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As someone who has carved himself like a monument of new divine from the flesh of the old gods' world, he naturally despised softness.
"Formless. Weak. Disgusting."
The segment winced harder with each of Prime's seething words. That did not save him from a poke to his side. When he withdrew by half an inch, his older self pushed it in a whole inch deeper. Not his finger, a scalpel. The dull end of it, but nonetheless it hurt.
"And I certainly don't remember being this spineless," Prime hissed.
The segment gave a furtive glance to the sweet pastry that has just been slapped out of his hand and now lay on the cold tiled floor. Contrary to the accusations, he did not leave crumbs on their notes. And for godless heaven's sake, did not eat in the laboratory. But it seemed to not matter, as others would find reasons to mock and lecture him whether he did or not.
"I am not fat," the young boy objected with a soft frown. He wasn't. Prime never actually mentioned this word, either. "My body mass index is normal, so stop-"
"I don't want to wait until it becomes abnormal," the older cut him off, his voice as sharp as the other end of the scalpel. He paused, as if waiting the segment to draw conclusions on his own. When the boy failed to adopt his line of thought, he let out a heavy sigh.
He did not remember being this indifferent. This weak, this unfathomably easily tempted by some quick carbohydrates, and this bad at banter. Forget banter, even average conversations. This young one is from his last year at the Akademiya, he should have learned to talk by then.
"You are a disgrace to all our collective," he draws out, slow and cutting deep. Fear flashes in the segment's eyes.
Not breaking eye contact, Prime takes his hand and places the scalpel onto the moist palm.
"Human blood is approximately seven hundred calories per liter," he states a fact. "Bleed it out. I sure do hope that you can at least calculate how much that would be. I gave you the data to build upon."
With that, he leaves the segment one on one with the sharp thing.
***
In a strange way, he likes feeling... full.
Stuffed. Filled to the brim.
There is a strange sensation budding inside him and it is not described in any verified literature, so Zandik does not bestow much importance upon it. He dissmisses, but if he were to describe it first, it would be: like the central string that connects a doll's head, through the trunk, to the pelvis suddenly grew tighter. Compression by the vertical axis. Yes, that sounds less poetic. He hates poetry.
Weighed down. Internal tension: simultaneously nauseating, sleep-inducing and warming, pouring liquified heat into the vessel of his body. Zandik hates to admit it, but since it is not described in any verified literature, he does not have to.
The urge to fall down. He cradles his scrawny body to sleep under three, four woolen blankets. The allure of weight inside of him. It makes him want to vomit like it made him on that one night. Okay, more than one. But it will certainly never happen again.
He is not that pretty and he is not that desireable to have it, the sickly-sweet burden that would deform his innards and leave him crushed and nauseated.
***
"Bye, I'm leaving to report to Pierro!"
Prime's eye twitched.
He dragged his stare up and down Omega, who stopped halfway to the door. "Dressed like that?"
A hint of a smirk gave away the fact that the segment enjoyed it, having his creator's eyes on him. He rested his hand on his waist, where the harness hugged his frame snugly. To Prime, that already was annoying, redundant and tasteless, but the leather belts extended further down. At least he wore looser shorts today and not his skin-tight pants; that left at least a few things to imagination.
Omega could have this forever, but he knew that Prime did not intend to make a statement if he asked a question, so, he replied, "Any objections?"
"I have many objections," the older man intoned, the unamused frown making his gaze darken. "But I held onto the hope that you would figure them out yourself. I do not remember being this stupid at your age."
The segment shrugged and blurted out, "Maybe take rivastigmine? Might help you remember."
Prime gave him another long, unamused look. Omega tutted.
"To think that even my creator is not immune to internalizing societal pressure and taboos." He shook his head. "That he lives in a limited, conservative mind..."
"My mind is not 'limited'. However, it is clearer, since I do not hoard all sorts of garbage in it."
"Sad virgin."
The man bit down on the snappy, acetic response on the tip of his tongue, and took a deep breath to steady himself. "I forbid you show up to a meeting with another Harbinger in such immodest attire."
"I forgot to ask you," the segment giggled.
"You represent me."
"I represent blasphemy."
They could go on like this for hours. Still, Omega was never late to Pierro's office.
***
He spread his legs before the older man, twirling his tongue around his gloved fingertips, smiling like he's high, eyes clouded with pure lust.
He prided himself in his intelligence only to get himself fucked silly, incoherent and happy. He thinks: all Harbingers should add this to their schedule. Bringing about a godless world will not be possible without sacrilege.
He is young, successful and finally handsome. Red looks good on his skin. Ideas come easily to his mind. He daydreams about going back to Akademiya just to strut around in inappropriate variations of uniform, just to get some old professor refuse him an A+ unless he lets him bend him over at a writing desk. And just to pass and get the highest grade regardless, by impeccable knowledge alone. These fantasies make his toes curl.
But he can't spare these imbeciles his priceless time, because he is too busy tinkering with oh-so-forbidden ancient machines in his own lab, and getting railed by Pierro. Sometimes, in that same lab. More often, in his office, bent and gripped and slammed into the wall so hard it actually motivates him to work on achieving immortality.
Scratch that, he likes the thrill.
He finally doesn't have to spend his nights sleepless and lonely and worried to the point of nausea that Pierro will never fuck him another time. Paranoid over their relationship. He calls him to his office often. For his 18th birthday, Pierro gets him a harness and a few other trinkets they test that same night until he needs urgent medical help. The relief slowly settles into the young man's bones. A permanent high. He feels like he is floating, weightless, so good his eyes fill with tears. He never turns down an opportunity.
If he didn't like it, he would have a bad time, for his superior doesn't ask for his agreement. But he likes it. Really he does. He doesn't think about it, too busy getting the most out of his blessed, blasphemous youth.
***
Before the segments crowd the laboratory and fill it with their bickering, laughter, and the sound of something exploding that wasn't supposed to explode, Prime can have to himself a few moments of quiet. His day starts when the sky is yet to turn blueish-grey with dawn.
He takes a deep breath as he opens his eyes, and immediately gets out of bed, or the chair if he happened to fall asleep in one. He needs to take in a few sips of coffee before he can let out any words, and the segments know not to bother him. Paradoxically, this silent time is crucial for his coherence for the rest of the day, so he allows it. Sometimes, the quiet of his mind is accompanied by selected literature on which Prime effortlessly and deeply focuses. Sometimes, it's just him and the desolate view out the window, the snowy plains.
Next come the preparations in the lab. He had tried delegating this to the segments or the staff, but it was a failure: manual sorting of clean test tubes and starting of various machinery puts his mind in order. His mind is an orderly one. A lot of what is done by Prime is done for its internal homeostasis. He looks after it like he looks after a necessary, prized tool.
That includes chasing away his insufferable younger versions. How and why the segments develop personalities is, shamefully, a mystery to Prime. The central component which defines their current purpose was none more than a side effect, an event of spontaneous organization, in a simple cloning experiment. Despite him having gracefully found application for the unexpected outcome, the personalities the segments developed and keep developing are invariably lousy ones. That seems to be impossible to influence by any imaginary means, from gene therapy to psychiatric drugs.
So Prime watches, sometimes from behind a one-way mirror, the behavior and misbehavior of his selves, and they do disappoint him a lot with their baseless, arbitrary sets of quirks, weaknesses and kinks; but if there is any silver lining, it is that he finds they make his internal state, his mind a lot clearer. A lot is done for the quietitude and poise of it.
Contrary to popular belief, though, he doesn't dream of ancient tongues, math formulas and periodic tables. When Prime dreams, it is of being stuck in a tightly-knit nestle of mighty vines, of scrambling to his feet and making a dart for the exit in a maze-like facility quickly filling with murky sea water; picking live ants from under his fingernails, having a tree trunk squash him under its weight, being shipped overseas in a flimsy box consisting entirely of squeaky, creaking boards.