Post by A Witness... on Apr 12, 2024 21:08:40 GMT -6
For an untold time Simiae was not Simiae. Time had no meaning. He felt an existence, but not himself. Something larger, encompassing, endless.
And then that changed. Simiae's awareness had no reflection in the transparent shell that was an inch from him. Not an inch from his face - there was no breath fogging up the barrier. An inch from what he was now.
He remembered, lame and hairless his physical body had climbed into the chamber. The tendrils weaved around him at first and then into his veins and nerves like fire. It wasn't built for the likes of Simiae, but for someone, or something, else entirely. A word flashed into his mind... Caretakers. They seemed to be powerful beings controlling and capturing people and things from the worlds, but these white beings were physical and mortal enough to be taken out by a bullet, at least at point blank range. Their essence, their fluids, were the antidote to The Virus. The Virus was developed as a weapon against the Caretakers. To fend them off when they came to take the land before Gaftwud. Simiae had taken VXX, the 20th version of it, and now it was gone from him. His body anyway.
The temporary coffin made of the alabaster quantum foam, or lattice, or whatever Steve had called it. Steve. Steve Austin. The human. He had left. Left Simiae. Left Angelo. Left Azeir. 2 Molepeople and 1 Simiae left to hold up the walls that keeps the chaos at bay. The three agreed to take on the position of the Caretakers that were killed. Ironically helping the agenda of the Caretakers by keeping the worlds separate. Gaftwud, Simiae's home, or more specifically The Tops. His community, his people, his loss. A hunter and a tracker getting lost made no sense at the time. It clicked when Simiae learned of the walls. Comprehensively huge, they projected the illusion of a land larger that what they contained. And they pushed a subtle mind controlling message to any sapient entity... go away. Nothing to see here. Don't investigate. The very walls that Simiea now protected were the same ones that forced him away from his family and out into the world.
His journey was coming back to him. His story, his friends, the places he had been. It was a relief to find his identity again. At least his mind, maybe his soul.
He counted his senses, and found only one: sight. He spun on an axis inside the chamber. Now he floated a few inches above the biological part of Simiae. That body's eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell very slowly. A very deep sleep indeed. He was now a separate consciousness floating without the challenge of gravity. He rose up and felt a second sense. He bumped into the glass. Pain, from the unexpected. How could that be. There must be something about the glass, or something about Simiea's new form.
He spun around again and back around a few times. He found nothing but glass, and the bed of the coffin, and tendrils and Simiae the body. After all the fight to become this version of Simiae he was still trapped in the same coffin his body was in.