I never meant for any of this to happen. One moment I was standing in the telepod, euphoric—believing I’d finally conquered the barrier between man and machine. The next, I felt it: a crawling inside my cells, like my DNA was being rewritten letter by letter. At first, I thought I was evolving. Stronger. Faster. More alive. I could feel every nerve, every pulse of blood. I took Ronnie to bed that night like a man reborn. But she saw the changes. The hairs on my back. The way I moved—too fluid, too insectile.

Now, weeks later, I’m falling apart. Literally. My fingernails popped off like loose caps. My skin itches constantly, peeling in patches. I vomit acid to digest food. I wake up on the ceiling, clinging like some goddamn bug. I reviewed the logs today. That’s when I saw it—the fly. It got in with me. The computer merged us. Two genomes. One body.

I’m calling myself Brundlefly now. Not out of pride. Out of horror. I don’t know how much of me is left. I need Ronnie. She’s pregnant. My child. Maybe the only pure human part of me that remains. I have to fuse us—to combine our DNA in the pod and reverse this. To make something whole again. Even if it means we become one. Even if it kills us.