Greg groaned as he woke up to someone shaking him. “Five more minutes.” He grumbled, rolling away, only to let out a yelp as he fell off some kind of gurney. “What- oh, wrong body.” Greg muttered with a yawn, shifting his focus to the self with Tessa, who was the one shaking him with a concerned expression. “What's up?”
“What- Greg, you were asleep!” Tessa exclaimed.
“So-oooh, right, I don't do that.” Greg frowned, his mind finally catching up with what was going on. “I- think I did something… impulsive.”
“Why am I not surprised.” Tessa grumbled. “Please tell me you didn't kill anyone.”
“No one died.” Greg rolled his eyes. “But… I may have been confronted by an alien while wandering around the wrong section of the feral zone, been told something about all life interacting with mana in relation to the fact that I did not, and subsequently gone about possibly changing that while in front of said alien, which… was probably not the best idea, seeing as I almost immediately passed out.”
Tessa frowned. “You passed out?!?”
“Yeah, turns out becoming a real boy makes a person really hungry.” Greg explained. “Like ‘I'm about to die’ hungry.”
“Okay, let me get this straight.” Tessa sighed, rubbing her temple. “You went to check on the ferals, somehow got caught by the aliens, and in the process became real? As opposed to what?”
“Smoke, I guess?” Greg shrugged. “Though I suppose I'm probably still smoke… Basically, I realized that what I've been doing so far is just kind of simulating things. I make my smoke feel like skin or bone or whatever, but ultimately it's still smoke, you know? But if I can simulate the feel of skin and bone and all that, then what was stopping me from simulating everything else? Like, what if I simulate the cells instead? Or the proteins, or even the particles! Basically, the more complete my simulation, the closer it should be to reality, until the difference is non-existent! And the moment I realized that, I obviously had to try it, and then…”
“You passed out.” Tessa sighed again, shaking her head. “I miss the days when all you did was make card castles.”
“I dunno, I think the stuff I get up to now is much more interesting.” Greg retorted.
Tessa just rolled her eyes. “So what happened after you passed out?”
Greg shrugged. “No idea. I was out until you woke me up, and I haven't had a chance to look around because we've been talking.”
“Right.” Tessa muttered. “Okay, you go figure out what's going on, I'm going to see what the squad is doing. Then- we'll figure it out.”
“Got it.” Greg nodded, shifting his focus back to his other body. “Fuck!” He jumped as he found the blue lady from last night standing over him, watching him with a curious expression.
“You are one of the strangest creatures I've ever interacted with.” The woman commented, stepping back as Greg clambered to his feet.
“How so?” Greg asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
The woman raised an eyebrow at him. “First, you might as well have been a rock according to my scan, which as I explained, should have been impossible. Then you began to ignore me and a moment later fell unconscious, your entire body shutting down due to a complete lack of nutrients, which is even more impossible. And now, you roll off your bed, mutter something about ‘wrong body’, and simply go into a daze for the next five minutes! And to top it all off, I now find that you are perfectly scannable!”
Greg blinked. “I am?”
The woman glared at him, activating her network device and hitting him with the beam again, before showing him the screen, which was a surprisingly detailed breakdown of his physical attributes, along with a note that stated his natural mana allowed for heat manipulation. “A fully accurate profile, independently verified by our specialists after I brought you in. By all accounts you seem to be just another mage, with a rather basic form of natural mana. Which makes it all the more baffling that you seem to have simply appeared on the ship, with no record of us actually picking you up.”
The two stared at each other for a moment. “So… what are you going to do with me?” Greg asked. “Imprison me? Kill me? Shoot me into space?”
The woman gave him an incredulous look. “What? Of course not! All we want to know is how you managed to get here, how you fooled our scans, and what you did to consume all the nutrients in your body. It seems clear that you experienced some kind of unique mutation during your world's shift and we wish to document it, even study it if you'll allow us.”
Greg frowned, considering how he should play this. Obviously pretending to be normal wasn't an option anymore, probably hadn't been an option since the first time he was scanned. But… Did it actually matter whether the aliens knew about his smoke? If anything they'd just see it as a unique mutation, right? The only thing he needed to hide was the fact that he knew they'd killed everyone they hadn't taken. So… his best bet was to tell enough truth that they wouldn't suspect he was leaving anything out, right? “I suppose I should start from the beginning then, huh?” Greg finally offered.
“If you'd like.” The woman agreed, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms as she settled in for Greg's story.
“Basically, I've been unconscious for the last two years, ever since the apocalypse started, which I suppose would be when mana arrived. Then I woke up about two weeks ago, discovering that I'd transformed into a smoke man.” Greg began.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Smoke man?”
“Yeah, see-” Greg cut off, frowning as he tried to pull some smoke out, but found it sort of… stuck. He cocked his head as he had to actually detach the smoke from his body to pull it out. “Weird…” He muttered, sending the smoke back in and attaching it again, before detaching it and bringing it out again, doing it a few more times just to get a feel for the process. Then he sent some into the gurney and attached it to a small section of it, feeling a tickle in his mind as he got a feel for the material that the gurney was made of. “Huh.”
“What are you doing?” The woman asked, causing Greg to jump as he'd legitimately forgotten she was there.
Greg coughed awkwardly. “Sorry, just… figured out something new I could do. Anyway, this is my smoke and I can turn it into pretty much whatever I want, as long as I've dissolved it.” He explained, showing her the smoke then turning it into a small rock, then a piece of glass, and finally a wad of magnetic balls before turning it back into smoke. “I basically am the smoke, fully capable of existing as just a cloud of it if I want to. Which, apparently, means you guys don't pick up on me, so when you took everyone, you kinda… left me behind. Thankfully, I'd given a few people some things made of smoke so I could keep tabs on them or they could alert me if they needed me, so I just turned them back to smoke, found some material to dissolve until I had enough to make myself a new body, and boom, here I am! I was heading over to talk to one of them to figure out what was going on when you found me.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The woman stared at him, taking a moment to put everything together. “So you're with the cultured as well?”
Greg froze. “Uh… what?”
She rolled her eyes. “You're a discontinuous existence, you remember the time before your mutation, and then there's the comment you made about the ‘wrong body’. It only follows that your primary concern is with the others who share your culture, joining with them first, probably not long after they were taken, and making sure they were secure before you checked on the uncultured. I assume your time spent in a daze earlier was due to your attention being focused on them. Does that sound accurate?”
“Pretty much.” Greg sighed. “Is that a problem?”
The woman gave him a weird look. “Why would that be a problem? One of our goals is to reintegrate the cultured and uncultured. The fact that you have allies on both sides is a good thing. The more connections between the two sides, the easier it will be to bring them together.”
“Oh… okay then.” Greg shrugged. “Yeah, I started with the humans, or the civilized, I guess, which does make more sense considering we're all technically human anyway…”
The woman nodded. “Then the only thing that still confuses me is how all the nutrients disappeared from your body.”
Greg frowned. “I can't say for sure, but… I don't think they disappeared, I think they weren't there in the first place. See, when you started talking about all life interacting with mana, it got me thinking that maybe I wasn't alive, and that I was just simulating life, poorly at that. So I tried to do better, and… well, it worked, but because it worked, my body suddenly needed all this stuff to actually function, which it didn't have, because before that moment I didn't need it. And so I passed out. I think I could have fixed it with more smoke, but I only had enough on me to make the body. Plus this little bit, obviously, but that's clearly not enough.”
“And that's why you were suddenly able to be scanned as well.” The woman muttered thoughtfully. “Because before then, you weren't technically alive.”
“Basically.” Greg agreed. “And that's all I know.”
The woman considered him for a moment, before letting out a snort. “I reaffirm my previous assertion. You have to be the strangest creature I have ever interacted with. Discontinuous existences are uncommon enough on their own, as are beings composed of a single material, but a discontinuous existence composed of a single material that is capable of simulating anything it consumes? I wouldn't believe such a creature would even be possible if you weren't standing right in front of me!”
Greg paused. “Yeah, that's fair. I’d probably have a hard time believing something like me existed too if I weren't, you know, living it.”
The woman gave him a serious look. “I would very much like to continue studying you, if you'd allow me to. I can compensate you with personal instruction.”
“Instruction on what?” Greg asked.
“Centering exercises, spell insight and adjustment, mana investment, and combat.” She replied simply, pausing for a moment before continuing as Greg stared blankly at her, obviously having no idea what she was talking about. “Centering exercises help you maintain your mental state so that the mana doesn't warp you like it has the uncultured. This clearly wouldn't be a permanent issue for you but it is a waste of mana. Spells are the process of altering your natural mana to create a different effect through spiritual constructs imbued with intent. The more efficient your construct and the clearer your intent, the more powerful the result. Mana investment is the process of taking in mana to strengthen your body and mana pool, and there are different ideologies on how to best do so, which I can help you parse through to discover the best method for you. And combat is combat, which I don't think you need me to explain.”
“Yeah, no, I got it.” Greg nodded. “So basically you're offering to tutor me in exchange for me helping you with your research.” He considered it for a moment. “I guess the question is what are you hoping to learn from studying me?”
“There is much to learn from the uniqueness of your mutation. Just the fact that it is possible could tell us a lot about the nature of mana! And that doesn't even touch on the insights your smoke could bring to the nature of illusions! A thorough understanding of how your smoke works could revolutionize the construction of certain spells.” The woman explained.
Greg blinked. “Really? Why?”
“Spells operate through imagery and understanding. The better you understand something and the clearer your visualization, the more effective your spells will be. For example, in order for someone with natural water mana to cast an ‘ice spike’ spell, they would need to understand cold, ice, and the shape of a spike, and be able to visualize the process of water turning into an ice spike. You could try to brute force this by imagining forming water into a cone and freezing, or you could visualize the process of an icicle forming on a ledge. The first requires a significant amount of mental effort, but everyone knows icicles and how they form, and it's an easy picture to pull up, which makes the process stronger and more efficient. Similarly the idea of something that is fake but real enough to interact with is hard to grasp and requires those without very specific forms of natural mana to jump through a lot of hoops to conceptualize. However, your smoke does this naturally, so not only can it develop our understanding of how this is possible, the image of it can carry the intent, just like the icicle carries the intent of an ice spike!”
“So… you want to use my smoke to help people make better illusions?” Greg asked, scratching his head.
The woman smiled. “Basically, yes.”
“I guess that's fine?” Greg muttered, considering the other ideas his smoke could represent, in particular the ability to dissolve things… though if you wanted to kill something, there were probably easier ways. “What do you get out of it? Like, do you get paid or something for selling the idea?”
The woman paused. “There is… compensation for spreading spell knowledge.”
Greg narrowed his eyes. “More than some training would be worth?”
“It depends on the spell.” The woman replied. “If people find it useful, then yes, it could provide a lot of compensation, but if not, it could be worthless.”
“Of course, of course.” Greg nodded. “But on the off chance that it is valuable, I think I should get something a bit more substantial out of it, don't you? Nothing major, of course, just say… Fifty percent? Though I suppose you might incur some expenses training and studying me… how about you cover your expenses first, then we'll go fifty-fifty. That seems fair, doesn't it?”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “That does seem fair. Though I doubt it's something we'll actually have to worry about. Its main use would be for those with natural smoke mana, which is relatively rare itself. The main value of this knowledge will be adding to the collective understanding of mana.”
Greg shrugged. “Fair. Just covering my bases, you know? Is there some kind of contract we should sign, or…?”
The woman snorted. “I'll put something together.”
“Awesome.” Greg grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “Is that it then? Are we good? Can I go?”
“Yes, you may go.” She nodded, then paused. “Where would you like to go?”
“Well… I'd still like to check on the f- er, the uncivilized, but they're all women, so if you're separating everyone by sex that isn't exactly an option. Though I guess there's nothing stopping me from being a woman…” Greg trailed off as that thought percolated through his mind. “Fuck I'm a degenerate.” He muttered, shaking his head. “Anyway, I definitely want my main self to be with the civilized, but I don't want to abandon the uncivilized in the process, you know?”
The woman stared back at him with a blank expression. “You are going to be incredibly difficult to work with, aren't you?” She sighed, rubbing her temple. “Just finding you is going to be a pain.”
“Oh! I have something for that!” Greg turned the little bit of smoke into a small strip of glass. “Just break that and I'll find you. I can sense all my smoke and I feel when it breaks.”
The woman blinked. “I see… then where do you want me to send you?”
Greg considered it for a moment. “The uncivilized. I have enough smoke with the civilized, no need to send more over there.”
“Very well.” The woman nodded. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Same.” Greg agreed, and then he was in the middle of a city square, surrounded by ferals. “Ah, shit, I forgot to get her name.”