Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It was unknown just how long Dalton had slept. His mind had been swept off to dreamland. Except here wasn’t any dreams to be had. He was in a weird state of being aware he was sleeping, but also being awake. But it was like time stretched here in this sort of fresh oblivion. This was something he believed to be more in tune with how life after death might’ve felt.

Ironic he wasn’t given this instead of…that weird virtual space. His ‘thoughts’ were hard to keep up, they seemed to randomly speed up or slow down in this weird sensory distortion. He wasn’t fully asleep either. Every now and then it’d feel like something was touching upon what made him, well, him. Like soft caresses that slowly reached deep and deeper into his being. They were being gentle, trying not to trigger…something.

Oh.

It was like what happened in the virtual space. This time his disgust wasn’t present, but the desire to not be molested was apparent. The ‘hands’ could never venture past a certain point as if responding to Dalton’s will. It’s unknown how long this went on, but his thoughts slowly started to regain their own speed. No longer did the distortion seem to be apparent. Instead, the hands seemed to grab his entire being in this moment.

The feeling of being squeezed into a all-too-tight tube encompassed his consciousness that quickly began to be pushed out of it’s nulled state. Instead his consciousness felt like it was being…put into a costume. A shell was connected to the tube he was in, his entire being shot into the shell, filling it like a cup being poured full of water. Slowly he could actually have sensation. Novel, isn’t it after an untold amount of time being ‘asleep’.

It was like his consciousness spread it’s roots into the shell, showering him with random data and inputs that had his mind reeling from the warmth that seemed to suddenly suffuse his being. At first it was ‘legs’, he could feel those. Then his stomach, then chest - hands - arms - then finally his head. The tube closed off ‘above’ him as his mass of data filled this new shell in it’s entirety. There was still an odd feeling of disconnect between him and the shell, as if something was stopping him from integrating further.

But that’d be fixed.

[Beginning System Full Integration]

[Project Genesis coming online.]

[Fusing consciousness with the shell.]

Pain suddenly burned through his entire ‘body’. Those roots he put in earlier were yanked on and forcibly connected to something. The very act of connecting to something else brought this untold amount of pain. He couldn’t help but compare it to the gunshot he received before being domed. But there was no nulling this. He screamed silently as the pain kept on coming. It started from his feet upwards. His consciousness and data were being stretched and pulled like taffy to perfectly fit the shell around him.

That’s when he realized he literally had feet. Yes, feet. Not the approximation of feet, but actual flesh and blood feet. The pain had gone out around them when the integration was finished, but it kept working its way upwards, giving that same unending agony in a ring. His brain was overheating, burning at this feeling. He couldn’t comprehend the basic senses of a mortal creature after not having any for quite a while. He had already formed a disconnect with his old body. Now, here he was being forced into a meat suit.

As it passed further, his digital being being mixed into physical being, he realized one gigantic crucial detail about his body the moment the groin was passed.

He wasn’t male. No, he was distinctly female.

If it wasn’t for the pain he was in, he’d definitely be protesting this. Was this the scientist’s sick idea of a joke? He didn’t even get the man’s name! 

The process continued. He realized he had a tail too, more like a velociraptor’s tail coming out from his tailbone, it was odd. But when his consciousness connected, he could feel and instinctively know how to move it. It was much more flexible than it looked either. The novelty would have to wait as it then passed his chest.

Yeah, breasts. In fact his entire body was more on the female side now. But his toes and hands seemed to have these sort of retractable nails. Was he some kind of predator-like creature? Through the new sensations, he could tell this body was -way- stronger than his old one at least. The muscle was odd, biology didn’t seem to work the way he remembers as his body seemed to be both very dense but lithe and rippling with internal power and energy.

Then his head was passed. 

Sensation -bloomed- as the pain stopped. His brain seemed to slow down. It calmed from the agony that had befallen him through the entire process. He was hooked up to some kind of machinery, floating in a warm, thick gel that felt like he was fully encased in jello. Even if he tried to open his eyes, he couldn’t. He had a helmet on his skull with a long tube going down his throat into his stomach. 

His brain halted all thought processes, then seemingly rebooted as his musculature connected to the nerves, the nerves connected to his brain. His brain, as he notices, was a mixture of machinery and matter. How he could see into himself, he’s unsure. But he could see into his body as if looking at himself in third person…a screen popped up into his blinded vision.

[Welcome to the universe, Genesis.]

[I am your self-diagnostic system.]

[I will grow as you grow. Learn as you learn.]

[Bodily capabilities at 100%]

[You are born.]

Born?

He didn’t get a chance to contemplate this. The gel he was surrounded in started to get sucked into some force from below his suspended body. Dalton shuddered at the feeling of the mask receding with the tube in his stomach. Like a long worm moving out of him. It was highly unpleasant. As the volume of the chamber decreased, he floated downwards, his feet touching the ground finally. There was a drain below his feet which seemed to stick him to it as the flow of liquid passed over and around his body.

He was no longer weightless, a sucking, slurping sound filling his ears as the gel he was constricted in slid off his head. This prompted the removal of the mask with a hiss and a pop, moving out of his sensory range a moment later. He felt a large mane of hair slip into the gel behind his body, long and straight. The moment his eyes opened?

He was blinded.

His new eyes hadn’t seen light before, perhaps. So it was a disorienting display of purples, blues, yellows and bright white. A rainbow of color with the disgusting sound of the gel disappearing below him. His limbs slowly started to finally respond to his desires to move them. He knew he was stronger than his old body. But he felt so -weak- in the moment. All these senses he had were so…

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Enhanced.

Smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch. He had to take several seconds of blinking before his body seemed to naturally adapt. The gel was now around his thighs. He was painfully aware of his own nudity now as his eyes began to focus…

He gasped.

A new breath of air for a new life.

Along with a new revelation that he was no longer on Earth, probably. Why? The tube’s ‘glass’ was clear. Other than runny strands of goo on the glass walls beyond it was a laboratory that SCREAMED mad scientist. He was in a circular room that was brightened by floor lights. All around him was an art of odd machinery and towers of robotic pieces that didn’t make sense to him. It looked like it was straight out of a sci-fi novel. Actual robots seemed to be doing things, beings made of black or goldish metal moving around and cleaning or hauling things around the lab.

There was at least four different sections which he could rotate around the tube he was in to look. Plants, animals, chemicals and robotics. Each sections of these had taken up 25% of the room, perfectly. Each of them divided by glass walls. He was in the middle of this room, four plain and bare walkways leading to his container. 

Moments later he gained control of his feet and fell to the ground. He was stunned beyond words at this laboratory. It was monstrous, at least 100 people could be working around all of these sections and still have room for themselves. But something else caught his vision.

Dalton’s reflection.

If it wasn’t painfully obvious already, this body was not his. But it was…attractive in an alien way. No, seriously, he was an alien. Starting from his head, his face was sharp and almost elf-like, like an oriental beauty without any blemishes on their flesh. He was unearthly pale -no, white. Like paper. But without the grossness of being so white with veins appearing through translucent flesh. It just was -white-. His, or gods - HER nose was pointed and not too long, just slightly longer than a normal human’s. She had long ears perhaps about the length of a hand up to it’s middle finger. Both of them aimed downwards.

They seemed to respond normally, he could move them up or down, sort of like a dog’s ears, but they were properly on the sides of his face. His eyes were sharp, and his facial expression while resting seemed to be an externally predatory look. Aggressive, but calm. Like someone who’d sit on a throne and look down on you sternly. He had long black hair that seemed to be untamed and wet, slick with the goo from earlier. It was too long, going down to his waist. But the most prominent feature was the two sword-like black horns with purple tips jutting from his forehead for a good foot or so.

These seemed to bring him no discomfort. As for the rest of him, his body seemed to be in an hourglass shape. Not too busty, but enough to have a good handful if he were to squeeze. The rest of him was the same pale white as his face except for the ends of his new limbs. His arms were pitch black from his hands to his elbows, but they seemed to fade into white in a gradient above the elbow into the bicep. His legs were the same, from his feet up was black until his knee, which faded into white along his thigh.

It made him feel like he was wearing long gloves and stockings. Even his tail had the same look for most of it. Except it has stripes of black along the top of the tail until it reaches the pure white areas.

“What the hell?”

His voice, used after so long was saying such a cliche line. But how couldn’t he question himself? Especially when his voice held a sort of husky smokiness that a mature woman might have. More seductive in it’s tone without it honestly trying to be. A voice from above crackled to life.

“Releasing Project Genesis. Standby.”

It was robotic in tone and matter to the fact. There as  hiss of air and a loud POP as the cylinder he was in seemed to rotate in two different directions. His vision of the room blurred as he spun to the right. It was like a jar being opened. He realized real quick that he was on a raised platform. The platform itself began to lower to some steps and a odd observation booth centered around the bottom. He had paused when in front of him was some steps. The glass finally moved upwards, lifting him to feel the artificial warmth of the outside chamber.

His body filled with strength. He could feel his body finally respond to him with it’s enhanced power. It was addicting, like energy flowed underneath his new flesh and filled it with purpose. He stood tall and with nothing better to do, he stepped down the steps and onto the hallway. He was now within the middle circle that surrounded his containment, face down one of the hallways that ended in a large metal door.

One that was now opening with loud groaning and hissing noises. What came out of it was a man who screamed mad scientist and a pair of robots with some sort of long rifles. The mad scientist was a man floating in some sort of…half-egg? Dr.Eggman? Please don’t let his name be Dr.Eggman…the floating chair held the man in question who exclaimed loudly.

“Rejoice! My GREATEST CREATION has awoken!”

Fuck, it’s his ‘creator’.

The robots clacked along the warm metal floor while his chair came closer. Now that he could see him closer, his skin was wrinkly. Like a raisin, which was an apt description because his flesh was the same coloration. His hair also stood straight up but was pure white in some sort of punk-like gelled look. It was literally a tower with a cut off plateau. He wasn’t human. His eyes were…like an insects, a fly’s. Red with multiple facets while his mouth was a circular maw with teeth. He even had four hands. The man couldn’t have been more than 4’ tall.

“I, THE GREAT DR.RUPELS HAS CREATED THE MOST PERFECT BEING EVER! Genesis! Ah! This moment gives me CHILLS! Chills I say!” His eyes seemed to bore holes into Dalton, making him shudder and feel even more naked than his current state was.

He was still oddly calm, like this just wasn’t effecting him in any sort of realistic way as it should. He was like an observer, treating things he sees as fact and that is all there is to it. Maybe that’s why he’s not freaking out.

“Well? So how do you feel, Genesis?”

That’s his cue. “I feel…awake? Alive? I feel strong and…” He paused, even if it was obvious that this wasn’t his old body, he didn’t feel trapped by his body like a prison. It was like every fiber of his being was running at 100%. “Energetic? What is this place?” Dalton looked around, frowning.

The fly-man snorted. “Obviously you’re in my lab! Come, come! You are fresh like baked bread and naked! We will get you clothed and you will learn what I, your illustrious creator desires of you in time! It’s your birthday!”

With that, the fly man turns around in his floating seat and heads off with the robots doing the same.

Seeing this, Dalton has no other choice other than to follow this man. “Alright I suppose…” With this, his first steps in this new world are made. Going across the hallway and into the open, massive metal door which closes behind him as he enters.

“You’re going to be the best…ehehehe~”