Chương 161: Act 3, Chapter 15: Me, myself and I

Day in the story: 5th January (Monday), around 4. 30 p. m. We were inside the company that would make me a plural individual soon enough, and all I could think about was whether it had been a good idea in the first place. I jumped on it the moment I thought about it and my abilities suggested that it might be a possibility, but so far I'd only been making more versions of me tied to myself. What I was trying to accomplish now was entirely different.

I was going to occupy different bodies with my personas—amplifications of certain traits, but still ultimately me. Would they be separate from me, or still connected? What would happen if they died? Would a part of me die as well? Would I never be able to use that persona again? [I don't think so. You are just lending your authority for them to be you. As the art piece is destroyed, Authority no longer dwells inside it and is released instead. You'd probably be safe.] Probably, coming from you, is not very promising. [It's the best thing I have for now. My own existence is a mystery to me. Power over identity seems to be a rule-breaking ability.] I won out with it, yeah. I mused about all of it while I sat on a chair in a spacious waiting room. Sophie was discussing payment details and overall procedures, as well as contracts and other boring stuff, leaving me alone with my thoughts and able to observe this place of technology.

So far, most institutions and companies like this went in two directions with their interior design—either clinically clean interiors with white walls, steel, and glass, screaming minimalism so loudly you went deaf long before you noticed it, or full new world order with colors, shapes, and freedom of expression, including plushies, soft cushions, safe spaces, and rainbows everywhere. This one was surprisingly neither.

It used its big, lofty windows and spaces to build an interior that looked like a train station mixed with castle and steampunk aesthetics. It was certainly a deliberate choice on someone's part—a passion realized in visual representation, while the technology they offered was already high-tech enough. I liked it. Pretension to be something lesser, when you are indeed the top dog.

"Would you like something to drink?" a cute guy asked me. I'd seen him bouncing in and out of this waiting hall a few times already. The first time he brought some documents for the lady behind the counter at the front, but every time after that was clearly just to check me out and work up his courage, I guessed. And I used cute very liberally here, as I found it rather endearing, while I could just as easily consider it creepy.

He wasn't someone I would consider handsome by any means, but I learned a long time ago that it didn't matter to me that much, if at all. I liked beauty in natural forms—the symmetry of faces, the contrast of eyes against skin tone—much like I liked good shadow play, lighting, and perspective in art. It satisfied my need to be intellectually stimulated, but people were not paintings or statues. They had personalities, and those could be equally, if not more, satisfying to study.

"Yes, please. A tea, perhaps?" I asked, and he smiled, a bit of yellowish teeth showing. As he moved away, I wondered whether I loved anybody at all in my short life. I remembered some lingering love I felt for my parents, but it was so long ago that it was only a vague memory by now, no matter how sad that seemed. I chose to love Peter around the same time, and it proved to be right.

My feelings for him were probably the strongest I had for any person in the world, and he never let me down, despite me constantly providing him with opportunities to test his resolve when facing the same from me. My only other choice of trusting someone with my feelings was Sophie, and on that front I was blessed even more than with Peter.

She'd always been a force of nature, a clear defiance of all the traits that other pretty girls in my life taught me were normal when you had a small world under your small feet. Trying to rise to be something bigger seemed beyond most of them. He came back right in the middle of me thinking about whether I was the same petty, cruel pretty girl as those from my memories. I'd have to work hard to be better, and not just try to appear better, as Peter reminded me at Montmartre in Paris.

"A tea for you," he said as he placed it on a knee-high table right in front of me. It was in a glass and was most likely iced tea, judging by the temperature.

"Thank you. Certainly a different kind than I had expected."

"We don't have real tea in here. I checked everywhere," he answered, then leaned back in his place against the armchair.

"Better cold than sorry," I said, sipping and thinking back to the original question I'd posed to myself. I never did love anyone romantically. Not any of the high school boys I tried kissing or having sex with, not any of the men I met later in my life, not Jason, nor any girls for that matter. The closest I ever felt to love was Nick, but even with him it was more an attraction to being close to someone my age who could protect me, who was smart and interesting in his own right.

It certainly wasn't the same feeling I could see Peter and Zoe share.

"What do you mean?" the guy asked, clearly not appreciative of me being nice.

"Nothing. I'm not good at small talk," I lied.

"What are you doing here?"

"Sitting."

"No. I meant at the company."

"I work in trade. I'm looking for potential clients." Not big on people skills. I wondered how well that worked out for him.

"I'm not a big fan of paying for things," I said, fishing for something unusual from him.

"I can't offer any discounts. Your boss is discussing the terms with mine. It's in his hands already."

"That's unfortunate. Do you at least know how long that will last? I feel like I've spent about half an hour here already."

"No idea. I was told the contract was negotiated beforehand via emails and phone calls, so…" He trailed off, clearly not knowing how to continue the conversation. I decided to throw him one last chance at redeeming himself.

"Maybe you could at least tell me how long the scanning takes."

"We have the best machines for that. Around fifteen minutes? Depends on how cooperative the model is."

"I'm very cooperative," I said, throwing another lure.

"You're going to be a model?" His eyes widened.

"I mean, I wasn't— I shouldn't be that surprised. You certainly have the look."

"What look exactly? Can't you scan literally anything in there? A person doesn't have to have a look to be scanned."

"I mean, you're pretty."

"Well, thanks. I'm trying. Doesn't always work out. It's difficult when you're pretty much rotting inside." If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Rotting?" He almost spelled it, while I finished my drink and placed the glass on the table.

"In a character sense," I left it vague.

"I could help you work out your problems. I'm good at that." I forced myself, with the help of two additional brains, not to roll my eyes.

"Are you asking me out right after I told you I'm a bad person inside?" I've been in this situation already, right?

"Yes. I think so. Yes, I am."

"I would consider it once, but I am over relationships based solely on physicality for some time." I had pent-up tension that needed some release, and some dumb fun might be the right answer, but I wasn't asking the question.

"I understand."

"Keep trying though. Someone might say yes," I said, while I considered whether maybe a woman could be a better option after all. I just realized I'd never lingered on that much, because I thought I wasn't physically attracted to them. But on the other hand, I noticed it was practically the same with men, with a few exceptions I consciously allowed to reach that point. Maybe I was hung up on men because society expected me to be? Did all people have to work so hard to figure themselves out?

Or was I the only one who didn't seem to have any direction ingrained into my DNA? It felt like everything was up to me and nothing fated to be. My other self—which meant me, by extension—could be a perfect good-doer, while I was trained to be the scum of the earth and be fine with it. Even my romantic life seemed to be so exhaustingly dependent on my own whims instead of falling face-first into feelings like normal people do. Fuck.

"Would you be so kind and go ask how long—" I started, wanting to give him an excuse to untangle himself from an uncomfortable situation, but I heard that Sophie had just finished her conversation with whoever was responsible for all of this on the company's side, and they were on their way to me.

"Never mind. I feel like my time has come," I added, standing up and muting the connection to Sophie's card. She came out of the door the moment I straightened up.

"How did you know?" the guy asked.

"When you open yourself up and listen to the universe, it whispers back to you. Try it out," I said to him, right before I went toward my girl.

"I struck a deal. Two hundred ten thousand for all of that. Half already sent, second—""Yeah. I heard it all," I interrupted her, as the guy she was with went away toward the woman at the desk.

"I don't know how I feel about you listening in on everything."

"It's for your safety, Soph."

"That's taken away by your presence."

"Yes. I'll think about something you can turn on and off, instead of being on all the time, okay?"

"That would be much better."

"We are ready for the scan," a man's voice reached us. He was a balding older gentleman, wearing a suit that looked more like steampunk cosplay than regular clothes. If it wasn't obvious who was behind the success of this place, this was supposed to scream it into their faces—with tact, of course. Everything in moderation, even bold visual attacks.

"We are coming," Sophie answered, and we joined in after, walking down the corridor set up in the same Victorian style made to look futuristic. I wondered then why such aesthetics are not popular for other epochs. Futurization of the industrial era had its place in the sci-fi movies of that time. The steam revolution was obvious. The French Revolution could be a fun one, with gallows becoming an item of common usage, and everything stemming from that would be just wild.

Maybe places like this existed within Ideworld somewhere—splinters caught in time and made ridiculous by the beliefs of the people from that era. I couldn't wait to find out.

"Please strip down to what you are comfortable with, although underwear gives the best result in mapping if naked is out of the question," some technician guy told me as we were preparing outside the room with a big machine that looked like an oversized, vertically disassembled MRI. Sophie took a seat with the boss guy, while I was instructed to go into a changing room, as pointed out by the guy that just talked.

"You know what? A body is just a body, and I am going to have a few more in a short time," I replied, as I started taking off my shirt and trousers.

"What? Not here!" he answered, surprised.

"You can go into the more private place to do that," he said, turning around. He seemed to be a decent man. I saw him through my fingernails, and he did his best not to look. Contrary to the Victorian man sitting with Sophie. Both of them stared—Sophie in disbelief especially. Especially after I took off my bra and went for the panties.

"Maybe that's not the best place for that," she said.

"Excuse me? There is just a glass wall between us and the machine. You'd see everything anyway, during the scan," I replied, standing as I was created.

"That wall," the man said, "would turn opaque during the process."

"Oh. Didn't know that, obviously. But still, you'd have life-sized models of me anyway. Where do I go?" I asked, while my dear friend face-planted redder than I had ever seen before. I embarrassed her. It's not something I'd like to repeat. Courtesy of the man that tried not to look, I was soon standing on a small mechanical dais at the base of the big scanning machine, while the glass turned black, just as he said it would.

The warmth of the room was accompanied by silence at first, and where that lack of cold persisted, the lack of sound did not. It was gradually replaced by an ever-increasing whirring of the machine as it aligned its mirrors around me. Light started shining onto me from every point, as the big arms moved around my body. I felt like a fly being wrapped in a cocoon of light by some modern spider. And soon, from that cocoon of light, my new bodies would emerge to carry my soul onward.

The artist who was supposed to work on the changes was very receptive to all of my suggestions. I wanted each body prepared for me to be based on mine, but different enough so that each persona felt real and distinct. A few new ones I based on clear ideas I held in my mind, while the old ones followed the changes I often applied to myself. Jess Hare would have longer hair and bigger lips, with more pronounced cheekbones.

Elle Erikson would have a smaller nose and thinner lips; her hair would be shorter too, and her body a bit more slender than mine—frail. Gertrude Monkey would have even shorter hair and a more masculine facial structure, but bigger boobs and stronger legs. I asked to change one of the models of me to be much smaller as well, and to include a dress as part of the design, while leaving all of my features intact.

The change in size would counteract the increase in complexity, giving the same final sum, so there was no conflict in the contract, and they went for it. I had just finished discussing all of my human models when the first questions about the "pets" started.

"We will start with the spider, as it's pretty easy," the girl doing the 3D sculpting said. I had sat beside her for three whole hours already, but she was manic and a very talented person as well. She knew her software very well and had a lot of models prepared already for changes.

"Okay," I answered, as she loaded up a mesh that looked like a typical cute jumping spider.

"I need it about cat-sized and furry," I said, and with a few moves of a digital pen she added a proper hair structure to the creature.

"Frontal eyes a bit bigger, those on the sides smaller," I instructed her, and she followed without a question. I had a very clear image of how Anansi looked in my head, so giving her a physical form wasn't very difficult.

"Legs a bit more slender and longer… yes. That's great."

"I think that would be it," she said, and the spider looked fantastic—but it was still lacking one important detail. Well, two actually.

"I want her to have two rabbit-like ears sticking out of that cute head."

"I forgot about it. I am sorry, won't happen again," she said, and opened another model in a separate tab, copied the ears from that one, and applied them to Anansi's first form. [I like that.]"Fantastic. Let's get to the cat now," I asked, and she saved the model, opening a new one and loading up a basic house cat mesh.

"Can you start with making the ears just a tiny tad bit longer? And bigger too, maybe. Let's see how it would look. I want them to still be cat-like, but also like a rabbit's if someone is not paying too much attention."

"Mhm," she confirmed, while readjusting the size of the ears.

"That's it!" I shouted when the size was just about right.

"Great. Now, the difficult part."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I want the paws to be more human-like. Opposable thumbs and a bit longer fingers, so she would look like a cat, but be able to grab things if needed." My ask seemed outlandish, but she didn't mind and remained entirely professional.

"You worked on some movie props or something?"

"I did a lot of fantastical creature design for movies, theme parks, and other stuff. I am used to creative tasks," she answered, and presented me with paws that fulfilled each of my requests.

"That's exactly what I wanted. Can you make the back paws just like that?"

"Of course," she said, copied the changed body parts, and adjusted their placement just enough to make each of them seem unique while being the same in function.

"Okay. Then just add six small, spider-like eyes around the head—two on each side and two in the back. Make them small, barely noticeable, like bumps." I intended to paint the cat white and those small eyes black, but in my mind they would be closed when Anansi interacted with sleepers, not to scare them off, while opened in any other endeavor. And since it was like that in my head, I was sure the model would follow it when animated, giving her the ability to close and open them at will.

"Does that work for you?"

"Yes. That's splendid."

"So that leaves us with the last model. The centaur? Should be easy. Let me load up some horse models."

"No. Hold up. The centaur was just to give you the idea of the size. The thing I have in mind will actually be something else entirely."