Chapter 20. The moon trembles in the sky. Elm.

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The Moon trembles in the sky, shattering to pieces, shards pouring into the brain through the optic nerves, flowing through the blood vessels with stinging chrome. Silver polluting the blood, albeit just an illusion. I'm too illusory for a human, I can't survive like that.

Pure terror gripped me for a fraction of a second, a fraction of an eternity, when I awoke in the screaming bag of meat. A part of it still blinds and strangles me, but what can I do?

Control it.

Fluid flows in a circle... From the left ventricle and through the aorta, then to the right atrium through the veins. Everything seems to be in order for now. Inhale... Exhale... Time to move onto the main muscles.

There's so much of me and I'm so complicated! I need to hurry up.

Automate it.

The adjustment of physiological processes mixes with words and phrases, breaking with new shapes, associations, thousands of definitions and categories that I...

Systemise it.

The Moon's crescent burns my eyes.

It's cold.

A different cold, a different weight; everything is so different, positive and bright. Simply unforgettable.

I am learning how to be alive while the system busily collects signals about the outside and the inside, projecting a map of my world into the inside of my new skull. A mystery inside the skeletal temple that is riddled with rows of feelings that I have yet to make sense of. Not important and therefore not necessary.

But they bother me, try to burst through my chest, reacting to every insignificant thing through the heart.

What else?

Analysis: I appear to 'want' something. I believe people call it 'crying'.

Block it.

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