14 14. A changed man

Dwax stepped out of the metamorphosis pod. He was unrecognizable. He had the golden eyes of the lion. He wasn't malnourished anymore, and his stature had changed. This stature was what he was supposed to be before he starved in the street for years. He wasn't rippling with muscles; he wasn't unnaturally beautiful. He had become the actual, real Dwax. He admired himself in the mirror. His body gave him confidence.

I got dressed and walked out of the door. The first person he saw was Warrow. Warrow tried to get up. Waarrow had to be very careful when he tried to move. Because of the staggering amount of nerve endings, Chip had a hard time catching up. It was lagging. Warrow waked toward Dwax like a zombie and hugged him.

"Dwax, my boy, welcome back."

When Dwax saw Warrow moving around, joy filled his heart.

"Warrow, you are moving!" Dwax saw the metal component of the chip on Warrow's head.

"You got the chip installed."

Warrow smiled.

"That was the plan, haha!" He started walking with Dwax, putting his hand on Dwax's back as a body language of closeness and trust. "I can take care of myself now. Even though I'm clumsy, I'm alright as long as I'm careful. I reckon I could take care of plants at this stage."

He stopped for a second and his eyes filled with emotions. "Did I ever tell you how grateful I am to you? I'm glad you didn't listen to me when I requested you to kill me."

Dwax smiled at him.

"Don't fret, old man. Since you could move better now, we could hang out and do some things together." Dwax leaned in and said, "We could get some good alcohol from a nice bar." Warrow smiled, and the rows of sharp teeth made themselves known.

He waddled toward Dong Jun.

"Dong Jun, am I allergic to alcohol? Is there anything I should be concerned about?" He had drunk alcohol, but it was an unnecessary risk.

Dong Jun stopped for a second, annoyed.

"How should I know?" After the initial, instinctual mean reaction was gone, her face went soft.

"You can test something's toxicity by ingesting a minuscule amount of it to see if you have a reaction."

Warrow rubbed his hands together. He had already tested his new body for its alcohol tolerance.

"Man, this is going to be good."

For some reason, the scene of him doing so crept Dong Jun out.

"Please don't do that."

Warrow stopped acting like a shitfly that was cleaning its head and wings.

"Sorry."

Dong Jun immediately felt bad about rebuking Warrow. It was just creepy when something man-shaped and covered in chitin acted like a shitfly.

"Bring me a bottle too when you are at it.

Warrow and Dwax went out, looking for a liquor store, bar, or something equivalent. They walked out to see Kahara sunbathing.

"Hey Kahara."

Kahara lifted her sunglasses and smiled when she saw Dwax.

"Dwax! You've become so handsome. Look at you!" She rushed at Dwax and started poking at his toned body with her fingers.

Dwax doubled over and laughed. "Ahaha! Stop it! Ahaha!"

Warrow put his hand on Kahara's shoulder and said,

"We are going to look for some good alcohol. We will drink from the top shelf. Do you want to come with us? It'll be fun."

She lifted her finger and requested a minute. She came back with some weapons.

"Fuck knows what's out there. Better safe than sorry."

The three started to walk around the simple little town that had been formed around the research facilities.

"Man, not a single titty bar around. What a dreadful town!" Kahara laughed. They made their way to a supermarket and grabbed some potato chips. They walked right by the donkey-blinding, low-quality alcohol that supermarkets sell. They wanted to drink like kings.

They walked by someone's garage and almost failed to notice the anomaly.

"Oh fuck, what is that?"

The open garage was covered with eggs from floor to ceiling. There was a skeleton sitting in the chair, covered in eggs too.

"Kahara, do you have a phone with you? Let's take pictures and leave. It looks creepy, but it might be benign. Hell, it may be beneficial."

When he was a hobo, he would've rejoiced at the sight. It was all the little eggs he could eat. It wasn't a stretch to think that all the other things in nature needed these eggs to sustain themselves. Dwax had gained an instinctual understanding of the food chain through empathy. As in, asking himself, "What if I was a hungry little bird?"

"Let's not distract ourselves too much."

Several rats ran through the road in front of them. Some city sewers were full of these rats before the catastrophe. It wasn't a surprise that some of them survived. The sewers were off-limits to humans by law. Otherwise, cities would have dead homeless people in their sewers every time it rained. Hobos could only eat rats that wandered to the surface.

Dwax instinctively focused on the rats but held himself back. He wasn't homeless anymore. He wanted to chase them and lunge at them. Cook them.

He quickly composed himself and tried to avoid signaling to his companions that he just wanted to eat a rat. Eating rats was not a dignified thing to do in the eyes of these middle-class people. They didn't have that desperate mindset. Dwax wanted to fit in and that included not running after every critter he saw.

They found a liquor store near a car charging station. Its vicinity was littered with corpses.

"Oh fuck, these dead motherfuckers might've drank it all." Warrow cursed.

Dwax walked in and brought out four bottles.

"They cannot drink the whole store. These were what was left from their little death party. "

Kahara took the bottle and carefully opened it. It was some fancy whiskey. Warrow said,

"Can someone pour it into my mouth? I'm clumsy; I would drop this bottle and shatter it into a thousand pieces." Kahara poured some for Warrow. They opened the chip bags and sat on the bench fifty meters from the liquor store. They didn't want to eat their chips among the corpses.

About halfway through the bag, they heard a rustling from the bushes. Filled with alertness, Dwax picked up his axe and turned around.

There she was. A malnourished little girl with goat eyes. She had survived the catastrophe with a benign mutation. Dwax put the axe on the ground and picked the little girl up. He pinched her cheek and asked.

"Hello, sweetie, what is your name?"

The little girl answered.

"Lara."

Kahara approached the girl and said,

"Hey, Lara, are you hungry?"

Lara nodded, a bit shy.

"Let's get you some food, alright?"

Drunk, Kahara started crying, startled, Lara started crying too. The four of them made their way back to the lab. They fed Lara a bit of soup and introduced her to the immediate family of the researcher who had been unfrozen recently. Dwax was hoping that one of the researchers or their family would take her in.

Dong Jun said,

"Can three of you put up signs for any strugglers out there? They should come and join us. We are lacking manpower to a staggering degree. Also, it's dangerous out there. We have seeds that wouldn't become infertile after two replantings. We can actually farm and eat well. Normal seeds are going to go extinct because they are designed that way. We will use our database to spread seeds that aren't saddled with that system."

The three nodded. It made sense.

"These things aren't easy." Dwax thought to himself. Dwax knew some things about dealing with people. The homeless population was a tight-knit community. Whenever there was a job with no questions asked, the homeless would spread the word, and they could eat that month. They would do this for the times when someone else found a job that required manpower; they would be tipped off too. Such goodness existed even among the lowest scum. However, they were the kind of people who would whack you and try to sell your organs. Every human being you choose to associate with is a risk.

"We need police, rule, and law."

Dong Jun was taken aback. She didn't expect the ignorant and homeless Dwax to hit the nail on the head. She had always underestimated him when it came to intellectual matters.

Dong Jun sighed.

"There is no point in reinventing the wheel. We will become a database-assisted democracy, with this lab being an essential private company. I'm not giving up my power over this lab to some bureaucrats. And those bureaucrats are going to have to listen to me when it comes to the subjects that involve this lab. I can't let people who know nothing about genetics meddle with me."

Dwax rolled his eyes. Most of the things that are going to involve this lab. She practically is going to rule society from the shadows.