Mortal Protection Services Chapter 50: XII.DB: Dilt Bifferenter

XII.DB: Dilt Bifferenter Dilts Bifferent CSS I'll Get Back To You On That The five of us, four mes and one Jimmi, rode the turbowonk back to the bridge. Medical could wait until we weren't in the middle of a battle. I... we? I'm going with I. I may be more than one body now, but I still feel like an individual. I'm still Dilt Bifferent. "So, I have an admission I need to make before we reach the bridge." "You four are all connected in a hive mind." Jimmi said. "Yeah! How did you know?" "You all blinked at exactly the same time." She shrugged. "I used to be like six hundred minds, it's cool. How many yous are you?" "A LOT. More than six hundred... And there's another version of me that's still linked to the Intelligent Scourge, but that's a separate hive-consciousness. I'm the copy of a copy. Other-me sent those shuttles with these me-mes aboard." "Anything else I should know?" "Feels like a thousand new mes are born every second, and also die every second. I kinda wouldn't mind if we stopped that. Sort of disorienting and unpleasant to suffocate that much." "Here check this out, probably what you're feeling." She handed the headset she had on to one of me and I put it on. "Oh yeah, that's uhh... that's what I'm feeling alright. Couple hundred more of those big tubes spitting mes out on the big ball there." The turbowonk went ding when we hit the bridge. Luke was sitting in the captains chair, mouth agog, staring right at the main viewscreen. Oh, that's what the headset is mirroring. "Hey buddy, got a surprise for you." Jimmi said. "And it isn't that nightmare on screen... uhh, kinda sorta." He spoke before looking back, "Hey Aunt Jimmi. I see you've seen the..." He turned back and saw the group of us. "...Dad?...ssss?" Ha, his face, my poor Luke. He couldn't decide if he was happy to see me, terrified I was there, or furious with me about something... probably the dinosaur thing. "Hey buddy. Things got a bit weird while I was dead, and now I'm a terran hivemind." I said with the one of me closest to him, and all of me waved. Even the dying, birthing ones on screen. "Oh, Hey Mafdet." She seemed busy on the tactical station but took a moment to meow in my general direction, then she hit fire and every single tooth in the mouth fired at once into different targets. It was beautiful. Fifty-three Scourge flesh vessels were shot with such perfect precision and power that the secondary explosions basically crippled them all. Luke slammed into a me at a dead sprint, two of me had to help catch the me he hit so I could spin in a circle with him in my arms. Once I got my hugging me stabilized and upright, my other mes went and took up stations on the undermanned bridge. "Sick ship, dude. Permission to man several stations at once?" "Granted." He let go of me, and then afterward, he stepped back he punched me in the chest. "DINOSAURS!?" "I... Sorry?" I didn't know what to else say, and I had way more than four brains working on it. "Maybe have that conversation later. More important things are calling." Jimmi walked over to the comms station. "Like calling your wives and Molly, or I dunno... maybe catching some of those Dilt-hoses." "And do what with them?" The me behind her was closer, so it answered. "I am starting to regret making my ship look that way..." She shuddered. "I think we could plug one or two into my ship. It has plenty of fighter shuttle bays that would fit one of those... Diltipositors. And it's big enough that we could maybe get two plugged into it at once. They're decently spaced out, but I bet we could find a spot with two close enough." "And we could use my tractor beam hands to control them and put them in place." Luke added, helpfully. "Great, lets get Ingamar on the line and have the Amish Papacies provide cover." Jimmi was on it, she started making calls. I had my mes at their stations, ready to go... but I took in a moment to take in the gestalt me. There were thousands of me, mostly dying in space, but from all