I wake up to more rain. However, now I can actually see the clouds far above me. In other words, it's daytime. My first sleep was uneventful. I was, oddly enough, slightly disappointed. I guess I was expecting some sort of consequence to sleeping through the night...

Activating sleep mode. Warning, no active cooldowns detected. Sleeping now will be very inefficient. Continue? y/n

Ah, sensitive as ever, system. No, we won't be sleeping yet. There's something very important to do now. 'Generate clone'!

Activating 'Generate Clone' using default genetics.

Now that I get to see it again, this screen confirms my assumptions. The genetic resear- techs I'm doing is to improve the clones. Oh, wait. I'm so stupid. 'Actives'

Available Actives:

Extract DNA Bases Extracts adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine from biomass.

Extract RNA Base Extracts uracil from biomass.

Unavailable Actives:

Generate Clone Generates a Clone Cooldown; 0:000:23:59:16:357

Yep, this saves me some time. Alright, right now I have... uhm... where did all the screens go? Wait, did the slee- nap function close all the screens?! I... I don't know how I should feel about that... I guess most of them I didn't need, but a few helped with keeping track of resources and stuff.

So... I was trying to use the most recent 'fly absorbed' screen to find out how much biomass I have, but clearly that isn't going to happen. What I do know is that I have at least 0.2 g, and the next two researches cost 0.1 g.

Reloading Research...

Genetic Decoder Learn to decode the effects a gene has.

Biomass; 0.1 g,

DNA Bases; 0.05 g

Gene locator Learn to locate genes within a genome. Biomass; 0.1 g,

DNA Bases; 0.01 g Gene Extraction Learn to extract genes from stored genomes. DNA Bases; 0.01 g,

RNA Base; 0.02 g Densification 1 Increase storage density, allowing for more biomass, ??????, ??????, ??????, etc. to be stored per volume.

Biomass; 1 kg or

DNA Bases; 100 g or

??????; 500 g or

...

Helpful Guide :)

Biomass; 10 kg,

DNA Bases; 1 kg,

??????; 1 kg,

...

Alright, for all of these techs, I need 0.07 g of DNA Bases, and 0.02 g of RNA Base. Let's start with the lower amount one. 'Extract RNA Base 0.02 g' (hopefully that works).

Activating 'Extract RNA Base'. Please designate amount of biomass you will extract from:

Oh... First I want to see what the conversion rate is. 0.01 g of biomass!

Extracted 0.0005 g RNA Base from 0.01 g of Biomass.

...is that 5%? Only 5%? So for 0.02 g of RNA Base, I need 0.4 g of Biomass... Fuck, how much is the DNA Bases worth? 'Extract DNA Base'!

Activating 'Extract DNA Base'. Please designate amount of biomass you will extract from:

0.01g...

Extracted 0.0001 g RNA Base from 0.01 g of Biomass.

So in total, I need 7.6 g of Biomass. That's 700 flies worth. 7 whole fucking hundreds.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Hopefully my clone finds something worth more th- ugh! Why do intestines move like that?

----------------------------------------

Pov; clone 2

I wake up to rain. Again. I...huh? Wait, didn't I just wake up a few seconds ago? Crap, did I accidentally say yes to that sleep screen? Dammit! How many hours has it been?!

splash

wha... Water? I... feel wet? I'm not... I'm the clone. My hands, my face, they're polygons. Oh. So that's how the cloning works. The clones has the memories of the original. Well, fuck. That makes things a hundred times worse. I need to tell me about I me being them.

'Hey, me...? I'm an exact clone of you, including memories and emotions. In other words, I'm not as disposable as you thought.'

...I'll be honest, I don't know if I said that out loud or not. Not having a mouth makes talking really hard. Whatever, that isn't important for the short term. For now, I need to check out my surroundings.

From a quick look around, the puddle (me) is in the middle of a flat stone layer. The area is about 10 yards wide, and completely barren. I mean, there's some moss, but not much of it. Just in case, I gathered a handful and tossed it into the puddle. I also tossed in a pebble, just in case.

Now, looking around the edges, I'm reminded about why I never tried rock climbing; a fear of falling. The 'mountain' we're on is like those old Chinese paintings of mountains that look unnaturally steep. One wrong step and I'll fall all the way to the bottom. Hell, I'm fairly certain that's what happened to my previous clone. I guess that's why I never saw them again.

...So to summarize, I'm trapped up here. With absolutely no easy source of biomass for research...

Loading Research... Error. Not original user

Oh, of course that happens. I swear, there's got to be some settings or something to...

Loading Settings... Error. Not original user

Are you fucking kidding me? There were settings this whole time!?

Loading Settings... Error. Not original user

Fuck, I need to tell me about this. There might be something important! No, settings are almost always important in some way. Please, please let me talk out loud without a mouth!

----------------------------------------

"Hey, Hades, you there?"

"I'm a bit busy. Keep it short."

"I got a system ping over on channel 2. An unlicensed research system update. I'm trying to track down where it came from. It went to Zixian's sector. It might be connected to... your investigation."

"Dammit, I'm in channel 6. Right, I'll head to Zixian next. Thanks for alerting me."

"No problem. Good luck!

...what kind of research is 'Helpful Guide' supposed to be for? It's such a minor update. Maybe it's a red herring? Whatever, I'm sure Hades can solve this. I need to figure out who sent this."

----------------------------------------

Pov; Original

Moss consumed. Biomass; 0.447/1kg. Gained 0.007 xp.

Well, I want to say that's nice, but I don't know how much biomass I started with, so I don't know how much it increased by. Maybe i- HOLY FFffffff- Was that a rock? Did my clone just throw a rock into me? What the fuck! When I said 'test out anything for biomass', I assumed that excluded shit like rocks. Fucking idiot.

Whatever, moss is nice, moss is cool. It feels like bad news though. Usually, moss grows where nothing else does. Logically, if there were grass or leaves nearby, those would've been easier to grab and throw into me. The only conclusion I can think of is that there's no grass or leaves nearby. And if there's no grass, there's probably little other vegetation. Of course, maybe my clones just stupid. I wouldn't be surprised, just angry.

Speaking of stupid, they're doing weird gestures above me. For fuck's sake, stop using me as a mirror! Go and get me some more biomass!

...well, there they go again. I should really stop yelling at them so harshly. It's not like I have a deadline to meet. I can be more patient.

Moss consumed. Biomass; 0.499/1kg. Gained 0.007 xp.

Oh, that's slightly more helpful. 0.052 g huh? Better than flies, and much faster as well. In that case... might as well just 'Extract RNA Base'

Activating 'Extract RNA Base'. Please designate amount of biomass you will extract from:

0.39 g of biomass. Which should result in...

Extracted 0.0195 g RNA Base from 0.39 g of Biomass.

Yeah! That's all of the RNA Base I need for resear- I swear, I need a better way to say that. Next is DNA Base, which I need... 7 g of biomass for. Yeah, this is going to take a while. Luckily, time is far less of an issue now! All because I can simply 'sleep'!

Activating sleep mode...

Cooldown detected; Generate Clone; 0:000:22:46:51:725

Sleep until cooldown finishes? y/n