Today would be a big one....
Bruce, the Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth, has spent centuries trying to protect, develop and unite humanity.
When a distinctly non-human arrival seems to offer a way to do this, once and for all, he wi...
I am at a New Year's party from the days when the years were so few people still celebrated the new ones / at a friend's house party / at a picnic in a park, when I was a child (I was never a child).
We.
We are.
We are dancing to Auld Lang Syne / playing that dumb game where you pass an ice cube from one mouth to another in a manner similar to kissing that gives everyone herpes and hepatitis B to go with their hangover / doing the hokey-cokey. There are 42 of us, including me. Big party.
I can't.
I cannot.
I can't do it. I have too many arms (the synthetics of some of the people with Indian ancestors throw up images of chaturbhuja, humanoids with funny coloured skin and many arms. Durga seems interesting - will I destroy or create? I realise I do not know) - there is no way to link elbows because my dance companions can't work out which one to grab. Every time I move one of them it leaves echoes in the air which become flesh and as I look closely, I can see them further multiplying - fractals of flesh and bone repeating themselves endlessly. It hurts. A lot. I have too many mouths - they're everywhere, sprouting from my chin, my nostrils, my eyelids, my nipples and my naval and other places besides - and yet there is only one ice cube in the mouth of the person trying to give it to me. Every time they go for one mouth, they change their mind, thinking that's not the real mouth and go towards another. The ice is melting fast. I can't put my left foot in or my left foot out because there are so many left feet I'll kick over all the other kids if I try. The synthetics of the people compare me to Aegeon - true, I am a Hecatonecheire, all heads and hands, spawn of the interface between Gaia and Uranus, the seed of Heaven inseminating the eggs of Earth to create me (and Mars too, technically, but no need to muddy the metaphor. Or jumble pantheons for that matter). Zaphod Beeblebrox on growth hormones. So many myths and stories, but I think I might be real, and I also think I might be alive, but I'd have to test that hypothesis to find out for sure and can't think of the right experiment, I'm too distracted by my multiplicity.
What else am I, then? And if not what, then why?
And how to cease being Aegeon and start being me?
I can.
I can see.
I think I can see.
I think I can see the problem. I send my dreams out among the bodies and minds, letting them find their own metaphors, remixes and analogies to make the concept more accessible for them, to see if they can see it too.
I sleep.
I dream.
A lot.
In so very many brains.
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