Hatch a plan for a new Zoe

Zoe sat down, exhausted by you roaming around in her in ways she never would have expected. She was perplexed, as you proved to somehow know more about her anatomy and its control than she did! She rubbed her sweaty forehead, trying to focus while you were still stepping around in her body, using your control of her form via Ela's slime state to ferry your physical self around to study the internal structures. And with Ela's advanced mind working in overdrive with all these nanites hooked up to you, you seemed to piece together the puzzle of Zoe really quickly.

Your cloned Ela-self sat down next to Zoe, and Chloe joined in as well, not one to be left out of a family huddle. You smiled brightly as you seemed to have a bit of an epiphany. "Okay, I've mapped out much of Zoe's insides, and I'm pretty sure I understand what's going on in here. This large space can be certainly exploited for storage space--I could put the whole lab in here even and have a roaming Zoe-shaped mobile science building--but like many organs, this one does double duty. This is a reproductive chamber."

Zoe's eyes widen, as she looks down at her body. "...Are you sure? How is that possible? I was engineered specifically to be an adaptive bodysuit, I don't think anywhere in the notes for Project Inside Out is there any mention of building me to reproduce."

You nodded, putting a hand on Zoe's shoulder. "I'm certain, and it would at the very least explain why you're so stimulated by me wandering around in there. It's kind of like... a cuckoo clock, it has this little bird that pops out of a door and peeps every hour, but there are all these other mechanisms to make that work, these other gears and levers and bellows and everything, conveniently hidden away as part of the illusion. It's like the scientists that made you wanted to make the adaptive bodysuit version of a little chirping bird, but they had to add all this other stuff, including a whole clock, to get what they wanted. In order to build the parts they wanted, the scientists had to add in so much more, and since DNA isn't really well understood yet they probably used a lot of existing code..."

"So, tell us," said Chloe, suddenly interested in letting you be the teacher rather than the student, "what exactly would Zoe be built of, if what you're saying is accurate?"

"If you ask me, the body that we can't see right now in 3D space I think most closely resembles a cuttlefish." Chloe snort-laughs upon hearing that, causing Zoe to frown. You give Chloe a shove, and then turn back to Zoe, taking her hands in yours. "And I think using this reproductive chamber, I can turn you into a living elastomer being that doesn't need nanites."

Zoe suddenly looks up, rubbing her neck. All of this has been a lot to process for a bodysuit that until just recently had a firm grasp on what she thought was a pretty complete version of herself. She'd clearly been aware of her internal, extradimensional body to some degree, but she only had so much control over voluntary muscles and senses, leaving some of what you were doing inside her a totally novel experience. "How? How can you do any of that? You're going to use my body to convert me inside it, like some cocoon? How can I essentially give birth to myself?"

You glanced back to Chloe, who had finally adopted a more serious--even intense--expression as she listened to your proposal to do something that she and Zoe had been certain would take years of research. "I'd replace your brain with my own self, which is surprisingly easy when you're as big as you are in a real three-dimensional fashion. I'd use some of my elastomer, without the nanites, as kind of a 'starter dough' in a sense. This chamber becomes the perfect environment to grow the elastomer up to size and integrate with your brain all at once. My theory, based on what I'm seeing here, is that the lab environment is too sterile and regulated--it created an evenly distributed neural network, where an environment like this instead would allow for specialized structures to form naturally, removing the need for the nanites. You don't need to improve the science of the elastomer, just the creation process."

"In theory," Chloe was quick to add. Zoe remained silent, looking at you for a moment. Chloe stood up, and strolled over to the nearby whiteboard used for writing notes, and began to jot down a few things. "Just to recap, you're saying you want to trade places with Zoe's brain, that's step one... impregnate yourself with elastomer, step two... so you could give birth to a naturally-developed Elastomer Zoe. And all of that is predicated on a hunch about the incubation environment."

"It's a reasonable theory," Zoe said, barely above a whisper, before clearing her throat and glancing up at Chloe. Clearly she was still in a daze, even though you'd calmed down your stimulating activities within her body. "You and I have both seen plenty of studies about lab-grown tissues not having the same properties as live-birth samples, all due to a myriad of complex processes that aren't always well understood but necessary for the process. Besides, we had to make Ela's mass in batches to create as much as she had to have her own extra-dimensional stability, whereas I suspect there would be no need in my body."

You nodded, brushing a hand along Zoe's bare shoulder, now that things have calmed down. "I could then do the same for you, Chloe, but you're right about being concerned. This is all a hunch. If I was only thinking as Emily, without this extra super-brain working in the background, I'd have never come up with this idea, let alone been confident enough in its execution at any phase. But I can do this, and I feel certain that if you trust me, it'll work out."

"And what about Zoe's body at the end of it? As in, her old bodysuit-making body that you're using to do all this?"

"I'll figure that out later. If there are any problems in the process, I'd put things to a halt return her to normal as quickly as I can. The risk of catastrophic failure is very small, but there are a lot of more plausible things to happen that then we'd need to go undo."

All eyes turned to Zoe, who seemed to be thinking heavily upon your words. No doubt she was playing through all the scenarios she could think of, and pondering the risks.

"I won't try anything without your go-ahead, Zoe. The choice is yours. If you want to do it, then we start immediately--and we might need a bigger space to work in."