(Rose)
Feeling consciousness, awareness of oneself but in a void of body, it’s very strange.
Whether I could like it or not, my mind and identity worked as they did, because they used to be attached to a human body. They were built for it.
Without a body, the human soul... devolves rapidly.
Nightmare is holding together.
She’s helping because she sees as an interesting friend, and an ally in these circumstances.
Right now we’re not much truly, but we seek ways to survive nonetheless.
We’re not in the void below reality as I first thought. We’re in a gargantuan stomach.
A place where instead of being dissolved by entropy, we’ll turn into nutrients or energy for a greater being.
In that sowhat chaotic place, Nightmare was like a fish returning to its primitive sea. Whereas my humanity isn’t adapted, and I would have drown by myself. Or turned into sothing else.
I’m used to sharing a body with Blu so I’m at ease actually now that nightmare is ruling our shape.
R - How can I help?
N - Think. As much as possible. Complex thoughts reactivate the print of your brain and the links to structures in T.I. It helps putting structure around us and to translate energy into power.
As if the more I thought, the more my ghostly brain would spread itself like roots and grow.
Exactly she replies.
We have nothing materialistic yet, no flesh, no genes to replicate.
But we still have brain patterns, structured in T.I. We will extend that, like roots and branches in the soil.
Until we can sprout into reality and atoms once more.
Slowly for now, our true self will grow, and be able to catch and deviate more and more of what floats with us and around us in this wide stomach.
N - Leave the protection from the acids to . Just focus on growing us.
So I do.
The more I think about myself, my past and my mories, what I know and what I can deduce to bridge the gaps of what I forgot, the more invisible neurones and synaptic links appear within us.
At the sa ti, I can feel Nightmare entangled with , focusing on bringing energy to us, and creating a dark oil that covers us like a skin. That oil is an exotic material, a void of energy and matter, sohow stabilised into a gel.
That liquid void acts as a cellular barrier or skin for us, against whatever would rapidly dissolve us and digest us behind.
Smart Nightmare made it even able to absorb most things that co into contact with it, so that we can use them once they pass that barrier.
That interface she’s designing becos our real daiûa dark skin.
Surely enough, at so point it will gain real mass, and our body will beco real. But there’s still a very long way to go.
We’re just roots growing around a core, the seed.
If everything fails and turns to hell, our minds will retract into that seed, and the skin will cover it entirely and solely.
Closing all doors, we would beco a dormant spore, invisible from any outside sight, but ready to restart growth whenever enough energy would reach us again.
It’s the last chance option. If everything else fails and we’re in dire danger. If the monster that swallowed us notices we’re on a path to rebel and plans to crush us, then we’ll do that.
Until then, we’ll lie low but grow ourselves. I focus on spreading our dendrites all around, and she focuses on covering all but the growing tips with that camouflaged skin.
~
R - How long? Since we died? Before we can return to reality?
N - It’s not relevant. Don’t think about ti.
We have no control over ti.
Only so on ourselves.
I alone, would have been gone entirely. My fragnted mind wasn’t able to survive and regroup.
I died. Parts of were saved inside a pendant, but I died.
She. She survived. Because of her nature.
Akin to Blu a long ti ago, she restarted from the fundantals, reconstructing what she had lost. And she chose to grant a new form of life, instead of just consuming the food I was.
Now I’m doing my best.
In this new form of chirism or symbiosis.
I spread our immaterial mind into that space. She makes it stick and stain.
Both of us, alone, would have died...
Together...
Maybe we can create a flesh even that god won’t be able to digest.
Maybe we will survive the maelstrom of digestion that lies amidst this ocean. Maybe we will survive.
We will continue to lay low, and grow discretely as much as possible, between the feet of this giant.
No. We’re within. We’ve beco the disease of that thing so much greater than us.
I think most of my intellect has now regenerated.
Enough to realise our situation, and to realise we have to play our chance with the upmost intelligence.
Because we’re against sothing imnse and unimaginable.
Let’s be smart.
As long as we are ourselves in a blind spot for that god, let’s keep it that way.
We secured the seed as well.
Now let’s grow as much strength as we possibly can. And Nightmare is right, ti is not relevant right now. We’ll bid and take our ti.
And grow like a disease...
We’ll spread like a virus inside of it but keep ourselves as if dormant.
Our new flesh, currently simply an oil covering our immaterial brain cells, will gradually grow into sothing more complex, an animal organism.
As I spread our minds, she will spread our flesh.
For the first ti ever, I can say I know what it feels like to be a tree.
It amuses a little actually.
Normally I would just feel my own body and its limits.
Currently I feel no muscles and no really defined shape, but I can feel the growth and nurous branching out of my thin roots and branches.
Both of them being technically more brain tissues made entirely of T.I.
I feel my own liquid body spreading around, slowly but soundly, like the network of roots of a tree growth, or a dripping of ink on wet paper.
It brings an instinctive satisfaction actually.
Sothing primitive and reassuring lies in that feeling of growth. It’s similar to a sensation of satiety.
I know Nightmare feels the sa. The bigger we beco, the smaller our fear of completely dying becos.
We won’t overco that god at this rate though.
I don’t think our little growth will be exponential.
It’s much more likely to be logarithmic even.
Given we’re yet to be more than the spore of an algae in this foreign ocean, a grain of sand not quite digested, we will never be able to swallow the ocean itself.
But we will survive at least.
And then soday, sothing else will change.
Either we will beco sohow strong enough to escape, back to reality. Or strong enough to fight on this side, starting from a disease.
Or the god itself will change, in a way or another. Maybe good for us, maybe worst.
We’ll adapt, and we’ll be opportunistic. Though we’ll try to be smart and foreseeing when opportunities arise.
In a way, we’re going through the process that brought and brings every daiûa to life. Albeit in a more hostile environnt.
Grow and evolve carefully, in a foreign and dark, sunless ocean.
Until you have gathered enough power and knowledge to find a way to escape...
Until you can give birth to yourself, in another world...
And live.
~
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