The Luke Cluster

James hurried to school the next day, after getting a text from Luke. His friend apparently had been working on something big, but that was all the information that Luke told him--other than that James was going to like the results. Nervously, James walked inside the building, and was soon greeted by Luke. ...And Lady-Luke. Both smiled wide at him, as one male and one female variant of Lucas approached James, giving him a hug.

"Uh, hey," James said, caught off-guard as he eventually wormed out of the hugs. "What the heck do you think you're doing, Luke? If they see Ivy like this..."

"Ivy isn't present," the female Luke said, still smiling. "You can address me as Ivy if you wish, but at the moment, the Hilda personality is fully in command of this body. You have three new emails, by the way." Hilda turned, brushing some dark brown hair away from her ears, showing that she had the phone notifications from James's device visible again. In fact, the more James looked at Hilda, the more he realized that she had tattoos all over... no, not tattoos, more notifications! Apps and displays and information peppered her arms, at least where the skin was visible beyond her short sleeves. The back of her hand had a working clock, and biometric signs for her body were present. ...And biometric signs for other people? The little box with pulse and blood oxygenation data kept shifting names, to other students and even teachers in the school.

James frowned, crossing his arms. "Okay, Hilda and Luke. What's going on, where's Ivy?"

"Right here," a voice said, but an unexpected one. When James turned around, he saw the body of Amy Xiao, star soccer player for the school and one of the 'cool kids' that always tried to talk Ivy and Beth into dating some of the more popular guys. She had her hands on her hips, before strolling forward to wrap her arms around James, kissing him on the cheek. "Surprise! Luke and Hilda and I talked about all this last night. We didn't want to change up the look for our body--" now Ivy's body was all their body, huh? "--So we thought we could just do some mind tweaking like Luke did with his mom, leaving a little bit of nanoslime in everyone's heads."

Luke took James's shoulder, and started walking his friend down the hall, as the two girls followed. "But then we thought, hey, if we could just convince everyone in school that our new body was the one we've always had, why leave it at that? We could make ourselves invisible to them, or make them listen to any commands we give them, or take their bodies for a spin ourselves! And to do that..."

The computer lab that Luke took James into looked like a tornado had hit it. Computer parts were strewn across the floor, making a total mess. But more importantly, a stack of Ascend headsets--with a little droplet of orange slime resting in each--sat along the near wall. Dozens of headsets had been neatly replicated by the walking 3D printer by gutting the school's computers, apparently!

James rubbed the back of his neck. "I dunno about this, Luke! Are you sure this is a good idea? You're altering a lot of brains here to go this far..."

"It's not a good idea, it's a great idea! Jim, don't worry about everyone. They're in my cluster, and I'll take good care of them. But I'm going to also make sure they all take good care of you. I put enough electronics in Ivy's body that her whole body can behave like an Ascend, but I only have enough material for everyone else to just wear a headset, even then they have to share. Still, that's enough stuff that we could do anything with these bodies!"

James looked back at Ivy and Hilda--technically Amy and Lady-Luke--augh, this was so confusing! "A 'cluster' now? What are you talking about?"

"It's a clever idea. Here, allow me to give you a visualization." Hilda lifted up her shirt, so her stomach was exposed, and her stomach behaved like a screen for these Ascend-esque tattoos, demonstrating the full-body augmentation that Luke installed in that body to make her behave like a digital device from head to toe. On her stomach, little images of people and arrows started to form, creating what looked like a network of lines pointing at people. "With Lucas providing a drop of nanoslime to each person in the school over the course of today, they will be given three directives to act upon, but otherwise remain normal. First, whatever body Luke, Ivy, yourself, or I am in, they will recognize us as if we have always been present. At the moment, they think I am an enrolled student, isn't that fascinating!" Hilda grinned, before continuing.

"The second directive is that if we ask people to 'forget us', they will, temporarily. We can essentially be invisible in the school, a blind spot to everyone we tell to ignore us. They won't even bother to think about why we're absent from class or anything, they will simply not recall our existence, thus we could roam around the school and nobody would be suspicious, as long as they have nanoslime. The final directive is that any of us can direct anyone in school to either wear or remove one of these Ascend headsets. Since you and Ivy and I are not slimes, that is how we could control other bodies. Awareness is turned to off by default, and there is no mixed mode established for the headsets, so everyone will behave normally except when controlled or given commands via a copy of my Hilda AI programming--although, that version of Hilda isn't nearly as integrated as I am into a body..." Hilda smiled, looking down at herself, shaking her hips a little.

Luke paused for a moment, before reaching over to absorb a desktop PC into him. "Right, almost forgot." He touched James on the shoulder, and James felt a sudden surge as something flowed inside him! He felt something weird traveling through his head, creating a brief brain freeze, feeling something bubble up behind his ear... and then Luke let go, stepping back. "I already put an Ascend transmitter in Ivy, now you've got one too! It can connect to any Ascend I make, just say you want to initiate a connection and pick your target."

James reached up, feeling behind his ear at a couple strange bumps. "What the... you put a transmitter in me? And what's this?"

Luke grinned, reaching up. "Don't freak out, just let me demonstrate before I explain." James felt strange when Luke touched the little sliding toggles behind his ears, as for a moment, he temporarily went blind! James's eyes turned totally black, like obsidian, when Luke did this. When Luke put the slider back where it was, James could see just find again. "So the transmitters block all sensory info when you're connected to one of the Ascend receivers normally, but that doesn't work so easily when they're inside you. I put these sliders on so you could adjust your vision, hearing, and tactile senses, basically you could shut everything off if you wanted to immerse yourself in a remote body. But, if you're bold, you could try controlling a remote body and your own at the same time this way, the tech kind of bypasses all of that.

James turned around, looking at all three of his companions. All three bodies were grinning excitedly at bringing James in on the plan. He didn't know what to say, his head was flooded with all sorts of emotions! They could be anyone, they could disrupt classrooms, make people do whatever they want! Maybe James could get **** on Dean for hitting on Ivy--maybe Ivy takes the body of Dean's girlfriend and embarrasses both of them then and there! Every perspective was theirs, every body could be theirs, all unaware of the things they were doing unless made to have awareness again.

"It's... I mean, this is a crazy plan, Luke. I don't know how you can pull this off, but if you can if this really works..."

With a nod, Luke took a seat in a nearby chair. "I'll be honest, it's pretty exhausting. The Ascend headsets will help offset some of that, but one blob of basically my body for everyone in the school to adjust their minds? Not only is it a big chunk from me, but it's going to be tough to maintain it for long. Maybe in a week or two I'll have to scale back, especially when I'm fully ready to integrate into Ivy and be one person again. At that point, we'll do a final mind-change on everyone and then we'll cut things back. But for now? We rule the school, dude."

James nodded, taking his own seat. Amy sat on James's lap, and while it was strange to have the sexy, athletic body atop his lap, he wasn't going to complain if Ivy was so willing to use it! Hilda just happily stood by, arms resting at her side, waiting for if she was needed for anything. With all the minds spread out, it seemed that Hilda didn't have as easy of a time blending in without a mix... she didn't seem to mind, as long as she remained physically present in a living body.

Now, the question was, what to do with the whole school at their mercy!