SpellsRUs: Urge for Self Loving

"Turnaround is fine with me, chief." I was practically itching to try out some of the more intriguing spells I'd gotten. "Besides which, you can make food... shit, I guess you can't, can you?"

"I dunno, I've never tried. Since it ain't living, I should be able to. But I think we'd better have something else available in case it doesn't work. That little trick takes a fair bit out of the body, as I'm sure you noticed, so we'll need to keep buying at least SOME non-created food." I nodded. "Mind if I stop at the Burger King? I'm starving." I shrugged in dismissal, and continued to play with the Control Console. When we pulled up to the drive-thru, I decided to have just a little fun with the teller. I read her name off her nametag, and put it into the Subject line.

Subject's Name?: Barbara

Command?: Provide readout of Subject's thoughts on-screen.

I watched as the cute little blonde's thoughts scrawled across the screen. She was primarily thinking about how she was going to get enough gas in her car to get home, seeing as how the cheapasses that ran the BK were having to mail her a new check to replace the one that had gotten lost. I smiled and opened my mind to Peter, and shared with him the girl's thoughts. He asked what I had in mind, and I told him to flirt with the girl. We needed to get some information on this area, after all, and a local source would save us some time. With his responses tuned by the Control Console and my mental prompting, he'd promptly asked the young lady to dinner, and offered to pick her up here when it was time. She countered by saying that she'd want to bring someone along just so she'd feel safe, and Peter didn't even bat an eyelash. All of this took less than a minute, too, which had been my deadline. Barb, as I'd discovered she preferred to be called, was good at her job, and had delivered our food and flirted with Pete all within 45 seconds. I was impressed. I'd never been quite that glib when I'd been shoveling hash. Matters were set, and we'd meet Barb and her friend here at about 7:30. Pete and I nodded in unison, and we set off back towards our future home. On the trip over, Peter asked me to put the application paperwork on his knee. I asked him why.

"Just a little experiment," he replied. I finished my fry, and shuffled the papers back out of my laptop's case. After I laid them on his knee, his eyebrows drew together for a moment, and then released.

"Take a look, and tell me what the papers look like now," he instructed me. I shrugged, picked up the papers, and looked, my eyes widening as I looked. Instead of the blank forms they'd been when I put them in the case, they were now neatly filled out in black handwriting, MY handwriting!

"How'd you do that?" A flash of processing time later, I answered my own question. "Ah, now THAT'S what I call a little matter rearranging! What did you use for the base material?"

"Just the grease from this crappy burger," he replied, polishing off his 4th cheeseburger in as many minutes. He crumpled up the wrapper in one hand and threw it into the sack of garbage. "I figured it wouldn't be nearly as hard as making polymer steel out of wood chunks."

" I guess not. Ink's a lot simpler compound, but oil's even simpler. I must have done better'n I thought when I upgraded my brain." He grinned evilly at me.

"Yeah, you certainly did. I just can't wait to really test 'em out. That girl Barb and her friend oughtta do nicely, we can get some feedback on the body remodeling you've done." His grin turned lustful, and he reached down and patted his dick fondly. "After all, I don't have to worry about knocking some girl up or getting an STD with this bad boy." He referred to some of my alterations, making him sterile and immune to diseases. I shook my head in mock dismay.

"Less than a week old, and you're already turning into a teenager. How fast they grow up," I sighed, and then busted out laughing. Peter drove us around for a little longer, then we headed back to the complex. It was the work of only a minute or two to 'discourage' anyone from coming up to this floor of the building via a short spell. Peter's touch opened the door, but unfortunately, he chose to do it by removing the hinges of the door. He looked at me sheepishly.

" I don't know exactly how locks and tumblers work, so how was I going to fix it?" I nodded. After all, his power worked by his understanding. He could have removed the lock with his power, but how was he to replace it? He would have been completely unable to replicate the delicate internal mechanisms of the lock, which would have raised suspicion, so he'd removed the hinges, which he COULD remake as necessary. Together we hefted the steel-core security door inside, and leaned it against the wall.

We looked around the empty rooms, trying to decide what should go where, and the exact logistics for what we had in mind for the future. I said, "Pete, we'd better set aside a couple of these for a lab. I don't know about you, but kitchen magic ain't high on my list of favorite things."

"Better make it two or more. Gods know what either of us'll get into later on. And is it me, or does the paint job on this place suck?" He was right, the complex must have hired a crew of crack-smoking monkeys to do the painting. There were globs of paint everywhere, matting into the carpet, with light streaks of the original paint still peeking through. "I'll start on that, if you wanna get moving on whatever you've got in mind." I agreed, and we went to work. Pete swept around the apartment, reworking the paint so that it was even, and even pulling up the carpet in a few places. When I heard the ripping sound of the carpet staples giving way, I raised my eyebrow. He responded, " I hate this crap. Better to have hardwood floors." I shrugged and went back to weaving spells. I was weaving spells into the walls themselves to protect us from storms, electrical surges and burglars. I watched as best I could as Peter reworked the carpet into teakwood floors, only overriding his choices when he would have given us a pine-pale floor. Too hard to keep clean, in my opinion. I had him make it a dark reddish tone, so we could ignore the mopping if we got too busy. "Wait a sec, Pete, I've got an idea." I dug out one of my spellbooks, and started rummaging. First order of business once we'd gotten set up, I promised myself, I was gonna write an index for these things so I didn't have to keep hunting for what I wanted. I puttered with a few spells, and finally got what I wanted. I got Peter to conjure me some white paint, and I overlaid one of the walls with a large, intricate diagram, surrounded by words in archaic languages. He looked at me askance.

"What's that? Not bad artistically, but I could have gone for some babe in a bikini." He mock-leered for a moment.

"Just another example of efficient laziness, bro. This is a general housekeeping spell. Lint, dust, extraneous grease marks, shed hair and the like will be banished by this li'l beaut. Why waste time with housework when you can get magic to do it for you?" I smiled broadly and patted myself on the back.

"Good call. I suppose it WILL free up a lot of time. What about laundry and dishes, though?"

"I'll worry about that later. Let's get this carpet up, I've got all of the primary protections in place, and I'll tweak it later. Never worry about what you can put off till later, that's my motto." I looked out the window. "Shit, it's getting dark. We don't have power yet, but I think I can get us something..." I muttered a few words I'd run across in the book, and small globes of white light appeared , pinwheeling in an intricate pattern in the middle of the room. "Take one of those into each room, that way we won't have to worry about finding our way in the dark." He nodded and hauled off a few of them. I took the remainder, and so we had ourselves some light. For a few hours more, we puttered around, remaking the place itself into what we wanted.

The Next Day

I woke up at about 8 am, rather surprisingly. Until now, I'd always been more of a night person, and since we'd not gotten back to the hotel till 3 am, I'd only had about 5 hours under my belt. Not feeling inclined to go back to sleep, I went over and said Peter's name loudly a few times, till he woke up. I could have shaken him, but both of us hated that. "Pete, wake up!" His eyelids creaked open, and he looked like hell. I guess all of our renovations had really sucked the juice out of him. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he'd dropped a great deal of weight in a hurry. "Jesus Christ, you look like shit!" In my alarm, a spell came to mind. It would allow me to share some of my energy with Pete until we'd managed to recharge our batteries. I muttered and gestured as I walked over to the phone and put in an order with room service, to be delivered ASAP. With the spell splitting my energy between the two of us, Peter started to look more normal, although not in top shape. I was starving, and feeling more drained. "Why the hell didn't you say anything? I'd have stopped hours before, if I'd known you were so drained!" He lacked the energy to respond, and seemed to lapse into a doze. I stared at him for a few minutes, not even trying mental communication since that would only drain both of us further. Finally, room service arrived.

I tipped the porter lavishly, seeing as how I'd gotten the grub within 10 minutes of my call. I pulled the lids off of all the plates, and started gorging myself, not even using the silverware. As soon as the food hit my stomach, I started to feel better, and Pete's breathing seemed to be coming easier. I felt bad about what had happened, since I should have realized what a drain transmutation would have on him. Maybe my decision to remove my own power had been a bit too hasty, but I couldn't do anything about it at the moment. As I ate, I thought frantically about the energies we were toying with. Master PC itself seemed to draw on the ambient power across the Internet, and thus across the world to fuel it's effects. My magic drew directly on stellar and solar forces to accomplish things, but matter-rearrangement seemed to draw it's power directly from the life force of it's user. So far, it seemed that the more radical the change in states, the greater the power required to reshape something. Peter had been reshaping polyester fibers into 2 inch thick wood for most of the night, and thus his current state. His work with the walls seemed to have left him alone, since he was just redistributing the matter evenly. Shit. I was going to have to watch out. Given that he mirrored my nature, he'd drive himself to collapse and never even notice. But how was I to keep an eye on him while I played around on my own?

I got it! Pete's idea yesterday, to make a female version of me/us, seemed to be an ideal solution. If I made another clone, she'd be able to watch out for both of us, particularly if I gave her extended monitoring capacities. The more I thought about the matter, the better I liked it. I resolved to do something about it at my earliest opportunity, but I didn't think I'd have the time until we'd finished moving. While Pete slept, I showered, shaved, and repacked our stuff. Hold on, what about the girl from the drive-thru yesterday? Shit, I'd forgotten about that! Dammit, now I had another mess on my hands. Well, it would just have to wait. I had to get Peter moving before the cleaning crew arrived. But how? He was like a diabetic recovering from an insulin reaction. Nothing for it but magic, I guess. I cursed myself for sloppy planning and got to work. A few minutes work and Pete was reduced in size to where I could stick him in my pocket. I did so, grabbed our bags, and checked out of the hotel. I was screwed. The lease we'd agreed to sign was to be a two party lease, and who knew how long it would take him to recover? Guess I'd have to work the Clone spell sooner than I thought, or I was going to have to alter.....

"Hey, Jay!" a squeaky voice called from my pocket, and I felt something moving around in there. I looked down, and sure enough, Peter was hanging on the ledge (to him) of my pocket.

"Feeling better, Pete?"

"Much. I guess we overdid it."

"That ain't all. We forgot about the girl at the fast food place." He lapsed into a session of violent cursing. "Calm down, we'll figure out something. But first, you need to get back to regular size." With a gesture, I cancelled the spell holding him at his small size. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to take him out of my pocket, so he ended up ripping his way out of my jeans. He was lying there on the parking lot, laughing hysterically.

"Sometimes, Jay, you make me think there's hope for you after all." He smiled, and pulled a pair of shorts out of his bag. "I find it hard to believe that someone so powerful forgets the simple stuff."

"Hey, sue me, sometimes I forget the details." I was mortified, not to mention getting a breeze. I looked at him and gestured down at my leg. Mercifully, the parking lot was empty, so noone noticed the naked man that appeared out of nowhere. While he got up to at least pseudo-modesty, I unlocked the car and started it up. Peter got in on his side, and put his hand on my leg, mending my jeans. "Thanks. I happen to like this pair."

"No sweat. We'd better get moving, though, if we wanna get moved in today." I nodded and started driving. We headed back to the condo's leasing office, and with a little aid from Master PC, we got approved to lease, and signed off on it. A further tweak would ensure that noone at the complex would bother us unduly or allow anyone access to our apartment without our approval. I wasn't entirely enamored of doing so, but Peter insisted.

"Look, it's nothing too bad. All we're doing is ensuring our privacy, for which we're paying, if I need to remind you."

"I know, I just don't particularly want to get used to having the Master rewrite everyone around us. Most of the users of this thing end up being major buttheads."

"True, and if I ever see you doing so, be sure I'll call you on it."

After signing the lease, we shook hands with Ms. Cornwallis, the complex's manager and got our keys. I pocketed mine, making a mental note to make all other copies useless. We pulled the car and the U-Haul up to the parking spaces immediately adjacent to the building, and got on with our unpacking.

END CHAPTER ONE

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CHAPTER 002

In a remarkably short time, even with my spells to help out, we'd managed to set up shop in our condo. Everything was in a place that was either aesthetically pleasing or convenient, and Peter's ability to reshape our packing trash into other shapes had eliminated our debris. I'd set up shop in one of the spare bedrooms (there were 4 in the condo), and we'd converted another of them into a fabrication shop for anything technical we'd need. Soundproofing and the like was assured by more spells, and we'd even thought ahead, and the entire space was filled with defensive spells to keep attention away from us. Anyone coming in through the door or any of the windows would only see furnishings appropriate to two bachelors, and they would completely ignore the teak floors, leather and metal furniture, and the tapestries on the walls.

Peter had managed to get the job as café manager, so we had some income. I'd started playing the stock market by using my intellect (and a lot of scrying with my new crystal ball) to make some smart calls and buys. Mostly, though, I was getting antsy to do something else. On an impulse, I started up the Control Console, and started running through the names of the local stock brokers in the Yellow Pages. On my fifth try, I found what I was looking for. A more honest than most broker, usually managing to make a decent living, with only a few setbacks. The Control Console remarks were that this Madeline Phesant was of above-average intelligence, 35 years old, and financially struggling. Her ex-husband had apparently married her for her money, run her into debt to the tune of over 200 thousand dollars, and then skipped town. I shook my head, and made a note to look him up later.

With a few keystrokes, I'd increased our Ms. Phesant's intelligence to genius level, and removed the ulcers that had been troubling her lately. I planned out what I'd need to say, and picked up the phone.

"Phesant Market Brokers, this is Madeline."

"Ms. Phesant, my name is Jason *****" I began. "I've been looking at your track record, and I've been impressed. Not only have you managed to be ethical in your dealings with clients, you've actually managed to turn a profit."

"Well, Mr. *****, I do try. I can't stomach screwing people out of their money. Besides which," she laughed in self-derision, "my ulcer would keep me up at nights if I didn't." I smiled, but of course she couldn't see it. "So what can I do for you?" I outlined my plans, and she was impressed. Then, with only a momentary hesitation, asked the real question. "How much were you looking to work with, Jason?" I'd already asked her to call me by my first name, but I insisted on calling her Ms. Phesant. I smiled even wider. My initial forays into the market had been VERY lucrative.

"Well, I was looking to 'work' with 350 thousand, to be honest." I said into the shocked silence on the other end. I had her image up on the Control Console, and I saw her mouth working silently on the Picture Display. "Ms. Phesant? Are you still there?"

"Ye..Yes!" Her thoughts, according to the Control Console, told me that she didn't have that much money coming from all of her other accounts combined. "Jason, I have to tell you, that's quite a bit more money than I'm used to handling." I had to give her points for her honesty.

"Well, I wouldn't mind increasing your percentage if you needed to hire someone else to work for you." Not only would that free her up to work full time on my portfolio, it would take a good deal of stress off of her. "Do we have a deal, Ms. Phesant?"

"Yes, we do. Could I get you to come down to the office, so we can fill out some paperwork?" Bother. MORE time taken away. Oh well, I guess it couldn't be avoided. I agreed to come down to her office after lunchtime. We finished our conversation, and I hung up the phone. Peter was still at work, so I had time to do some puttering about. I went back to my workroom, and started pulling books off the shelf. I still hadn't managed to put together my index, but it was a work in progress. With my crystal ball, I'd discovered that Xanthos' virus hadn't managed to knock out all of the Master PC's still out in the world. At best guess, there were something like 10000 users of the program on the earth. These others bothered me. Some of them, like Xanthos, and Dan, the high school teacher, didn't particularly bother me, but the majority of the others were seriously scary fellows. Even worse, some of them were in the process of making themselves gods on earth. My current project was to start cataloging and tagging the bastards so that I could keep easier tabs on them.

90 percent of the little fools had already made themselves immune to manipulation via the Master, so I ruled that out as a way to solve the problem. However, most of them seemed to suffer from limited imaginations. All of them had built themselves harems, and were constantly on the move trying to accumulate more. I shuddered to think about what state the world would be like if Xan hadn't put his virus in place. I shelved the problem for a while, and decided to do something about my watcher problem. I still hadn't taken the time to construct a female clone, mostly because I kept forgetting about it until it was too late at night to start. I opened up one of the spellbooks and started browsing. An hour or so later, I ran across a Splitter spell, one that operated similarly to that of the Clone spell, but it had a drawback; it didn't furnish the body with a will of it's own. No good. The Clone spell required some hours to work, and it all had to be done after sunset. Not good, since I usually was preoccupied these days with trying to finish my index. "Ah, screw it! I'll just have to do the Clone spell." I burned myself a message onto the workroom's door, just to remind me. I shelved the books, and turned my mind back to the problem of the other Master PC users.