“With great power comes great irresponsibility!” - somebody’s dead uncle

Aiden returned to his home for the hospital room was… alien to him. He felt like an intruder, unwelcome within its space.

Not that this place was any different.

A cramped apartment in some backward city. The entrance lock was broken and required a specific push to get the door open. When he entered, Aiden wrinkled his nose as he remembered the previous inhabitant had let things slip. Sighing like a tired mother as he found a duster that had accumulated dust, he went about cleaning up the small apartment. Throwing open the windows and letting fresh air in, collecting trash into plastic bags and rearranging the strewn pillows and blankets. It was work, it was mundanity, it was one of the few things keeping him sane.

There was a single room in this apartment that was already clean when he found it, and its contents remain undisturbed from the day its owner left.

Only when every dirty stain was annihilated, the floor mopped, the counters dusted, the trash thrown out and the bed done, did he sit by the kitchen counter. The couch had long been sold off by his previous self, along with many other luxuries he didn’t need, an act he had to acknowledge. For an attempt was still made.

“What do I do now?” he asked himself.

Shower up and visit the bank, ascertain the degree of hopelessness his financial situation was? Hope that whatever stipend he was given would be enough to last some more time?

Begin looking for job listings? Though Aiden Lu had plenty of experience, Aiden Bu did not and he would be working with his resume.

But these considerations were distractions. That didn’t detract from their value, but they were still a normality he was trying to focus on when his situation was very much not that.

“I’m just making the best of what I’ve got.”

He opened his eyes. One way or another, he was stuck here, and if there was one thing Aiden loathed to be, it was unprepared. To best adapt to this world, he needed to determine the full breadth of the resources at his disposal. Thus, he took a kitchen knife and pricked his finger. Watching in real-time as a droplet of blood seeped out before the wound scabbed over.

The living tattoo was resting on his elbow, biting its own tail as it seemed to rest in a coil.

Hopping off the chair, he lifted it, though he did so easily, it was likely a product of his younger body, not anything relating to his power. He didn’t feel particularly tired either, even after deep cleaning every nook and cranny of the house, but that too could be attributed to his younger body. He wasn’t the tallest, but for an Asian, 173 centimetres was pretty good.

Other than his myopia, he was at his physical prime, with the added caveat that his wounds healed faster.

And the strange serpent thing.

He tapped it, rousing it awake as it uncoiled around his skin. “What do you do…”

The snake turned to him as he spoke. It didn’t seem to have a physical body at all, appearing like a living tattoo or patch of moving scales on his skin, its movements were strange, appearing completely 2D.

“You can hear me?”

Its tongue flicked out, acknowledgement perhaps? Aiden held out his arm, “Show me what you can do.”

The forked tongue flicked again, as it seemed to wrap around his arm, moving its head in every direction, due to its 2D nature, Aiden didn’t realise it was searching the room till it found what it was looking for.

“The fork?” he asked as it seemed to gesture at the implement drying on the rack.

Aiden walked forward, grabbing the fork with the arm that had the snake. The moment he did so, the snake struck, like lightning it moved, slithering off his arm and onto the fork.

He dropped the fork as it bent and coiled around his finger.

Reflexively taking a step back as the fork fell to the floor with a metallic clang, he saw it was covered in white scales as it slithered forward.

He gingerly extended a finger, letting the snake coil around it, “I see…”

The prongs had separated, becoming a poor approximation of a snakehead with the middle two prongs bent down to form the lower jaw and the outer ones bent over like fangs. The eyes of the snake were positioned on the back of the forkhead, which itself had curled slightly to imitate a rounded head.

“Could you come back?”

The snake did so, slithering off the fork as if shedding skin, slithering back onto Aiden’s own hand, leaving him holding an oddly gnarled fork.

“Transformation still stays even though it left…” he muttered as he pulled off the fork coiled around his finger.

Notably, though it was animate, it still had the properties of the original material, given the metallic clang when it had hit the floor.

“Go back on?”

The snake obeyed, slithering off his finger and onto the fork. A moving picture as it transitioned mediums.

He let it rest on the kitchen counter, “Could you straighten yourself back into a fork?”

It seemed to look at him quizzically, an expression it somehow pulled off with a fork face. It laid itself straight, but it couldn’t straighten its prongs, which had taken the shape of its fangs.

And the first of many casualties lost to Aiden’s power was a fork.

“Damnit,” he muttered. Genuinely more grieved by the loss of silverware than the understanding of his power. “I suppose that’s yours now…” he held out his arm, letting it coil around his wrist like a bracelet. “Though I don’t want to lose a fork every time I use you…”

He went around the room, towards his work desk. Soon pulling out a spare notebook. Cleanly ripping out a page, he went to work folding, soon an origami snake lay across his desk.

“Try this,” he said, placing his arm near his creation.

The snake booped the paper construct with its nose before it slithered off the fork and onto the origami. Now that Aiden knew what he was looking for, he saw that when the snake moved off the fork, it almost looked like ink dripping off and onto the paper, but the ink held a solid 2D form.

It tested the body, slithering around the desk with what felt like greater dexterity compared to when it was in the fork body before it shook its head. Raising an eyebrow, Aiden patted the small ‘creature’, feeling the creases of its paper. While textually it felt like the scales of a snake, it also bent softly like the paper it inhabited. “So paper is easier to move in but more fragile…”

The snake nodded, before booping its head onto the fork still wrapped around his wrist. Transferring itself onto it once again.

The snake seemed intelligent, enough to answer his questions, if simply.

“Could I make more of you?” The fork nodded. “Does it have to be a snake?” The fork shook its head.

He ripped another piece of paper, this time folding it into the shape of a small rabbit, then he thought of creating a-

-Aiden blinked as he saw the origami he made starting to move. Its body was brown and appeared furred. Jerking upwards, the head seemed to turn fearfully at him, its oddly long ears held tall and rotating as if scanning, before it leapt away from him with surprising speed.

The snake was faster however, two metal fangs sunk into the paper rump of the creature before it brought it back to him. Presenting it to Aiden almost like a cat.

“What the hell?” he muttered. Aiden remembered making something, but the concept of what he was trying to make eluded him. Only that he was thinking about it as he made it.

The snake nudged the spasming origami body into his fingers, which he gently touched, feeling the soft texture of fur.

And memories returned.

When the origami ceased moving and colour drained from it, Aiden remembered what a rabbit was.

“Did I just…”

He pulled out a piece of paper, writing on it: Rabbit, small herbivorous mammal with long ears.

Before he touched the origami rabbit, “Wrap around it to prevent it escaping this time.”

The snake obliged, its metallic body holding it like a predator.

He pushed the memories again, this time he saw the painted image of the creature appear on his skin before it moved across his arm and dripped off his fingers onto the origami body. But it was strange, it was weakly spasming, Aiden looked at the written note, understanding that while he didn’t remember what he just made, he understood it from the words he left behind.

Yet something was strange, the creature was spasming inside the snake’s embrace as if dying, if it was a living creature shouldn’t it move differently from this? He touched the spasming rabbit again, absorbing the memories of it back. Something was missing, he realised. His memories no longer held anything about a rabbit living, but only of one weakly spasming after it had been wounded.

He pulled out a textbook from his desk shelf, a children’s zoology book. Quickly flipping the pages, he found the one he needed.

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae…

He skipped forward, already knowing most of this until he reached what he wanted.

They live in a large range of environments as prey animals. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, and a good deal of it is devoted to overhead scanning. They survive predation by burrowing, hopping away in a zig-zag motion, and, if captured, delivering powerful kicks with their hind legs. Their strong teeth allow them to eat and to bite in order to escape a struggle.

He put down the book, this time touching the form of the origami rabbit again. Once again, he imagined the concept of a rabbit.

This time, the creature was live, scanning the room, before it soon spotted the snake. Instantly dashing away, moving in a zig-zag motion, it still wasn’t fast enough before the snake bit into its rump. But this time, it was fighting back as it struggled. Kicking at the metallic body of the snake with its hind legs and biting ineffectually.

Aiden absorbed it back into himself as he understood the nature of his power.

“So it lets me turn my memories into tattoos, which can then inhabit inanimate objects and move like their real counterparts.” But it cost his memories to do so and when these homunculi were damaged, the memories he put inside them were damaged as well. Making a subsequent recreation with those memories damaged. Not to mention the rabbit didn’t seem innately loyal to him, running away the first moment it spotted him and the snake.

But another thing was that it didn’t have a defensive reaction the first time he created it. The rabbit didn’t originally start kicking and biting at its predator until after he read it in a book.

What would happen if he thought of a rabbit that had behaviours it didn’t originally have?

Taking the note page again, he wrote: This will obey you.

Then he touched the origami rabbit, now slightly ruffled after two run-ins with the snake and thought of-

Aiden stared blankly at the still rabbit before the snake pushed it into his hands and upon reabsorption, he realised he forgot what ‘obey’ meant.

But there had to be a way around it. Now put in a curious fervour, he wrote on the note page: This will follow your orders.

Then, he put in the concept of a rabbit that would obey him.

When he looked at the strange creature once again, he read the note and understood it. “Jump up twice.”

The origami rabbit obeyed and jumped up twice.

“Run in a circle once.”

It ran in a circle.

“Roll over.”

It rolled over.

But did that mean he could only have one obedient creature next to the snake? No, he understood what his notes meant for him even when the concept of ‘obey’ was gone from his mind. So he folded another thing, a frog and this time he wrote on his note page: They will listen to you.

Then in the new fold, he put in the concept of a frog that would follow his orders.

“Jump twice.”

This time, both creatures jumped up twice.

Could he do it some other way? This time he pulled a dictionary, searching the word on the note page he didn’t understand.

Obey

/ə(ʊ)ˈbeɪ/

Verb

Submit to the authority of (someone) or comply with (a law).

And once again, the concept of obey was in his mind. It was a beetle this time, folded quickly and created the exact same way. When he told the three to jump, they all did so.

He spent the rest of the afternoon playing and testing the limits of his power. He discovered that he couldn’t create anything non-living, no knife or gun tattoos, but so long as he could think of it, any animal he knew could become a tattoo and act on its own. Also, though he had two creatures holding the concept of obeying, when he reabsorbed both of them, the concept didn’t stack but merge, so when he used ‘obey’ again he forgot it in its entirety, a limitation but one he could already think of ways to work around. In trying to think of ways around needing the tautology of thinking a thousand ways to say obey, he also discovered that though a creation took a concept after he created it, it could hold multiples of the same concept as he was making it. This was discovered when he created a snake that would move forward, turn left, then turn right, then forward and turn left again. Essentially programming it to repeat a command he added.

Through all this, the white snake that possessed a fork looked on with lazy curiosity, until eventually, Aiden turned his attention to the creature.

“All my creatures are my memories and understood concepts, yet I still hold the concept of what a ‘snake’ is, so what are you then?”

The guard said it was a Status, an instinctive expression of his power that represented his Hume level, but given the nature of his power, it must also hold some kind of concept or memory.

“What are you…” he muttered as he held his arm out, letting the snake coil around it.

Then he reabsorbed it-

-Aiden blinked as he felt strangely… happy, but it was tinged. Like he had just experienced a bittersweet moment. The snake was on his arm, back in tattoo form and on the note page, he saw words in his handwriting but didn’t remember writing.

It’s best you don’t look at the memories inside the snake. You will agree with me every time you look at it and remake the snake every time.

Underneath it, was written:

Didn’t heed my previous self’s warning, so I’m the 2nd time I looked at it.

Underneath that:

Third time here, remember to buy milk. I remembered I was out but I wasn’t sure if it would carry on after making the snake.

And underneath that:

Fourth time here, bought the milk then looked at the snake. Agreed with me, also I should name it, keep calling it snake is a bit weird when it isn’t one.

Fifth time here, Jesus I am curious. Also, take a shower.

Sixth, for the sake of not getting stuck in an infinite loop, please stop.

Seventh, there is a lesson from Pandora I should learn.

Eighth, yeap.

Aiden looked outside, seeing that day had long since turned dark, and realising he was in different clothes and smelt slightly nicer. His hair was still wet from a shower he didn’t remember taking and a fresh bottle of milk stood on the kitchen counter.

Checking his phone, he realised that the day was still thankfully the same, however, he apparently spent the last four hours in a loop of reabsorbing and remaking the snake.

He was curious, what was in-

-He laid on his bed, the snake coiled his arm as he held the note above him.

Ninth, just name the damn thing and go to sleep.

“Huh,” he muttered. “So it leads to this result every time huh…”

He glanced at the snake as it coiled around his wrist as it usually did so, by biting its own tail. Seeing the apparent futility of doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results, he spoke, “Guess I should just name you huh. Since you're constantly biting your own tail, I guess I’ll call you Oros.”

He left it at that, sinking into his bed and trying to fall asleep, yet the curiosity of the situation had not dimmed. Whatever it was he remembered from the snake, it made him feel better. Not necessarily hopeful, but enough to view his situation with measured positivity.

“Wait,” he suddenly spoke in the darkness, remembering a question of true importance that was unanswered.

“Did I put the milk in the fridge?”