Of all the things Howard Manfield knew to trust the most, it was his senses. Stalwart in their defense of reality, they told him that the universe broke down into understandable orders. His grasp of these concepts, even from a young age, compromised the skills that governed his life regardless of his perception or interference. Throughout his education, his most common report from teachers and counselors was that he was an "old soul" and a "joy to have in class." Naturally, he was despised by his peers.

Drawn like a moth to flame, Howard marveled at the morphology he found within the animal kingdom. It was not necessarily their function, but rather their exigent nobility that fascinated him. Each organism, even the mutants, were born with the capacity to construct a perfect copy of something that has never existed. As most men do, Howard saw himself in his studies. Having been born with what doctors and his parents would call, with no shortage of venom, "a tender constitution," most of his time was spent in books or a virtagarden. Whether this connection was due to lack of external stimuli or an essential narcissism was the topic of many amateur psychoanalysis sessions at the dinner table. His parents saw each meal as a conversation with the natural world, and each conversation as a meal to enlarge their worldview. The newest and latest in psychology and symbology was brought right to Howard from the moment he could open his eyes and ears. But it is not best to dwell.

Howard did not have an easy time making friends, nor did he have time for friendship for that matter. The matters that concerned him most were rooted in the real, or in situ, as his meaner science instructors called it. And he found himself to be much more comfortable wading through the nearby dump brush that surrounded the southeastern field of his school than a crowd of people. After a little investigation, his fifth-grade teacher told him it got its name after it was abandoned in the 50s, something about a bad breakup, and had been left to its own devices since. It amassed plants and creatures into a dense rugged and matted landscape with all manner of trash and filth all atop a nice light hill, all the things a growing scientist needed.

What his studies gained his social skills lost. This was not helped by his parents, who found the "path of least resistance" would lead him to any library or field of study he could want, comfortably away from proper society, or god forbid a camera. The social order was the most important thing in this "post-state" and "social-forward" world and his parents lovingly found uses for him where they could and made spaces for him when they could not.

Howard preferred to wrap his mind around more transfixing subjects. Thankfully, his chosen field was flourishing with subjects to jump between. He began his independent study of transformation with the Viceroy butterfly. He loved it in part because of its strength in numbers coupled with a complete invisibility. Everyone knew about the Monarch. It was the class beauty, the team captain, but love of the Viceroy is saved for those with a true appreciation of science. For without the noble Viceroy, the Monarchs would be eaten alive before making it to either end of their trek. The indispensable species.

Howard longed for the perfection that he saw others wield so brutishly. Flipping through his Vidwatch he could see video after video of the rest of the world living life on their own terms. Fast cars, beautiful women, money, sex, drugs, death, it was everything. Maybe as a kid he would have watched the news with his parents on Saturday Mornings but now? Now he lived the news, and it brought him whatever he cared about most. This was his slice of heaven and the only thing that made the loneliness bearable.

As Howard grew older and his access to the World Net was expanded, his interests specified to the grotesque, or rather to what polite society might call grotesque. Ugly as sin, only to be formed into a terrible and beautiful winged creature. Howard thought about the first creatures of their kind emerging into the world, what would the neighbors think?

Unfortunately, economic needs, that is to say the economic needs of beer, pizza, and porn, compelled his studies from the species that truly caught his admiration to those that paid him. Or rather got him paid. Naturally, he was neck deep in flies from here on out.

Despite having considerable academic potential, it was not enough to qualify Howard for a debt-free degree, and his parents' income did not meet the threshold for community school. Howard also happened to come of age as "generational accountability" became the new buzzword to explicate the deficiencies parents found in their children. To ensure he would pull his weight, Howard had eagerly accepted the challenge of single-handedly bearing the brunt of financing his education. A distinction he shared with the few and uncelebrated others. His parents considered it a badge of honor to prove his worth amidst such adversity.

If his neighbors could see through the musty windows of his apartment maybe they'd be filled with the same eagerness to leave his parents did, or perhaps the desire to feed. Howard was never sure about people. His apartment was filled to the brim with his passions. Where others might have seen chaos, he knew there were systems, where some might say madness, he would say genius. Photographs from his time in situ lay strewn across his walls and floors. Truth be told with the state of his apartment it would have been an understandable echiuran confusion. In the back of his mind, he wondered if one day he would find himself on a wall just like this. Finished and finalized for study and conjecture.

His mind quickly moved onto more fun and engaging thoughts, unfortunately his work required an amount of focus that required him to spend long hours in the lab, he flipped through his dating apps with no matches to be found. He couldn't even remember the last time he held a woman close to his body.

It was an important subject to him, as crucial as the air he breathed and the retirement he saved for. He knew one day it would be his time in the sun, his time to spread his wings and conquer the world like his fathers before him. His current station, self-appointed Lord of Flies garnered him very little by way of attractiveness, and the revulsion of women and non-women alike reinforced his love of his craft. From his perspective they were the unwashed masses bereft of the cleaning power of reason. But for all of his certainty the creeping doubts of his self-worth compelled him to dream up new ways to meet people.

He had spent enough time in his cocoon. Soon it would be his time to emerge, it was inevitable.