"What could be worse than being an Igor forever?" Igor sighed, leaning on the balcony.

"I don't know...maybe being the guy strapped to the table?"

He just sighed, not listening. For an 'evil scientist' Igor's not a bad guy, but like many people who aren't 'bad guys' he's managed to do some pretty terrible things in his life. I'm one of them. See, he once invented this serum and decided it would be a pretty neat idea to test it on a lab rabbit. If Igor was someone else, he might have paused to wonder whether he should burden an innocent little bunny with sentience and immortality, but no. Instead, as he tells it, he struggled with his conscience tormented over whether or not he was 'evil' enough to hurt a rabbit by giving it a shot. Now, Igor's a smart guy, almost definitely a genius, but he just doesn't think. Brain probably has more philosophical depth.

The way he tells it, he finally decided to make the serum ingest able and stick it into a carrot. Imagine what it was like for me. One moment the world was a fog, then suddenly I felt like my head was going to split open. Then I realized I'd just had a thought. "Ow, my head." I was thinking about myself. I had a self. And suddenly I was all alone, separate from the rest of the world because of the self thing. Oh, alright, alone except for the big, dumb looking guy staring down at me. And a brain on wheels that made noises. Man he turned out to be annoying.

My litter mates, the rabbits that used to live in cages across from me, the ones I could always hear and smell disappeared one day. They were just gone. Igor told me that his master had gotten rid of them. I wanted to follow them, but they had gone where I couldn't follow. As time went on I learned that eventually everyone would go the same place. The idiot Brain, my creator, everyone except me. Once while Igor wasn't looking I chewed up his notes about the serum. He still doesn't know what really happened to them.

Brain and I spent most of our days hiding from Igor's master. This Dr. Glickenstein had a library of books he never touched. I've never seen Igor go near anything that wasn't a technical manual either, but as soon as I learned to read, I started using books to fill up the long hours while Igor worked. Because I'm a rabbit, my sight isn't the best, but I kept trying, holding my face very close to the page. Some books I didn't understand, but some like Watership Down and Animal Farm made me feel a little like I wasn't so alone in the world. They also made me horribly depressed, but so does everything else so that's nothing new. In addition to those, I read philosophy, the encyclopedia, anything I could get my nose into.

Always, at the end of the day we were there to meet Igor. He'd sit at his desk trying to draw up blueprints for hours before he fell asleep. Sometimes he'd just talk to us. He told us all about what he'd do when he was a famous Evil Scientist. Crushing the world, subjugating the masses, that kind of thing. To tell the truth I don't think he had any kind of real plan for it. Just 'Step one, make machines. Step three, rule the world.' Okaaay, genius.

Anyhow, on that day out on the balcony Dr. Glickenstein suddenly pushed the door open. Igor barely had time to shove Brain and I behind a lawn chair.

"Gee Brain, why don't you move your claw a little lower? My kidneys aren't completely crushed yet." I whispered.

"Ow! That was sarcasm!" Luckily there was a sheet hanging out to dry on the balcony. From behind it I could see Igor as he grabbed a convenient broom and pretended he'd been sweeping all along. If Dr. Glickenstein spotted us, we would probably all die.

Well at least, he was welcome to try it with me, but I have a soft spot for the other guys.

"Aha!" Schadenfreude's voice rang out from the speakerphone. "Why hello there, Doctor Glickenstein."

Dr. Glickenstein's voice was grumpy as usual. I could just see him frowning, shaggy gray eyebrows knit together. "What is the meaning of this? I'm doing important things and I cannot. be. interrupted!" He punctuated his statement by pounding the wall. Igor winced, momentarily stopping his sweeping to glance nervously at the man. Glickenstein, thankfully didn't seem to be paying him any attention.

"I know your secret." I could picture Schadenfreude leaning closer "Your adorable secret with the big floppy ears and the cute little twitchy nose."

"What?"

"Your secret with the white...fluffy...tail...?" Schadenfreude's voice was dripping with smugness.

"I don't know what you're saying." Dr. Glickenstein was confused now.

"Yes you do."

"No, I don't!"

"Look, can we have done with this charade? Can you just get to the part where you admit you know what I'm talking about?"

"Listen, you preposterous man if you think-"

Igor was watching Dr. Glickenstein very carefully. Maybe he was confused, but I began to have a horrible suspicion.

"Brain, listen, this is bad."

"Uh-huh."

"They know about you." Igor was pacing up and down the floor, nervously running his hands through his hair. "Okay, this is bad, but maybe, maybe Schadenfreude will be impressed and let me work for him?"

"He's not talking about me, he said 'adorable'"

Igor threw up his hands. "What else would he be talking about?"

"Well, Igor." I nervously tapped the floor with a foot. "Supposedly sentient beings like us, you know how we do that thing where we say things that aren't true so we can imagine things we can't have in real life?"

Igor just looked at me.

"Stories, I mean." Cripes, this was embarrassing.

"Hey, is this about you using Dr. Glickenstein's computer?" Brain squeaked his wheel.

"Igor, I kind of used Dr. Glickenstein's computer to publish some fiction." I blurted, glaring at Brain.

"Yeah, totally, they were all like: 'Agent of N.I.M.H.' and 'One Bad Rabbit: Flopsy, Mopsy AND Cottontail (weird tilted line thingy), Peter.'"

Igor's face had started looking pretty interesting by this point. Something between rage and utter confusion. Confusion won. "So I should be worried?" He sighed.

"Er..."

"That's a yes, then."

"Maaaybe."