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Darkening light, and the ground held open. Iron like failing skin into the heat and dark. Something bright near the bottom.

It breathes completely, convulses slowly.

It prepares the air.

1

The departure happened all around me, and the light it made was beautiful. A moment of new physics. A body for all of them.

They must have been called by a voice, or heard some kind of song. Silence doesn’t cause this much rapture.

I couldn’t contribute to the body. I didn’t hear a thing. I wasn’t useful enough, so I was left behind.

It was my idea to bring the monster here. Its absences fascinated me – the lack of regular organs, of children, of sight… so much gone, yet still breathing. How was it still breathing?

Nature reveals itself in unusual ways.

2

Benning’s monster has been here two days. He hasn’t left its side. He sleeps with it. I don’t think he trusts us.

Memoranda are a strange kind of haven – imagine trying to file an injunction against dying. Urbanity is how an impotent man thinks he’ll keep. I’m not impotent, so I’ll try to be a little less careful with my words, maybe even slightly feral. Sometimes all you can do is pretend you have options.

The creature is uncircumscribed by the normal geometries. Its cells are grotesquely multinucleated. It seems to be in pain – at the very least its contractions are labored – and we speculate this is because it is perpetually in search of food. Some necessary and catastrophic fuel that damages even as it sustains.

Any life form can be reduced to a series of appetites, but it’s the dearth of information with which the creature can still assemble an understanding of its environment, its unique methods of growth, that make it different.

It knows we’re watching it.

–

Benning moves among us. He hasn’t started changing. Everybody else has. He’s proud of being spared. It think it makes him feel important.

The creature is an infection that must be maintained, because its failure would send out an even worse disease. It doesn’t fear anything, but still panics. It wants so bad that its wants are needs. It looks hungrily at our bodies. It makes noises through Benning’s mouth.

It has never left its room.

–

We understand it better now.

It wants to return home.

Maybe it can’t survive the trip. Maybe it isn’t welcome back.

It is using us.

–

The creature continues to grow within me all if its necessary flesh. To the others – whoever is left – I’m just another superannuated body. But I am not being expelled. I am being accepted.

I cannot see Benning – I cannot turn my head – but I hear him shuffle down the halls. He’s anxious. I don’t think he has begun to change. His exclusion might be bothering him now. Sad, I suppose, but his concerns are not my own. My own concerns are barely my own. I hear the voices welcoming me. Soon they will replace me.

I am being both fed upon and reimagined. I do not think one process is possible without the other. When I am done being changed I will not emerge whole – I will simply be another part of the body. This causes me inexpressible fear, but absolutely no pain.

The distance back home already seems smaller.

3

Benning was careful as he moved throughout the crowd. He didn’t have to be. They weren’t watching him. They couldn’t even see him.

The monster’s return had ruined whatever distance remained, so now the two worlds were hopelessly mated. It liked this, so it sent out more roots, more arms, each one aimless and dispassionate, until the sky was iron-red with hyphae. 

Benning hadn’t spoken to another person in years. Sometimes he said his own name to himself for practice.

He arrived at the hotel and went inside.

–

Roche was waiting upstairs. He was sitting on the edge of the second bed. He smiled as Benning entered. He had been smiling for a while.

“Hi, Benning. I didn’t meet you in the lobby. I felt like sitting on the bed.”

Benning stayed in the doorway for a moment. Roche kept smiling.

“You’re looking well. Sit down.”

“No, I want – ”

“Sit down.”

Benning entered and sat down on the first bed.

“Do you know what a great insight is?”

“Listen, – ”

“Let me tell you the insight first. You need to hear what I have to say, first, Benning, and then you have to repeat it to me.”

Benning looked at him for a moment.

“Alright.”

“Nothing maximizes faster than an indiscriminate hand. Can you say that back to me?”

“Listen, – ”

“Can you say that back to me?”

“Nothing maximizes faster than an indiscriminate hand.”

“Excellent! Take us, for instance. There is nothing special about us, Benning. They just landed here one day, and started changing things. It’s not that they’re just better geneticists than navigators – they just don’t care where they land. And why should they? The process is the same regardless. Consumption must be done that way. Otherwise it isn’t true consumption. It isn’t honest hunger.

“It’s thrilling to not matter, Benning. You must see that. Being hurt by someone who barely even notices you is true honesty. You never have to feel undeserving of the things you have, or deserving of the things you don’t. You’re never confused.

“Their knowledge of mechanics is just so much more intuitive than ours, Benning. Imagine what it must be like to just feel things, to feel a probability.”

“I don’t want to have to imagine anything,” Benning said, abruptly, stupidly. “I just want – ”

“Could you say it back to me again, please, Benning?”

“Nothing maximizes faster than an indiscriminate hand.”

“See! You said it without pause or protest this time. That’s great! I can’t be sure I’ll still remember the observation the time we meet again, so it’s good to know that it’s safe and well-kept with you.”

Roche stood up.

“Goodbye, Benning.”

He moved towards the door. Benning reached out to stop him.

“N-No, wait! Wait. Tell me. Am I the only one who isn’t part of it?”

Roche sighed.

“Of course you are. Someone has to be. We can’t write our own history, Benning. It might be biased.”

Roche moved towards the door again. Benning lunged at him.

“Take me with you. For Christ’s sake, take me with you.”

Roche shook free and left.

–

Benning moved to the window. He looked up.

The surface of the second world was just above the tops of the buildings on this one. What little liminal space remained was known only to him, because space and breathing were inconsequential to the body they had all become.

Benning tried to consider whose up was whose down but he confused himself every time. It wasn’t a matter of waiting for the information to reach him, because there was no information to send. They told him nothing, so he never saw anything change.