Hive > OG : 2 months, 15 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes

A bead of sweat dripped down my brow as I carefully crept into the quiet living room. The tray of hot tea in my hands shook precariously with each step, the overfilled cups sloshing merrily with each overcorrection. I finally reached the coffee table and, after a quick drying with my shirt, handed a cup to my mother. She thanked me, then flipped on the TV as I passed my dad his. I sat back, sighing comfortably as the TV channels began to flip in search of something to watch.

A few long minutes passed of this restless surfing and I soon found myself doing the same, only with my own mind. I flipped first through the twenty bodies stationed in a house I was renting just across the street. I watched one begin a patrol, taking my dog - a big, energetic attack puppy - on yet another walk.

I smiled and relaxed into the couch, satisfied to spend the evening body surfing, as it were.

Hive > Quartermaster : 2 months, 15 days, 10 hours, 32 minutes

The moment I entered my body I was awash with the anxieties of actual leadership. Almost a thousand and a half clones quietly listened to this body at all times of the day. I got up from my chair and paced the dining-hall-turned-headquarters in the cabin back at base. Filing cabinets lined the walls with various notes. The various whiteboards nailed above them were permanently smudged with old ideas.

At the center of the center of the chaos, seated at the long wooden table, four bodies sat, asleep. Each represented one of the four Division Heads under me, empty until they needed to communicate with me in person - a formality with the mental taps but it gave an air of legitimacy to the war room.

I took my seat once more and closed my eyes, flipping the channel to the first of my Division Heads, Head of House Division.

Hive > Quartermaster > House Division : 2 months, 15 days, 10 hours, 33 minutes

I got up from the computer desk and stretched out the ache of stillness. It was early enough in the morning that the various Discord servers I moderated, each hosted by various members of the house for their various fanbases.

I reached a hand out from behind the server tower blocking half of the dark closet and swapped bodies to the otherside. I stepped over a pair of modems and a mess of ethernet cables stretching like veins throughout the halls.

The house had been long abandoned on the outskirts of the city, but with a few quick nights' work it had become shabby, but livable. After a few months of video tutorials and hardware store trips, the inside was almost nice. Of course, looks didn’t matter, as the house only existed to be the one stop shop for internet activities for the hive.

The first room over was once a bedroom, but now hosted a group of four, each at a different desk. One clone hovered over a couple phones lined up on the desk while stock information flew across a screen on the wall. Another clone clicked rapidly between various windows containing banking websites. From there, I monitored the various accounts I had running across the country. Across the room, I worked at another cheap desktop to log and track the various identities I gave out across the hive, financial or otherwise. The rest of the room was taken up by a set of battered filing cabinets filled with sorted hordes of cash. As I watched, I buzzed about the cabinets, withdrawing a variety of bills. I snapped a rubber band around them, split off a runner pair and took off with the cash to a worker a state over.

I leaned into the next bedroom down the hall to watch the chaos there. At a table, two scribes sat with a pad of paper each, though they powered through them with incredible speed, as though trying to race the other to fill the pad. The judge to their competition leaned against a wall on the floor with a laptop, documenting the events of everything I experienced. The triumvirate formed a sort of newsroom meets historian meets personal assistant niche that the entire hive had come to rely on.

I walked past the stairs leading into the attic and flitted into the mind of the artists upstairs.

Hive > Quartermaster > House Division > Culture Anchor : 2 months, 15 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes

I set down my phone, the photo displayed on it still mid-edit. I had splurged for a good camera phone, compared to the bulk budget smartphones I used elsewhere in the house. The photo was of a finished piece by one of the nine artists studiously practicing in the sunny attic before me. Heavy metal pencil sketches, marker pop art as before, but also constellation art using oils, watercolour landscapes, a pair of illustrators and a dedicated colourist and typesetter - it was fair to say that I was diversifying.

I passed a curtain and was plunged into darkness and the dull glow of artificial light. The room was stifling as several school surplus computers struggled to keep up with the art programs and occasional live streaming software. Two clones, one of the two dedicated to fulfilling digital commissions of varying styles, and one of the three webcomic artists, were murmuring into a microphone on either end of the space.

I ducked back into the much cooler traditional art side and picked up the phone, flipping back to Division Head before I set to removing the meta-data from the photo.

Hive > Quartermaster > House Division : 2 months, 15 days, 10 hours, 41 minutes

Downstairs, the dining room contained a plethora of additional surplus monitors, the towers forming the complex maze that was the research team. Almost twenty clones worked to look up things for various projects, either long term deepdives or quick searches. There was one studying therapy and psychology, another on medicine and the human body. Among those taking requests from the hive were those researching maps and defense tactics and a whole slew trying to learn japanese, spanish, and ASL.

The living room, in contrast, was the lazy hedonist's paradise. Managed by Entertainment Anchor, several clones sat in a circle holding hands - these being the station clones that scoured my bodies’ various memories for interesting things to feature. Each was dedicated to a different channel, including nature hikes or art or urban exploration. Whenever I was bored, any of me could tune into something a little more interesting.

Around them lay the readers, of both book and manga variety. Volumes stood in neat stacks around them, piles due to be returned to the library beside piles due to be read. Ringing the room, headphones plugged and eyes focused, a group on laptops binged through films, anime, television, and Youtube.

I glanced over to the family room, as of yet empty. My eyes narrowed as I thought about what would eventually go in there. They narrowed further as I considered the same for the basement as I passed it. All in all, it was a cushy life in the house, I decided, before slipping back behind the server tower.

Hive > Quartermaster > Wilderness Division : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 01 minutes

I got up from the table at the cabin and walked over to the next room. The crack of light that poured in from the door was the only source in this room where four bodies focused on their tasks. They each managed a variety of clones in different places -

I found my thoughts interrupted as Expedition Anchor sat up and winked at me. He was not quite so busy, as his four pairs of runners needed little managing on their long-haul trips. Even the pair traveling to Tokyo from Seattle by way of swimming were relatively safe now that they were far from shore. I gestured for him to concentrate and both of me smiled.

Suddenly, Experiential Anchor nearly flinched herself out of the bed. This was no doubt in response to one of the clones under her dying in some new and horribly creative way. Along with some new clones enjoying theme parks and museums that Experiential Anchor directed, there were several clones that had taken advantage of the splinter hive effect. With this, I worked to experience drugs and physical trauma first hand, then relay that to Experiential Anchor in words, but not memories, to be spread to the rest of the hive.

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A mix of the other two before them, Exploration Anchor managed sets and pairs spread across the country - as well as a few internationally - to simply wander in and out of stores and find all of the niche things to enjoy in each of the ten cities I had so far infested.

The last, exactly unlike all of the rest, managed a network of runners and a couple drivers who worked to get any physical items, like cash or supplies, where it needed to go. Boring, repetitive work, but it kept resources flowing over long distances.

Hive > Quartermaster > Home Division : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes

I got up as I was flipped to, eager to show off the base to myself since last I’d given it attention. I walked past Wilderness Division Head as he returned to the table, not even bothering to tune into Work Division Head. Work Division was almost identical to Exploration Anchor’s domain, but dedicated to earning money in those same ten cities.

I walked past the Therapy Closet quickly. The splinter hive held inside were dedicated to conversing with anyone rank Anchor or higher, their only other point of contact outside their “clients” and entertainment channels being the researcher at the House.

Similarly, I bypassed the door to a basement I had dug out. The splinter hive and their activities inside were largely secret to me. Besides Operations Anchor and the eight project leaders, I had no idea how many clones actually filled the splinter hive and wouldn’t unless absolutely necessary. The projects researched in this basement ranged from studying the Hunter to planning ways to cover my tracks in case of public awareness of me. Occasionally, Ops Anchor would push random revelations to the hive that, though rarely relevant, would often leave me laying in bed at night wide awake to consider what it meant.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor that overlooked the dining room and opened taps with the occupants as I passed them. Airport anchor was focused on hitching free rides on planes to random destinations from various airports.

Town Anchor was focused on the small rural town I had saved. I had left an extensive group to work there, though now I couldn’t leave the growing cult presence there unchecked. I would have to nip that before it got out of hand.

Hive > Quartermaster > House Division > Notes Anchor > Scribe A : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 18 minutes

I noted that down.

Hive > Quartermaster > Home Division : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 18 minutes

The next door contained Home Anchor, who managed the farm workers and security that worked around the home base. The crop work had been… if done poorly, as my brown thumb hadn’t changed much since cloning. However, I had always done well with animals and the chickens and pair of pigs were doing fairly well. I considered if it was worth entering 4H, then shook off the thought as I came to the door at the end of the hall.

Hive > Quartermaster > House Division > Notes Anchor > Scribe A : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes

I noted that down.

Hive > Quartermaster > Home Division : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes

The door at the end of the hall led to the bedroom I had once laid in to direct the fire rescue efforts, what felt like years ago, despite only being months. Now, though, it was full of bunks where copies of me lay, all various leaders under the watch of Leadership Anchor. Diplomatic leader lay next to the cadre of judges who remained cloistered like the therapists, but arbitrated disagreements amongst myself. There was a judge for each level in my hierarchy, with five for drones. A special judge, symbolically named “California Worker 3 of 5” represented the eye witness drones for things that happen in the field. So far they’d remained dormant, as I found it hard to truly disagree with myself so far.

Budget leader planned out future purchases from a small desk wedged against a window, working away on a laptop with a few online retailer websites open. Leadership Anchor lay in the biggest bed, my mind there managing ten tactical planners, as well as a few drones that ran combat simulations in the yard outside the cabin.

Not to mention, of course, the standing army of 500 clones spread across the country, each ready to become a thousand bodies at a moment's notice.

Hive > Quartermaster > Home Division > Laboratory Anchor : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 23 minutes

I moved through the hive, across the yard, and into the warehouse I had constructed on the outskirts of the clearing. Laboratory Anchor stood at the top of a catwalk that ran the circumference of the building.

Below, I could see a variety of my experiments underway.

Immediately apparent was the nearly full orchestra practicing some symphonic piece of video game music. Almost 60 members in all, though some were doing practice unrelated to the orchestra. It was one of the first things I indulged in, scouring discount websites for cheap instruments to learn. There was no use to it, no plan to monetize it... just something I thought was neat.

A heavy curtain separated the orchestra from the rest of the room, which itself was divided in two by a concrete wall. On one side, clones experimented with the limits of my clothing capabilities, trying to replicate designs and fashion one of my research clones would look up. While organic materials like leather and wool were incredibly easy to make and shape with detail, the more synthetic the material, the harder time I had making it look real.

Beside them were the body testers, who tried the same tests but with the body rather than the clothes. A few worked through just generating new usable faces, but others were replicating specific faces, others computer generated looks, one pushing the extremes my body could create, and one focused on forcing out extreme mutations. So far, I’d unlocked albinism, as it seemed like I could replicate any genetic variance I’ve achieved at least once - positive, negative, or otherwise.

Lastly, a group of twenty clones sat in a circle, each with a pair of coloured paddles in their hands. The leader, who I had called “Plumber Leader”, experimented with the extremes of the mental taps. Plumber Leader walked around, gesturing to various bodies who put up a coloured paddle in response, though no words were verbally exchanged. Thus far, little new information had been found.

It was generally quiet over here, though the other side of the wall was a different story.

The biggest area of the warehouse was dedicated to combat and physical limits. About a dozen of me practiced martial arts in pairs - though two soloists were learning yoga and another was in the midst of learning to clean a gun in opposite corners of the space.

A group in the middle were trying to develop bioweapons, in a sense. Each tried to generate blades or blunt protrusions in our body, something to give a biological advantage in a hand-to-hand fight. So far I’d given myself very thin arms or very thick arms at best, but it was a work in progress.

Over it all, a pair of clones were jumping from one end of the catwalk to the other. As each jumped, they rapidly generated, gooped, and absorbed bodies behind them, pushing off in a sort of kicking/walking maneuver. While it certainly got them all the way across, much further than a normal jump, it was messy and a far cry from actual flight so much as gross double-jumping.

Hive > Quartermaster : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 28 minutes

I sat up suddenly, blinking as the clone I had been focusing on suddenly gooped. In the past month, with little rhyme or reason, some of my clones would simply die at random. I made sure to split off a new Laboratory Anchor, then noted down the time and details of the occurrence on a nearby whiteboard.

I suspected this to be some brand of instability in the clones, but so far, no pattern had emerged.

Hive > OG : 2 months, 15 days, 11 hours, 30 minutes

I returned my attention to my body, blinking slowly as I tuned back into some home improvement show my parents had settled on. It felt a little odd, spending my days doing nothing but lounging while others of me worked, lived, and died somewhere out in the world. Maybe it was because of this, because of the fact that the more I took in, the less I felt connected to humanity, that grounding myself among people still powerful enough to tell me what to do was necessary.