476. Exotic matter, 2

(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 me together.

She’s helping me because she sees me 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 somewhat 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 something else.

I’m used to sharing a body with Blume 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 me. Just focus on growing us.

So I do.

The more I think about myself, my past and my memories, 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 same time, I can feel Nightmare entangled with me, 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, somehow 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 come into contact with it, so that we can use them once they pass that barrier.

That interface she’s designing becomes our real daiûa dark skin.

Surely enough, at some point it will gain real mass, and our body will become 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 become 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 time.

We have no control over time.

Only some on ourselves.

I alone, would have been gone entirely. My fragmented mind wasn’t able to survive and regroup.

I died. Parts of me were saved inside a pendant, but I died.

She. She survived. Because of her nature.

Akin to Blume a long time ago, she restarted from the fundamentals, reconstructing what she had lost. And she chose to grant me a new form of life, instead of just consuming the food I was.

Now I’m doing my best.

In this new form of chimerism 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 become 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 something immense 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, time is not relevant right now. We’ll bid and take our time.

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 something more complex, an animal organism.

As I spread our minds, she will spread our flesh.

For the first time ever, I can say I know what it feels like to be a tree.

It amuses me 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 numerous 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 me an instinctive satisfaction actually.

Something primitive and reassuring lies in that feeling of growth. It’s similar to a sensation of satiety.

I know Nightmare feels the same. The bigger we become, the smaller our fear of completely dying becomes.

We won’t overcome 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 someday, something else will change.

Either we will become somehow 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 environment.

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.

~