“And so it goes, another common tale in which two wonderful, and somewhat deranged humans, namely I and the wonderful mistress behind me, will attempt to conquer the known world from the comfort of our beds!”

“Jack, dear O boy?” the woman called out from further back in the room.

“Yes, Raven?” Jack replied, peeling himself away from the highly fascinating corner.

“Who might you be speaking to?” Raven said, one thin eyebrow raised in question.

“The universe!” Jack said, smiling pleasantly.

“Oh, I see,” Raven said, her eyes unflinching. “Mehm, I understand! But Jack, you see, that camera? Yes, that camera? The camera you’re enthusiastically discoursing with? It is quite unfortunately out of order, and has been out of order for the last past couple of decades. I would advise you to try the one under the train tracks,” she said with a polite smile.

Jack’s fingers stroked his smooth chin. “Hm. The one where the bullet trains actively go through?” he asked.

Raven clapped her hands together. “Yup!” she answered, her face shaking up and down in joy.

“And I take it,” Jack began with a suspicious look, “That the train must be moving at very high velocity, nearly at the speed of sound in fact, for me to be able to see the camera which you speak of?”

“Yup!” Raven said, nearly jumping up and down in glee.

A long moment passed. Jack had taken Raven’s clever suggestion quite seriously, and was currently weighing the pros and the cons of it. His face tensed with complex thought and emotion.

Raven could not read any of it, yet she looked on expectedly, her smile maintaining it’s perfection throughout the entire four minutes it took for Jack to come to his decision.

“You know, that sounds like a damn shred idea. I, if you would do the honors of believing me, was just thinking about it. I’ll have to do it sometime soon!” he said in the most sincere voice Raven has ever heard.

For the slightest part of a second, Raven’s pristine face twisted itself into a contemptuous sneer, and in the next part of that second, had quickly reformed itself to its previous elegance. She continued, unhindered by Jack’s unexpected reply. “I see. I do pray I shall witness it first hand,” Raven said in good humor, and turned away to face the giant monitor screen. She began punching the keyboard strokes at an unfathomable speed. Page after page of flawless code began to fill the screen in front of her.

Jack shrugged and walked to the two tables positioned in the middle of the room. He studied the naked body laying on top of it. It was a pale, five foot eight, and tightly muscled male in his later 20s. Long black hair dropped to his shoulders.

The other table was for him to lay on, but strangely enough, it had four metal spike studs sticking out of it, positioned throughout the center area where the spine would be. The fourth spike stud, the closest to the neck, was as half as large as the other ones spanning at only half an inch.

Above the beds, as Jack looked on anxiously, were large circular helmets with countless valves and thick wires sticking in and out of it; ancient technology compared to what they had now. Jack shivered.

Raven stood ten feet away, in front of a fifteen-foot wide supercomputer-- another relic of the past. Long black hair stretched down her slender back, ending at legs which Jack blatantly ogled.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“How is the body?” Raven called from the back, the tinkering of buttons not pausing as she spoke.

Jack pressed both of his hands against his mouth, stifling a rumbustious cackle. He swallowed it painfully. “Oh right, yeah it’s pretty darn good. I can’t wait to have it.”

Raven went on, “It took me a great deal of effort to smuggle it out of the F section. Are you positive this will work out?”

“F section? This right here is S class meat, baby!” Jack said, slapping the man’s tight abs.

Raven glanced behind her, violet iris eying Jack suspiciously. “Uh-huh,” she said carefully, “You’ll get decent parameters out of him if the transfer succeeds, which I highly doubt, though I am not entirely sure what will happen to your Psych levels. At the very least, I can’t imagine you getting any worse,” Raven said, returning her attention to her work.

Jack returned his attention to the body. It was quite larger than Jack’s small 5-foot 4-inch figure. Even if it was for a short instance, Jack would no longer be considered ‘small.’ His body was somewhat feminine, with thicker legs and a slimmer upper body, and though he never admitted it, it always did bother him that his body was so meager. Agile, true, but agility is simply overrated when compared to the countless advantages a larger body offers. Having a slightly more flexible body was hardly something to be proud of when killing was the main hobby of every half-wit in a 100-mile radius.

Though he would miss his golden skin, a somewhat unique color in this facility, he certainly wouldn’t mind trading it for the few extra inches of height.

“Raven,” Jack said, turning his head towards her, his face full of horror and suspense “His penis, Raven, his penis. It’s larger than mine! Why is his penis larger than mine? This is unacceptable!”

Raven paused. The computer went still for the long moment it took her to process what Jack had said. She thought of glaring at Jack, thought to express her utmost displeasure in his tiresome behavior, but had found the action too taxing and far too ineffective, and would certainly only serve to further fuel the flame. So instead, Raven shook her head in disappointment, rubbed her eyes in exhaustion, and then resumed her work.

“Why do you look so let down?” Jack went on, “You seem surprised that the first thing I would inspect was his gentiles.” It was an odd thing to say, considering was she faced away from him.

“It hurts just the same, Jack, you know that much more than I do,” Raven said, somewhat dejectedly.

Jack looked back at the body.

He nodded, the humor leaving his face. He did. He did know much more than her.

“Can I kiss it? I’ve always wanted to kiss my own lips.”

“If you want,” Raven replied with indifference.

So he kissed its lips. Twice. “My future lips will be wonderful,” Jack said in approval, much to Raven’s growing annoyance.

A quiet moment passed. The supercomputer hummed in the background peacefully, distracted only by the rapid tempo of Raven’s fingers hitting the keystrokes.

“Can I suck its penis? I’ve always wanted to suck my own penis,” Jack said.

Raven paused momentarily, then resumed her work. “It is not your body yet, Jack. I find it quite distasteful that you are compelling me to inform you that if you placed your mouth upon that man’s penis, it would still be considered giving fellatio to a man other than yourself.”

“Can I suck its penis? I’ve always wanted to suck my future penis.”

Raven threw her hands up in the air “Behold, Gods! Oh, Great and Wicked Gods in the poisoned skies and the dead earth! Hear me in my suffering! In my wretched agony, I wail to you! Woe is me, Woe is me! Here stands behind me, in this very room, one of the greatest minds humanity has ever created, through methods of unfathomable horrors and sinful incantations, through countless sacrifices and invaluable resources, capable of performing feats imagined by the whole of man!” Raven sang, sorrow filling her voice, "And all he fucking wants is to suck his own future, fucking, genitals. The same genitals from which he pisses, his damn penis!” Raven finished with a flourish, stilling her body for increased drama effects.

She then shook her head and returned her fingers to the keyboard, her face tired and her shoulders slumped.

Jack laughed, and then laughed some more. He dropped to the floor, curling upon himself as his body shook itself ferociously. Tears flowed freely. His muscles began cramping. “Greatest minds! Greatest minds! Mad! I am simply mad! How absolutely wonderful you are, Raven. My minds' bleed for you!”

Raven turned towards Jack’s slithering figure, her face disturbed. “That was not mirthful enough to warrant such a reaction, Jack."

“You have no idea! You simply don’t have the mind to see it’s greatness!” Jack replied in between hysterical chuckles. He was pushing his luck, and he knew it, yet this was far too much of a farcical to not laugh his lungs out.

Raven looked unto him in raw contempt. She arched her nose in disgust, her voice cold and eyes like wicked daggers. “There comes a certain price in scheming with you, Jack. In a world where sanity is the currency, I wonder if the piece of mind I had relinquished was truly worth it.”

Jack began wheezing and gasping for breath. His fingers crawled at his neck as his cackling grew out of hand. Blood started dripping down both his nostrils.

“Murderer! Murderer! Stop it cruel lady, or you might suffocate me!”

A shiver ran down Raven’s spine. She stared at Jack’s foul body as it was wobbling, crawling, and creeping across the floor in a most perverse manner. His now near silent giggles unnerved her much more than his obnoxiously booming laughter.

She resolved herself to not be distracted any longer and returned her attention to the computer. The quicker finished inputting the code, the quicker she would be able to part ways with this lunatic.

Raven exhaled heavily. It was a shame, too, as he was kind of cute in a way. In an odd and niche way. In a very strange, bizarre way.  "If only he would shut his mouth and smile all day," Raven lamented, as Jack’s hysteria grew increasingly obnoxious in the dim background.