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Description
The image came out rather janky - my apologies. The detail starts to break down with too many figures involved.

Part One:

Mature Content

Managing one of BioForge's research and development wings, Cordelia had learned to treat the gene-engineers beneath her as the creative types that they were. They were artists, insular, each laser-focused on their particular niches. They did their best work alone, in the quiet seclusion of their laboratories.

Her management style was hands-off, to say the least. Mostly she handled the day-to-day running of the research complex, making sure the lights stayed on, and joked that she felt more like a janitor than anything else. Now and then, one of her gene engineers would poke his or her head out of their laboratory, wild-haired and pale, screeching for her to requisition them a particular plasmid or obscure extremophile bacteria or requesting to be re-sleeved into a neurodivergent SUB body capable of approaching a problem from a different angle, and she would facilitate that, usually by writing a large number of zeroes onto a very long cheque. The scientist would then vanish back to their research, and she might not see them again for months.

It was a neat arrangement. She didn't bother them and, in return, they made billions in profit for the company with the wonders of bespoke biology they periodically produced.

Unique organisms for unique problems, that was where BioForge excelled. While other manufacturers were churning out their 12th Generation of Catgirl SUBs for their jaded consumers ('Now With BIGGERER Breasts!™'), BioForge had loftier ambitions. One day, they hoped, their creations would be walking on the surface of the moon and would leave the spacesuit at home. For now, they were doing good work for companies operating in hazardous conditions. Their new carapace designs were showing promise for deep-sea divers on offshore oil rigs.

FleshForge had thousands of gene-engineers on the books, and many more that the company paid handsomely just to keep their neural patterns on ice, purely to deny their competitors their expertise. Cordelia herself managed almost a hundred and it was for this reason that Doctor Hayes's absence had gone unnoticed for so long.

A quiet scientist, Hayes had a private research area down in the second basement behind a sterile, airlocked door that granted a great deal of privacy. His particular niche -obsession was a better word- was synaptic streamlining. In the silicone age, he might have been an expert in data compression or a kook trying to get Doom to run on a pregnancy test microchip. In the genetic age, he pursued miniaturization, seeking to squeeze the maximum potential from the SUB neural tissue onto which minds were written. While other scientists might wonder about a human brain using 100% of its potential, Doctor Hayes was more interested in 1/10th of a brain running at 1000%.

The man's latest requisitions made for baffling reading. Rather than technical equipment, most of his funding was being spent on food - large sacks of candy and sweet fruits, huge slabs of fresh meat, all of it delivered daily in vast quantities. More than one man could ever hope to eat. What could the man be doing with it all? She ventured into the lower levels to see for herself, shuffling past the pallets of bulk buy soda that obscured the entrance to his laboratory. She keyed in the access code to his laboratory. The terminal flashed red. He had changed his code...

Worrying. But not enough for her to risk overriding the man's quarantine. All that mattered were results. She would arrange a meeting in the month - if he had something to show for his eccentricities, it wouldn't be a problem. In the meantime, she was sure the man had everything under control.

Within the laboratory, Doctor Hayes #781 sat on the edge of the cup and pushed his legs through the surface tension of the soda. At this scale, the liquid had a gooey viscosity to it, though the bubbles helped. And they gave delightful relief as they hissed and popped against his feverish body.

His skin steamed. A sticky, sugary residue soon accumulated on his body and wings as the liquid evaporated. He would have preferred to sit beneath the air conditioner vent, but a hundred copies had already claimed the area, gathered in a fluttering swarm that coated the bench, their wings angled into the draft of cold air to attain the maximum cooling.

Other prototypes were experiencing the opposite problem - their metabolisms were too slow, and their human-shaped bodies poorly suited for retaining heat at so small a scale. These hypothermic individuals had paired up with the hyperthermic models, and mixed clusters of Hayeses pressed together across the laboratory, desperately trying to find an equilibrium by sharing their body heat. Some groupings had devolved into tiny orgies, as their minds frayed. A cloud of feral Hayeses flittered and fought over the food pile, glutting themselves on high-sugar foods to fuel their deteriorating biology.

Hayes #781 had only been alive for a few minutes but already he sensed his time growing short. He'd overclocked the metabolism on the newest iteration as much as he dared. Too much. "The candle that burns twice as bright" and all that... He sensed that, if he ever left the cooling liquid, this tiny form would soon slip into heatstroke.

Doctor Hayes #1, the original, the human, from which #781 had downloaded so recently, had already returned to his digital drawing board, shaking his head with glacial sluggishness. "Pity..." he mooed, a deep, slow drawl to #781's accelerated ears. Two versions of him sat on his shoulders, already whispering new ideas in his ears.

Two other versions shared the cup. They attended to each other's bodies, scraping away the sticky residue. "What if we increase blood flow to the wings? We can use them to radiate heat. That should give us another percent or two."

"The heart can't take the extra strain. We already tried that."

"Did we?" muttered the other, befuddled. "I don't... I don't remember... Well what if we tried increasing the blood flow to the-?"

"You just suggested that," said the first.

"Did I? I don't... remember..."

They had each lost a great deal of their minds in their transfers. There was only so much storage space in a brain the size of a grain of rice. Each of them now existed as a fraction of the memories and personality that was Hayes #1. What part am I missing? #781 wondered. He looked around at the chaos, at the grotesque waste of semi-human life, and then up at the haggard state of his human body, which he had inhabited until so recently. How tired he looked. A sense of calm horror came over him.

Ah. So that was the part he'd lost - his blinkered obsession. He saw he was the only one of him who saw this travesty for what it was.

Description
The image came out rather janky - my apologies. The detail starts to break down with too many figures involved.

Part One:

Mature Content

Managing one of BioForge's research and development wings, Cordelia had learned to treat the gene-engineers beneath her as the creative types that they were. They were artists, insular, each laser-focused on their particular niches. They did their best work alone, in the quiet seclusion of their laboratories.

Her management style was hands-off, to say the least. Mostly she handled the day-to-day running of the research complex, making sure the lights stayed on, and joked that she felt more like a janitor than anything else. Now and then, one of her gene engineers would poke his or her head out of their laboratory, wild-haired and pale, screeching for her to requisition them a particular plasmid or obscure extremophile bacteria or requesting to be re-sleeved into a neurodivergent SUB body capable of approaching a problem from a different angle, and she would facilitate that, usually by writing a large number of zeroes onto a very long cheque. The scientist would then vanish back to their research, and she might not see them again for months.

It was a neat arrangement. She didn't bother them and, in return, they made billions in profit for the company with the wonders of bespoke biology they periodically produced.

Unique organisms for unique problems, that was where BioForge excelled. While other manufacturers were churning out their 12th Generation of Catgirl SUBs for their jaded consumers ('Now With BIGGERER Breasts!™'), BioForge had loftier ambitions. One day, they hoped, their creations would be walking on the surface of the moon and would leave the spacesuit at home. For now, they were doing good work for companies operating in hazardous conditions. Their new carapace designs were showing promise for deep-sea divers on offshore oil rigs.

FleshForge had thousands of gene-engineers on the books, and many more that the company paid handsomely just to keep their neural patterns on ice, purely to deny their competitors their expertise. Cordelia herself managed almost a hundred and it was for this reason that Doctor Hayes's absence had gone unnoticed for so long.

A quiet scientist, Hayes had a private research area down in the second basement behind a sterile, airlocked door that granted a great deal of privacy. His particular niche -obsession was a better word- was synaptic streamlining. In the silicone age, he might have been an expert in data compression or a kook trying to get Doom to run on a pregnancy test microchip. In the genetic age, he pursued miniaturization, seeking to squeeze the maximum potential from the SUB neural tissue onto which minds were written. While other scientists might wonder about a human brain using 100% of its potential, Doctor Hayes was more interested in 1/10th of a brain running at 1000%.

The man's latest requisitions made for baffling reading. Rather than technical equipment, most of his funding was being spent on food - large sacks of candy and sweet fruits, huge slabs of fresh meat, all of it delivered daily in vast quantities. More than one man could ever hope to eat. What could the man be doing with it all? She ventured into the lower levels to see for herself, shuffling past the pallets of bulk buy soda that obscured the entrance to his laboratory. She keyed in the access code to his laboratory. The terminal flashed red. He had changed his code...

Worrying. But not enough for her to risk overriding the man's quarantine. All that mattered were results. She would arrange a meeting in the month - if he had something to show for his eccentricities, it wouldn't be a problem. In the meantime, she was sure the man had everything under control.

Within the laboratory, Doctor Hayes #781 sat on the edge of the cup and pushed his legs through the surface tension of the soda. At this scale, the liquid had a gooey viscosity to it, though the bubbles helped. And they gave delightful relief as they hissed and popped against his feverish body.

His skin steamed. A sticky, sugary residue soon accumulated on his body and wings as the liquid evaporated. He would have preferred to sit beneath the air conditioner vent, but a hundred copies had already claimed the area, gathered in a fluttering swarm that coated the bench, their wings angled into the draft of cold air to attain the maximum cooling.

Other prototypes were experiencing the opposite problem - their metabolisms were too slow, and their human-shaped bodies poorly suited for retaining heat at so small a scale. These hypothermic individuals had paired up with the hyperthermic models, and mixed clusters of Hayeses pressed together across the laboratory, desperately trying to find an equilibrium by sharing their body heat. Some groupings had devolved into tiny orgies, as their minds frayed. A cloud of feral Hayeses flittered and fought over the food pile, glutting themselves on high-sugar foods to fuel their deteriorating biology.

Hayes #781 had only been alive for a few minutes but already he sensed his time growing short. He'd overclocked the metabolism on the newest iteration as much as he dared. Too much. "The candle that burns twice as bright" and all that... He sensed that, if he ever left the cooling liquid, this tiny form would soon slip into heatstroke.

Doctor Hayes #1, the original, the human, from which #781 had downloaded so recently, had already returned to his digital drawing board, shaking his head with glacial sluggishness. "Pity..." he mooed, a deep, slow drawl to #781's accelerated ears. Two versions of him sat on his shoulders, already whispering new ideas in his ears.

Two other versions shared the cup. They attended to each other's bodies, scraping away the sticky residue. "What if we increase blood flow to the wings? We can use them to radiate heat. That should give us another percent or two."

"The heart can't take the extra strain. We already tried that."

"Did we?" muttered the other, befuddled. "I don't... I don't remember... Well what if we tried increasing the blood flow to the-?"

"You just suggested that," said the first.

"Did I? I don't... remember..."

They had each lost a great deal of their minds in their transfers. There was only so much storage space in a brain the size of a grain of rice. Each of them now existed as a fraction of the memories and personality that was Hayes #1. What part am I missing? #781 wondered. He looked around at the chaos, at the grotesque waste of semi-human life, and then up at the haggard state of his human body, which he had inhabited until so recently. How tired he looked. A sense of calm horror came over him.

Ah. So that was the part he'd lost - his blinkered obsession. He saw he was the only one of him who saw this travesty for what it was.