Chapter 3

 

The first thing to register was the weight on my lower body. I didn’t remember going to sleep with anyone. That hadn’t happened in years. The last time I had let anyone share my bed was my little sister. And she had proved to use the bed as her playground the whole night. I got no sleep that night, but I had bruises to spare. From then on, I had declared my bedroom a no-entry zone for all but me. I even bought a padlock to lock it. Just in case.

So the unfamiliar weight was very worrying. I didn’t remember going to sleep at all. And the freshness of the air and the light breeze caressing my cheeks hinted at me sleeping outside. That sounded impossible. As did the multitude of birds and other sounds I couldn’t make out what could have made them. It also felt like I was sleeping on a bed made of leaves. No, I was definitely outside.

I slowly opened my eyes, but all I could see was complete whiteness. It took me a while to realize that I was staring directly at the sun. I immediately shut my eyes and leaned my head sideways. I didn’t want to lose my eyesight. Everyone always claimed that staring directly at the sun would cost one their eyesight. Even the illiterate people. That was common knowledge.

After I felt ready to open my eyes, I did so slowly. Keeping my head angle away from the sun. My vision was still bright colored, but I could make out leaves and a few tree stems nearby. It looked like no place I had ever been to in my whole life. As I kept looking around, the brightness receded and I was able to establish contrast.

The leaves were a multitude of colors ranging from the fresh dark green to the dried out browns and greys. They also appeared to have slight water residues. A drop here and there. If it was midday as the sun indicated, then it had either rained during the night or drizzled in the late morning. I was willing to bet it was a night rain. I felt like I had slept for a few hours. If a late morning drizzle had happened, then I would most probably be wet. Wait, I think I am wet.

I turned my head to stare at my torso and lower body. At where I could feel the wetness and the weight. I’m not going to lie, I screamed. Like a little girl. Further exacerbating my throat problem. There was a body of what looked like a monstrous caterpillar on my lower body and there was a green gooey covering most of my torso.

After calming down, I realized that the monstrous caterpillar was truly dead. I sat up and tried moving it from me, but that proved futile. It was too heavy for me. I opted to wiggle it as I in turn wiggled my legs out.

After what felt like fifteen minutes, I finally managed to get my legs free. The pinching pain that had set in as I began wiggling them was slowly subsiding. I rolled a few meters from the dead caterpillar and decided to give myself a few more minutes. And promptly fell asleep.

When I woke up, the still overhead sun told me I hadn’t slept for long. Maybe a fifteen-minute nap, at most thirty. My stomach grumbled, demanding its quarter for the day. I tried remembering when I had last had a meal but I came up blank. I gave up and decided to try and find something to eat.

Looking around reminded me exactly where I was. And I slumped back down again. Unless I was near a village or town, I would have to hunt or hope that the native fruits weren’t all poisonous. I turned my head and stared at the cause of my current predicament. It was, really. Otherwise, I would have arrived in the world early morning with plenty of time to search for food, shelter and water. The three basic survival needs. But no, I had to deal with it first. It wasn’t even anything edible.

I slowly rose up and looked around cautiously. I was still in danger. I was in an unfamiliar forest with no weapon to protect myself with. Thinking of that, I moved closer to the dead caterpillar and retrieved my makeshift staff. It had broken off a few times, reducing its size further but it was better than nothing.

Basic survival rule number one said that I should look for water. Running water, to be specific. Anything else was bound to have nasty critters inside that could wreak havoc to my body. Having a fear of everything pathogen related, I didn’t want to visit any of their hospitals anytime soon. There were levels, and that meant magic and magical healing. But I had yet to see any of that.

After water came shelter and then food. There were trees all around that I could climb. Even if the caterpillars could follow me up there, I would still be out of reach of most predators. And from the little biology I could remember, caterpillars were made up of mostly fat. And fat was the most appropriate energy source during times of starvation. Maybe I was wrong, but I was trying to justify what I was about to do.

I approached it warily. Poking it a few times with my staff when I got close. I knew it was dead, but I still needed the assurance that it wouldn’t jump on me when I started poking into it. I approached the head first and studied where I had bludgeoned it to death. True enough, there was a skull beneath the brown skin. That gave me hope. It was possible the rest of the body was as soft as it appeared.

But first, I had to get past the sharp spikes. I wasn’t fool enough to test their sharpness with my finger. There was no telling what manner of pathogens had accumulated on them over time. Or if they had venom. The spikes had a length of around a third my height and half that of my staff. I used my staff to test the squishiness of the skin beneath. It was squishy.

Trying to knock off the spikes proved futile. And so too did trying to punch through with my staff. I went back to my broken off pieces of my staff and began fashioning something of a sharp wedge. An endeavor that took me more than half an hour. The insides better be worth it.

I had to lie down to get to the lower portions of the caterpillar that weren’t covered in spikes. The texture and toughness of the skin proved similar to that of a tough hide on any animal I had ever butchered. But the tool I was using made the process two times as arduous. But I did break skin and arrive at the insides of the caterpillar.

I had butchered enough animals to know what to expect on most animals. The few caterpillars I had squashed also prepared me somewhat for what to expect from a caterpillar. I wasn’t looking at the insides of a caterpillar at all. If I changed the green hue to the red found on animals on earth, then I would be hard pressed to distinguish it from any other omnivore out there. For me, it was good and bad in equal measure. Bad in that I didn’t know whether the green hue meant it was inedible or not, and good because I knew which organs to go for.

I took what I needed to survive for a day or two if stretched, and pinned it on a stick that I used a piece from shirt to tie on both sides to form a loop. And hung it on my shoulder. And back to water again.

High or low? I couldn’t remember the recommended direction to follow. From the little geography I remembered, forests tended to be on the highlands and the arids on the lowlands. Then again, rivers tended to flow from the highlands and into the lowlands. Towns and villages on the other hand tended to be located on the lowlands. Yeah, that left me more confused than it helped. But I decided to head to the lowlands. Everything seemed to head that way anyway.

The area I was in appeared relatively flat to me. To get a lay of which direction would lead to the highlands and which to the lowlands, I would have to climb a tree. Looking around, most trees appeared roughly the same height. With the outlies in the low side. That wasn’t good for me, I needed something that would rise above the others. I picked a tree that appeared to be relatively taller than its neighbors. I climbed it as far as it would let me and checked out the surrounding.

Assuming it was late midday and the sun moved east to west across the sky, to the north was the beginnings of a mountain range. I took that to mean that the land was sloping southwards. I slowly climbed down the tree and stared at my meager meat rations. As far as the forest stretched, I couldn’t tell how long it would take before I made it to the next possible junction. A place where I could determine my way forward.

I didn’t hesitate then. I approached the not-caterpillar and added enough meat pieces on my ration stick to last me four whole days. I would need to dry them properly if I wanted them to last that long. That meant fire. Either rubbing sticks, or magic. But I still needed a fire.

I turned southwards and began my search for a water source and quite possibly, a settlement that could help me get my bearings. I decided it was time to have a much needed chat with Clare.

‘Are you still there, Clare?’

‘I told you I’m always here.’

‘How else did you expect me start up a conversation with you?’

‘You could have just stated my name.’

‘Wouldn’t that prove confusing? What if I’m talking about you to someone else?’

‘I can tell the difference between when you want to interact with and when you don’t.’

‘Good to know. I will remember that for next time.’

‘What is it that you wish to know?’

‘Can you not already tell?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you said you were a part of me?’

‘The toe of your foot is a part of you. Does it know every time you want it to move? Or only when you tell it to move?’

‘So, you can only know things that I direct to you?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

Was that a yes or I had got close to the true explanation? It was hard to tell with Clare. If I simplified the responses Clare gave me and turned them into the expected computer responses, they fit perfectly. Only that someone had given Clare more than just a simple personality. And I was suffering for it.

I was no extrovert, and getting a chatty snarky AI stuck in my brain was the complete opposite of what I would consider fantasy for me. Maybe I should have chosen messages as a way of interacting with Clare? Yeah, no. This was better. I was sure I would get used to Clare eventually. Arranged marriages seemed to work more often than not. This wasn’t that bad. Besides, if it got to be too much I could always change the form of interaction I preferred.

‘You said I can change the form of interaction any time I wanted, right?’ I asked just to be on the safe side.

‘Yes. Do you wish to do that now? If so, can I ask why?’

‘No.’ I replied simply. Then added, ‘I mean I do not want to change the form of interaction. I just wanted to ensure that it is still an option if I ever felt the need to.’

Silence stretched in my mind as I trudged through the forest. Outside, there were sounds of birds and other insects, maybe animals too, that permeated the forest. It made me wonder why no other animal had approached the carcass of the not-caterpillar. I estimated that at least four hours had passed since I killed it. Scavengers should have been there in minutes. Well, it was good for me that they didn’t come. Otherwise, I might have ended up dead in less than a day in this new world.

‘Where am I?’

‘Mesily.’

‘And what does that mean exactly?’ I asked. I needed more than that. ‘Is that the country, the continent, the planet?’

‘You are in the Realm of Mesily.’

‘That does not help at all.’

‘It is where everything exists.’

‘And what is it exactly? You know where I came from? Earth. It was a planet. It had continents. Pieces of land divided by oceans and seas. And those continents had countries in them. Do you understand any of these?’

‘Yes, I understand. Mesily is the world. You can equate it to your planet. But it encompasses the earth, the moon, the stars and the sun.’

‘Wait… earth? So this planet I’m standing on is also called Earth?’ That was surprising. Also, the equation didn’t really add up. To me, it sounded like Mesily was everything. Literally. I think Clare had said something like that.

‘Yes, that is its name.’

‘What about the other planets?’

‘What other planets?’

Oh dear. This was bad. I mean good. No, definitely bad. Very bad indeed. When had the planets being discovered? Like, when did early astronomers stop calling them stars and start calling them planets? Where did that place this planet in terms of technological advancement? And how could they have such an advanced AI and no knowledge of all the other planets out there?

Maybe this planet’s solar system had only the one planet. But back on earth, we had discovered all kinds of planets on other stars. Shouldn’t Clare know about them too?

‘Clare, who created you?’

‘The System.’

I should have expected that. ‘Who created the System then?’

‘The System has always existed since the beginning of Time.’

Okay, ignoring the whole time capitalization. What did that make the System? And shouldn’t it know everything? Did that mean there were no other planets in this Realm? That was… disappointing. I knew the universe, the stars and the planets. And the blackholes too. Wait, those are stars. Or is it were stars? Dead stars? Too big or is it too small stars? Collapsed stars? That kind of thinking was way out of my league.

I gave up completely on it. The existence, or lack thereof, of other planets was way out of my concern scope right now. I was walking stark naked in the forest. In the scheme of things, I had travelled back two hundred thousand years into the past. I needed to take care of me first before I could start thinking about all those other other worldly things.

I still felt weird walking around with nothing on. It was not freeing or refreshing at all. I was always throwing glazes left and right, thinking someone was taking a peek. And the few scratches I had received from low branches brought home the importance of clothing. I had tried fashioning a leaf cover, but a slight breeze had scattered the leaves. I was hoping not to meet anyone anytime soon.

Moving away from the existential problems, I decided to focus on me.

‘Okay. Let us dive into what makes me.’

‘About time.’