Murbellass

Pesky humans ruining a good nap on soft tiddy…  This chapter is a bit dense and maybe bloated?  I took out some things and merely feels full now, hopefully not too full.

CW:

Spoiler

discussions of depersonalization and dissociation, but in a self controlled manner as a positive for mental health

[collapse]

    The knowledge that humanity was now trying to talk to Sylph’s people shocked me fully awake.  Back in reality, I looked up at her with a questioning look and shared a thought, “What are they going to do about this?”

    To which she replied with a shrug and a sharing of the idea of me taking her to my home first.

    I nodded against her, still in my comfortable position resting upon her chest.  The idea of showing her the house where I grew up was exciting, but also my own bed which I hadn’t slept in the past two nights.  Sylph’s was very comfy, especially containing her, but it wasn’t my bed.  I yawned and stretched out from under her arm.  “Has Badger been let out?”

    David replied, “Yes, Jessie took them out back after you dozed off on Sylph.”

    Sylph and David shared a chuckle “I should probably get Marin home.”

    I looked to the other couch and David’s voice, and found Larry was in a similar position sleeping on David’s chest.  

    “Yeah, and we should probably get Larry to bed.”  Jessie said just walking up the stairs with Badger who whined and came over to set their big fluffy head between My and Sylph’s legs. 

    Larry grumbled his way upright after some gentle prodding.  There was much hugging and well wishing and appreciation of how wonderful everyone had been.  Sylph, Badger and I set off to the house.

    On the walk home I asked her again.  “What are your people going to do?”

    Sylph sent me a sharing and I accepted.  It was a single thought, one pieced together of many voices?  Not the right word… many minds together having shaped the thought.  The alien’s Consensus.  

    First there was context with the thought.  A construct belonging to humanity, the blinking, primes.  An awareness of the space around Earth and its moon complete with a sense of gravitational potential in a rotating reference frame.  The construct in an Earth orbit of stable potential, at the same distance as, but trailing behind the Moon.  Some knowledge within me filling in, Lagrange point.  

    Then came the content of the thought.  It felt like the way an unhurried and uninterested shrug feels within my body.  The same response I’d give if I'd just had breakfast, was reading a good book, and someone asked me what I’d like for dinner in three days.  Only In this case, dinner was humanity's message, and three days was on a geological time scale where a hundred years was a blink of an eye.

    “Wow they really don’t give a shit at all do they?”  I asked Sylph incredulously.

    “They do not.”  was her reply.

    We finished our walk home, hand in hand, pondering the implications.  

* * *

    Sylph giggled in delight as she saw mother’s front yard.  It was an exercise in permaculture she undertook with herself to just not have a lawn.  Lawns suck and are nothing more than a status symbol that started up with white middle class suburban sprawl to show that a family had made enough to spend time doing or money hiring maintenance work.  It’s an expression of distaste for diversity and I was sure Sylph would hate it too.  My mother’s yard was not that.  

    It was lumpy with roots, rocks, and random mounds of dirt.  It showed a lack of uniformity in plant life; clover, moss, lichen, ferns, weeds, succulents, and she would cast mixes of wildflowers into the wind in spring.  Strewn about in interesting and advantageous places there were hobbit looking circular doorways.  Bird houses with beautiful yet weather-worn painted facades were nestled between rocks.  Her one nod to ongoing artificial help from humanity was an intricate pump system that created a miniature watershed of artificial creaks that pooled in a small pond.

    Sylph seemed to dance across the stone path towards the door, twirling to unknown music.  She looked like she belonged in some musical number in her fancy outfit and the delight on her face.  Badger and I had stopped at the gate to appreciate her, she paused at the porch and turned back towards us.  “This is beautiful!  Did your mother make this?”

    I nodded and we walked the path towards her, a wistful smile on my face.  “Yes, she was a huge fan of fantasy and fairy tales, the ones about actual fairies.”  I stopped in front of Sylph to look around myself.  “She wanted to make something unique and spent all the years I knew her adding little touches here and there, even right up until very near the end.”  I sniffled a bit.

    Sylph gave me a moment watching the emotions play over my features, then held out her hand to me.  “Come, It’s cold outside and you look very tired.” 

    “I am.”  I took her hand and pulled myself close.  I fished my keys out of my bag and opened the door.  “Welcome to my family home.  I think I might make some tea, would you like some?”

    “Yes, that sounds lovely.”

    I took Badger off their leash, and they wagged their way to Sylph who was now inspecting the walls my mother had filled with pictures and mementos of our lives.

    I let out a very long yawn as I put the kettle on.  It wasn’t much past ten o’clock, but I was very tired.  I didn’t want to be and a thought occurred to me.  I turned to the shared instincts of the brain fungus and posed a question: How would I go about being wakeful for only one more hour?

    It replied and I gained a sudden instinctual awareness of several compounds that it could synthesize or small alterations that could be made to areas of my brain to temporarily nudge my circadian rhythm back an hour.  I was too tired for brain alteration, so I chose one compound I’d both never heard of, and had absolute knowledge of, for the colony to release.  Just as this new part of me expected, I felt the gradual drain of drowsiness away from my face and my thoughts, and I knew that it could easily be filtered out when it was time for sleep.  I love this fungus.

    The kettle started whistling me out of my distraction and I made a pot of chamomile, bringing it out with two cups.  I found Sylph on the couch with Badger’s head in her lap, her fingers idly scratching as she was still looking around at the walls.  She turned around and smiled at me warmly when she heard a slight rattle of ceramic.  "Your mother… she was a very attractive woman."

    I cracked up laughing.  "You aren't the first friend of mine to feel the need to say so."  I smoothly slid onto the couch next to her, and glanced slyly back to her while pouring tea.  "Where do you think I got my ravishing good looks from?"

    "Well you do also look a lot like David.  I assume there's a story there." Sylph said with a raised eyebrow.

    "Yes but not too seedy.  Well actually pretty seedy…"  I couldn't help but giggle at my unintentional pun.  "Both David and Larry donated their uh... genetic material for my mother to get pregnant.  Most people actually assume Larry's was the one to win that little competition."  I handed her a cup.

    "It's obvious from your pheromones it was David's seed."  Sylph said matter of factly as she brought the tea to her.  She smiled as she inhaled it's scent, but a guilty look came over her face.  "Oh dear, I hope I didn't spoil anything you didn't want to know."

    "No, I think I kinda knew.  David always smells like home to me, like pancakes…  Oh!  Remind me to make you some in the morning." 

    She giggled at me.  "I will."

    We sat quiet for some time, enjoying our tea and pleasant company.  I interrupted this with a question.  “Sylph, If it was your decision, what would you say to the satellite blinking at you?”

    “I’m not really sure myself.  Hello to start.”  She chuckled to herself, “Establish that I know many human languages already.  Likely then the posturing would start.  Assuming it’s a governmental entity, attempting to assert authority over whatever chunk of the world they looked at as belonging to them, followed by trying to work out who we are and our intentions and what they can get from us.”  

    Sylph sighed, she leaned back into the corner of my couch and pulled me closer.  “We are only here to reestablish a link to the piece of us that took root here, but that can’t be told to them, at least not in any way they could link it to this grove here.  That would just jeopardize the grove.  They’d come to study, to prod, to assert rights, and attempt to control whatever they find.”  Sylph let out a disheartened chuckle.

    “I could tell them we’ve come to study the evolution of life here, but then comes the struggle to explain that we are more interested in things like soil ecology or oceanic diversity than we are in humanity.  That intelligent life exists outside their solar system, and it doesn’t really care about the intelligent life that exists here.  Hierarchal intelligence without respect for diversity only has value as a cautionary tale.”

    I chuckled and nuzzled against her.  “Not gonna go over all that well when most of human fears of aliens coming center around them seeing us as less than bugs.  Our poor fragile human egos can’t take the idea that we aren’t important.”  I giggled again.  “Like, most the stories turn it into a prelude to annihilation just so some value can be made of our existence, if only being worthy enough to get wiped out...  Before human ingenuity and rugged individualism wins out that is.”  The last part said with heavy sarcasm.

    We both laughed at this, but then a thought occurred to me.  I sat up to look at Sylph, some insecurity seeping into my voice as I spoke.  “If you are only here for the grove, does that mean there’s some point when you are done here and you and your people will move on?”

    Sylph scanned my face and smiled at me in a way that filled me with reassurance.  “I haven’t told you what the grove means to us have I?”

    I shook my head.

    “I would like to share this with you, through our connection, but the enormity of it might be overwhelming for you.”  

    "It's okay.  I love listening to you."

    She smiled brightly and wiggled a bit as she prepared.  My heart beat a little faster knowing she was just getting started.  “The grove is a part of our network of entanglement, but with a unique purpose.  Long ago, seeds were sent out by my people.  Seeds to seek out and find conditions where they could take root, to grow, and to reconnect with our network.  To expand that network across this galaxy you call the milky way.  To seed communication, connection… to seed awareness across the habitable bodies in space we could reach, and with that, create an array.  The bigger an eye the more light, the more information it can take in.  We are forming an eye the size of the galaxy.  An eye that can see much more than a narrow band of photons.”

    I couldn’t help but stare at her in awe.  I find myself like this a lot.  “Like radio telescope arrays on earth.  That’s amazing.  What are you using this eye to look for?”

    “So many things.  Viewing distant galaxies, their formation and their end.  The worlds that exist within them, the possibility of new life, new diversity, new connections.  Even the background radiation of the universe, insight into far more distant and varied histories than my people represent.”  Her smile was radiant as she finished.  Sylph, the otherworldly goddess, sat before me.  

    I reached out and reverently caressed her face.  I needed a connection to her, to know she was still a tangible being, existing here with me.  I leaned forward and kissed her softly.  “You are so beautiful when you get to talking like this.”  I pulled back from her.  Her face was flush.  Her eyes closed and lips parted with the most serene facial expression.  “All of this connection, the entanglement of your people… I’m part of that now… right?”

    Sylph’s eyes fluttered open and I felt a brief pang of guilt for pulling her out of that moment with my question.  She smiled though, with the awareness of what I asked, and nodded.  “Yes you are.”

    A new set of insecurities began battling against the happiness I felt watching her.  I felt love in how her face, her voice, all of her told me I was part of her connection to her people now, but what did her people think?  Those same beings that saw no value in even bothering to answer a basic attempt to say hello from humanity.  “What does that mean to your people that I’m now part of that link?  I can feel… I know in my heart what that means to you… but am I a welcome part of your network to the others… the Consensus?”  I shared with her my misgivings to make sure she understood what I was truly asking.

    “Oh Marin, please don’t worry about that.”  Sylph kissed me, her hand gently cradling my cheek.  “I’ve told you before how much my people value connection and diversity.  You, as an individual, represent a very unique connection.  Not as a representative for humanity, or its hierarchies, but as a unique mind and set of experiences so very dissimilar from our own."  She paused for a moment, thinking, but then taking my hand in hers.  "That is just words though, would you like to ask them?”

    "As in ask your biosphere?  Wow… uh yeah, I would… but I think let me try something first.  I've been wanting to tinker with the brain reboot failsafe thing you put in me."  I playfully stuck out my tongue at Sylph before turning my awareness within, towards my friendly neighborhood brain fungus.

    I asked and brought to mind the details of Sylph's failsafe: a set of monitored brain states, a threshold, and the reaction to pull my awareness back to the void.  The first change I wanted to make was to have the reaction be more gradual and less binary.  Ewwww, a binary.  In the event the measured parameters within my brain grew close to the threshold, I wanted less to be yanked from the moment into nothingness, but instead, a gradual self-controlled depersonalization.  To slowly allow my consciousness a distance from my body and my feelings in proportion to the distress within my brain.  Dissociation was a known experience for me, being able to do it in a controlled manner would be amazing compared to some form of trauma pushing me there.  

    I queried the colony the best way to do that and was presented with instinctual knowledge of various mental states, configurations of neurons, and synaptic patterns within my mind which could result in that shift.  I chose one which seemed to give the most room for unimpeded conscious thought, and replaced Sylph's failsafe with that in the colony's instincts.

    The second change I wanted to make was to be able to have a clear memory of any overwhelming situations.  Even if I couldn't be present in the moment, I still wanted to know what had happened.  This included wanting to be able to review how the situation affected my mind and the process of being overwhelmed.  To see if this was something I could add capacity for.  

    I again made a query of the colony, and again was presented with options.  One in particular sounded interesting; giving the colony limited access to generate memories.  Well… both interesting and disconcerting, but it felt like the best way to do things.  Memories generated by the brain fungus would feel very different, they wouldn't be filtered through my understanding of reality nor have emotional context in their creation.  Also just giving it access in general felt invasive to me, but not really much more invasive than it already having formed a net of fungal hyphae around the neurons of my brain.  I’ll deal.  I added this to the failsafe instinct as well.  If my brain got weird, the fungus would keep a record.

    I turned back to reality and shared a summary of the changes I made with Sylph along our connection.  "Okay I'm ready, I think?"

    Sylph smiled and nodded after receiving what I had sent.  "Yes, I think that will work well."  She pulled her legs up on the couch and crossed them in front of her.  "Okay for this you may want to get comfortable first."

    "Well if you want me to do that I might just want to sit in your lap."  I smirked at her with a suggestive eyebrow waggle.

    Sylph giggled and spread her arms to welcome me.  I gleefully snuggled in as she wrapped around me.  "Comfy now?" Asked Sylph, a wry grin on her face.

    "Yes, very!"  I said, wiggling against her.

    "Okay.  If you can feel your way back to the link with me, beyond that should be my own links to my people.  One of those links will be to an intricate highly active nexus of many interconnected others, our biosphere, the site of Consensus.  You will have to provide some indication of your current identity, the colony should be able to help you generate that."

    "My current identity?"  I twisted to look at her, confused.

    "Yes, Identity is under constant flux to adapt and evolve to the needs of the individual or the consensus."  Sylph giggled to herself.  "One time, as a joke, I shared the human 'Ship of Theseus' thought experiment with the Consensus."

    "If every plank, nail, and oar were replaced, is it still the same ship?"

    "Yes, that one.  When I shared this, there was unanimous agreement that of course it wasn't.  Why would anyone want the same ship as it decayed, broke down, was overtaken by new techniques, or failed to meet changing needs of the crew?  My people hold no value in the persistence of identity.  You are understood as an individual by who you show up as in the moment.  Yes, one's history is important, but who you are today defines you far more than who you were yesterday."

    "Wow, that's actually a very refreshing take on things."  If only humans could see things this way.  The lives of so many trans or queer kids coming out made so much better if parents weren't so invested in their concept of their child's identity that they feel the need to mourn it's loss when their living child remains seeking comfort and validation.  I relaxed into Sylph's arms.  "Okay, after that what do I do?"

    "Sharing your identity with the Consensus is shared along with a request to participate.  The concept will be put forward, interested individuals will contribute, and when consensus is reached you will be made aware of the results."

    "How long will that take?"

    Sylph gave me a kiss on the top of the head.  "Something as simple as that?  You'll likely be accepted in under a second."  I could feel her smile into my hair.  "Once that's settled, you'll be able to opt in to any topics or decisions you feel are relevant to you.  Individuals might also seek you out for anything they feel your perspective would be relevant for.  Of course any issues that affect you directly won't be decided without your input.  You can start whenever you are ready and I'll be right here."

    I took hold of Sylph's hands where they were clasped in front of me.  "Here I go."  And I closed my eyes.

* * *

Murbellass

Content warning for big weird rambling sentences that feel kinda neat to me, but may just be a big mess for any reader😜  Please let me know where on the neat<-->mess spectrum they fall for you.

    I turned to my void and searched for my connection with Sylph.  I found it and reached towards it.  Without eyes, I could see her form, her being, her life energy, behind and wrapped around me.  I looked past our connection, towards the alien network of entangled links stretching to infinity.  I found the nexus of connection as Sylph had described.  It was both very near to me, only two degrees of separation within this space, and very far from me, out beyond the moon in the reality of spatial distance.  

    I reached through Sylph for this nexus, the Consensus.  When it felt my desire for connection with it, I felt its desire for connection with me, but these desires were incompatible.  It didn’t know me, but it had a desire to do so.  A request for my current identity.  I turned to my shared instincts with the brain fungus, and requested help assembling my identity for the Consensus.  In response I was presented with several techniques for distilling one's being into a single complex thought.

    There were simple matters.  Methods for identifying my location amongst any number of reference frames, either literal physical location, or far more figurative, conceptual, or even what felt like poetic notions of location somehow existing without the presence of language: a poetry of thought.  Methods for chronicling my experiences, how they shaped me and my mental processes.  Methods for mapping the connections important to me: connections to place, to life, to individuals.  My lineage, not just of blood ties, but the ties of life and living.

    Then came more important matters.  Who was it that I wanted to present as me to the Consensus?  My own image of myself, be that aspirational, cynical, or somewhere in between; each telling of me as an individual.

    I started simple, my location within my home, within the town, within the valley, of a range of mountains, bisecting a continent, upon the planet Earth.  

    I put together my experiences.  A self selected flashing of life before my eyes, basics of my childhood, my mother's teaching of plant medicine, my pubic schooling, my studies on biology, my work in the library.  

    I put together connections.  My feelings of this house and growing up, this town and the people, society and its biases and how it saw and shaped me.  My concepts of people.  My mothers, Janice and her lack of acceptance, Aria and the wealth of hers.  My family of Larry, David, Jessie, and the library that was so much a part of them.  My friends, Cairn and Lilly and all the affection, feeling, and love we shared.  My wonderful dog Badger and their companionship.  

    My connection to Sylph… on establishing her as valuable, something triggered over our link.  I had added her and the entangled network responded, she too had added me.  Through our connection, I became part of the interdependent web of her identity and her a part of my own.  Aliens have social networking?  Weird.

    I added the grove as another location, and felt a similar connection.  Its impression of me the one time I had briefly connected to the part of Sylph's people that was there, before that connection fully overwhelmed me into unconsciousness.  The grove was now a part of me as well, and I of it.

    Finally I took my connection to humanity, fraught as it was, and added that.  All the bureaucracy, bias, bigotry, and oppression, wedged in alongside the accomplishments of art, media, history, and sciences that have shaped me.

    Upon all this, I added myself.  An aspirational view of who I hoped to be:  Someone who helped life that was suffering.  Someone who, thanks in part to Sylph, was working to move beyond a view that human suffering was more important than other life or entire ecosystems.  I added a realistic view of my limitations:  my anxiety, my depression, my executive dysfunction, my sensory issues.  I added a cynical view of my differences:  The things that set me apart from human societal ideals; my queerness, my transness, my neurodivergence.  I took all these things and tied them together with my name, Marin.  The aliens didn't have names, but I took what it meant to me; the fact that I chose it in the face of a society that runs on assignments, and it's meanings to others who knew me, including Cairn who calls me Marinara.

    I probably put way more effort than was needed into this, but I compiled all the above into a thought with the guidance of my colony, tacked on the request to join, and fed it all to the Consensus.

* * *

    I was jostled back to reality, being bounced against Sylph's chest.  While I was working on my identity, I was dimly aware of the wonderful feeling of her fingers lightly trailing up and down the hair of my forearms and her soft gentle humming of the same melody she was that first night I met her.  Now she was laughing at me.  "Wow, you put way too much effort into that, but it is really very good."  She kissed the side of my head and squeezed me close.  "The only reason it's currently taking so long is final consensus has been held until everyone who wants to see the spectacle of the first human to introduce themselves can get the chance to know you as you've provided."

    I pouted in her arms complete with sarcastic "Hmmmmmph" noise.  "How long are they going to take?"

    She giggled at me some more.  "Shouldn't be long, but given all the attention, there's no way anyone would refuse.  You've well proven your uniqueness and value as a diverse viewpoint."

    "Bleh… I didn't want to be a spectacle."

    “Marin, has anyone ever told you that your disgruntled pouting is adorable?”  Sylph squeezed and wiggled me against her as blushing she couldn’t see overtook my face.  “My people are just discovering first hand what I already knew, how wonderful you are.”

     I was in full blushing pout mode in Sylph's lap as I received it.  A sharing from her people.   An acceptance as a part of them and their network.  The first human member of the alien Consensus.

Murbellass

Yay, all the ETs think Marin is cool!  Only a little bit of eir tears in this one at the start.  I'll have more next time though so don't worry.