What would be your first thought if you went to bed one night, perfectly normal in your home, and the next morning you woke up, you found yourself in a strange place, with your perfectly normal human body replaced with a huge mass of quivering flesh?

At least, that's what it seems like at first, when I woke up. It's kind of like waking up like normal. Not all of your senses come back to your right away. It takes time, even if only a few seconds. But when they did, it felt like waking up with a hangover, as with my new body my senses were now much more acute, but my still humanish mind didn't know how to handle them yet. Not the mention that I now had a thousand eyes and ears where before I only had two of each, a thousand noses and mouths where before I only had one of each, and a whole lot of other sensory organs besides.

As it was, it took me a few hours before I got my bearings, and took stock of my surroundings.

I appeared to be in a tropical jungle, judging by the trees, the humidity, and the heat. My body appeared to be much taller than the trees surrounding me, and I guess I had to be at least 400 meters tall, with a wider base. I was taller than many skyscrapers.

From my base there appeared to be some sort of purplish stringy moss growing around me. The moss was apparently part of my body cause I could see from eyes down there, and also taste anything that touched it. Speaking of, there appeared to be several fat wriggling worms down there, hanging around my base. They were eating the purplish moss, and despite it being part of my body, it didn't hurt when they bit into it. The moss seemed to regrow just as quickly as they ate it.

I felt a stranger sense connecting me to the worms. It felt like I was feeling them with my mind. Curious, I probed this sense, licking at their souls to get a better sense of them. When I did this, they shuddered and stopped moving. Curious.

All of this felt very familiar, like I'd seen this before, somewhere…

Oh right, Zerg. Duh.

So I was a hatchery then? I looked around with my new eyes. No there were those huge bone spikes poking up from my base. I was a Hive. I was also either the Overmind, or a Cerebate. I probed the strange sense that had connected me to the Larva. Was there some greater entity out there controlling me? I didn't feel like I was being controlled. That probably meant I was either a rogue Cerebate, or actually the Overmind itself.

Either way, I didn't feel like being controlled was something I wanted, so if I was a rogue Cerebate, then I would plan to remain a rogue Cerebate.

With that out of the way, I probed another one of my new sense to see how much resources I had. Not a lot, apparently. Enough to make about a hundred units of zerg, but not much more than that. I probed another sense to see what gene sequences I had access to. Only three: Overlords, Drones, and… Prospectors?

Curious, I examined the sequence of the Prospectors. Oh, it seemed that Prospectors were used to find minerals when they weren't readily available as crystalline structures. Well, that explained why I hadn't heard of them before, they wouldn't have been useful in the Koprulu sector where there were a lot of those crystalline minerals. Speaking of which…

I glanced around me with my new eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of those crystal minerals. No such luck, there was none to be found. There weren't any Vespene gas geysers anywhere either.

Just my luck, the person who dumped me here wasn't kind enough to put me in a place were I had access to these things.

This was going to be a problem. Vespene gas was necessary for evolution, fuel, and awaking Psionic potential. The Zerg had originally evolved without it, but once they had found it, they had evolved to have a great affenity for it. Without it, I would have problems with controlling my brood, as without psionics they would have problems connecting to the zerg network, and would go feral.

I was suddenly thankful that who ever had left me here had given me some starter resources so that I could make some units without having to worry that they would go feral.

After thinking about it, I decided to make some overlords first, so they could scout the area and see if there were any Vespene gas geysers nearby.

Turning my attention back to the larva, I was startled to discover that while I was thinking, a large batch of them had appeared. There were about twenty larva on the ground right now, but only 6 six of them were ready to grow into new units.

I quickly ordered them to grow into Overlords, and they twisted around, biting their tails. After a few moments, creep grew up over them, forming cocoons.

I was fascinated by the whole process, as I had not known until now that they bit their tails first, or that creep was responsible for forming their cocoons. I still felt their minds as they turned into mush inside their cocoons, becoming raw essence. That was interesting. I wondered what was hosting their minds as surly their brains weren't intact anymore, right?

As I made that thought, I realized suddenly that I knew how it worked exactly. Apparently I had the memories of the old Overmind, but they were there in the background, only surfacing if I thought of them. The minds of the larva was held in the creep itself, which apparently had it's own nervous system.

You learn new things every day.

It took the larva two hours to fully form into Overlords, by which time I had ordered two thirds of the other larva to turn into Drones, while one third turned into Prospectors.

When the overlords were done, I sent four of them off in the cardinal directions, while one traveled upwards to get a better idea of what was in the distance, and one stayed to keep an eye on the drones and prospectors.

The Prospectors looked like gnarly flies that buzzed around and licked the ground with long tongues to taste it's mineral content. Their tongues were sharp and powerful, able to dive into hard stone like fish, and I got the feeling that they were at least six two meters long.

It didn't take them long to find a few spots nearby with good mineral content, and I ordered the drones to start clearing out the trees to make a path to those areas.

The trees were brought back and placed in my mouths, which proceeded to crunch them up with powerful jaws and unbreakable molars. When the trees had been rendered to pulp, my mouths would swallow them. This was unconscious, as I didn't directly control my own mouths. The trees were rather bland, it's essence not very colorful, but I did take the time to store it's sequence in my memory for later use.

It didn't take very long before all of my mouths were working to crunch up trees, and a back line started to form. My drones were cutting down trees faster than I could process them. I ordered them to slow down, but it was galling that I couldn't process them fast enough. Something to think about later. At least my mineral count was going up.

I made drones until I had thirty of them, then I ordered one of them to form a spawning pool, away from the lanes bringing me wood, so that I could make zerglings. The spawning pool took up ten units worth of the vespene gas the ROB who dumped me here had so generously gifted me, so I had to be conservative with it from here on out until I could find some more.

The spawning pool six hours to finish, after which I turned ten larva into twenty zerglings. By now the drones had encountered a few animals, which had fled at the sight of zerg. I ordered ten of my zerglings to set out to find these animals, while the other ten were ordered to protect my drones in case a predatory animal turned up to try and hunt them. It didn't seem likely, though, as the drones were rather enormous.

By now the Drones were mining for minerals, digging up rocks and returning them to the hive. If the trees had been bland, the rocks were tasteless, and their texture was rather grainy.

An hour later, the zerglings brought back animals they had hunted down, and they were a lot more tasty, their essence blooming in color. Like before, I stored their sequences in memory for later.

It was when I had a few of the drones clearing out the trees in a ring around me that I discovered an opening in my Hive. Curious, I ordered on my drones to enter the opening, and when they did, I discovered my real body. There was a large cave-like opening inside the hive, at the bottom of which my real body lay. I looked like a Cerebate.

I didn't know how large Cerebate's were normally, but I looked pretty big. I was wrapped around a pillar, atop which was a purple Khaydarin Crystal. It was glowing with a purple aura.

I wasn't quite sure what purpose the crystal had, but it could be useful in case I couldn't find any Vespene gas, which was looking to be likely.

Khaydarin Crystals were reservoirs of Psionic energy, and they absorbed any kind of energy that surrounded it, be it living energy, light, sound, psionics, or any other kind of energy besides.

By now the Overlords had traveled quite far, and had yet to find a single Vespene Geyser.

If I didn't think of something quick, I was going to run out of fuel and lose control of my brood.

And if that happened, I would die.