Turn 20

--- Maya ---

Knowing that her prototype Bio-pod had finished cooking, -she pointedly refused to think of it as ‘growing’- she needed to sneak it out of her house and into her lab before one of her family members stumbled upon it.

And since she was already secreting away something to her new lab, she felt it wouldn’t hurt to also take a few busted electronics that while lying around, had yet to be stored away just yet, due to their various owners’ stubbornness about replacing them.

Something she felt she was helping with by taking them off their hands.

(We are really doing mental gymnastics to justify stealing.)

“It’s not stealing, it’s just recycling… without permission.” She explained.

(You’re really making me earn my keep here.) Her inner logic told her.

---

“Okay, so… I don’t think we actually know jack shit about biology…” She pointed out to the voices in her head.

(Really, because I figured after all of that smut we at least understood that babies happen when-)

“Shut up!” She shouted, cutting her more immature side off.

(Quite…) Her inner logic agreed. (Especially given the… anatomical inaccuracies of that bit of… research material.)

“That’s not what I meant and you both know it!” She growled, as she connected the technological parts of her bio-pod to her laptop as she set up the basic program to actually make use of said bio-pod.

(I think the fact that our little cooker, does nature’s growing ten times faster, says we do in fact know the basics of biology.) Her inner passion told them.

“Look, I’m not arguing we’re a genius, because come on, you can’t argue that.” She agreed humbly. “But seriously what do we actually know how to grow with this thing?” She asked, gesturing to the ugly bit of flesh and metal sitting on her lab table.

(Uh, well… what about those healing herbs we read about?) Her inner wild thing remembered. (Those might help with that one rib that hurts every time we breathe.)

“Maybe…”

(Or we could try growing our own fodder for our organic experiments, that way we don’t have to keep going to the forest to collect foliage.) Her inner logic pointed out.

“What kind of fodder would we even use?” She wondered listening to the faint whispers in her head for advice. “Grass grown super-fast?”

(That is what fodder usually is nowadays.)

(No, fodder is the minions you don’t mind letting die a horrifically painful death.) Her inner insanity argued.

“It’s both.” She told them, typing up the basic genetics of all herbal life as she decided which direction she was going to finish the program.

---

Having set her bio-pod to grow her first real truly organic experiment, she decided to go ahead and return home early that day.

And as she made her way home, she remembered something that she hadn’t quite realized at the time. “Hey, when I was fighting Decker, where were the two of you?”

(What do you mean?)

“I mean, at first you guys were there telling me what I should do, and then out of nowhere you two sort of just quieted down.” She explained, “So, what happened?”

(Hmm, I’m not sure…) Her inner logic admitted. (We were here, and I remember everything that happened, but at the same time I don’t remember saying much of anything or feeling the need to for that matter.)

“Okay, but why didn’t you feel like talking?”

(Because you were focused.) Her inner passion answered.

“Focused?”

(Yeah, we’re pieces of you so obviously, we represent the different mental tracks you’ve got running at any given time.) Her inner insanity explained with surprising clarity. (When you’re actually focused on one thing, it probably takes away whatever mental processing power lets us run in the background.)

“That’s uh…” She couldn’t quite articulate a response.

(I… I suppose that’s plausible.) Her inner logic attempted.

(What?) Her inner madness asked indignantly. (We’re a hundred percent genius, why do I have to keep reminding you two about that?)

(Because you’re not usually so… informative.) Her inner reason pointed out as delicately as she could.

“I um… My bus is here.” She told herself, desperate to change her mind onto a more understandable topic.

(You do know you can’t actually run away from us right?)

---

After making her way back to her house, Maya paused as she set her things down in her room, her eyes drifting to the (beautiful) bed just laying there without a care in the world.

“You know what? I think I’m going to go ahead and crash.” She told her other selves.

(That’s reasonable.) Her inner logic agreed. (We could use a rest, after these last few weeks.)

(Time for sleepy time junction…)