Murbellass

    Apparently I have access to writing brain again so here's another chapter❣️

    Also getting more into instanced sentience which I view as distinct yet adjacent to issues of DID and plurality.  Lots of room of room for ableism here that I hope to not add to.

    The triad eventually filtered off back to various library tasks and I turned back to Sylph.  “What were we talking about before your sibling?  It was something neat, but I forgot.”  Yay ADHD brain!

    “Instanced sentience, you wanted to know how I keep my shared identity current.”

    Much respect for Sylph's memory.  “Oh yeah!  Yes I would still like to know that, but this was a lovely tangent.”

    Sylph shared with me a fungal blueprint of sorts.  Instructions for human-like brain structures that would instance off parts of my awareness that could be given tasks or varying levels of consciousness, but maintained connected to my memory and kept aligned to my identity.  There was a caution present as well.  Not that this was dangerous or harmful in any way, but that I would be using neuron structures that were no longer strictly human.  The culmination of millennia of alien biotech, generating neural tissue that could form more complicated networks, using less space, fewer resources, and operating at speeds far faster than what evolution on this planet had produced.  She was letting me know this would be a far larger jump of altering myself than I have yet gone through.  

    There was a brief flash of concern and anxiety rising up within me.  If I did this, would I still be me?  I thought about all those I love, and all those who loved me in return.  Would I still be the same me they know and love?  I looked to Sylph, the look of concern on her face as she saw the anxiety of mine.  But in her face, I remembered a few days prior when she had told me about her people's feelings towards the 'Ship of Theseus' thought experiment.  

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.

    Huh, I guess my memory does work sometimes!  But would anyone I cared for even want me to be the same ship?  I was pretty sure the answer was no.  Everyone I cared about wholeheartedly supported my growth.  The library triad who stood by me providing me support as we all moved through our grief over Aria's death.  Cairn and Lilly easing me through my realization of being a weird enby queer.  My mother's acceptance of me, even though so much of her prior understanding of gender issues had to change along with me.  

   My other mother though, Janice, the one who didn't support me.  She wanted me to be the same "boy" she raised despite how harsh she was towards men in general.  She couldn't stand, let alone support my growth as a person into who I am today.  Her inability to even tolerate the shifts in my identity became toxic and I've not talked to her since.  I still held out some form of hope that the relationship could be salvaged, but until then, I didn't care what she thought about my choices.

    If I did this it would be my choice, and the people in my life I valued would support me in pursuing my growth, even if that growth changed me into something different than what I was.  

    I squeezed Sylph's hand which had been placed on my own.  "I think I'm ready to try that."

    Sylph nodded as I turned within myself, to my loveable brain fungus Fungie.

    I presented Fungie with the blueprint given to me by Sylph, with the request to prepare to create an instance of myself that would maintain and curate my shared identity and represent that which is Marin within The Consensus.  I'm making my own alien social media manager!  I couldn't help but chuckle to myself at the thought.

    Through our shared instinctual understanding of my biology, I saw and understood what Fungie had generated to implement my request.  Some sections of my brain would be altered, my own neural tissue replaced with that of alien design and Sylph's adaptations to function in human-like ways.  The alien neural tissue being so much more efficient, those parts of my brain would shrink.  With this newfound space, a mirror of other parts would be created that could then become conscious in whatever capacity allowed.  Creating another instance of me.

    'Go ahead and make it happen Fungie'  I mentally smiled at my loveable fungal headmate and it got to work.

    I'll venture the guess that not many humans have ever experienced the active restructuring and upgrading of their own consciousness in real time.  It was very weird.  Doppler shifts in speed of thought washed through me as different portions of my brain adjusted to the alien neural circuitry.  My inner monologue, that never really ever shut up, seemed to fluctuate in volume, frequency, and some other hidden third mental dimension.  This was all so weird I felt my overload failsafe start to kick in and pull my consciousness back away from my body and my awareness, but even that didn't help as my consciousness was the thing being overloaded.  So I just had to clench myself mentally and let things finish, but then they did.  I managed to unclench whatever mental muscles I had been using and guide myself back in tune with my awareness of self.  

    Checking in with Fungie, I found that my consciousness had been successfully moved over to new hardware… Wetware, bioware?  Might have to put some thought into nomenclature.  The whole process so far had apparently only taken about 30 seconds.  Fungie also notified me it was starting on the mirroring process to create the new instance of me.  I opened my eyes to let Sylph know all was going well.

    There's a certain type of queasy dizzy headache that a person gets when they have a new pair of glasses.  When their perception of the world is subtly altered and the brain has to take a bit to grow accustomed to the change in how head and eye movements sync up to perceived motion of the world around them.  Imagine, if you will, the queasy dizzy headache that comes when your entire perception of time is the thing that has been altered.  Only a slight shift, and it wasn't like time was moving uniformly faster or slower, just a bit wibbly-wobbly.  This all hit me the moment I rejoined reality within my body.

    I wrapped up the sensation in a package and shared it with Sylph.  She had the audacity to giggle at me.

    "Yes you do look a little queasy.  Your thoughts are now partially happening through quantum interactions.  It will likely take some time before you adjust as they now are subject to weak interactions with past and future states."

    My mouth dropped as I considered the ramifications.  "So can I see the future now?!"

    Sylph giggled again, "See, no.  Your eyes are still only taking in light in real time.  Think into the future though, kinda yes."  She wobbled her hand in front of her.  "The interactions are weak to begin with, and fall off proportional to the inverse fourth power of distance away from the moment in time.  Some of my people have been able to become sensitive to quantum perturbations into the past and future on the order of milliseconds through meditation.  It's interesting but not particularly useful.  For you it probably just feels weird."

    "You are right about that."  I let out an exasperated breath.  "This'll take some getting used to.  But aside from that it went well.  Fungi's gonna tell me when my first mirror self is ready."

    She leaned over into me and gave me a squish.  "I'm happy that worked out.  I was a little nervous as we couldn't really simulate how that change would feel for you despite knowing it was safe"

    I shared with Sylph my memory of the whole experience.  "I assume there is a gem in The Consensus on the topic?"  

    She nodded

    "Then please give them that as it should help out.  I suppose whatever instance of me winds up back there probably has a lot to contribute."

    She nodded again much more emphatically.  "Not in any urgent way of course, but yes.  This is one small reason why everyone is so excited to work with you.  New perspective is something to be celebrated."

    It was then that Fungie informed me that my mirror self was ready.  "Well speak it the devil.  Looks like another me is done cooking.  I think I'm gonna go say hi."  This earned another giggle. 

    I turned back to my void within, and there waiting for me in the emptiness was another gleaming node of me.  I approached cautiously and mentally nudged em.  

    Ey *ooof*ed at me in reply, and right as that happened I also gained the memory of being nudged and *ooof*ing.

    'Oh gosh I'm sorry!'

    Both our internal monologues started laughing as the memory of this interaction continued to be doubled from both our perspectives.  

    *Okay, this is weird, but funny weird not scary weird.*

    'Yeah, I think of things that have just happened in the last five minutes, this will be easier to adapt to than wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey thoughts.'

    *lol! Agreed*

    'Did you just think *lol*?'

    *I guess I did, rofl.  OMG, is this what we sound like when we think at Sylph?*  We both mentally blushed, it was very cute.

    'haha, we just blushed at each other and both thought it was cute.'  

    *It was very cute.*  Both me and myself were beginning to resolve the impression of facial features in our shared mental void, and my other self winked at me.

    'So's your face!…  Well I guess that would be our face but it would be totally cute if you were controlling it'

    *You're so cute when you ramble like that.*

    'Takes one to know one!'  and we both broke down coyly cackling.  'Okay, so.  I guess we are going to be flirting with each other now.  We should share that with Sylph😜'  I had managed to somehow wedge an emoji into my thoughts while making the same face.  Much giggling was had while we began sharing our conversation with Sylph along with an invitation to join us.

   In unison '*Sylph look!  We're being cute at each other🥳!'*

    -🙄Yes, you are both being very cute.  When I suggested you try this…  This was not the result I expected, but I now realize I should have.-

    *Awww, we can feel you are enjoying this despite the 'ol mental eye rolling*

    'We feel the mirth and endearment in you.  Search your thoughts Sylph, you know it to be true!’

    And now all three of us were laughing.  Both of me blushed as the doubled mental impression of Sylph's wonderful laughter washed over our shared memory.  More memory of Sylph is always a good thing.

    -So, which one of you will be representing yourself in The Consensus?-

    *That would be me… I think.  We are effectively the same person so it’s not like it matters though.*

    ‘Perhaps we’ll swap occasionally.  I’m not exactly sure how we can tell each other apart at this point but it looks like we can somehow.’

    -There’s a difference in your identity as it is conveyed in sharings.  It appears you have subconsciously tagged yourselves as unique despite nothing being unique other than physical location of your portion of consciousness in your brain.-

    In unison again, *’So what do we do now?*’

    -Well,- she points towards soon to be Consensus Marin despite not having hands within my void, -you can just decide to go off to the Consensus whenever…  Or you could also just continue flirting at each other, but please know that your body just randomly blushing while sitting next to me in the library might look a bit silly for anyone watching.  Knowing you, I imagine that would feel embarrassing😏-

    ‘She smirked at us!😱’

    *Our body blushes when we blush in here?!😱*

    In reply, Sylph shared an image of what our body looked like.  Our body was sitting there, eyes closed, blushing furiously.

    *Body Marin, get back out there before Larry comes to make fun of us!*

    ‘Roger that Consensus Marin, on it.’  I mentally saluted and giggling sprung out as I hoped back to my body and opened my eyes.

    Larry was giggling at me from behind the counter…  ‘I’ve failed us😱’

    *R.I.P. us.*

    Sylph was also giggling at me, but at least she gave me a hug.  After the hug though, I got up to finally busy myself with some actual library work again.

*Meanwhile, back with Consensus Marin...*

    It was time to dive back into The Consensus.  I turned to my connection through my node in the aspen grove and checked back in on [Xenobiology, engineered fungal colony; humanity: compatibility].  I was met again with the dissonance of my current identity and my shared identity clashing.  Shit, I forgot!  New me also has ADHD just like other me!

    I pulled up what I had put together before as a shared identity.  I now had the joy of having met Sylph’s sibling Hermit, so I added xer as a connection that was important to me to find that through the alien network xie had added me as well.  

    I then looked to what I had first shared for who I am, the source of the dissonance.  When I first packaged my identity for sharing I was coming from a place of tentative desire for connection, community, collaboration, and acceptance from The Consensus.  Now that I'd been accepted, my view on my role and place within their society, as well as how I saw my goals for the future of my own life had shifted.  I wanted to maintain that community and collaboration with the aliens, but now I also wanted that community and collaboration to extend to other humans as well, selfishly starting with my own family.  

    I overwrote my identity with the parts that had changed and packaged it back up according to my instinctual understanding of how to do so from Fungie and mentally placed it as how I introduced myself upon entering the consensus.  I also had a thought that I wanted to run by Fungie.  *Is there a way to bump my identity up against the consensus every so often without me thinking about it or bothering anyone such that it'll let me know when there's a dissonance again?*

    'Ooo, that's a good idea!  Then either of us could fix it depending on who's busy at the moment.  I knew I created you for a reason😜'

    *I think it's probably more like we created us before we were a we, but just an I.*

    'Touché'

    lol, We're a nerd.  Our shared memory showed we both thought this to ourself at the same time and both my body and my mind chuckled.

    Fungie returned to me with the knowledge that this was possible and it could wire that up right now, so I told it to go ahead as I dove back into the discussion of how our connection came to be.

    Upon entering the discussion gem, I was greeted with a warm sense of welcoming from those involved.  Some progress had been made and they wanted my input.  Also I'm pretty sure they were interested in my shift towards a desire to bring more humans in general as well as meeting my family in specific.  

    I looked through the gem at the discussions that had been ongoing, watching shifting theories and developing proposals for means of adapting human and other terrestrial lifeforms for symbiosis.  One aspect that drew my interest was a link to another gem through a new facet of this one.  [Xenobiology, engineered fungal colony; humanity: compatibility, adaptation vectors; grove retrovirus].  I accessed the adjacent gem and found that The Consensus had tasked the grove's colony with cataloging and sequencing the genes of all the other microbial life within its area.  They had found the retrovirus that my mother had stumbled upon.  

    In the grove there were several species of flowering plants that tended to thrive throughout.  Thousands of years ago when the alien fungus first arrived on Earth and seeded itself within this groove, one of its first acts was working to form a symbiotic relationship with some of these flowers.  The retrovirus was initially created to adapt these species for direct influence by the fungus.  The adaptation allowed for the flowers root system and reproductive cells to also be habitable by fungal hyphae, the flower and the fungus would work together to produce pollen and spores as well as improved pheromones and nectar that was very attractive to local insect life.  In return the insect life spread the word spores and the spores spread the virus to all the flowers of this species in the grove.

    The fungus picked specifically these plants because they also produced a poison that made them inedible to most insect and mammalian life, minimizing any risk of cross-over infection of other species and ecosystem impacts.  Minimizing impact was very important for the alien's culture.  And this was successful for thousands of years.

    Enter my mom, who one day about 30 years ago, was wandering through the grove taking stamen samples from various flowers.  The Consensus shared with me vague memories the grove had saved of this particular trip of hers as it did for all incidences of possible direct interactions and impacts of its presence.  She looked so young back then and so pleased with herself and her life.

  I recalled what I knew of my mother from before I was born.  Aria was something of a hybrid of hippy and witch, all rolled in to a wonderful cottage core lesbian package, not to say that the Venn diagram between those things doesn't have heavy overlap…  She ran a herbal medicine and tea shop that was across the street from the Longsprings library that the triad later took over and renovated.  

    At the time when she first moved to Longsprings with Janice, the tea shop was owned by an elder hippy lady who'd lived through the actual hippie moment, Woodstock and all.  Her name was Flower, probably not her legal name, but bleh at anyone who wouldn't respect chosen names as more important.  Mom was randomly applying to jobs while Janice was supporting the two of them through a trust fund she could draw from, and one day she wandered into the old hippie's shop.  That old hippie nearly instantly took my mother under her wing and taught Aria everything she knew about the medicinal uses of anything that could grow anywhere near town and exactly where to find them.  

    She instilled in my mother a sense of reverence for passed down knowledge from those who had been before, but my mother also brought the heart of an experimentalist to the shop.  As long as I could remember she was constantly finding new plants or reading new articles from journals, trying to delve into how to best help the people that came into her store.  Frequently using herself as a guinea pig…

    I shared my remembrances of my mother and who she was along with what I felt would be an appropriate facet this information could be shared under within the filing system that was The Consensus.  [Contact, Aria Barbelli: vocalized name; human: mother of Marin. Earth].

    The information was gratefully accepted into the gem within The Consensus, and I watched as it was processed and a fuller picture of who my mother was filled in along with the sparse understanding the grove had of her interactions within it.  The connection was obvious though not proven.  At some point my mother, seeking understanding of the biochemical effects of the active poisonous components of the flowers, had ingested and come into contact with the virus the grove had engineered millennia ago.  That virus had altered the genetics of at least the one egg that produced me, causing habitability markers to be present across the surface of all my cells.

    Some other aspect of the viral lifecycle had likely resulted in some cancerous mutations in my mother's ovarian tissues, resulting in her eventual passing, but thankfully long after contracting the virus that appears to have had no other adverse effects.  Ultimately meaning, that with a little more directed design work, this virus could be adapted more purposefully to benign infection and genetic alteration of humans to become a viable host for the alien fungal symbiote.

    It was a bittersweet result, but one I'd expected.  I felt my other self slump the shoulders of our body as ey too became aware that it was likely the cause of her death.  I felt Sylph find us and wrap us up in a hug.  I joined the other Marin in being fully in the sensorium of our body within that hug as we both needed it.  We also felt a sharing of concern and comfort from The Consensus, and a vow that any further work on this will be done with full human simulations to minimize any possible harm done.

    The sense of support that was present for me in that moment completely shifted the emotional tone of what I was feeling.  The bittersweet was replaced fully by warmth and comfort.  I still mourned my lost mother, but now I had the means to bring others I cared for into this same all encompassing warmth, comfort, and interconnection that had grown so important for me.  And I'm pretty sure Fungie made me immune to cancer.

Murbellass

    Getting close to wrapping up the arc of this story and it feels really neat how I'm already coming up with ideas for the next arc in a sequel type thing.  So far I'm thinking it'll be coming back to visiting Longsprings after a lil time skip ahead.  Watching how the events of this story shape what becomes of Marin, Sylph, and The Grove years later as told by an outside perspective of a new character looking in.  No clue on release timeline right now, but writing motivation is present again and I'm loving having that.