp on them. Working on an implant that would enable a better and more permanent connection between us, will ping you the deets once it’s done.
ORION-501: I see. It is a bit… hard to understand what exactly you mean, but I will do my best to be of help.
NULL: Just imagine us being in a network, although biological instead of electronic. Anyways, remember that we have this interface? Basically I wanna figure out what it does. But as you have said, that thing is incredibly complex, so I wanted to get my feet wet and get a better feel with digital things. It comes quite natural to me, but I doubt it’s as natural as to any AI, huh? :D
ORION-501: I would assume not. I can help with that task. Let us start with the basics.
And so we began. For the next few hours Orion coached me on the most basic functions of an AI, their tasks and how they accomplish them, the way they sort information and what not. While I personally wasn’t an AI, the insights were incredible. It made looking through vast sifts of data quite easy, although in most cases quite boring as the speed at which things were sorted was still based off of the system it ran on. And while the computers we worked with were orders of magnitude faster than what I was familiar with, if you worked at thought speed it felt like a slog.
I vaguely noticed that the other me was doing something else, although I didn’t pay too much attention to it. This was much more interesting.
By the time we were done I felt a lot more confident, although tackling the Interface would take a lot more, so I started the monumentous task at organising everything in the databases. For that I had Orion clone them so that I could work on my own without interfering with his work. The reason I had him do it was simply because he wasn’t doing much else at the moment and I wanted to take a deep dive in my own digital tools.
While it would be wrong to say I could live in the datastream, it felt very natural to mentally traverse the digital infrastructure, almost as if I was watching someone else walk through a city. I was sure that with future Evolution Paths I would be able to fully immerse myself in it, which I looked forward to very much.
The best thing was that I could still use my body for something else, although for the moment I still had to be physically connected to the system. I was hoping that in the future that would no longer be necessary. For now that meant, however, that I could still help load the fabricator while I was pursuing all the databases at my disposal.
It turned out that the other me had started another construction run while I was busy, and by the time I finally returned to reality we had a whole nother set of things ready for use. This time around he had focused mainly on utility items and things to both decorate as well as streamline our work routine. Part of the construction run had been the beginnings of a robotic arm to help load the fabricator automatically. It also included basic beds, two personal computers, which seemed like he had taken to my idea, as well as a myriad of tools and parts to repair other things in the room. The only issue was that we were already running low on some materials, so we would soon have to scour the surrounding areas for more.
We were half way done putting together the robotic arm when Alpha returned once more, another big haul of biomass behind her.
Other me nodded at her, then looked at me, “Okay. We have lots of things prepared. For now I think it’s best if we supplement our numbers. The earlier they are born, the earlier they can evolve. I want to make sure we can deal with whatever we might face, especially the nest of the beasts Alpha had mentioned.”
My expression fell involuntarily. I didn’t look forward to birthing my first egg, but at the same time he was right. So we both sat down on some cheap looking but surprisingly comfortable chairs and started to eat.
“What would you go for then?”, I asked the other me, “I am not sure what hatchlings to get. We could probably get one or two more of me, but I doubt that just numbers will solve our issues in that regard.”
Other me was silent for a moment, before he spoke, “Don’t take this personally, but I don’t think I want to deal with another you yet. This has been… quite the shock. For the moment I was thinking bog standard Hatchlings if we can, or unaltered Cybernetic ones so that the Hive-Mind can take over. In general I think the thing we need most are numbers, especially fighters. Maybe another hunter or two, although I am concerned with overhunting. We might not need to eat, but if our supply of biomass slows down any injuries we sustain will be crippling.”
I would lie if I’d said it didn’t hurt to hear that, but I did understand him. Nodding, I continued to eat, “So I guess make them combat ready? Have you considered non-humanoid bodies if we can swing it? Something like combat drones in the shape of dogs or something. Humans aren’t exactly the most predatory build out there.”
“I was thinking the same. If possible I would like to get something akin to a cat or something for hunting, plus a few more heavily armoured drones. I would guess though, that it will take a couple of evolutions for that to work.”
We discussed details for a while longer until it was time to start. While we could make quadrupedal Hatchlings they looked disturbing enough for us to decide not to go with that idea.
As we had thought we were unable to go back to normal Hatchlings, but from context it seemed that the cybernetic Hatchlings were the same base, just with additional Evolution Paths in the future, unless we changed them. So we each decided to go with the most basic model, but we agreed to change the face back to the chitin covered one, just to make it look less horrifying.
As we started, however, our worst fear turned out to be true. Because of our mental link the birthing process was orders of magnitude worse, both in how pleasant and painful it suddenly was. After the first egg was done I wanted nothing more than to pass out and hide away in shame, but we had firmly decided to get this over and done with, and just two more drones were not enough.
So started the worst day of my life to date.