It might come as a bit of a surprise, but I enjoy social gatherings.

A lot.

I love being able to talk to my people, enjoy learning more about their daily lives, and am delighted to form stronger emotional bonds with them after every conversation. I have lesser clones stationed per neighborhood whose main purpose of creation is civilian interaction. This can range from impersonal topics like career paths to more personal discussions relating to their personal relationships and current mental health. I like to think that the knowledge they were once part of me makes them feel safe enough to speak to me impersonally. It might also help that I already know their every secret, thus avoiding any awkwardness as they attempt to word their general emotion towards anything unpleasant in their lives.

It's a very relaxing and intimate part of our society with a large majority of citizens scheduling such consultations monthly or attending similar community meetings to find solace in their neighbors and friends.

It would please me greatly to ever develop such a relationship with a peer outside my race but the numerous satirical content being shared around the internet after I shared this part of our culture with the rest of the world dampens my hope of such an event ever occurring.

With every new evolution, I attempt to improve upon the constitution of my people, most frequently since the plan of leaving isolation had been placed our agender. I have also spent a lot of effort and time creating an avatar that would arouse feelings of trust from other sentient bipedal species, with varying degrees of success.

Reducing my height to only eight feet had taken a lot of mental readjustments on my part; and so had reducing the size of my horns, secondary core, and many other similarly cherished but not vital physical appendages.

In most cases, my avatars were often a visual manifestation of my mind; my physical body being too inconvenient to move- since after my first millennial as a native of this world, having a much smaller and easier-to-maneuver form had proven vital to my continued growth.

Research backed by decades of observation had shown that females tended to be more trusted and less feared in humanoid societies, so I attempted to visualize my latest avatar with as many feminine features as I possibly could. This had proven to be more difficult than I had anticipated since developing secondary sex characteristics that mimicked a humanoid female required other parts that were equally impossible for my mind to comprehend, thus resulting in numerous failed and -by the words of my councilmembers- horrific attempts.

Before my fall into this rabbit hole, I had merely assumed the appendages on the chest of humanoid females were mere lumps of misguided fat found in only those with defective physiques.

Most of the females I fought in my earlier escapades into the human world were often flat-chested and protected by bronze, silver, or gold-plated armor.

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However, after scouring records, watching detailed videos, and sending countless electronic letters to renowned scholars specializing in the topic of humanoid bodies; I was surprised to learn that the lumps of fat were not physical defects, rather they were important sources of nutrients for young offsprings and a sign of a female body’s physical maturity; thus correcting my false assumptions and marking male humanoids the true physically defective gender for lacking such a vital appendage.

Some nights I lay awake in the gaping void of my mind, wondering if humanoid species would hate me less if they could see the lumps of fat on my chest and remember being nurtured at a young age, building a faint sense of trust between us automatically.

However, post-isolation I’ve contemplated tossing out the entire project and rebranding myself as a loving male father figure due to my difficulties in accomplishing the goal. This train of thought was later derailed after many attempts to recreate the male sex organ all ended in an even more horrific failure.

So now, three-year post isolation, ninety-five years after my last manifestation and five years before my next; I’ve settled for the best of both worlds with softer features, a slim physique, and a well-defined musculature to match the basic outline of humanoid aesthetics. Although I’m beginning to understand that any action I take would most likely be viewed with negative scrutiny, I cannot stop my efforts to integrate with the rest of the world since our place on this misshapen planet rigorously depends on it.

Every few millennials, whenever a world grows unstable, it collides with another world on the metaphysical plane, automatically ejecting everything it considered ‘alien’ in a misguided but admirable attempt to restore a certain degree of systematic balance.

Unfortunately, the last collision of worlds brought over some gods too weak to resist the force, magic, aether, qi, and caused a mutation in the physique of the preexisting natives; leading to the awakening of superpowers in many individuals across the nations under some very specific and often times bizarre conditions.

This had made attempting to get an accurate measure of strength across the fifteen continents a journey into insanity and frankly a suicide mission as merely entering the territory of some species displaced on this planet is considered a war declaration.

That unfortunate collision also left me, a sentient rock already alien to the world I awakened, stranded on a planet on which I was even more of an alien than the last.

The first few years after being displaced were very much an awful experience on my part, with a feeling I had yet to identify as loneliness and boredom eating at the corners of my fragile and helpless mind. However, things took a quick turn for the better after a violent altercation with a mutant bird left me broken in some parts and screaming in mental anguish till I lost consciousness.

However, when I woke up the next day I could sense a change in the air around me. Rolling closer towards the reason for this change, I could only catch a quick vision of some pebbles a similar cloudy grey color before my aether wanned and I had to wait the next day for another glimpse.

Although I instinctively knew these pebbles were alive, I wasn’t sure exactly what they were; and this would remain a mystery until a year later when I became more proficient in my control of aether and accidentally absorbed them back into myself in an attempt to observe them closer.

My glum mood lasted only till the morning of the next day when more chunks of myself fell off, all possessing the familiar smell and presence; reassuring me that I didn’t incidentally end the existence of whatever it was keeping my persistent feeling of loneliness at bay- Unknown to me that they were my very first citizens.