“Oof.”

Gordon let out a small huff of exertion as he unlaced the full-face goggle contraption he was using to interface with the Life Model prototype that was stationed in the bait house, pulling off tiny tendrils of flesh wrapped eagerly around his temples, and setting the device down in front of him. To an outsider, this device looked more to be a grotesque lump of overgrown tissue than actual goggles, the invention roughly sculpted to resemble that of a motorcycle helmet.

That is, if it were a motorcycle helmet that had lens made out of meat – and substituted a metal frame for globs of fat and sinew.

Even as the meaty accessory lay still on the table, its bright red flesh pulsed and undulated as if there was a creature trapped within, attempting to squirm its way out of the oblong prison of hideous muscle.

In the beginning, the newly evolved Gordon hadn’t yet accustomed himself to the mechanical approaches that would be more readily accepted in this reality, so he defaulted to what he knew best – the study of advanced bioengineering and its many, many marvels.

With Bio Control, a skill that gave him intricate control over the human body and its different… by-products, he had cultivated a sample of skin cells extracted from his body into a fully functional telepathic circuit stored within flesh receptors.

This would be key to controlling the Life Models he had envisioned.

Prototype-1, the model that had greeted Zachary earlier, was the only model to still require the use of this flesh headdress - and was a complete and utter failure by those lofty standards he had dreamed up. Unlike the perfected versions which laid dormant in glass tubes all around the world, this initial proof-of-concept had greatly diminished features; features that were crucial to Gordon’s needs.

Yes, this prototype tended to lock up without a user, but that wasn’t too big a flaw, since the clone could generally talk and speak according to the user’s intentions just as well as the other models. Plus, it didn’t require the coddling the new versions did, being capable of open-air storage without shrivelling up like a plum, so in some ways it could be said to be a little more useful than its successors. And it had integrated about sixty percent of Gordon’s intended characteristics.

But the all-important versatility just wasn’t there.

What good was a clone host that needed its user to give it their undivided attention for the entire period of usage?

So he mainly used it to greet houseguests and for social gatherings; that, and as the jaws of the trap that was his outward facing place of residence.

Nowadays, Life Models around the world still required paying customers to strip down to their birthday suits, step into control pods and strap on a whole array of electrodes to their bare bodies, so as to quote, “ensure uninterrupted signal relay between user and Life Model”.

A whole crock of hogwash.

Gordon had figured out unintrusive multi-body control ages ago. Control that didn’t require wrapping your head in a meatball like for Prototype-1, or consulting some manual to affix a litany of sensors to your body.

But that kind of control wasn’t for the sheep. That was for him; for when he finally decided to pull back the curtains and reveal his plan to the entire world.

Gordon lovingly placed a hand on the top of the helmet, wistfully staring at the creation. This was the very first thing he had made in this world; his first step in the grand scheme he had concocted. Well, that wasn’t quite true – he had to draw up schematics and work through failed trials before he came to this product.

His fifty-first step, then.

“Alright, enough reminiscing,” Gordon declared. “Best to get things started. Pity, though. If this new element hadn’t come charging in demanding his Mask back, I’d have more time to refine the Life Model concept. Walking bio-factories with the ability to create more of themselves on the go, with nothing but harvested organic tissue; now that would have been a work of art. All I needed was just a little bit more time to figure out Skill duplication and transference. Three months, tops.”

He sighed.

“Oh well; what’s already here suits my needs just fine. Actually; I wonder if he found what I left for him? Would save me some time if he did, him delivering himself to me on a silver platter. Eh, it’ll work out in the end; after everything kicks off, I’ll have all the time in the world to go looking for him.”

Gordon got up, strolling over to the dusty panel of switches on the far end of the room, humming a well-known children’s song as he did so.

“…which one gets there first, the bird – or the bee?”

Click went the first set of switches. This was to power on the hidden antenna buried within the construction blueprints for each individual Better Life facility situated around the world. They would then daisy chain relevant neural commands to every pod currently in the possession of unsuspecting customers within the radius of Better Life Inc compounds.

Which if Gordon had calculated correctly – and he always did – would be every known inch of populated landmass.

“…which one gets there first, the fly – or the flea?”

The next set were flicked into position. The effects of this would be more noticeable than the last set; they triggered every dormant Life Model to a state of operation. Currently active users would be booted from their session, returning to their own bodies confused; but safe.

For the moment.

“…the bird soars up high; so high in the sky.”

Chubby fingers tapped in the necessary passcodes and verification phrases into the keypad by the side. There were a total of eighty five randomized codes, the sequence of which varied by the day of the week. Ordinary people would have to bring pages on pages of notes just to be able to figure out what to enter here.

Gordon, on the other hand, had made certain… adaptations to his mind to keep all the information in his head.

ACCESS GRANTED

“… the bee hovers low; looking up as it cries.”

This were the last few steps; the creation of the global telepathic network, across thousands and thousands of miles, and focused entirely on the heart of the web; the lair Gordon was currently in. He twisted the three knobs as far right as they would go, a mild buzz beginning in the background as the neural receivers embedded in the masonry of the building warmed up. A small pill was spat out from a dispenser, a tiny LED blinking within the capsule.

The control node for the entire network.

Gordon plucked the pill from the slot and without hesitation, gulped it down. At once, he was assaulted by a barrage of new viewpoints that were added to his own, winking into existence in the corners of his eyes. The feeling of incompatibility soon passed, as Gordon’s mental adaptations took over, beginning to assume control over all 29,857 Life Models in use around the world, relaying orders which would be carried out as soon as the user wished it to be so.

Gordon tested it out, focusing on the viewpoint of a Life Model stationed in East Pyrate. He willed it to place a palm on the surface of the pod cover in front of it, then slowly scrape its fingers along the glass, steadily increasing the pressure until…

The glass sheet shattered in front of the Life Model, particles of shimmering dust sent into the air around the holding pod.

And Gordon smiled.

The song he had been humming as he brought the system to life; that was a ditty composed by Jorge Lomnud, some obscure Koppenian artist. At the orphanage, his caretaker, a kindly old Koppenian woman who treated the children under her watch with care and compassion, used to sing it to them so many times that he now knew it by heart.

The song went on for another twenty or so verses, listing out each organism’s pros and cons, how they would overcome certain challenges as they raced each other to some indeterminate location, vying to be the first one there.

The song then proceeded to describe how all four animals perished painfully, each succumbing to some obstacle that was fatal to one; but not to the others.

The old songs were always so very gruesome.

The moral of the song, as the creator intended, was one of unity; to show that people had to work together, that regardless of one’s strengths or advantages, no one person could get to the place they aspired to alone.

Gordon now saw it as a microcosm of society. The birds represented the elite, whereas the bees were the diligent workers which kept it all running. The flies were the composer’s way of portraying the less useful ones, the undesirables which provided less value to the world, but could be generally ignored and dismissed with the wave of one’s hand.

But the fleas?

Well, the fleas were parasites that clung to the skin of another’s body and greedily extracted blood for their own sustenance without any intention to repay their host.

Like Gordon used to be.

Past Gordon saw the song in a vastly different light than he did now. His only takeaway, one shaped by years of monotonous grunt work, was that luck alone was the sole factor which determined one’s lot in life.

The birds had everything they wanted, in fact, they lorded it over the rest and made sure to let you know it. The bees, too; they were just insects like the rest. What made them so arrogant? Was it just because they were gifted with a different, less disgusting appearance?

The flies and the fleas were only trying to survive; why in the world did they deserve such humiliation from the birds and the bees? All that separated the four was the place they were born, the indulgences and chances they were afforded. Something that was governed solely by luck; not by hard work or intelligence.

They were lucky to get to where they did.

Gordon was unlucky to be where he was.

New Gordon had a completely different perspective of the song compared to his past self.

There was no point in comparing the differences between the four animals. No point discussing their size, their characteristics, their abilities, their weaknesses, their lifespan, their hopes, or dreams.

After all, bird, bee, fly or flea…

In the end, they all suffered the same way, didn’t they?

~

Something was wrong.

Zachary had now returned to Better Life Inc after an uneventful walk back from Gordon’s honeytrap. The first thing he noticed was that the glass doors at the front entrance, once shut tight, and only accessible via the usage of the tablet in his possession, were all flung wide open.

An invitation? Zachary thought, frowning. So it was a trap, then?

This deduction was proven incorrect almost immediately.

Because from within the darkness of the building, out marched twenty or so grey-skinned figures, oxygenated gel dripping off their bodies as the clone hosts lifted and brought down their legs in sync, ambulating closer towards their goal; the houses surrounding the Better Life building.

As soon as the line reached a new house, a Life Model would split off from the herd, robotically stepping towards the front door of the residence. After forming a bladed hand, it would thrust towards the wood or metal, splintering the obstacle with great force before heading deeper into the darkness.

A muffled scream would follow soon after – a scream that would be abruptly cut off moments after it was issued.

The so-called master plan he was crowing about, I guess.

Zachary let them pass, pressing himself as flat as he could against a wall outside of the Life Models sight lines.

It wasn’t like Zachary was afraid of them – who would be afraid of drones capable of growing additional appendages that could, on top of that, morph from harmless hands and fingers into lethal swords at any point in time?

Not Zachary, that’s for sure.

He was just worried about the time it would take to disable them, that’s all. It wasn’t as if there was a real point to engaging them; his only goal was Gordon Higgins, who was most definitely still within the building in front of him. While he was wasting time decommissioning the clones, Gordon might catch on and take the chance to escape!

Just to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t be discovered, though, Zachary made sure to stifle his breathing and cover his mouth with both hands.

Once certain the Models had gone out of earshot, Zachary slipped into the complex via one of the open glass doors, his shoes squelching against the puddles of gel accumulated on the ground.

This way, Zachary consulted the circular device as he followed the instructions on its display. Once he had entered the building, the text which indicated which location to go to had shifted to that of a glowing green arrow, one which periodically spun about to point towards the direction he needed to head in.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Why couldn’t the first Mask I met be Unitas? Zachary grumbled, walking down a dark hallway. There wouldn’t even be any fight if it were him; he’d obediently let himself be re-assimilated into my body. And he’d be a huge boost to my power, too; I doubt any of my Masks would be able to overpower him without me at the helm. Sure, the bastard might hog the body for a little longer than I want him to – a few decades longer, actually. But he’s like an auto-win button!

He stopped before an unassuming wall panel. Zachary looked down at the device in his hands. The arrow indeed pointed in this direction.

Towards a wall in the middle of a random hallway.

For a moment there, Zachary thought the device had broken down in the middle of its operation, turning it over in his hands to examine the contraption for signs of visible damage and lightly slapping it on its back in a bid to jolt whatever component had been misaligned back into place.

But with a whirr and a click, the wall panel shifted away, opening up to an elevator.

Now Zachary was certain it was a trap.

Well, maybe it was just how this Gordon entered his base. Via hidden elevator. Not exactly that big a stretch. All villains loved their hidden passageways.

This wouldn’t be how Zachary would do it, though. Zachary would let his overconfident pursuers discover a secret entrance which, at its surface would appear to lead to his base.

While they were busy congratulating themselves, they’d brainlessly step into the hidden entrance and – boom! They’d be atomized by way of some laser beam array hidden by the sides. Or falling spikes ejected from cavities in the ceiling.

The true passageway leading to his actual base would be behind a broom closet on a random floor, like floor twenty seven. It would be covered up by three stacks of boxes that one would have to slowly and carefully displace to uncover.

On top of that, the hallway leading to the closet in question would be extra narrow and cramped, so you couldn’t just take out the boxes and leave them at the entrance; you’d have to squeeze through the corridor with box after box, shifting the boxes filled with random junk to more spacious rooms on other floors, huffing and puffing as you came and went, exhausting yourself with menial busywork.

Nobody likes manual labour, after all. They’d be thwarted before they even made it to the last boss. Or they’d give up in exasperation after the sixteenth box.

Concealment via frustration.

Zachary warily stepped into the metal box, examining the insides as he did so. A hidden elevator like this, in a building designed and built by his enemy? Surely there would be some sort of mechanism to incinerate any intruders. A jet of toxic gas, perhaps?

But as soon as he was fully within the cuboid, the panel slid back into place, so quick Zachary couldn’t react in time. He froze in place, looking up at the ceiling, half-expecting it to start collapsing and compressing his body into a fine red mess.

To his relief, no such thing happened, and the conveyance began to descend to the place he had been searching for.

His thief’s lair.

Well, Zachary reckoned. No point in worrying now. I came looking for him after all; can’t be too surprised when I actually find him.

After a minute the doors slid open, and Zachary stepped out cautiously. The room the elevator had spat him out in didn’t have much of a feel of a lair, not in any way he expected. In stark contrast to the pitch-black building above, it was illuminated brightly by way of rows of white florescent tubing in the ceiling.

It was a big space, if that counted for points towards a lair-like feel. But the walls were painted a cheerful sky blue, and there were armchairs and couches littered about next to switches and dials, for their operator to lounge on as they fiddled about with the controls.

If anything, it reminded Zachary more of a dentist’s waiting room rather than a lair.

A pudgy man, clad in a golden mask, spun around in his swivel chair to face the intruder. He’d been rather preoccupied with what he’d been doing, so he didn’t react immediately to the sound of his entrance activating. But as soon as he realised who had joined him, Gordon’s face lit up, and he shouted across the room at his enemy.

“Oh; you’ve made it! Wonderful! So you found the transmitter capsule in Prototype-1, and the accompanying console?”

Zachary winced.

They had been left for him.

“So it was a trap, then?” Zachary called out nonchalantly, advancing towards Gordon, the chubby man smirking as he watched Zachary approach. The otherworlder was still fixated on his plan. Just get in close enough of a range to get a hold of Gordon, then activate Profile Swap to neutralise the threat. Tangible contact - simple as can be.

In fact, so fixated was Zachary, that he didn’t notice two Life Models silently come up behind him.

And in a cruel déjà vu, wrap both their arms around each of his in turn, .

“Rrgh!” As soon as the trap closed, Zachary tried his best to pull away from the Life Models, exerting as much force as he could while exclaiming through gritted teeth. If his Level 7 Beastkin strength actually did something, however, the emotionless drones didn’t show it outwardly. They merely marched towards Gordon, halting in place as soon as they were about three meters away.

Solidly out of Zachary’s reach, even if he did somehow manage to break free and rush towards the fat man.

Zachary scowled angrily at the thief of his Mask.

“Really? The same trick; twice?! Get another routine!”

“If it works.” Gordon shrugged, smiling. “If anything, it’s more on you for falling for it twice. I mean, you can’t be expecting me to just leave myself without any protection, can you? That’d be rather stupid of me.”

Zachary glared at his enemy.

“How’d you know I’d come? Maybe I couldn’t find the transmitter.”

“You did notice what’s going on upstairs, right?” Gordon scoffed, raising his index finger to point to the sky. “After all of that finishes up, I’ll have all the time in the world to leisurely search for you. And besides, you won’t go anywhere until you have my Mask; isn’t that right?”

Zachary turned away from his smirking foe, peering up at the faceless Life Models towering over him.

“Well? Get it over with already. Kill me!” Zachary yelled.

Detonating his soul here, right next to Gordon, wasn’t an option. If it did work, all that would achieve would be killing the Mask holder and redistributing the Mask into yet another random world. And worse still, perhaps this time the System wouldn’t even bother with the re-allocation.

The Mask might be deleted for good.

He could bite his tongue off; that was an option. But his foe was someone intimately familiar with the workings of a human body, and had devoted his waking hours to creating a perfect facsimile of a human clone. If he caught on and managed to prevent his suicide using whatever newfangled medical techniques or Skills at his disposal... it would be safe to say that route would be cut off for Zachary from that moment onwards.

No; getting killed by Gordon was the best course of action. It’d be a setback, sure, but Zachary would respawn somewhere else in this world, as long as his soul tether held. Enough time for him to figure out another way to best get at Gordon.

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you, my Masked comrade.” Gordon replied, to Zachary’s surprise. “You can never have enough power; especially when its knowledge. You have information I don’t have. Information that can be used for my purposes. And I’ve always wanted to know about the vascular structure of an alien species.”

Zachary tried futilely to wriggle out of the meat shackles again.

No luck there.

“Do you know what the biggest organ in the human body is?”

Zachary stopped squirming to raise an eyebrow at his captor.

“Huh?”

“Relax, I’m not going to do anything to you just yet. It’s taking a lot of my mental processing power to get the Life Models to do the things I want them to do. And I want to savour your dissection with every fiber of my being. Take this as me passing the time. Besides, it’s not like you’re getting free any time soon. So humour me; largest organ in the body?”

Zachary thought it over.

“The skin, right?”

Gordon snapped his fingers.

“Exactly. The skin. So much wasted; the largest surface area of any individual organ, and all humans use it for is tactile sensation. To touch; to feel. Why not replace it with something else?”

Gordon stepped out from behind his desk, circling behind Zachary, at a tantalisingly close distance. Zachary clenched his fists and tried again, forcing his arms forwards and- nope, still not budging.

“Look at these,” Gordon brought his face down dangerously close to Zachary’s, plucking at the flesh of the grey Life Models. “Adaptable neural cells; think stem cells, except with more applications. The whole body itself is a walking brain; a meat computer that can function on a higher level than any living thing present. Except that it’s grown without a consciousness.”

Zachary wondered if proximity was enough to trigger the System recognition protocols.

“Profile Swap,” he whispered under his breath, focusing on the image of the fat man next to him. He opened his eyes to find that Gordon was now strolling back to his desk; and that he had not resumed control over the Mask.

Damn it.

“And - do you know what my master plan is?”

“Something to do with world domination, I’m guessing?” Zachary replied derisively.

Gordon wagged a finger.

“Close, but not quite. The previous me; oh, how he hated this world. He wanted them to suffer. But how, then? Plenty of avenues of revenge. Some of them viable, most of them not. A lot of them wouldn't let me watch the impact close up. My answer to this question – install in place assets under my sole, remote control. Assets I can use to do my bidding.”

“Is that it?” Zachary snorted. “You’re going to kill a bunch of people? Bit hackneyed, no?”

Gordon laughed heartily.

“They’re not there to kill, silly. What would the point of that be?” Gordon shook his head sadly. “Killing’s quick! It’s instant, and unfulfilling. To really maximise one’s suffering, you have to allow them to live. That’s what the Models up there and all around the world are in the process of doing.”

“Maim; but not kill. Hurt; but not kill. Never kill. Keep every single person they wound alive. Pull out ocular organs, rip out fingernails, pluck out teeth one by one, and peel off skin. Puncture the eardrums; slowly sever vocal cords as they scream. Leave the human screaming noiselessly in a world of darkness and silence. Then provide just enough first aid to prevent them from bleeding out.” The chubby man spat the words out with venom.

“But,” he continued. “you might be asking yourself, ‘Oh, but Gordon! Why would you let your underlings have all the fun? Why aren’t you out there, maiming and killing and harming and hurting? Why are you cooped up here, hiding away?’”

“Oh, but I’m not letting them have all the fun. I’m the one having all the fun.”

Gordon excitedly pulled the shirt he was wearing up over his shoulders, baring his body to Zachary.

The otherworlder reflexively flinched at what he saw. For although the previous Gordon had an actual paunch, this Gordon instead had masses of pink, wrinkled lumps growing and pulsing in place over his chest and abdomen.

In fact, they kinda looked like…

“Are those… brains?”

Gordon grinned manically at his captive.

“Can you imagine? I’m linked up to twenty nine thousand Life Models; all around the world, all of them slicing, and stabbing, and tearing – all of them me! Can you even conceive of that… that ecstasy? It is an unimaginable pleasure, akin to godhood.”

Zachary stopped listening halfway through - he had caught onto something that Gordon had said.

Yes, yes, this guy was absolutely deranged.

Gone entirely mad with power, bumped up to eleven.

But he’d said something else there – something important.

“Sorry, did you say that you’re linked with all the Life Models? As in, you have a solid, tangible connection with all of them?”

Gordon’s smile persisted as he answered the question. He fingered a pink lump, prodding the wrinkled mass. “Yes, these additions to my mental capacity work wonders for telepathic communication. I’m basically half a Life Model myself, now. I can process things ordinary humans can’t even imagine-”

Zachary silently muttered two words, focusing on a certain grey form which he had found himself in at the start of his journey in this world. As his body elongated and his skin changed its composition to those adaptable neural cells that Gordon had been boasting about at length, he felt the beginnings of another mind invade his, presenting as a sensation of prickling running down the length of his body.

Gordon’s smile finally faltered as he watched Zachary change into a very familiar shape. One that he had spent a month and a half refining and perfecting.

A form that he was now mentally linked to.

A solid, tangible contact point.

He only had the time to get out two pleading words.

“No, stop-”

It was Zachary’s turn to smirk. He squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on the image of the man in front of him.

He uttered two words in kind.

“Profile Swap.”