Mr. Kaht is a scientist, but not any scientist, he is the lead scientist on the Immortality Bug Project!
Years ago, a species of insect was discovered, and this insect produces a liquid which causes cells to become biologically immortal.
But the liquid is produced in such tiny amounts, it would take years of harvesting to get enough for a single person...
That's where Kaht and his team come in! They are working to transfer the ability to produce the liquid into bacteria found in the human digestive track, so that everyone can be immortal!
But Mr. Kaht has a dark secret...
Years ago (Around the time the bugs were discovered, coincidentally.), when he was a child, his Friend began talking to him. Little Boy Kaht's Friend was invisible, but that doesn't mean he wasn't real, so Little boy Kaht listened to his Friend...
Friend told Kaht that he was lonely, and that they should be friends! But Friend had no body, so they couldn't play together, if only Kaht could get Friend a body...
And so, in the present day, Mr. Kaht has guided the Immortality Bug Project to its final step! A man in a lab coat brings in the final specimens, several petri dishes of bacteria. Every test so far has been a failure, but not this one! Deep in his heart Mr. Kaht knows that he will succeed this time, Friend has told him the correct way! All through his life Friend has helped him, guided him, and now is the time to repay him!
Reaching over, he carefully looks into the dish... No trace of the distinctive black fluid.
The next one, nothing. The next, still failure. But in the final dish... Empty, it is completely empty! How could this have happened?
In the sewer under the building...
It had been so easy, so easy. Easy enough that the creature was still in a kind of giddy trance, drunk on the simplicity and speed of it. These new bodies were perfect, easily controlled and numerous. And the speed! Compared to the vast abyss of time he has spent cultivating his insects, the time it had taken him to multiply into the thousands was astonishing.
Gripping the ceiling of the pipe, the creature leached sustenance from the surrounding water. The pieces of its body were fed easily, and near indestructable now that they had been possessed.
In the darkness, Friend wondered how to thank the man that had given him his perfect body...