JESSICA : N/A
DAY 4 : D-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, AGNI, YEAR 1
PURGATORY 3 : INTERLUDE 2 : RACE
[ BEGIN RACE SELECTION ]
As the timer reset back to eight hours, I saw my first new prompt after probably-some-double-digit-number days of introspection. But I forgave myself. I’d been in shock, after all. And now I wasn’t.
In place of the ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ options I’d been abusing for days, I was only left with a single choice.
[ CONFIRM ]
And there was a new box below that.
[ WARNING 1: THIS CHOICE IS PERMANENT — WARNING 2: A RACE OF LESS THAN 75% COMPATIBILITY MAY CAUSE MENTAL DESTABILIZATION ]
Processing that, I was doubly relieved for my delay as it occurred to me that eight hours simply wasn’t long enough after literally dying for my brother, to make a ‘permanent choice’. Let alone one that risked ‘mental destabilization’. That sounded bad. Didn’t it basically translate to insanity? If I was lucky… It was also the sort of thing that put people into permanent comas, right? And even that would’ve been a stroke of luck compared to some of the other possibilities. Comas, for all their disadvantages, didn’t tend to involve a lot of pain.
But what exactly was I supposed to be confirming?
Oh… The proceeding scan of my surroundings was instantly resolved when I noticed that the previously empty grass field was now covered in a bunch of weird-ass silhouettes. Not that anything was actually there. Each was more like an outline of something that could be. Some were yellow. Others, orange. Those closest to me were a kind of lime green. But most were varying shades of red. There were thousands of them. And none of the silhouettes looked even remotely humanoid.
The sole exception was the exact copy of myself standing right next to me and mirroring all of my movements. No particular color. It was just literally me… Standing right there. And looking for all the world like some kind of fucked up pre-coma hologram preview of what an eternity of mental destabilization would look like.
At least when I started thinking of mirror-me as a sort of focal point, the rest made a whole lot more sense. My clone was centered in the middle of the few lime-green silhouettes in sight. The further away from my copy they got, the more yellow, orange, and then red the silhouettes became. So that must’ve meant the closer ones had a higher ‘compatibility’?
As I approached my lifeless clone, it stayed glued to the same spot even as it walked in place, completely mimicking my own movements. Except for the part where I was actually moving.
Experimentally, I reached out to touch my doppleganger’s shoulder. But my outstretched hand passed through its matching one, even as fake-me did the same thing. Curiosity piqued, I jumped into the same space my copy occupied. “FUcgglllh!”
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Barely managing to land my short hop, I immediately vomited at the sight of my own insides as I quickly traveled through the intangible, yet unreasonably thorough copy of myself. The copy vomited too. The grass to either side of us was now stained with the same slurry of stomach acid and half-digested mix of virgin Long Island iced tea, sour cream, chips, and the various components of a fully loaded quesadilla.
Curiosity now evaporated, I looked desperately around for a water source. But I found no such thing. Resolving to just figure this shit out and get it over with, I approached one of many shapeless lime-green silhouettes. Not that it didn’t have a shape. It just wasn’t one I could make heads or tails of. As I focused my attention on it, a floating opaque number appeared over its center.
[ 92% ]
Was that my compatibility with this… Thing? Pulling from a life of math classes, I managed to discern that 92 was larger than 75. Well above the danger zone, then. Bracing myself, I held my breath, shut my eyes, and inched my hand forward to touch it.
Woah… This was the creepiest shit ever. Not altogether unpleasant, but definitely not a sensation I’d sign up for. Opening my eyes, I saw the silhouette’s details gradually fill in as my own perspective shifted and split between the two perspectives. But after a few seconds, my vision settled.
My periphery faded to memory as I now saw all around me at once. Like a panorama shot that never ended. Shouldn’t this have made me dizzy? But it didn’t. And the creature I now saw in place of the former green silhouette was truly mind-boggling. A sort of writhing mass of purple tentacles, each featuring between one and five black orbs that I intuitively registered as my new closest equivalent to what a human would ignorantly call ‘eyes’.
So… This was me now, huh? I had hundreds of those same many-’eyed’ tentacles, all moving around in seemingly random patterns. Focusing on each in turn, I realized it was me making them move like that. And doing so felt for all the world like breathing. If I really tried, I could get them to stop in place. This made me dizzy, so I quit it.
Which was easier than I knew it should be. Apparently, this alien could actually avoid thinking about a pink elephant if it wanted to. And despite all my eyes moving everywhere, my new 360° vision was completely stable. Intellectually, I knew that Jessica Simmons The Human Girl would be sickened by this. But any actual aversion to my new reality felt… Muted. To the point where the remnants of my anxiety might as well have been entirely absent.
I could even remember a lifetime. And not one from Earth. I’d lived in this form far longer than as the human Jessica Simmons. I had a family and everything. Except… What was a ‘family’? I never knew any concept like that on the alien planet that was… No, wait. Obviously, Earth was the alien planet. This was fascinating. I’d never felt so free before. Free of stress. Of fear. Of anything even remotely like a ‘human emotion’.
This was good. Great, even. I was exceedingly tempted to just mentally confirm my choice and move forward. But what would the human Jessica Simmons think? On a whim, I decided to verify the obviously correct choice through those limited eyes real quick before locking it in.
Without needing to try, I did something that resembled ‘rolling’ over to my original silhouette, easily identifiable as the lone forest-green figure in the field. Quickly and effortlessly reaching my goal, I extended a tentacle to touch it.
I marveled as my perception shifted once again. Mid-transformation, it hit me what I’d almost done.
I vomited on the ground again. So did my newly reformed copy. “Nope!” I spluttered out a hacking cough that came not too far removed from my gag reflex. “Fuck this… Fuck this whole thing.”
That… was a close match? I didn’t even want to think about what a red silhouette would be like. Against my own wishes, I thought of it anyway. I couldn’t help but shudder in revulsion.
I confirmed my choice to remain human so hard that I was afraid I’d somehow break the ephemeral button. As a lifelong gamer, I realized inherently that this fear was stupid. But as a lifelong human girl without the requisite fetish to appreciate such an existence, I was far more relieved that I wouldn’t be living out the rest of my days as a ball of living tentacle porn.
That spoiled the novelty of the whole thing for me. I was so done with this shit.