Chapter 217: Jones, the twin

Tampering with the brain of a modern man was significantly different from tampering with that of a caveman’s.

The cavemen around him had an average IQ of seventy, at least that was what he figured. Even though the standard IQ tests from back on Earth could not be properly applied to the people around him, the fact of the matter was that cavemen were significantly less intelligent than he was.

Jimmy was an educated man. He used to be an Electrical Engineering student, and not to mention, his cognitive capabilities followed him from Earth, even if his current body wasn’t the ideal example of an evolved, intelligent human. He was smart, and likewise, the sleeping clone in front of him was smart as well.

Editing every single one of the clone’s memories would take days, if not weeks, and not to mention, he couldn’t essentially lobotomize the clone either, because he couldn’t risk it unlearning its magical abilities now, in the eleventh hour, where those same abilities were necessary to pull everything together. Dinosaur taming, and every other bit of skill revolving that matter, was necessary to help prevent the extinction of the only shapeshifters that Jimmy was aware of!

With such issues considered, he had to be creative.

“Soft lobotimizing…” He muttered.

Jimmy came up with a new plan, and he implemented it. His plan was as simple as his previous ones; He planted a new thought in the clone’s head, an unspoken rule that it was to follow no matter what!

“You are my twin brother, and you always will be.” He said.

The new, planted thought he just implemented revolved around that matter, and Jimmy was really hoping that it would poke a hole in the clone’s mind, and rewrite every memory it had.

The formula behind this move was simple. The clone may initially start out believing that it was Jimmy, as its memories encouraged it, but that strong, planted thought in its head would say otherwise.

The clone would eventually believe that it was Jimmy’s twin brother, and at some point, every other memory it had would not matter much, as it would be rewritten by the same, unspoken rule that the clone was to follow.

This barely cost two-percent of his mana to implement, and with a decent amount of mana left over, he used it to make a ’second fail safe’ of sorts. He wiped out the clone’s memories over the past month, other than that of the shapeshifters that he recently met.

This solved a lot of problems all together. It kept Jimmy’s girlfriends safe, for one thing, but now the clone also had a strong, comprehensive reason to help the shapeshifters back in the underworld.

“Sloppy work at best…” He held his breath. “But I’m fresh out of mana, so let’s hope to God it fucking worked.”

“I’m sure you did a great job,” Mika said, and pinched his cheek. “Do you want me to free your twin, or do you want to be the one to do it?”

“Go free him,” He said, “It’s best if I’m the first person my ’twin’ sees.”

Mika did not question him any further. She walked over to the control panel, pressed a couple of buttons, woke the clone up, drained the liquid from container number two, and then opened a one-meter wide ’door’ through the glass for the clone to follow.

’Fuck… I forgot to give him a reason for his ’supposed’ death. He’s gonna ask why he came out of a container… isn’t he? I should’ve knocked the fucker’s IQ down by a scale.’ He thought, ’Or not? The worst thing other than a hostile clone, would be a hostile and stupid clone. Let’s work with what we have…’

Jimmy was nervous, but as the clone crawled out, he held his breath, and made first contact with it.

At first glance, he felt weird about seeing himself crawling around naked, but he had no other choice than to work around it. There were other, more pressing matters at hand, after all.

“How do you feel?” He asked, pecking for reasons to confirm if his plan was a success or not. “You’ve been asleep for a while.”

“I’m alright,” The clone answered. “How are you doing, brother? Why did I end up in that damn box?”

“You died in battle, Jones,” He answered, as this was the first lie he could think of. “Lucky for you, I saved your DNA in a container.”

“Oh?” The clone grunted, “So my name is Jones, huh? I remember it being Jimmy.”

“The container can make some mistakes,” He followed along, “But don’t worry, I’ll help you catch up. Your name is Jones, and you’re my twin brother. Some fuckass cavemen from the west hills want our lands, so they keep attacking us. You died in the last battle, shot down by a spear. I’m sorry to say that they killed your pet dinosaur too.”

“Bastards…” Jones held his breath, a vein visible on his forehead as his anger mustered, “I’ll tear them limb from limb… they’ll regret ever crossing our path…”

Jimmy was making things up as he went along, but the thoughts, or blatant lies he ’planted’ after the clone was free, were effective, simple, and helped send the clone towards the right path. He figured that if his clone was upset enough, he’d ask less questions about how he came to be, hopefully long enough until the new set of ’rules’ in his brain set in properly.

However, he was worried that he had obsessed the clone a bit too much, as he had antagonized the enemy a bit too much. It was a bad move, but he panicked, as he quickly remembered that he had skipped over many modifications that he was supposed to do a moment earlier, but either forgot to do so, or didn’t have enough mana to follow through with it.

For example, Gutaxun was still alive, and in the off-chance that his clone remembered Gutaxun, he was sure that he had a real problem in his hands, which was why he panicked. He didn’t want anyone to lay claim over his pet.

To avoid clogging the clone’s brain with too much worry, he had to slow down, and then add, “We already handled those fuckers from the west hills, brother, we killed them, and we’re gonna kill the rest of them sooner or later, but right now, I need your help with something else.”

“Oh?” Jones repeated. “What on Earth could be more important?”

“You remember the shapeshifters, right?” He asked, “I need you to go down there, and help them preserve their lake. It might take you a few weeks, but they’re friends we can’t afford to lose. They offer us a tactical advantage over the same hairy bastards we’re trying to wipe out.”

Jimmy figured that it was effective to give the clone a goal to follow. It should even be effective enough to help the few rules he planted in his clone’s head, settle in nice and well. He was hoping for that to be the case, really, but what went on in his clone’s head was yet to be determined.

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