I needed to be sure.
Curiosity wasn't optional anymore—it was survival dressed up as experimentation.
I isolated one of my own and let it drift, passive, membrane relaxed. It didn't resist when the amoeba found it. Didn't flee. Didn't acid-burn. Just… waited.
The amoeba engulfed it.
Digestion began.
And then—
Contact.
The moment my cell's membrane broke down, the new sequence activated. Genetic payload deployed, not outward, but inward—a forced rewrite aimed straight at the nucleus consuming it.
I felt it latch.
Override.
The amoeba convulsed.
Its internal structure went wild, producing my cells instead of its own. Too fast. No regulation. No hierarchy. Just uncontrolled replication, each new cell screaming me into existence.
The amoeba swelled.
Then burst.
Tens of thousands of me scattered into the water like shrapnel.
I re-centered myself, stunned for half a second—then grinning internally.
Yes. This is good.
More than good.
I felt the count spike, numbers ballooning past previous limits. I didn't need to calculate it precisely to know the truth.
I had enough.
Enough mass. Enough complexity. Enough redundancy.
Enough to stop pretending I was just a cell.
I gathered myself.
Every fragment responded instantly, collapsing inward not as chaos, but as intent. Roles assigned. Structure enforced. Redundancy trimmed. Cells folded into layers, differentiated, specialized.
Shape emerged.
Eyes formed first—not for aesthetics, but because I was tired of sensing the world as gradients and pressure alone. Gills followed, then a digestive tract, musculature, skin. Organs layered themselves into place like they'd always been waiting.
When it was done, I swam.
I was a fish.
A real one.
Fins cut through the water. Vision snapped into focus. Motion was no longer drifting—it was direction. I darted, turned, accelerated, feeling water split around me in clean, satisfying lines.
This was it.
This was what I'd been waiting for.
Hunting was faster. Sharper. Alive in a way drifting never had been. I chased smaller creatures, tested speed, tested bite force, reveled in the fact that I could move instead of just existing.
For about two hours.
Then the novelty wore off.
I circled the pond, restless, unsatisfied. Eating like this felt… inefficient. Predictable. Small.
I wanted to test something bigger.
Something that could eat me.
That's when I saw it.
A crocodile, half-submerged near the edge, still as death itself. Ancient. Confident. Apex.
Perfect.
I didn't hesitate.
I swam straight at it.
The crocodile reacted instantly—jaws snapping shut, water churning as it lunged. Darkness swallowed me whole as I was dragged inside and crushed between muscle and teeth.
The moment digestion began, I let go of the fish.
Structure dissolved. Organs collapsed. Identity spread.
I was no longer one body.
I was everywhere.
Each of my cells dispersed through the crocodile's system, slipping into tissue, blood, organs. And then, as one—
Injection.
Genetic payloads fired into nuclei across its body. One cell at a time, then dozens, then thousands. Crocodile cells began producing me instead of themselves.
The process was violent.
Cells ruptured under the strain. Tissues failed. Some of my cells were destroyed, but others slipped onward, finding fresh hosts, continuing the spread.
Replacement followed.
Muscle became mine. Nerve became mine. Bone dissolved and reformed. The crocodile thrashed, collapsed, and went still as its biology was overwritten from the inside out.
Fifteen minutes.
That's all it took.
When awareness stabilized again, I pulled myself together, reasserting structure, consolidating what remained. The crocodile's body—my body now—twitched once, then rose.
I flexed unfamiliar limbs, tested weight, balance.
And laughed, silently, internally, because there were still no vocal cords yet.
Wow, I thought.
That was… exciting.
If this was what multicellular life had to offer—
Then I was going to have a lot of fun.