64 Explanation

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I went to bed that night a little shaken, I did an entire scan of my brain, but I couldn't find any anomalies. Something in the devil fruit had reached in and messed with my head. That fact did not sit well with me at all. But I had no idea how to fix it, so I pushed the problem to the side, so I had room to focus on my most recent breakthrough.

Back in the lab, I started to replicate the serum which I had officially named Darwin. It had an uncanny ability to mutate the consumer so it could survive a dire situation. I filled capsules with the Darwin Serum when the door opened behind me, and Evos walked in.

"You wanted to show me something, Soren?" Evos asked while putting on a lab coat and a pair of gloves. "You look horrible. Did you have a bad dream?"

"I'm thirteen now. I don't have nightmares. Just show me your project all ready." Not pushing the matter anymore, I turned around holding a vial of the Darwin Serum, "I had a breakthrough yesterday. After running hundreds of tests, I was able to predict the mutations the subject would undergo when exposed to the serum."

I handed Evos the notes, and he started to flip through them, "I don't understand. You used the chaos to predict a pattern. Isn't that like a double negative?" Stroking my chin, I thought about how to explain it, "I didn't use chaos; I used chaos theory, which is somehow different and the same. So let me break it down, chaos theory the study that there are underlying patterns, constant feedback loops, repetition, fractals, and self-organization within the apparent randomness of chaotic systems. Did you get all that?"

I could tell by the look on his face that he did not. Sighing, I rushed about the lab gathering the materials I needed before putting them all together. "Ah, Soren, what is that?"

"This, my boy, is a double pendulum. Now, this is a perfect example. Now, if I hold it up here, what do you think will happen? Don't answer that because you don't know." I dropped the pendulum, and it began to swing around wildly within an arc in an erratic matter.

Stopping it after a minute, I looked back over at Evos, "Now what if I drop it but a centimeter lower." Again it was a rhetorical question, so I dropped the device again, and it started to swing but in an entirely different pattern.

"See, based on the initial conditions, the outcome can change, which at first seems unpredictable, but there are several mathematical formulas to calculate the possible trajectory of the pendulum." I watched as Evos' eyes lit up in understanding, "It's not about understanding the action but the conditions the action is performed under."

I clapped Evos on the back, "Now you're getting it. Now we just need to do some more testing to create a formula of our own. Once we discover one, we can start the fun part."

"What's the fun part?" I smiled evilly, "Why human experimentation, of course." Evos frowned, "That's not a good joke, captain." I didn't tell him that I wasn't joking, and we started to perform more experiments.

I made more homunculi and started to put them through the works. While most mutated as expected, there was a 10% chance for a random mutation to occur. And once it was verified, I was ready to perform the final test.

When I created my homunculi, I made them without pain receptors or cognitive, so they couldn't process what was happening to their bodies. But if I wanted to use the serum on others, I had to see the effect it entirely had on the brain.

"Evos, if you don't want to say I understand." I looked down at the teenager, but his eyes were steadfast, "I want to stay. I know why you have to do this and why I might have to do it in the future."

I nodded and created a homunculus. There was a noticeable difference in the eyes of this one. Its eyes were clear and aware of its surroundings. Once it was in the hood, I exposed it to the serum and watched it transform.

I had decided to use the controlled experiment creating a vacuum, but instead of the regular route that the rest had undergone, the homunculus started to change.

"Evos, get out of here now!" The urgency in my voice jumped started Evos as he ran out of the lab and barred the door behind him. Running over to the valve, I turned it, letting all the air in at once.

At first, the creature was only one foot tall with basic human features. But as the air hit its skin, it started to change. I watched over the next five minutes as the homunculi changed, its arms and feet melding into the body with its neck fusing into the body.

Its skin peeled and cracked, revealing white iridescent scales underneath. Its eyes were the final thing to change, turning to slits with rainbow pupils. When the transformation finished, there was a snake the length of my arm curled into a coil.

Opening the hood, I reached in and stretched out my arm. The reptile moved slowly, wrapping around my arm. "I don't understand what happened."

'I...evolved...master.' I jumped slightly and looked down at the snake, "You understand English."

'If that is the language you speak then yes.' The creature then proceeded to slither up my arm and wrap around my neck, 'I am tired, I go to sssleep. Massster isss warm.'

"Evos, get back in here. It's safe now." The door opened, and Evos hesitantly stepped in, "Is that the homunculus. What happened? None of the other subjects reacted like this."

"Honestly, I don't know, but after this, I might want to scrap the entire project. When I created it, somehow, it imprinted on me. Even with its limited psych, it was able to gain sentience. It called me master."