“Hey Starcoil,” Lilijoy said. “Long time, no see.”
There was a moment of stillness.
“You?” said the spider. Her voice reverberated in the dark.
Just for fun, Lilijoy used Scan. Unfortunately, it seemed the ability might have taken the day off, as no results were returned. This wasn’t a complete surprise; she hadn’t been able to use Scan when looking into the Trial Space from the other side either. She did wonder what else might be different though.
“Me.” she confirmed. “Sorry to drop in unannounced.”
“I remember you,” said Starcoil. She maneuvered her plump, round body to the other side of Lowly’s cocoon and peered out at Lilijoy. “I don’t like you. Go away.”
“You attacked me,” Lilijoy protested, oddly hurt by the spider’s rejection. “I even gave you a name!”
“Not a very good one. You move when you are not supposed to and you have an angry wizard inside you. Go away now.”
“I will,” Lilijoy promised. “Soon.” She began to move calmly toward Lowly and Starcoil, grateful that the tangle of webbing wasn’t too far off the jagged floor. Starcoil scuttled away, moving to the farthest corner of the cavern.
Now, let’s see. She placed her hand on Lowly’s wrapped legs and sent her healing energy flowing into his body.
“Stop touching my meal-friend,” said Starcoil.
Lilijoy ignored her command. Lowly wasn’t in good shape, though he wasn’t nearly as close to death’s door as she had feared. Mostly he was dehydrated, though he had puncture wounds all over his body, no doubt from Starcoil feeding. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but he seemed to still have most of his blood.
“So, Starcoil,” she said. “What’s it like, hanging out day after day in dark caverns? Seems to me it would be pretty boring.”
“You’re boring,” Starcoil replied. “Go away.”
“It’s just that I always wondered, what’s the actual point of being an intelligent spider?” Lilijoy continued. “It’s not like there’s a lot of problem solving or creativity needed, sitting by yourself in a web all the time. It seems like you do pretty much the exact same thing as regular spiders, only with commentary.”
“What would you know about it? Maybe I think great thoughts that a meal like you could never understand,” Starcoil replied, her voice sullen.
“Really? That’s amazing!” Lilijoy replied, “Can I hear one?”
Starcoil pulled her legs into her abdomen, a piece of inscrutable spider body-language that Lilijoy filed away. “You… couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Try me.”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you if your little mind can’t keep up.” She rubbed her front legs together. “What if rocks think?”
“That’s it?”
“Hah! I knew you wouldn’t get it.” Starcoil proclaimed.
“It’s…” What if rocks think. I mean, they kind of do. Certain rocks anyway. Silicon, the rare earth crystals I have in my head. Somehow, I doubt that’s what Starcoil is getting at. “… an interesting thought. What if they do?”
“They would think slowly,” the spider said with a hint of excitement. “Perhaps one thought, or even the very beginning of an inkling, would take longer than I have been alive. Now do you see where this is going?” She didn’t leave Lilijoy room to reply. “So this is the interesting part. Would that make them dumb, like you?”
“Well, no-”
“Exactly! So you just agreed you are dumber than a rock!”
Really?
“It gets better though,” Starcoil continued. “If the speed of someone’s thoughts have no relationship to how smart they are, then what does?”
There were times that Lilijoy suspected some higher intelligence was speaking to her through these types of interactions on the Inside. Starcoil’s question was a crucial problem, maybe the crucial problem that kept turning up when Lilijoy thought about Guardian or her own evolving mind. The best answer she had been able to come up with was architectures of interconnection, the ability to hold and relate multiple ideas simultaneously. Language was a tool that facilitated that, in part by providing a pre-existing architecture, but it failed at a relatively low dimension of complexity.
That was why, she suspected, that she wasn’t vastly more intelligent than her less augmented friends. She could think much faster, and access information seamlessly, but in the end that was a difference of quantity, rather than quality. She could work around it by adding more ‘cores’ of language processing, but she suspected that wasn’t a final solution. That was something more like collaboration; arguably better than a single mind in isolation, but not always.
It also related to what Lilijoy considered one of the great mysteries of Guardian; why had it stopped growing? Of course, she had no way of knowing that it truly had, but there were indications that led her and others to that conclusion. Anda had told her that the night sky above the ever-present clouds had not changed, that the solar system was not clogged with chunks of ever-proliferating Guardian-mind. Of course, there was always the ‘Doctor Quimea approved’ possibility that Guardian had long since consumed everything and the Outside was yet another facet of its imagination. As usual, she dismissed the idea, not because it was unlikely, but because it wasn’t actionable.
But that left the question, and one of her favorite answers was that there was a point past which Guardian did not want to grow, a point of diminishing returns, perhaps. Marcus theorized it was some type of phase bottleneck, that Guardian might split apart the way an unwieldy bureaucracy might eventual splinter and collapse under its own weight were it to grow more. Lilijoy was more inclined to think that Guardian simply didn’t find that adding more processing capacity added value to its goals, that and the fact that it was following its own Rule One to an extent and carefully maintaining some global entropic balance.
She thought all this in a tenth of a second and replied. “I’m impressed, Starcoil. What do you think the answer is?”
The spider plucked idly at the webs supporting her. “I haven’t figured that part out,” she admitted. “Probably something to do with webs. I’ve seen the kinds of structures your species build, and they’re really dumb, nothing more than standing caves. That seems to be how your minds work too, flat boxes, crudely linked.”
“It doesn’t seem like you would have had a chance for many conversations with my kind,” Lilijoy observed as she continued to heal Lowly. She was beginning to wonder what her next move should be, now that she had made it into the Trial Space. In hindsight, she had acted a bit rashly, and now that she was in, she wasn’t entirely sure how to get back out.
The spider clacked her mouthparts together. “No, I’m sure it doesn’t seem that way to you, box-head. My reality is far more layered and profound than you could possibly comprehend. Like my beautiful home here.”
Lilijoy looked at the chaotic tangle of strands spanning a good portion of the cavern. “Riiight,” she replied.
Starcoil contracted her abdomen and forced air from her spiracles, a whooshing sound that seemed like something between a sigh and a huff. “You are far too dumb to see it. When we first met, I was almost as dumb, but since then, I have… recovered. Memories, dreams, other lives, all woven together, thousands of deaths, thousands of conversations with your kind, each recorded here.” She plucked the web again.
Lilijoy began to re-evaluate her assumptions. She’s connecting to other Trial instances, or at least the memories of her experiences. What must that be like, to relive the same scenario thousands of times and only now have the opportunity to learn from it? I wonder if that is happening to others in the Trial Space?
“You’ve been busy,” she observed. “Don’t the prey mess things up when they blunder in here?”
Starcoil twitched a little. “My webs are a tool, temporary thoughts put outside my body. Your presence here is far more disruptive than the clumsiest beetle. Plus, they’re delicious, unlike that ridiculous creature you are fondling.”
“So you won’t mind if I take him away?”
The spider hissed. “It’s mine. You can’t have it. It’s doing something that no prey has done before and I want to understand.”
“Have you considered asking him?”
There was more mouthpart clacking. “That meal was one of the dumbest talkers I have ever come across. It thought I was the food. Most of its babbling made no sense.”
“He’s… different.” Lilijoy admitted. “His mind is unusual. I brought him here, though, so I feel responsible for him. I can’t let you keep him.”
“What do you mean, you brought him here? He stumbled into my home all on his own.”
This argument is going nowhere, Lilijoy thought. “Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
She pulled the wicked knife out of her inventory, relieved to discover that ability was still functional, and began to climb Lowly’s cocoon to access the web strands suspending him.
Starcoil made threatening noises, which she ignored. The webbing confining Lowly wasn’t particularly sticky, and after some twisting and bobbing, Lilijoy managed to bring him down to the uneven floor of the cavern while Starcoil watched. By this time, his wounds were healed, though the paralyzing agent from Starcoil’s venom still seemed to be in effect. Lilijoy could remember all too well how that had felt, and the miraculous honey from the bees that had dispelled its effects.
I wonder if I can get more of that from them, she mused. Maybe after I see if the Sources will work for me now. Of course, that’s assuming I can get Lowly on his feet. I wonder how long it’s going to take for me to get back to the Boiling Plains?
It wasn’t an ideal time to be away from the others, but Lilijoy figured it would work out with the orcs eventually, whether she was there or not. If it didn’t, her friends could respawn back at the top of the waterfall and try another direction home. She just hoped she could figure out how to get back in time to help Anda, and to say hello to Mr. Sennit.
***
It took some time for Lilijoy to figure out how to neutralize the paralytic agent Starcoil had injected into Lowly. Her Healing skill seemed to sense that something wasn’t right within his body, but she couldn’t find anything to fix. Starcoil stared at her with eight unblinking eyes from the corner of the room as she tried various approaches to remove the toxin, and she was just as glad that the strange conversation had lapsed into stony silence, as the problem of restoring Lowly’s mobility occupied more and more of her attention.
I must be missing something. Maybe I need the Poisons skill? I think Skria has that. Still, that seems awfully arbitrary.
She thought back to how she had combined her Charm trait and Manipulation with her Healing, unlocking aspects of the skill related to mental health.
It must be the sub-skills issue again. My Healing is at Enhanced Journeyman, but my understanding of this facet of it is lacking. I bet if I did have Poisons, I would have more leverage on this problem.
Fortunately, she had become very accomplished at acquiring new skills from learning so many different crafts, and from studying how the information of the Mystic Library was conveyed when she picked up Swimming. She pulled up the vast body of information from her internet memory on poisons and toxins that interfered with body processes in one way or another, and cross-referenced it with her Nature: Plants and Nature: Animals skills.
Typically, just holding the information in her head wasn’t enough. The Inside required an action or an activity to cross the threshold. Fortunately, Lilijoy had been collecting bits and pieces from various interesting plants for days, in addition to the live samples she had transplanted into the Trial Space. She pulled out a random assortment of leaves, roots and seeds.
Surely some of these are poisonous. I can’t exactly try to make a poison so I guess there’s only one thing to do.
She tore off a tiny piece of a leaf from a plant she had identified as pale bog arum and placed it on her tongue, focusing all her senses on it.
Hmm. Tastes awful. Bitter. Burning sensation.
----------------------------------------
You have been poisoned by pale bog arum for 1 health.
----------------------------------------
Not too bad. I’m not going to forget the taste any time soon though.
She spat out the now soggy bit of leaf and examined it with the senses enabled by her Mana Manipulation ability. When she failed to see anything that looked like poison mana, she looked internally, with similar luck.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Crap. Guess I’m going to need something stronger?
She debated for a moment whether to use a larger dose, or to try a different plant. If she were Outside, and doing this for whatever crazy reason, she would carefully titrate the dose up until she achieved the desired result. On the Inside, where the consequences were less permanent, she decided variety was the spice of life. Plus the pale bog arum had tasted horrible.
One of the seeds from the large red flowers she had discovered while traversing the Boiling Plain caught her eye.
Now that’s got to be toxic. The stuff basically grows in boiling acid after all.
She popped the small seed, black, round and about the size of a peppercorn, into her mouth and rolled it around. There was no flavor or other sensation, so she caught it between her teeth and gently bit until she felt the hard outer shell crack.
Then, her head blew up.
At least that’s how it felt. Not only was she assaulted by a fiery sensation of spice that might make a case for making the Scoville scale logarithmic, not only did she feel her gums and the lining of her mouth instantly desiccate and peel, but a harsh, caustic smoke burst forth, driving down her throat and spilling through her sinuses to emerge before her eyes as a roiling cloud of glowing green and red sparks.
Her body tried to cough, to expel the foul substance, but her lungs failed to cooperate.
----------------------------------------
You have been poisoned by unknown substance for 92 health.
You have been poisoned by unknown substance for 137 health.
You have died.
----------------------------------------
***
Okay then, she thought as she hung in the white void. Probably should have stuck with the pale bog arum.
On the plus side, she had a few new notifications.
----------------------------------------
Skill Discovered: Poisons: Upgraded Journeyman
Trait Increase: Fire Affinity +5 (38)
Level Up! 2719 EXP Reached: Level 27 (10 more free points available)
----------------------------------------
You have died!
Death Counter: 3
----------------------------------------
I just hope that freaked Starcoil out enough to keep her in her corner until I get back. I wonder what my respawn options will be?
Faced with the unceasing monotony of white, her attention briefly returned to the Outside. All was calm there, as everyone had retreated to the various spaces they had staked out for sleeping or going Inside. Lilijoy was on watch, which had become more or less her permanent responsibility, since she didn’t really need sleep any more and could be Inside at the same time.
I wonder how many more of those seeds I have. Five or six, I think. It might be worth dying if I can raise my Fire Affinity like that each time. Probably should find a better way to use them though. I wonder how many credits I could sell them for? Or maybe I can find a way to recreate their habitat and grow them?
She started to get excited about the prospects for the potent seeds, wondering if others knew about them and what other uses they may have. If the seed alone was enough to kill her almost instantly, it could be the foundation for a top of the line respawn kit.
Respawn and raise an affinity at the same time. I bet the clans would love that. I bet they could be used to make amazing potions, and who knows what they could be used to build Outside.
She shelved her enthusiasm temporarily and replayed the last few seconds before her death. While she was kicking herself a bit for underestimating the risk, she hadn’t been completely irresponsible. One of her goals had been to capture system-level interactions involved with gaining a new skill. That had been a project of hers for a while now, following Arpentra’s advice to increase her understanding of skills and to find the elusive ‘sub-skill’. It was one of her excuses for gathering so many different crafting skills, not that she needed an excuse to indulge that side of her curiosity.
Let’s see now. What was the exact moment I got the notification?
She found the data stream for the notification of the new skill, the simple visual information that became words hanging in her internal awareness, and then she searched for what her system had been sending out just before. Her theory was that the information contained within her about, say, poisons, was mostly invisible to the Inside. It would need some type of data to evaluate her knowledge indirectly, and it was inclined to be stingy when doling out new skills and advancing old ones. The better she understood the data it used to assess her, the closer she would be to understanding skills in general.
There was the usually sensory feedback data, like that which she had manipulated last time she was dead in order to gain her Body Manipulation skill. There was also some… unusual sensory feedback. She traced and cross-referenced until she was sure. The skill had popped just after she saw the cloud of glowing red and green sparks issue from her mouth and nose, and the sense involved was her Mana Sense.
Now that’s an interesting trigger. Once I perceived the mana in that cloud, it decided I knew enough. Does that mean my ability to see the different mana types is some kind of shorthand for my understanding? Or would that be something a Journeyman level poisoner would be able to do? Some of both?
It certainly hadn’t been like that for her crafting skills, but then, there wasn’t really specialized mana involved in crafting. She had looked for ‘weaving’ mana and never found anything of the sort. Instead, the mana in use was generic, pure perhaps, though she suspected it could be like light, where white was a blend of everything. The neutral mana could easily take on the attributes of the crafter and the materials used. While its manipulation was certainly an important part of high level crafting, it wasn’t the direct link that many other skills required. That was certainly why she had struggled with Body Manipulation; she hadn’t figured out the mana situation because she cheated and skipped over that portion of the learning curve.
At least I know that mana perception is one trigger for skill bestowal, to go along with actual creations and actions that the Inside can easily detect. Not sure that gets me any closer to being able to break my skills back down, but it’s something. The time to really pay attention will be when I try to cure Lowly, assuming Starcoil hasn’t killed him in the meantime. It’s logical to think that there’s some time of pharmaceutical sub-skill in healing, and that should bump it up. I just need to pay attention to see if I can notice.
It wasn’t long before she was released from limbo. She was given the option to respawn at a neutral location close to her previous death, or at the falls. Despite a few misgivings, she decided on the neutral location again. At least she now knew one sure way to get out of the Trial Space.
She appeared in a tunnel. A small one, even for her.
Thanks, Inside. I appreciate all you do to make my life free from ease.
Thankfully, her map of the tunnels in the area was quite thorough, and she was able to figure out where she was after a few twists and turns. It took a little squeezing, but soon she was overlooking Starcoil’s cavern, where she received a considerable surprise.
“You can make your blood go anywhere you want? Does it work outside?” Starcoil was saying.
There was a brief moment of additional confusion for Lilijoy, before she realized Starcoil wasn’t talking about the Outside, which would have been even weirder.
“Essence goes where it wants. Essence is Only,” said Lowly.
Yup. There’s the confusing Labyrinthian I barely know, she thought. It was odd to consider how much time she had spent thinking about Lowly, compared to how much time she had actually spent in his company.
“Whatever,” Starcoil replied. “At least I understand the problem.”
Lilijoy couldn’t see where Starcoil was speaking from, but it sounded like the spider hadn’t moved from her previous location. Lowly was still lying on the floor, though he had propped up his head on one arm. Lilijoy fought off a feeling of disappointment that she might not have the chance to use the skill she had just died to earn.
She squeezed herself through the narrow opening head first, and flipped through the air as she fell to the floor, doing her best to avoid any webs.
“I’m back,” she announced.
“You died,” Starcoil noted. “Your body just disappeared. It happens sometimes, very annoying.”
Lowly seemed to take it all in stride, as if any time he wasn’t being beaten or eaten was probably as good as things were going to get. He flopped his body around so he could see Lilijoy, but didn’t speak.
“I see you’re doing a little better,” she said to him.
“Essence,” he replied, as if that should clear things up.
“I overheard you telling Starcoil,” she said, pointing to the spider lurking in the corner, just in case, “that you can move your essence around in your body. Can all Labyrinthians do that?”
“Horrible. Rule.” he said. Then he looked confused, as if what he said didn’t make any sense.
That makes two of us, buddy.
She knelt down next to him. “Do you mind if I try to get the rest of the poison out, clean up your essence?”
He stared back at her and slowly blinked. She noted absently that his eyelids were less like shutters, and more like a single curtain that swept a circle around the dark pools of his eyes. This seemed to be as close to consent as she was going to get.
She placed her hand on him and sent her healing mana through his body, scouting his blood for any signs of poison mana. The Inside seemed convinced she knew what to look for, but she herself wasn’t so sure. Nonetheless, she found it easily, less the color than the sparkling, a sense of scintillation that would be pretty in many contexts, light reflecting from a razor blade about to cut.
The dose makes the poison, she thought. Now that she could see the toxin blocking Lowly's ability to move, she was able to grab it up and heal the imbalance left in its wake. Unsure exactly what she should do with the substance, she pushed it out, through his lightly scaled skin, and then quickly wiped it off with her tunic.
Only the smallest portion of her consciousness was left to watch over the others on the Outside. The rest of her awareness was scouring, taking in every detail of the experience. She didn’t know if it was mere projection, but she felt as if the Inside was doing the same, that it was paying attention to her action, evaluating her mental state.
What’s changing? she asked herself. What’s different?
I did something I’ve never done before, so what do you make of it? she asked the Inside.
Data was streaming in both directions, as it always did, an unending flow of sensory inception and reaction. Her character sheet hovered at the edge of her awareness, and with half her thoughts she studied it, rearranged it, poked and prodded it to see where the signals went, hoping that if she just found the right command, the right arrangement, she might get some reaction, or it might finally understand what she wanted.
Nothing worked, and finally she let the moment pass, releasing her focus back to a more mundane reality.
I know this is possible. Professor Anaskafius told me I could learn to manipulate my skills. It’s like I’m trying to learn a skill to manipulate other skills but there’s no way to show the Inside I should have the skill, because I don’t have the skill.
She considered that thought for a moment. It was circular, a paradoxical problem with no solution. But she knew there was a solution, so one of her assumptions must be wrong. She reviewed the conversation with her magic mentor.
“With effort, you should be able to examine your Medical: Healing skill and see precisely which aspects you need to address” he said. With effort…
Maybe the problem was that she was searching for a clear answer, a button to push.
I don’t need the Inside to tell me what I know, she realized. My skills are my own. They live in me.
She moved her character sheet back to the center of her focus. She could feel the data stream supporting it, the tiniest trickle of bits back and forth that told the Inside her system was still using the data. She looked at the words Medical: Healing: Enhanced Journeyman and added a layer of data to her own internal awareness, connected adjacently to the sheet. Medical: Healing: Human: Anatomy: Enhanced Journeyman. She considered this for a moment and then changed it to Enhanced Master. Human anatomy was concrete and organized information that relied on her ability to model in three dimensions and her memory, both of which were easily up to the task.
She did the same with every species she knew of, even if she didn’t know what they looked like. For those, she didn’t assign a skill rank, but she wanted them there as reminders of what she didn’t know. Then she began the process of making new sub-categories for each species and ranking herself, Disease, Injuries, Pharmaceuticals, Chemistry, Metabolism… the list went on and on.
Somewhere in the early stages of the task, Lowly stretched his limbs and rose to his feet. Lilijoy left one part of her mind to continue the endless cataloging and evaluating and turned to the new problem-- where to go next, and what to do with her new… responsibility.
“Lowly,” she began. “Where would...” she let her voice tail off as Lowly walked away from her to pull on a strand of webbing on the other side of the cavern.
“Don’t touch that!” Starcoil barked at him.
He pulled his hand away, though he continued to examine the strand closely. Lilijoy could only assume his ability to see in the dark was at least as good as hers.
“What are you doing? Get away from there,” Starcoil said, though it sounded as if her heart wasn’t really in it.
“Where?” asked Lowly.
“There!”
“Where thoughts?” he clarified.
Lilijoy stepped in. “I think he heard you describe how you encoded your experiences in your webs, and he’s curious.”
The spider scoffed. “The creature can barely speak.”
“Well, maybe he’s like your hypothetical thinking rocks, in a way,” Lilijoy replied, watching as Lowly snuffled down the length of the strand, his face nearly touching it. “How would we know?”
Starcoil waved her front four legs. “Well, he’s looking in the wrong place. That strand is an anchor. It has nothing encoded.”
Lowly had reached a stalagmite and the thick blob of adhesive that kept the web stuck there. “End beginning,” he announced. He put his hand at the very base, next to the anchor.
“Come on, Lowly,” Lilijoy said. “We should get out of here.”
“Yes,” Starcoil agreed. “You really should.”
Lowly ignored them both, which created a certain awkward silence. Lilijoy continued assessing and rating her Healing skill, shifting the categories around and shuffling the organization. Organizing it by species was great for some aspects of the vast body of information, but terrible for others. This wasn’t helped by the fuzziness of issues relating to the finer details of chemistry and tissue organization on the Inside. Lilijoy was quite sure that such specifics were generated on an ‘as needed’ basis. It seemed to her that she might end up irritating the Inside by leaving a vast swath of specificity in her wake.
Or maybe that’s what it wants? Is this the equivalent of collapsing the state vector of everything I observe? But couldn’t it just do that itself? Maybe there’s some kind of interaction, a dialogue of creation between the path of observation we create and the potential Guardian has offered? Are we creating a web of meaning within Guardian’s creation?
She took a moment to try and imagine what that might imply, but the concept was just too big, too slippery.
I’m creating a web of knowledge from my Healing skill. Starcoil has made a web of her own experiences to try to make sense of her fragmented memories. The act of existing on the Inside creates a web tracing our acts of observation as we shuttle back and forth through space and time. What is Lowly doing? Wait. What is Lowly doing!?
She popped out of her reverie when she realized something altogether unexpected was happening. From where Lowly was standing, she could see something moving along Starcoil’s web, running up the anchor strand and then expanding along each branch and connection.
Starcoil isn’t going to be happy, was her first thought. This was followed by, I hope he has enough blood.
Lowly was exploring the web by sending a thin stream of his… essence out of his body. The blood moved quickly as it flowed up the anchor and into the dense tangle of interconnections. Lilijoy could almost see it expanding, like some inside-out vasculature being filled for the first time. She watched in silence, unsure of the repercussions of disturbing the process, and unwilling to alert Starcoil, though she did begin to slowly move to Lowly’s side. The blood flowing along the strands barely impacted them with its movement, though Lilijoy thought she saw the entire structure begin to settle slightly as more and more weight accumulated.
There must be a couple gallons on there. How can he be alive? she thought. It is the Inside though. If I look, will it kill him? Or maybe he’s like those frogs who can rehydrate? I’m going to go with that.
Indeed, Lowly’s body was looking quite shriveled. It continued to lean against the stalagmite, but Lilijoy had the sense she could pick him up with one hand if she wanted.
He’s just skin and bones now.
***
Only Essence flowed, free from the burden of the Old Ones. His thoughts were different now, tangled with those of the food entity in some way, though only slightly. This… web structure was so unlike the labyrinth of vessels within the Old Ones. He felt clear, but somehow naked, exposed. As the food entity had promised, its story, its memories were encoded in the weaving of the strands and their connections, and though both details and whole were beyond his comprehension, he felt a certain… leverage over his own thoughts that was new and frightening. The thoughts, the words in his head had new channels to follow.
There are no Rules here. It is time to move.
These words now had a different meaning to him. Or perhaps not different, but rather a new level, like the difference between the information coded on one strand and the way that information was changed by the strands connected to it. They told him that he was one, a singular entity apart from the others, that there was no more blend. He was free to move.
There is no tribe here. There is only… me.