Alternative Stories

"So...how are things?" I asked as I walked over to Ophelia.

The woman in question folded her arm in front of herself before responding. "Good mostly, everything is coming along well."

We were currently at the back of our main facility, a place ment for the little test that we were waiting to get started. There were others here of course, however a few important participants were still lagging behind so we could only stand around waiting for them.

"Well that's good at least." I mused.

For a moment there was silence between us, that was until she spoke up once more. "By the way..." 

"What?" I was somewhat puzzled by her sudden shift in tone.

"I understand the need for entertainment but don't you think you've been going a bit overboard recently?" That made me flinch and look away.

"I...I don't know what you're talking about." I said while trying my best not to make eye contact.

"All together you've spent nearly three million on novels. Just. Novels! Of course you have been buying useful books as well but seriously, fifty thousand on fantasy novels alone is ridiculous and that's not even counting all the video games, anime, manga, comics, movies and cartoons you purchased as well." 

"I got them for research purposes..." I muttered awkwardly but after a second of her glaring at me I caved. "I'm...sorry..."

She continued to glare at me for a bit before huffing in annoyance. "Well, at least the kids seem to be happy." True, they had been loving all the games and DVDs I had bought. 

(I thought she'd bite my head off...) I sighed in relief, thankfully to not have been scolded this time.

Honestly, after being in this world for just under six months and interacting with me for that long I think that Ophelia had mellowed out somewhat. I mean sure, she still gets annoyed with me every now and then but at this point she was more like a somewhat strict and bossy secretary, not that I'd ever have the balls to call her that directly to her face but still.

"But still, where the hell are you even putting it all." She asked with a blank look.

"Some of it is stored here in capsules but I've had most of it moved to the Sanctuary after I severed it all from this world." I responded with a slight shrug.

The capsules I was talking about were Artifacts that could store living and non-living things inside of a small pocket dimension, of course they could only hold so much and any living thing that had a complex consciousness needed to be knocked out or killed before it could be stored. Additionally the capsule could slowly erode the chains of anything inside of them, this was much slower than using an essence to do it but it was useful nonetheless.

(I've been transferring all of it into my Sanctuary's storage space but I should probably have some facilities constructed to allow others access everything as well, once we have time that is.) Right now we have been focusing on other things so all that would have to wait for now.

Actually we had already set up the framework of a town in the Sanctuary, furnished buildings with power, roads and paving, street lights, warehouses, shops, several large makeshift greenhouses and so on. Honestly getting everything done this quickly probably would have been impossible without the help of the Synthetics, they didn't need to sleep or rest and so they were a great help overall. Unfortunately though, the buildings that I had originally created have all been torn down at this point, not that anyone other than me seemed to mind much at all.

"My queen!" A familiar voice pulled me from my thoughts.

"Oh, hey Ashley." I greeted with a smile.

Ophelia however just muttered under her breath in annoyance. "This fucking bitch..."

"Any reports from Connor come in yet?" I asked as the woman in question approached.

"He's had a bit of a "hiccup" but overall he's fine, he told me to say thanks for the blue gooey stuff." She shrugged, not seeming to care all that much.

(He ended up killing someone again didn't he...?) I thought with a sigh, the "blue gooey stuff" as she called it was something the Yautja had given us, it could basically dissolve any dead biological material it came into contact with leaving no evidence behind.

"He is getting lazy again I see, not that I'm surprised, he was the one who picked "Bob" as a cover name after all." Ophelia huffed and I could only shake my head in agreement.

"Fair enough."

Anyway, we chatted for a bit as more and more people arrived, after about fifteen minutes everyone was here except for Jonas. The man in question would soon arrive however, thankfully everything had been set up ahead of time so we wouldn't need to wait any longer.

"Took him long enough." Ophelia grumbled in irritation. "He called us all here for this little demonstration yet he was the last one to arrive."

(I can't really argue with her there...) I chuckled dryly to myself.

"Good evening everyone, I sincerely thank you for coming, if you didn't know, my Professor Alexander Jonas T Rainer Griffin and it is an honour to meet you all." He smiled with his arms spread wide in greetings, the many surgical scars that covered his face and body making said smile appear far creepier than it was probably meant to be.

"Unfortunately we don't really have much time for pleasantries, as such let us please get straight to the point shall we." A researcher, one who Jonas had "volunteered" to be his helper for this little demonstration, said with a flat tone.

"A shame, truly, however you are correct my dear assistant." He clapped his hands together and sighed sadly.

"Please don't call me that..." the poor guy muttered but was completely ignored.

"At least he isn't dragging this out like he usually does." Ophelia huffed and for once Ashley seemed to agree with her.

"Let me begin with a small explanation for those who haven't heard yet." Jonas began by just gesturing towards the canisters displayed on a table close by.

One looked sleek and futuristic while the other looked rather primitive in comparison. "I, as well as a few others, have been researching the mutagenic pathogen created by Energyne in an attempt to recreate it using our superior technology."

Honestly getting the information we need from Energyne was simple, in fact it turns out that Anow'ka was really good at hacking into places, not that it would really be all that hard either way considering our advantage in technology. As for my little spy, well, the only reason I had ordered Connor to go ahead and infiltrate Energyne in the first place was because I wanted someone close by when the time came. I wanted him to capture both Claire Wyden, Brett Wyden as well as other high ranking individuals from their company once things got underway, after all I had plans for them all.

While the mad scientist began explaining I began to think, remembering all the little problems we've had on the way. (We actually succeeded in creating a new pathogen relatively quickly, the main issue we were facing was creating a new canister design, after all we have very few staff that actually specialise in mechanics and engineering.) 

While we did have Jonas, Rosanna and several others, most of them had little experience in mechanics, and while yes, Jonas did have extensive experience in robotic enhancements, he was still just one guy in the end. And sure, we could have just used the same container that Energyne used but Jonas insisted that we do otherwise, after all, as he put it "there is a challenge in reverse engineering the designs of another, however pure plagiarism it just...so undignified".

(Once I have time I should add the people that Navara Captured from the Perseus into the hive mind, honestly I had kind of forgotten about them until this point.) I thought with an audible sigh. (Thinking about that, I also have all the alien creatures and plants from my Trial as well that I need to deal with at some point.)

Anyway, turning my attention back to Jonas I noticed that he had moved to stand before a large portable display screen. "The old model had several flaws, it caused rapid uncontrolled mutations, some of which could be seen as cancerous and detrimental to the afflicted entity's performance."

"Now then, let me show an example of what I mean." He hummed before gesturing to the screen behind him.

What was shown was both impressive and terrifying, animals turned into massive behemoths, their bodies twisted yet surprisingly functional despite their horrific mutations. Honestly it would've been rather fascinating if it wasn't so damn gruesome, even the ones that looked relatively fine on the outside still had various unpleasant mutations internally, a fact that was shown through various images of dissected creatures. 

The greater the amount of the pathogen they were exposed to the more uncontrolled the mutations became, of course however, using less of the pathogen meant less mutations but the creature inherited far fewer traits and abilities from the array of DNA spliced into it. Overall, despite the staggering achievement that the pathogen meant for Energyne it was still filled with numerous downsides for those infected with it.

"As you can see, while impressive it definitely isn't close to being perfect." 

"Indeed..." Jonas nodded solemnly in agreement with this assessment, only to then do a complete one eighty. "Anyway, moving on to our clearly superior version, we call it the "Scientifically Triggered Evolution Via Ecological Slicing" or the STEVES pathogen for short." 

"None of us agreed to that name..." The poor guy helping Jonas could only groan at that.

Of course though, despite his sigh of frustration he was completely ignored by the mad scientist in question. "There are still some issues with it that we'll have to fix over time, however the control we have over the genetic alterations is far greater compared to Energyne's rather lackluster attempt." Jonas explained while making sure everyone was following along. "We can precisely alter the genetic structure of creatures while adding certain genes and abilities with much greater perception and ease."

"Display the footage please, my good man!" His assistant could only sigh before doing as he was told.

The creature looked like a king cobra covered in thick segmented armour that resembled the exoskeleton of an emperor scorpion and was as long as four buses placed back to back. Unlike the previous gruesome footage this creature actually looked relatively natural, it had no horrific mutations and for the most part appeared like something that could have evolved naturally over time. As we watched the genetically altered cobra that was currently contained within its enclosure, the serpent's body began shifting in both colour and texture, similarly to what some octopi can do to blend into their surroundings.

"We can also layer pathogens on top of each other, however after the third set of mutations things become harder to control and detrimental mutations become more common."

To put what he was saying into more simple terms, say that we give your normal, average every day house cat the regenerative abilities of an axolotl but later on we end up wanting to add new traits to it, well, we can do that. The problem is that the more we do it the more difficult it becomes to predict any unplanned mutations, at most we can mess around with a creature's genetics three or so times before things start getting out of hand.

"I still can't believe we can now make literal giant monsters so damn easily..." Ophelia muttered under her breath before sighing heavily. "But I guess it is not the craziest thing that's happened since we joined up with you." I could only chuckle awkwardly at that.

"As you can see, in addition to having more control over the process we have also greatly increased the overall speed of mutation as well, although it does still take time." Jonas said as the screen showed a sped up video of a porcupine rapidly growing and changing over what seemed like a day or so.

"Additionally, with the dear queen's permission, we have added a small insignificant amount of her DNA into all the pathogens that we have created, why exactly did we do this? Simply put, I wanted to test a theory I had, one that turned out to be correct." He laughed but didn't elaborate further.

The theory he is talking about was rather simple all things considered, however it had never occurred to me until he suggested it some time ago. I had previously explained to him how my hide mind worked to some extent, more specifically however, he was strangely interested in how every creature born from someone that was already connected to the hive mind would automatically be added to it.

He took this information and came up with the idea of slicing a small amount of my DNA into various creatures using the new pathogen that we had made. He wanted to see if doing this would add them to my hive mind without me having to pay any of my indoctrination slots, and to my utter astonishment, it actually worked. If I had to guess he had managed to trick my Hive Dominance Gift into thinking that those affected by the pathogen were actually my children or something along those lines at least, even if that wasn't the case though it was still a surprise to say the least.

(Honestly, I never expected him to actually find some kind of loophole in the mechanics of my Gift, he may be insane but he is most definitely a genius that's for sure...)