Knowing what he did now, Curt felt uneasy about the fact that the office he worked in had two drones… -No, that two people at the office had been transformed into drones. Still the fact that there were only two meant the place was probably safe, for the time being. The two changed were probably made that way while out shopping, an office like this wasn’t a likely target. Not that he would consciously know if that number was rising…
Curt looked down at the plastic gun in his lap. The little device that could alter species, minds, and destiny itself. And now he was given a choice; turn his co-workers, make them completely loyal and obedient, but still maintaining most of the original selves, or risk them becoming more of those emotionless, thoughtless husks because someone else got to them first.
He realized just how little he knew about many of his co-workers. If any of them got a radical personality shift as a result of the changes he’d make, nobody would remember them as the person they once knew. True, most of the people that had been transformed had lives that were largely the same as before, or even much better off in the case of the former criminals like Pam and Cassidy. But nearly five hundred people had been changed at this point. Could he say with certainty that ALL of the changes had been for the better?
He turned his head back up toward has screen. His code was compiling. Nobody in the office would begrudge him a walk around. A perfect chance to carry out his “duty.” He shook his head and stood up.
"Master?" Meredith asked.
"I'm just going to do a walk around the office to clear my head while the compiling is happening."
"Yes Master," Meredith said.
The woman behind the desk across from him was the first to be changed, gaining brown fur on her back, and white on her chest, while her pants wove into her shirt, the legs merging and widening into a large dress. Her shoes vanished as her toes shrank back into a set of cloven hooves, her fingers becoming similarly armoured. Her face grew into a short, cute snout, while a pair of horns spiraled out from her hair. Finally, the gazelle’s tail popped out through the hole in the back of her dress. She hadn’t noticed him getting up, and continued typing away on her computer. (#492)
Next in line was a man, slightly older than Curt. He shrank slightly, his figure becoming lean and nimble. Brownish-yellow fur, speckled with black spots, sprouted over his face, and spread downward, growing more thickly on his back. His fingers grew a little wider, and leathery pads puffed up on his palms and fingers. His feet grew longer, his toes shrinking and curling into paws as pads formed on the balls of his feet as well. While much of the gender change was hidden by fur, Curt could see the former man’s hips widen as his clothes vanished, while her chest swelled slightly. Her jaws stretched out several inches, her teeth growing much larger as they sharpened Her ears widened and became rounder, fur covering them as the move up the sides of her head, and her nose turned black and wet. The hyena maid chuckled as Curt walked past. (#493)
The next table had belonged to a man Curt knew a little, Fred Alto. They’d been partnered on a few projects, and had discussed bits of their personal lives during downtime. He’d mentioned having a girlfriend he’d been getting close to. What kind of sadist would give him a choice like this? Protect the man at the cost of the love of his life, or let him go, and hope he didn’t get unwittingly assimilated into the latex horde?
Curt looked away as he carefully pointed the gun. It was probably better to avoid the risk. Fred’s relationship wouldn’t exist either way if the worst happened. He pulled the trigger, and was almost relieved to get an error message. That was one off his conscience, no matter how it turned out. He tried to tell himself that, at least.
Curt turned his eyes toward a man sitting by the much-coveted window seat, and fired again. The man behind the desk straightened up to a perfect posture, his clothes fading away. His skin turned a dark gray color, as his body grew wider and barreled out. His arms and legs alike grew thicker, his feet rounding out and becoming indistinguishable from the rest of his legs, save for the large toes. Two of his fingers shrank away to nothing, while the remaining ones became much thicker. In contrast with his big body, a small, thin tail drooped off the back of the seat, a tuft of fur forming at the end of it. Her chest grew to match her heavy frame, and her jaws and mouth stretched forward into a long muzzle, her eyes shifting slightly to the sides. Her ears remained small in comparison to her new size, though they rose up taller and curled slightly, becoming able to move in the direction of any noise she heard. Finally, the large, signature horn of the rhino grew from the end of her snout, a second, smaller one, appearing further up it’s length. (#494)
The woman’s desk blurred slightly as the keyboard, coffee mugs, and other items were retconned to better fit her new size, allowing her to keep struggling to find the bug in her program.
Curt looked out the office window, and saw more latex drones in the streets. A lot of them, actually. He rushed closer to the window for a better look, the rhino quitely scooted her chair out of his way without turning her nose from her computer.
Curt carefully looked through the crowd of drones, looking for a human amongst them. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and he couldn’t see a trace of anyone.
He grit his teeth. This wasn’t working! He already knew he couldn’t just immunize everyone he could and hope for the best. This wasn’t JUST a malfunctioning TF gun like Atarah had suspected. The rental agency, and the money flowing to and from it, pointed to an intelligence behind all of this. If the drones weren't centered on anything, they would be a public service or a utility company. And the fact they were RENTED meant they were LOANED, meaning that ownership remained with the owner. Rather than accepting a small fortune for an individual one? It just made MORE sense for someone to be at the center of this.
Not that knowing that helped all that much. He was in a black room, blind folded with ears muffs on, with a gun, with ANOTHER man blind folded with ear muffs on with a gun. If it was a man. Eventually, one of them would feel out the other, and fire. If he was looking for Curt, but even if he was firing blind, he was bound to hit Curt by accident eventually. Curt hoped that maybe the protection that made him immune to his own gun would keep him safe from this other device, but given it could change people that had been parents, he doubted those safties were in place.
He shook his head as he thought over what he knew. Since all the maids had talked about places completely devoid of people except for themselves, that likely meant whoever this was, wasn't being picky about their targets.
Further, if this owner had disabled the safties for paradox prevention, it was likely he’d have OTHER features altered or disabled, as well. Curt remembered the message he’d received the day the “Blank Maids” had been created; the gun’s creators had seemed to be just as horrified by their seeming “personality death” as he had been (at least they'd still HAD personalities afterwards). Assuming they weren’t lying, they likely wouldn’t want one of their products to create the near-literally soulless creatures wandering around the city. Unless there were more extra-dimensional beings creating guns like this, it was likely that EVERY aspect of this was intended by the Owner.
If they weren't picky about their targets, then they likely weren't racist or sexist, not much help, but at least it was something.
A force intelligent or powerful enough to understand and alter these reality-changing devices, with no desire for any sort of personality or will in its servants. Curt wasn’t really liking the way this profile was shaping up.
He thought about what places had been changed. From the reports he’d heard from the maids. All of them were largely in public places when they’d found themselves surrounded. And thinking back over a few records Sophie had dug up, it looked like places likely to have even basic security, such as warehouses with key-card access, had few, if any rental drones, even when they’d be far more cost efficient for the basic work involved. So the Owner either lacked the means or the motivation to reach any places not accessible to the general public. It wasn’t much, but it was SOME kind of limitation on this Owner’s abilities. It would suggest someone who was lazy, if not for however how much work it must have taken to hack a higher-reality universe-editing device disguised as a child's toy.
As Curt placed his forehead against the window, he felt a thick hand on his shoulder. "Master are you okay?"
Curt turned to see the nude busty rhino maid.
Curt glanced behind at her desk and spotted the name 'Kacee' signed on her documents.
"Uh, Kacee?"
"I know you ordered us to always treat you like any other employee while at work. But I don't like seeing you like this. I know this is Meredith's job here, but she seems distracted with Dave right now, cute couple."
Curt saw that indeed, Dave was having a lively chat with Meredith at the moment. Curt was supposed to be her number one priority, but he guessed love could encourage her to let things slide a little. And it wasn't like he was showing any sign of needing her services as an aid at the moment.
"I... I'm just trying to figure out a major problem, if I can't solve it, everything could go under, but I'm kinda expected to keep it hush hush."
"I just hope it doesn't make flesh and blood employees prove useless... " She looked at the Latex drones. "Something about the ones who work in the office always felt 'off' to me somehow. I honestly don't know how humans stand them otherwise. Ugh! Sorry Master! That was rude! This humble maid apologizes! Now I sound prejudiced towards rental drones.”
"I'm just happy that they haven't replaced us all with those things," Curt knew she couldn't possibly know, but the remark still hit way too close to him. "At least I know I can always find work with you if worst comes to worst Master."
Curt saw the kind look in Kacee's eyes, all that strength, but so gentle. Curt glanced at her desk again... and his blood turned to ice.
"Kacee... why are there rental drones in the portrait on your desk?" Curt asked, see Kacee with a dark skinned man and mustache with Kacee standing next to no less than three rhino rental drones.
"I... I rent them out to... to be my children? I think... Fox, ironic name for a human, yes I've heard the joke a hundred times, and I have tried to have children, but for some reason nothing ever happened, there was nothing medically wrong with either of us... So, we began renting out the drones to play the part... I wish they'd come in children size, I guess this world is full of paranoid people." Kacee looked confused, sad, and scared and befuddled all the same time.
Curt felt sick. Curt's changing of reality had brought Kacee's children into existence, with memories, hopes, fears, love... and whoever had this second object, had just as quickly wiped them away... The person with the other object was changing more people into husks, RIGHT NOW. And if there was no undo button like Curt's own... what could Curt do? Order them to act like the people in their memories? It reminded Curt of horror stories about vampires who pretended to be the person they were before they were killed using their host's memories.
Worse, it meant children were being changed as well, Curt didn't know WHY he thought they'd somehow be magically spared, that whoever was doing this would show mercy on them, but given Kacee's age... it confirmed, those drones had been children before. The trio of junior maids who knew the power of the ray gun had reported being on a bus full of drones, but seeing the photo, to Curt's own shame, somehow made it 'real'. He'd told himself before that it had just been a bus full of random people, instead of a school bus full of kids and teachers, as if that was somehow better!
Curt made a fist. He couldn't immunize everyone, but he could at least immunize those he knew.
Turning toward a man Curt was reasonably sure had just gotten through a breakup, he fired. The man’s skin grew white hair, with stripes of black randomly placed all over it, as his hips widened, and his chest pushed forward slightly, though her figure overall became petite. A tail made of dozens of strands of long coarse hair swished behind her. Her toes hardened into hooves as the rest of her feet moved upright, becoming digitigrade. The business casual suit he was wearing became a black and white dress and apron, but not the way most maids uniforms were. No, this one was zebra print, blending in nicely with her fur. Her face stretched forward into a long equine snout, with a wide black nose. Her ears rose up, becoming longer and thinner, while her hair shortened, save for a “mohawk” carrying her stripe pattern. (#495)
Then there was Phil, a guy who was always dozing off during meetings. A pull of the trigger, and he became thinner, gaining a pale yellow fur coat. His nose turned black, it and his jaw pushing forward to a pointed snout as his teeth sharpened. His ears became rounder as they moved up the sides of his head. His feet stretched longer when his shoes vanished, along with the rest of his clothing, cushioned pads forming on the bottoms as his toes curled into paws. Her hips grew wider and long tail pushed out from her spine. The cute meerkat woman looked attentively toward her Master. (#496)
“Is something wrong?” Curt asked.
“Er.. Sorry to bother you with personal stuff at work, Master. I was just wondering…” she tapped her fingers together nervously. “Well… You’re a guy, and I was kinda wondering if… well… you had any advice for getting a guy’s attention? I mean, there’s so much competition, with how many more women live in this town than men.”
Curt grinned sheepishly. “I don’t know if I’d be the right guy to ask. Maybe start by giving them a few compliments? Most guys these days don’t get a lot of them.”
“Thanks, Master,” The meerkat said, making a mental not of it.
Curt felt a little bad about disrupting the dating pool like he was doing, but in this case, it was a little more understandable.
The last man Curt knew wasn’t in a relationship was Owen, who’d always been a bit of a loner. When the bolt struck him, his skin began to grow thick, green scales with ridges running down her back. Her chest grew to a generous size, pressing against her shirt as it was turned into a black dress. Claws poked through the front of her fingers and toes, replacing her nails. A long, thick tail grew out through an opening in the back of her dress. Her ears shrank to become holes in the sides of her head, and her hair vanished while her pupils became slits. Finally, her jaw grew, and grew, and grew, both in length and width, dozens of new teeth coming in while her old ones grew shaper. The crocodile woman gave a friendly smile, and went back to drinking down her coffee. (#497)
The two remaining “safe” targets were a pair of women, one a new hire whose name Curt hadn’t learned yet, the other, Marissa, had been the head of several projects. With a pull of the trigger, the new hire’s legs became noticeably longer and thinner, pink scales covering her skin from the knees down, as her toes became longer, talons growing from the tips. Black feathers covered her thighs and hips, with white feathers growing over her upper torso. Gray feathers with black tips grew over her arms, forming a pair of wings, each with a pink-scaled hand, and talon-tipped fingers. As her clothing unraveled and faded away, long, black feathers grew from just above her rear. He head grew white feathers soon after, with a ring of red around her eyes. Her teeth shrank as her mouth grew into a hooked beak, and long black feathers replaced her hair, completing the look of the new secretary bird. (#498)
The last woman’s skin became firmer, hardening into chitin, and turned a bright green color, with a thin layer of white hair. As her clothing disappeared, her legs became thinner and longer, her feet growing little claws. Her lower body arched and grew longer, a second pair of legs, matching the first, growing in to help keep balance. A large abdomen swelled up behind her. Her still-human-ish upper body grew a second set of arms, and both they, and her original arms gained claws at their fingertips. Her chest went up at least two sizes, while her hair turned as white as the hair covering the rest of her body, while maintaining its original length. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, three more pairs opened up alongside the first, far smaller. A pair of pedipalps grew at the sides of her mouth, completing her transformation. And even as her body changed dramatically, and the office furniture altered to suit her new, eight-limbed anatomy, the spider kept complete focus on her work. (#499)
Curt looked at the “experience bar” on the gun’s HUD. Four hundred and ninety nine maids had been created. One maid short of the next upgrade. While he was curious to see what the next upgrade could be, he was out of targets here. Still, if he was going to keep up with the immunization, he would have more people to change eventually. No need to rush.
Curt turned to go back to his desk when he accidentally bumped into Dave.
“Oh, Sorry.” Curt shuffled out of his co-worker’s way, bumping against the edge of a desk where a pure black, male and rabbit-looking rental drone was typing away, completely still except for its hands. As far as Curt remembered, it’s desk was always on the bland side, it rarely spoke up at team meetings, though the reports he remembered it submitting always seemed to hint at a much greater intelligence than the other drones. He also recalled that nobody in the office ever talked to this drone. Not that would be odd, given most didn’t know they were people, used to be people, had never been people thanks to the changes in reality, ugh! And yet, according to Skyla there was still a living soul in there with memories it couldn't logically have in its new existence locked away except when needed.
Curt paused. At the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but feel he was remembering something wrong. Yes, now that he thought about it, he could remember one person that would occasionally try to talk to the rabbit drone, seemingly oblivious to its lack of response: Dave.
Curt knew that with the more patchwork reality changes this other gun made, Dave’s memory might not be the same as his, but still, it wouldn’t hurt to try and remember what had been lost.
“Hey, Dave,” Curt turned and called to Dave as the naked mouse continued to the water cooler.
“What’s up?” Dave replied, filling the little paper cup.
“Did you ever talk to this drone?” Curt pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
Dve chuckled. “Yeah, a few times. I know it probably makes me look crazy, but hey, the fact that they never talk back to you, also means they never ‘talk back’ to you, if you get what I’m saying. It’s a nicer conversation than I get with the boss, heh.”
“What sort of things did you talk about?”
“Work frustrations, a few secrets here and there, since hey, he’s never gonna tell anyone. He might put up a facade of hating everyone equally, but I think there’s some good in there, somewhere.”
Curt blinked. “He ‘hated everyone equally?’ I thought you said he didn’t talk back?”
“I… I mean, he…” Dave glanced to the left and the right, then set his hand on his chin. “It’s weird, but… I kinda remember both. Maybe I just dreamed about talking to it.” He shrugged.
‘If you dreamed about it, I wouldn’t remember it,’ Curt thought. “Anything else odd about it you remember?”
“Nah, sorry,” Dave took a sip from the cup. “Old K. Bunny there’s just someone I shoot the breeze to sometimes. Nothing else to it.”
“Dave, I think your program finish-” Meredith said as she walked around the corner, stopping when she saw Curt standing there. “Oh, Master! Sorry, I didn’t mean to take such a long break! I just, I figured you’d be gone for a while, and it wouldn’t hurt to-”
Curt held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it, I’m not one to stand in the way of such a close… friendship,” he smiled at the two knowingly. “I was just finishing up anyway, and I won’t need any assistance for a while. Take as long as you need… As long as you don’t distract Dave from HIS job.”
“Yes, Master,” Meredith bowed her head.
Curt went back to his seat the way he came, stopping by the window again. He looked out, still seeing the latex procession on the street below. Seeing dozens, if not hundreds of naked brightly colored latex animal people like-things in the street below. Knowing that before reality was altered, the drones were people, and that there were still living souls within... while the nudist maids he got a sense of freedom, liberation, not caring who judged them... For the drones, them being naked just gave a sense of dehumanization!
They seemed to have stopped, waiting outside a convenience store. Curt admitted, he’d was still a little curious about why Dave had nicknamed that drone, when so few of the others had names. Still, everything about it was inconsistent. No way to be sure he’d get an answer.
K. Bunny. He knew he’d never heard the name before, but something about it gave him a sense of deja vu.
He glanced out the window again, and saw a man leaving the store, the latex drones watching, and following him. Curt couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something about the man’s face and demeanor, even from a couple stories above, looked familiar to him.
K. B… And that face…
Curt blinked, then suddenly felt a massive headache, as dozens of conflicting memories poured into his mind at once.
K. Bunny…
K. Banny… the drone that always seemed to work out solutions to the most complex problems.
K. Bainy… The man that never talked to anyone, and was rarely spoken to in return
K. Bailey! The man that worked at the desk where the black rabbit drone worked now, but had the face of the man below!
That wasn’t supposed to be possible! None of this was supposed to be possible. If a person was turned into a drone, they couldn’t still exist as a human, could they?
Curt had to investigate this!
As his headache cleared, Curt looked out the window again. The man was already rounding the corner, and the latex following was keeping pace well. Even if Curt ran out now, this other “Kent” would likely be gone by the time he’d made it down the stairs.
He turned back toward the black bunny.
There may be other ways of tracking him home.
Curt pulled out a cell phone. “Skyla… Hi honey, sorry to bother you, but I think I may have found something important. Can you meet me after work? And bring a few things along…”
+++
Kent continued his walk through the city, steadily making his way back home. He passed through what had once been a busy shopping center. Thanks to his work, the noise, the litter, all of it had been cleaned. There were still those few people that were immune to the device’s effects, and a few more people that had stopped by since he’d left, but, for now, he let them be. No need to draw more attention to himself if they were also among the immune. He marched past store after store, watching as drones stood tirelessly at cash registers, moved items onto shelves, and cleaned up, all without a single complaint. They’d all been slaves of one kind or another, before, anyway. All he was doing was removing the illusion, he told himself.
Not to mention that there wasn’t a single hobo to be found anywhere on the path he’d taken. So his work was reducing the amount of suffering in the world. What better way to prevent misery than to make a population incapable of it! And with fewer mouths to feed, the remaining population could have a surplus, without having to deal with a lack of workforce.
As he entered the suburbs, he took time to appreciate the quiet. Birds were singing, the sun was shining, and there was hardly a neighbor to be seen. Mostly just drones, wordlessly going about the yards, keeping property values high as they tended to their ‘homes.’
The peace was interrupted by a few of the immune, a group of children, laughing and playing with water guns. Kent sighed, and tried to move past them quickly, but was caught in the spray anyway. He sneered, and turned toward the kids.
“Oh, sorry, Mister,” the little robin maid said. “We didn’t mean to hit you.”
The kids went quiet as all the drones, in unison, turned their heads toward their owner, as if anticipating an order. The young maids backed away slowly, eyes wide with fear.
Kent just shook his head. “Don’t let it happen again,” he spat, before continuing on his way. He wished he could have silenced them as easily as he had the people that had become his drones. But even he didn’t want to outright kill a child. And even if he did, the gun’s perception filter likely wouldn’t let his drones get away with literal murder. And for now, the kids had quieted down, anyway. Same difference.
Kent finally reached his home, and stepped inside. Or rather, the house of his native counterpart in this world. Changing him first had been one of Kent’s best ideas. All the IDs, the passwords, everything was already set up for him, removing so much legal red tape that would have caused trouble if he’d otherwise appeared out of nowhere.
The house was spotless, and dinner was already prepared for him, another drone standing near the table to clean that up once he’d finished eating, but he ignored the food for now. Instead, he had the purple chimera follow him into his basement, where his whiteboard and map of the city sat.
He made adjustments to the board to account for the new stock he had today. He was approaching nine-hundred, total. Not much of a population change, in a city of around thirty-five thousand, but enough that without those reality alterations and the perception filter, things would definitely be seen as off.
Truth be told, at this point, he knew that he didn’t really need any more drones. Even renting the drones out for what amounted to half of a day of minimum wage pay, and accounting for various business taxes, only around twenty would be needed to provide funds for a cushy, comfortable existence. Add in a few more to clean his house and maintain his property and he was set. Regardless, he’d changed more anyway, so there would always be a few on hand when he had new customers making offers. It would have looked suspicious to turn down too many buyers.
But once he didn’t need to test people’s immunity to his gun to find the other gun’s owner, he could stop with this surplus nonsense. Too much stock, and managing it would become a hassle unless he hired some paper-pushers, introducing fickle, needy, error-prone humans back into the system again.
He moved to the map, where the purple chimera was already finishing up marking the spots untransformable individuals had been found.
He smiled as he saw the pattern form. In the dead center of this mass of markings was the Evenson estate. Of course. Had it not been for that accursed perception filter, he might have suspected this earlier. So many of those he couldn’t change worked for this Evenson in one way or another. And if some useless plebeian stumbled onto this immense power, of course they would make themselves the center of attention, the most important man in town. This “Evenson” probably spent every day making loud, obnoxious parties, watching gleefully as his servants blindly followed his every whim, delighting in their utterly endless, banal praise for him. Well, it would be time to put a stop to all that soon enough. He had to act fast. Kent doubted this Evenson would be any kind of clever, certainly not enough to figure out he was behind the drones, but he wanted to be sure he’d never be caught in the transformative crossfire.
He looked around the house briefly. No sign of the black rabbit. It seemed his counterpart in this world was caught in traffic, and would probably be late. No matter. With so many drones, he wouldn’t need to rally every single one. And if he was short on numbers, he could always add more.