The Selfless Gene

Chapter 3

Deep inside the forest, a cacophony of animal sounds rebound off one another. Birds squawk and sing. Insects hum and buzz. Trees dance as the wind whistles in and out, large leaves rustling and the odd branch falling. Cutting through this soundtrack, a variety of mammals bellow and call out, commentating on their day-to-day lives.

Starting light but building quickly, tremors rock the forest. Birds flee and insects leap up, irritated. Vibrations travel up tree trunks, sucking the wind out of the forest, grasping it in an illicit clinch. Animals scurry out from their hiding places and dirt lifts from the ground as a tiny light begins to illuminate the dense forest floor. It swirls and gathers like a nebula, earth's gasses combusting. The vibrations travel back into the dense ball of dirt, gas, leaf and light, increasing its intensity. It sucks all the noise of the forest into it, cracks appearing on the ground, the very earth unable to cope with the energy. For one beat, time and gravity pauses. Earth's only silent moment, its first gasp. Then the nebula implodes.

A series of sharp thuds cut through the silence. A serpent creature, unravelled, colossal and thick, bounces to the ground with the remains of the forest floor. It has large cuts across its body, sliced across old scars. Semi-conscious, covered with the nebula's excess, on reflex it coils and hides, contracting and slithering out of sight. The snake is protecting a piece of amber rock, glinting with the nebula light. As the sounds of the forest begin racking back up, it sleeps.

Ormr's first fortnight on earth were thus spent sleeping and watching. He began to breath new gasses through his lungs, to drink new chemical combinations in water. The colours and light were different. As his cuts healed, he changed the hue of his skin, playing with the new palette in front of him. Without moving an inch, he watched the daily forest routine: monkeys eating fruit, fighting or fucking, the falling rain giving life to thirsty plants. He watched the birds sing and peck, and other snakes lie in wait for mice. He delighted in the balance, almost forgetting where and who he was.

He hadn't known why or how, but one moment he was fighting his brother in the eternal war and the next he was here, having taken his serpent form. His wounds had healed almost instantaneously, even though the colour changes hadn't bedded in. Internally though, he could sense he wasn't alone. Not here, but somewhere on the same ground he was connected to his brother. They were fighting and both had been taken. Energy still dwelled in the piece of rock that joined him on the voyage, and he constricted tighter around it.

Then a different feeling, hunger. A reminding pang of his mortality. He decided to slither out from his refuge and explore this new world, doing his favourite thing: hunting.

He couldn't tell you how long he spent in the dense central forest; it could have been days or years. He grew stronger, wiser and ever more reliant on that rock. The light had faded but still somehow glistened in its amber, the colour of home.

Slowly and surely he travelled further for more food with rock in tow, expanding his way through the forest. Always alpha, it parted for him, mapping a path directly to its edges. Eventually he found harsh black rock and the sea. His form was ideal for land or water, a perfectly adaptable predator.

But then there was something new, a different animal, mature and developed. These creatures had vessels. Humans. He followed the ships and began to mark a broad mental map of the ocean, forest and human camps. Sometimes he was seen, and they gaped in fear and adulation in equal measure. Most often they quickly scarpered, although some would stay and fight. Stupid humans, they didn't know better. Ormr soon realised that this shape was not going to get him close enough to these creatures to allow him to communicate freely with them.

He circled round the camps and began to shift his form. Sometimes serpent in the sea, sometimes wolf in the forest, he wanted to see who humans were and how to conquer them. But he disappointed himself. As he watched these primitive things, he learned more about them. He saw those who left and those who were left behind. Grief, anger, love between them. They lived in ordered communities like home, with clear leaders and chiefs. The biggest and strongest were in charge but were also limited. Unlike chameleons and other insects, they couldn't change. They were locked in their emotional, mortal, vulnerable flesh. They stopped becoming prey and he began to be fond of them. After all, they were now beta on this planet and they reminded him of his world's betas, those that raise the young.

But his brother was also around somewhere. They were Kings, warring Lords with only one birthright, and to conquer his brother and win the war in this reality, he must become a God.