514. Exotic matter, 6

(Rose)

Something happened. Nightmare had the equivalent of a gasp, and a rush ahead, leaving me behind as she stretched.

What’s happening?

N - We caught something with warm blood!

Our combined existence is still in a very primeval form, only trying to eat and grow in both sides of reality with whatever comes by at our reach.

On our main side of existence, there’s only darkness, but with a reasonably constant and easy to digest moisture that is T.I. Not nearly as much as within a very energetic monster like Magenta was, but at least there’s some on Earth.

On the side of reality and matter, we’re maybe a few spores floating somewhere unknown. Not much.

But we just grabbed hold of a very large prey. And it’s not a plant. It’s a warm blooded animal. Blood turns Nightmare into something else.

I can feel that she’s already killing the animal by taking possession of its blood.

R - Wait...

N - I know. But we need to eat to live! We need that flesh now!

Our existence so far was still incredibly frail. We have an opportunity to build some solidity we can’t forsake.

Though I don’t always feel that sympathy for the animals I eat to live, right now I do.

Nightmare’s right, we have to eat as well. I ask her to make the pain go fast.

We devour the animal in a matter of seconds.

Like a mad plague, we melted all the flesh around the bones in a minute at most. We devoured it by building a kind of stomach above it and through it all, like a growing mould over all of its tissues. We turned it all into molten elements as fast as we could.

If anything else saw us act, it must have looked like a true horror story and nightmare (no pun intended). A disease that dissolved it all at frightening speed.

But now we can begin to build a body with that soup of aminoacids, sugars and other compounds we finally got.

We don’t have nearly enough materials to build two humans bodies right off the bat.

We have to do another thing to find more nutrients. By eating them or synthetizing them.

R - Blume would spread roots and leaves and grow on that, absorbing more raw nutrients and minerals from the ground and using sunlight for chemical synthesis. Given we’re on land it seems also.

N - That’s not a way I’m really good at. I work flesh directly... But maybe there’s more to eat around, either with blood or leaves.

R - Let’s go for a caterpillar body then.

N - That’s the best way to go.

We won’t create our real selves directly, but an intermediate body fit for purpose. That larval body will feed for us, until we have gathered enough elements to go through a metamorphosis later, creating our real bodies.

R - So... You’re going for human as well?

N - Yes. I’ll try it. I don’t want to be a flower on your chest, that’s stupid.

R - I know you don’t need me to be yourself. She’s grown over that as well you know.

N - Also I want to dream. I’m curious about that.

R - Then true humans it is. Based on what’s left on my genomic materials?

N - Try to regroup memories of your body, and we’ll see if there’s enough information left. Otherwise we’ll improvise. It will take me a while to craft our larva anyway. And longer for it to find enough food most likely.

Anyway, we’ve grabbed onto something real and valuable today.

We’re finally a step closer and back into reality.

~

We share the perceptions of our larval body. We’re two intelligent minds sharing the grasp and senses of a single rudimentary body.

Our minds are still mostly in the other world, so it’s not feeling cramped, but more like we each have a hand over the same toy. Luckily enough, we get along rather well, and we therefore aren’t fighting over it. We grow together as a real team. Still completely entangled, deeply, but truly separated nonetheless.

Having shared brain connections keeps the communication fluid and easy because we can share anything, not just words.

I can’t transcribe into words, but I share with her what I’ve found in my autonomous memories what is still recorded of my body. That means fragments of D.N.A, but also metabolic subtleties, preferences of expression, proteins folding and so on. There’s also many more than one genetic material. There’s also what remains of the ones from my various floras for instance, with some discrepancies between them. There’s also a collection of floral bacteria along the way.

There’s far more than just one genomic blueprint to make a human. We both know that.

But we start with what’s left of me. What data remains of my last body.

N - I think that’s not enough.

R - Can you craft what’s missing?

N - There are too many and wide gaps to fill in all that. If we want to create humans, or reasonably human looking bodies, I’ll need more.

This means finding something human out there. Dead, or alive.

R - If it’s alive, let’s just take what we need and not eat it whole alright?

N - It would be easier to eat two humans entirely if we find some.

R - I’d rather not if we don’t need it to survive anymore. But if we’re under attack, in danger, I guess that’s alright.

N - I get it. You still feel very human at heart.

Our larval body heads ahead along a hill, leaving the partially digested skeleton of an animal behind. It was either some sort of roe or a small deer.

We eat and digest the grass on our path.

We have no clue of where we are, but it’s seemingly reasonably lush.

~

We find a hole in the field. A warren. Nightmare is kindly asking for my opinion. I’m a little undecided.

I’m too egalitarian for my own good she says. Respecting the life of things smaller than ourselves is what makes humans, and gods, great, I reply.

But we’re still hungry, very hungry. I end up accepting it, though still feeling sorry about it.

I apologise and feel bad for the family of small animals we devour down there, one after another.

I feel really bad about it, but we move on, and we put that meat and all their tissues to good use.

N - At least you have respect and compassion for them. That’s already a lot more than most of us would toward food.

R - Hunger and will to survive prime above all, but I can still feel guilty about it.

N - Have you heard of the conatus?

R - No. I never heard this word before. Or forgot it.

N - Let me teach you about it then. I think it will sound very familiar to you.

The conatus is a concept I deeply understood and lived with, without even knowing there was this simple name for it.

Obviously, philosophers had written books of thoughts and reflections about it long before me.

Simply put, it’s the driving instinct, force, of all life.

From this world and the other. It’s a definition of life itself.

Anything that thrives to live on, by any mean.

And we do.

I’m hearing echoes of my past where my conatus manifested its will in words.

I will survive. I will live on, again.

And tomorrow, the sun will rise again.

~