If Ben were being honest with himself, which he always strove to do, he would admit that the lower levels of Mice Labs were sort of creepy. The thing about morgues, when he really thought about them, was that he wanted them to be small, to have a low capacity, and to look like the kind of place where things took a while. Three or four bodies at a time, because that means people weren’t dying all that often.

What Ben now realized he did not want to see was an automated morgue. He did not want to see large industrial machines, clearly newly purchased from the colorful stickers that boasted about their ability to process a certain number of bodies per minute. He did not want to see storage capacity in the thousands, or display cases to show off examples of their best work. The only good thing about the Mice Labs lower levels was that it smelled like a really expensive lemon scented cleaning solution, which was Ben’s favorite smell of cleaning solution.

“This bad boy right here,” Nick said proudly, slapping a large machine with a conveyer belt, “can threadlessly stitch so many damn bodies back into working order. You could even go through it living, but I don’t recommend it.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Ben said, feeling a wave of unexpected weakness at the reality of what the ‘Corpse Industry’ actually was. Nick grimaced and walked away from his new toys, looking embarrassed.

“Damn, sorry. Need a minute?” Ben nodded, and Nick led him to a nice and calm room that notably did not have a view of the morgue. There was a comfortable bench, which Ben immediately plopped down on, feeling exhausted. The room was set up like an office, and Nick rummaged around the large desk before coming back with two bottles filled with a sparkling orange fluid. He handed one to Ben and said, “Don’t open it yet, let me show you how.”

Nick carefully placed the spherical bottle near his mouth and then opened it, breathing in hard as soon as the lid came off. The liquid, Ben immediately saw, wasn’t actually a liquid, but a very thick and energetic gas that rushed into Nick as he breathed in. He held his breath for a few moments, then exhaled clean air.

“You played games, right? Like RPG’s?” Nick asked, and Ben gave him a look that could be translated as ‘Do I look like a baby boomer to you?’, and Nick laughed, “right, right. It’s a stamina potion. You can get these in gas, liquid or pill, but gaseous is best. It has a faster effect than the other two.”

“Makes sense to me,” Ben said, then brought the bottle to his face, opened the lid and breathed in. The air tasted like the smell of orange peels, and Ben felt it immediately. It was like all the good parts of a cigarette without any of the bad, along with a really strong cup of coffee and probably a hint of cocaine, though Ben had never done cocaine. All at once, two things happened; first, Ben immediately felt better. Hands down, no bullshit, he just fucking felt better. His energy was restored, his mood was stabilized, and he just felt good.

The second thing that happened was that he totally fell off the wagon about cigarettes.

“Well that was great,” Ben said, “is there like a version of that I could smoke like a cigarette?” In response, Nick just started laughing.

“Short answer, yes. I don’t keep any in stock but they’re easy enough to find. It’s funny because literally everyone who’s quit smoking has that immediate reaction when they try a gas stamina potion for the first time.”

“Yeah,” Ben said with a shrug, then hopped off the bench, “thanks for that, I needed it. Let’s get this show on the road. I’ve got people depending on me.”

“The letter you gave us said as much, but didn’t go into details. What’s the situation?” Nick asked, getting up and walking as he talked.

“So one of my guys, the Aeon Slug, Vivi, right?” Ben says, “I guess he got in big trouble back in the day for summoning.”

“Ooo, they don’t fuck around with that,” Nick said seriously as they approached the ProStitcher 999K, “just start dumping them in the chute there, the machine takes care of the rest. Go on,” he said.

“So they exiled him into the Overcavern Forest, and he set himself up a little home there,” Ben said, starting to deposit bodies carefully one at a time into the hopper via Utility Pocket.

“Just dump them in a big wad, the machine can handle it,” Nick said, “So what happened?”

“You sure?” Ben said, then deposited a large wad of exactly fifty bodies into the hopper, which started to gently jump and move around, untangling them, “Jesus that’s gross. So I find him, total coincidence, and we hit it off. Vivi’s a great kid, smart as they come, but dumb as a box of rocks, know what I mean?”

“Yeah I’ve met a few like that.”

“So he leaves his little dungeon and comes with me. Then, and I’m not totally clear on the details, but apparently a bunch of Gremlins learned how to open Beyond gates or summon or something.” Nick paused in his operation of the machine for a second.

“Fuck me,” he said, “that’s bad.”

“That’s what Vivi said. Apparently they pulled through a bunch of really nasty shit, and also a purebeast.”

“I don’t know what that is. Is it a monster?”

“Uh, it’s sort of like a unicorn I think? Some sort of heavenly animal, ridiculously rare, absurdly valuable. So Vivi’s freaking out about the gremlin thing and he issues us The Quest to put a stop to it.”

“You’re a [Questor]?” Nick said, “far out! Let me know when you get to the City Crystal, I’d like to see how it turns out.”

“For sure,” Ben said, “So long story short, a bunch of shit happened, and now everybody thinks Vivi started recklessly summoning a bunch of stuff and nabbed himself a purebeast. From what I understand, they want the Purebeast, and they don’t care how they get it. Oh, and Red,” Ben said, remembering the other part.

“She’s the Beyonder, right?”

“Yeah, gremlins pulled her through too, and apparently Solas doesn’t like Beyonders or something. It’s all way over my head. Point is, I bribed a guy in Solas PD to get my people out of hot water, or at least get them out on bail or something and this,” Ben said, indicating the neat line of repaired bodies, “is apparently the bribe. I’ve got a bunch more than this, but I’m not sure if I should hold some of it back for myself or not.”

“Well, from my perspective,” Nick said, reading a bunch of data slips the ProStitcher 999K had spit out with raised eyebrows, “I think anyone would be satisfied with the payout here. One of the reasons Atomis and I have been doing so well is this damn thing,” Nick said, pulling out his Smartest Phone and scanning all the readouts. “We’re just putting the bodies up on the Auction House and suddenly we’ve got a global market with instant delivery. This damn phone is a fucking liscence to print money, Ben, I tell you what. It’s like the dot-com boom circa nineteen-ninety-nine mixed with space age technology.”

“Yeah?” Ben asked hopefully.

“Yeah. That guy who wrote you the letter? He included a minimum price, his ‘satisfaction point’, and we’re going to blow it out of the water. Guaranteed.”

“How far out of the water?” Ben asked.

“Way, way out of the water,” Nick said with a greedy smile, “So if you’re wanting to keep some loot for yourself, I don’t think anyone is going to begrudge you. Plus, nobody will ever know. Your Utility Pocket is a nightmare for law enforcement. As of yet, it’s proven completely immune to being breached, and it’s contents are completely concealed. Nobody is ever going to know what you’ve got in there, unless you tell them.” Nick paused. “The Utility Pocket was my second choice, but I went with the phone.”

The ProStitcher 999K made a pleasant beeping sound, indicating that it was finished and ready for more.

“Let’s. . .” Ben said, “let’s just take care of Chief Cragg’s bribe before we get ahead of ourselves. I’ll be back a little later when things have cooled off a bit.”

“Smart. Ok, smart, yeah. Let’s get these ready for auction! So, they’ve been stitched up, right? Let me show you the VitalKing XXL. Top of the line, not cheap. Oh, but so, so worth it. It manually stimulates the bodies at the cellular level, animating them mechanically so we can trick healing potions and magic to put the body in top condition.”

--

The ProStitcher 999K, The VitalKingXXL, MuscleWerks 3600 Edition, ManaPW Etcher LuminousSE; expensive industrial machine after expensive industrial machine, each one with a very specific purpose. Ben was starting to get an image in his head, as well as an idea of just how much money MiceLabs was bringing in. None of what he’d seen was anything less than the absolute top of the line, bleeding edge of technology. Which brought them to the final step.

The bodies of the citadel insects, which had been mangled and full of holes, now looked significantly more dangerous than they had in life. Every feature of monstrous power they’d been endowed with had been enhanced to prepare them for the life of an undead supersoldier. Some of the bugs had been outfitted with state of the art cybernetic enhancements, while others had been altered at a genetic level. Nick had bragged that the kinds of enhancements they did here were utterly incompatible with any living creature, that they were too extreme, but that they were perfect for the undead.

“My customers know the kind of product I’m producing, and they’re willing to pay top dollar for the best. Most of the other labs that do this kind of work in Solas either don’t have access to the Auction House app, or are getting extorted by someone who does. As of right now, I’ve got a pretty solid monopoly on bodies coming out of Solas, hence my fucking state of the art facility!” Nick shouted that last part like he was so proud he had to shout it. “Which brings us to our final step.”

“There’s more?” Ben asked incredulously, “how much more can you possibly do to these things? They look like they’re ready for a goddam apocalypse!” Nick laughed.

“That’s pretty much what current demand is for, The Apocalypse event that started when we all finished getting here. Exitus has a passageway to the lowest cavern layer right smack dab in the middle of their nation, and they’re determined to buy their way out of the problem. Your question, though, what more could I possibly do?” They reached a sealed off portion of the facility, and Nick pressed his palm against the wall, which beeped green. “Ben, I present to you the Gate of Death.”

The door opened, and revealed the first properly magical looking thing in the lab. Sickly green light shone from a solid stone slab that was rooted in what Ben undoubtedly thought was graveyard soil. The light was a stain on reality, permeating it the same way the red citadel core had, but on a lesser scale. Floating in the light were gently moving hands, dozens of them, made of bone, or flesh, or ghostly light. Each one of them held a single sharp needle. The entire setup gave Ben’s [Magical] flesh goosebumps.

“This bad boy cost more than my entire facility, and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal. That right there is a specially designed Green Core Dungeon. Now, mine is tame, but Green Cores are why nobody bothers with long range communication. Know why?” Ben shook his head, instinctively backing up from the light, which seemed to want to draw him in. “Because, Green Core dungeons deal primarily with ghosts and non-physical monsters. Astral beings and weird shit like that. Every long range communication system in The World, with the exception of The Smartest Phone, inevitably becomes haunted as shit. Think the movie Poltergeist or The Ring, but on crystal meth and with the ability to destroy an entire town. Horror movie shit.”

“Fuck,” Ben said, taking another step back.

“This one isn’t like that. Due to the sudden crisis in Exitus, they shipped out a very limited number of these Death Gates to select, trusted vendors. Incidentally, they’ve offered citizenship to humans everywhere. I accepted, and I jumped to the top of the list.”

“What does it do?” Ben asked.

“I’ll show you,” Nick said, a necromantic gleam in his eye. One of the prepared bodies, a Beezel lieutenant, was carted into the room and deposited on the floor. It sat for a moment, before slowly starting to float, very gently lifted as though through water and then softly deposited on the stone slab. Ben could feel the rush of mana as it was poured into the body, and then, to his complete shock, a [Magical] copy of the Beezel rose from the corpse.

“What?” Ben said, then trailed off as the many hands got to work. The physical hands opened the body up, seperating exoskeleton from flesh and gently etching and inking magical designs on every avaliable surface, onto the soft flesh below, and inside the body on every organ. At the same time, the same thing was being done to the [Magical] copy above it, with complementing magical designs being etched onto the mana ghost. The entire process was mesmerizing, and took about a half an hour, which seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. It was like getting sucked into an utterly facinating, morbid youtube video, and then blinking and realizing how much time had passed.

When it was done, the mana ghost was forced back into the corpse. It’s eyes glowed a gentle, undead green, but the body didn’t move.

“That right there,” Nick said, “is why I get the big bucks, while everybody else is just getting paid. The Death’s Gate just applied high level necromantic control and enhancement spell formations across four spatial dimensions on that body, in addition to placing a totally stable ghost inside of it. Exitus has perfected the art of the artificial soul, and to this day, nobody has replicated their success.”

“What does it mean?”

“Basically, it can level, which most undead cannot. That thing right there is useful and in demand with even high level [Necromancers].” Nick paused, then said, “of course, assaulting the Apocalypse Passageway, it’ll last a week at most, but that’s still pretty great, all things considered.”

Ben just nodded his head, feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.

“We don’t need to be here for the rest of the processing, I just wanted to show off. Come on up, let’s go outside and get some fresh air, yeah?”

“That sounds fucking awesome,” Ben said, “but that Death’s Gate gave me the goddamn creeps.”

“Right?” Nick said, “One time I was looking at it, and one of the fucking hands was making a ‘come hither’ motion at me. We’re lucky none of the eyes showed up. Sometimes- ah, nevermind. Let’s just say it gets creative sometimes and leave it at that. Come on, let’s get out of here,” Nick said, and the two of them began power walking towards the exit. “Your order will be ready by. . . let’s give it about two days. I’ve still got to do quality control, do a couple of tests, but they’ll be ready for auction by then.”

They exited the lower levels of Mice Labs and were met by an excited, and well fed, looking Short Bus and Atomis.

“Ben, I beat the maze!” Short Bus said, shouting across the very short distance between them, “the solution was to break the rules! I’m a genius!” Atomis flicked Short Bus, then pointed at Nick. Short Bus said ‘Oh right,’ then extended his arm out so Atomis could run across it and jump onto Nick’s shoulder.

“What’s got you so happy,” Atomis had said as he ran, and Nick kept a straight face.

“Go see for yourself,” he said, and the mouse made a grumpy sound of disapproval. He reached into his lab coat and then threw a small metal sphere into the air that transformed into a Doctor Robotnik style vehicle, mouse sized.

“I will then,” Atomis said, jumping from Nick’s shoulder. The vehicle moved to intercept the mouse, who had intentionally jumped as far away from the ship as possible. It caught him, and then Atomis manually flew the thing away, down into the Luxury Morgue.

“Well that was pretty cool,” Ben said.

“Want one?” Nick asked.

“I mean, I literally don’t know how much storage space I have available to me, so, yeah?”

“Want to find out how much your Utility Pocket can hold? We’re all about doing the science.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, “I’m all about doing the science as well.”

There was a loud squeaking from downstairs, and moments later Atomis’s pod flew back up the stairs and started zipping around as the mouse squeaked and then eventually switched over to psychic communication.

“We’re rich!” he shouted, “Nick, get out the good cheese, we’re rich!”

“We don’t have any good cheese!” Nick said, suddenly excited.

“Then fucking buy some!” Atomis yelled, then began flying down the hallway to share the good news. Short Bus looked at Ben, an intelligent gleam in his eyes.

“That can’t be bad news,” he said.

“Dude,” Ben said, “that’s great news. Nick, any way you could send a message to that little swindler in the Desperation Rapids general store and let him know the good news? The sooner I’m squared up with him, the better.” Nick nodded and went over to a nearby console on the wall, typed for a little bit, then called over his shoulder.

“Done!”

As the group laughed and began to think of good things, like how much money they were about to make, and how much easier their lives would be because of it, outside, Dryst listened to a report from one of his more sneaky conjured beings. The being in question was a slightly golden-transparent harp with a single golden eye and little wings. It had been following Ben around, and now relayed everything that had happened to the Higher Music Elemental.

“They’re operating a green dungeon core out here?” Dryst asked himself rhetorically after dismissing the conjured harp into motes of mana. “No way they’ve got a permit for that.” Dryst considered for a moment if he wanted to get into a fight with a citizen of Exitus, then decided it was worth it. From what he’d seen of Ben, and humans in general, they couldn’t be trusted with anything truly dangerous, and lacked any kind of understanding of how things were supposed to be done.

They just ran around and did whatever the hell they wanted without regard for the rules, or law and order. Dryst was an elemental being. A Higher Elemental being. The law mattered to him. Proper respect for authority, mattered to him.

If Dryst were a more self-reflective type, he might have noticed the surge of glee he got from rushing back to Solas to rat Mice Labs out and fuck Ben over. If he’d taken the time to properly process his feelings, he’d know he wasn’t being objective. If he’d ever looked at things from a different perspective than the one he’d been raised with, even a perspective he found objectionable, he might have even been able to be friendly to Ben.

Unfortunately, despite The System’s best efforts, that’s just not how things happened in The World.