I looked at the little thing I had in my hand. It had a white head and a white leg. But as I looked closer, its head looked very familiar. It was my own head. And my own arm. So I wasn't just fused with a fly, the fly was fused with me as well. So the next question was, how do we undo this? As I looked at the thing in my hand, I saw the two larger flies pressing a few buttons on their console. After a few seconds, this one egg-shaped chamber, a pod as those two kept calling it, created a number sparks, which somehow caused a bolt of lightening to appear in the other pod. The flies pressed a few more buttons, which opened the door to the other pod. As it opened, smoke crept out. That couldn't be right, I realized, as there was no smoke when I was inside that thing.
"Smoke?" the small fly thought the same thing by the sound of it.
"Fusing organic matter with mechanics is new, even for this machine." the bigger one said, "Of course it may blow a few fuses."
"Let's hope it's all it is." the smaller one said, as he made his way toward the pod.
He approached it slowly, as if he expected something to come out. But no matter how slow he went, nothing would come out. He must have decided there was nothing to be afraid of, because he then just ran toward it. He waved his hands, trying to push away the smoke, which must have let him see more clearly what was inside there. He picked it up, then turned to us. He held up one cat, and what looked like a gray piece of meat.
"The good news is, we have fused the synthetic brain with the cat's head." the bigger one sounded pleased.
"The bad news is, the cat's dead." the smaller one replied.
Was this what they were trying to do? Fuse people with electric machines? What for? Somehow, this created images inside my head. I remembered men in silver bodies, and pale people in black outfits, both capable of turning people into machines. But for some reason, I couldn't remember what they were called. I vaguely remembered these people were dangerous, but not why. I looked at the fly in my hand. If it had my head and arm, chances were it had some of my memories as well. I couldn't know what the fly was thinking, but it too wouldn't have liked its situation any more than I did. So I had to believe that we could help each other out. I looked at the other two. They had already started doing something with their computers. Whatever it was they needed to do, they were too busy with that to notice what I was doing. So I turned around, placed the fly on the table behind me, and let it do what it had to do.
It put me down on that shiny ground next to him. At this height, I was close to that pocket where he had that mosquito. But even so, how could I take it out? I could think of nothing else but run toward it. With this strange leg, I pointed at the pocket. It seemed to understand what I wanted, because it reached inside the pocket and took the mosquito out. It placed it next to me. This mosquito, even though I had never seen it before, I felt as though I had. I even realized that when it was this big, it looked even scarier than when it fit in the palm of my hand. A hand, I then understood that was what this lower part of my leg was called. And these tentacles were called fingers.
"You had one of those mosquitoes?" I hadn't even heard Andre buzz his way to me.
He took a look at the mosquito. I could not describe that look on his face if I wanted to. It contorted into so many ways. Was this what it was like to be human? To change your face at will? In fact, thinking about it, why did I even want to describe that look on his face? This human brain of mine was starting to be far too complicated for me. This thought must have distracted me for long, because Andre had somehow managed to take the mosquito's head off while I wasn't looking.
"It's technology is far above anything I've seen before." Andre told me, "But every machine follows the same laws of physics, so I should be able to figure out it what does what, and how to reprogram it."
He used words I didn't know, but I didn't care. Before Andre could say or do anything else, the thing that had my head and claw tapped on the ground. It wanted my attention? I looked, and saw it draw something on the ground. It was a line, with two others connected to it. For some reason, I recognized it as "F". Next to that, it drew another line, to which it drew a semi-circle, and another line attached to that one. "R" I thought. Next to that, just a line. Nothing connected to it or anything, just the one line. An "I". Next to that, it drew another line. At the top of this line, it drew another one. It did the same with the bottom, and the same with the middle. This looked like an "E". After that, it drew a new line, which it drew from the bottom upwards, from the top another line down, and then up again. This looked like an "N". I started wondering why I recognized the meaning of his drawings, even though I had never seen them before. It even scared me when I started to refer to "it" as "him" all the sudden. I had to ban that thought, because he had drawn something else. A line, with a huge semi-circle. This was a "D". I tried to piece together what those letters meant, but he wasn't done. He drew one last line, but it wasn't a straight one. This one was curved, like a worm. An "S". So he drew an "F", "R", "I", "E", "N", "D" and an "S". "Friends"? Friends... it rung a bell (why did that phrase keep popping up?). For some reason I kept remembering names of people I didn't know. Saya and Merlin. Is that what they were? Friends? I wasn't sure what he expected, but something told me that nodding was the best response. He then pointed at his eyes, then at the door. He wanted me to go out and look for his friends. I started flapping my wings and flew away.
My life suddenly lied in the hands of a one-centimeter long fly. Even though it shared my brain, there was no telling if it understood what I wanted it to do. On top of that, who was this other fly that was helping him? It too had a human head and arm. It even spoke, though I couldn't make out what it was saying. Whatever it was, it had started fiddling with that metal bug. I looked at the other two. They were still too busy with their computer. But as I looked at the smaller bug, it dawned on my what this fly could be. If I somehow ended up with the head and claw of a fly, much like this lab-coat fly, and there was a fly with my head and arm, would it be possible if this lab-coat fly's head and arm were fused with that of a fly? It would explain why it could fiddle with the metal bug.
"I think I see the problem." the lab-coat fly said, "All we've done so far is give the computer all the properties of what makes up a living organism, but it doesn't understand what we would call life."
"So it did exactly what we told it to do, but not what we meant for it to do." the larger one replied.
"It seems that way."
"Ms. Godfrey won't like this."
"Lucky for us, she doesn't have to." the lab-coat fly said, "At least, as long as Magneto holds up his end of the bargain."
Magneto? There was a name I hadn't heard before. If I understood what they were saying right, they were trying to fuse people and machines together because this Godfrey woman asked them to, but they were planning to betray her, and this Magneto, whoever or whatever that is, was supposed to help them. Were these two flies friends or foes? And in either case, a friend or for to whom? I felt a sting in my head as I thought about this. This fly-brain gave me too much pain, I hoped it would be over soon.