Love.
The piglet didn’t know it, but that first spark of emotion, that all-encompassing fluffy warmth it felt as it suckled at its mother’s teat had a name.
Love was all the piglet knew in its initial days. Before sight. Before hearing. Love.
The piglet sat by Love while it slowly gained dim awareness of a world beyond that comfortable warmth. There were others like it, others that competed for Love, but there was enough Love for every last one of them.
As the piglet learned to stand, then to walk, Love was there to console it when it hurt itself. As others jostled and cried for attention, Love was there, calming them down. When the piglet’s curiosity got the better of it, and it investigated something scary, Love was there to scramble back to. The warmth was a constant, as sure and true as the sky above and the ground below.
Until one day it wasn’t.
Panicked, the piglet searched all over. Every nook, every dark place, even the scary areas. The piglet frantically searched them all in vain. Nothing.
Somehow, the impossible had happened, something the piglet hadn’t even been able to conceive of before today.
Love was gone.
The big two-feet, one of those who always put food in the food-place, was making noises at another one. The piglet didn’t understand.
“She’s just about outlived her usefulness. We’ll be getting no more litters out of the old sow.”
“I wouldn’t say she’s totally useless. They say aged meat is all the rage these days.”
“Aged meat doesn’t mean meat from aged animals, you idiot. But we’ll get a pretty penny for her nonetheless, sow meat is great in sausages. If we’re quick, we can get the butcher to save us a flank for a good roast tonight.”
The pair of two-feet walked off making a snorting, huffing noise. It sounded like they were… happy?
The piglet didn’t understand. How could they be happy? Love was gone.
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The piglet, now a pig, pushed its snout into the small two-feet’s back, nudging it away from the fence. The fence gave zaps that were a minor irritation to the pig but would no doubt injure the two-feet piglet.
This young one kept coming outside without the big two-feet, trying to get itself into danger. It also kept trying to touch the pig’s birthmark, a vaguely paw shaped dark patch over its left eye. The pig felt oddly protective of the juvenile and grew more used to his presence over time, eventually even being led inside the warm-place where all the two-feet lived.
In return, the pig introduced the small two-feet to the rest of his litter, all its brothers and sisters. Even though Love was gone, its embers burned steady in these others. Together, they could feel that warmth once more, even if diminished.
They frolicked and wrestled with one another, often drawing shouts from the one of the big two-feet, the one with teats, when they got covered in mud. The pig didn’t see the problem. Mud was natural. Good.
The pig and the two-feet’s relationship deepened, to the point that the pig could instinctively tell something was wrong even before the young two-feet ran outside yelling, flustered and breathless.
“I won’t let you! You can’t! You can’t!”
A group of big two-feet followed the young one out of the house, one of them making more of their strange grunts.
“This is what they’re for, Zozo. They’re animals. Livestock. Do you think your bacon comes from thin air?”
The young one was almost shrill. The pig trotted over to his side, snuggling his hand. It could tell he was in distress.
“I won’t eat bacon anymore! I won’t eat any animals! Just don’t take the pigs away.”
One of the big two-feet in front held his face in his hand and sighed.
“Okay, look. I can spare your pet, Mr Porkupine or whatever-”
“Mr Porkenstein.”
“Mr Porkenstein. You can keep him. But we have quotas, Zozo. These others have to go, I’m sorry. Your life will get a lot easier once you learn to see them as meat.”
The juvenile two-feet hugged the pig’s neck tightly.
“Never!”
“Whatever kid. Just get out from underfoot, we’re going to be busy. Despite what you may think, this is one is the more humane farms. Other places have them all in crates their whole life, never seeing the sun before getting slaughtered. These ones have had it great, comparatively.”
The young one shuffled over to the side with the pig, while the big two-feet coordinated and corralled all of the pig’s littermates into a metal box.
The pig oinked in concern, and the young two-feet reassured it with a head scratch. That was nice, but the pig still didn’t understand. It remained an observer, a silent spectator to the mysterious lives of the two-feet. But it wasn't worried about that. It just wanted to know where its brothers and sisters were going.
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The pig was tired.
Countless litters had passed through what the pig now knew as the farm. It had finally made that association after hours of training with the juvenile two-feet.
But other, broader concepts still eluded it. Like why all the litters disappeared just as the pig was getting attached to them, only beginning to feel sparks of Love for the pink bundles of excitement before they got ripped away, never to be seen again. Concepts like livestock, like supply chains, like market forces on the price of meat, all of lay just outside the pig’s comprehension. It had no… words.
All it knew was loss.
Loss and silence.
Its one solace was the young two-feet, miraculously not getting taken away like all the others. The pig now stuck by his side as it defended him from a hostile world. It seemed the more knowledge it gained, the less sense things made.
What was “meat”? Why were some things “meat” and others not? How does “meat” relate to its brothers and sisters?
These questions and more, the pig would have asked, if it had the understanding. If it had the words.
But they lay just frustratingly out of reach, almost forming themselves, mountains upon mountains of them, barely visible through the horizon.
The pig just didn’t understand.
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It was nighttime and the pig lay outside, next to the two-feet. He wasn’t so small any more, nowhere near the size of the big two-feet, but enough that the pig could really feel his weight when he rode it.
The pair were lazing around, with the two-feet playing on his light-box, his face illuminated as he leaned against the pig’s bulk. The pig was drifting off to sleep, before grunting suddenly, its instincts raising an alarm.
“What is it, boy? Do you smell something?”
The two-feet stood up, searching for whatever had startled the pig, before he looked up.
“Whoaa, look a shooting star! And it’s green!”
The pig shied away from the menacing green light as it streaked across the sky. Its instincts warned against looking into it, warned that something fundamental would change if the pig gave in.
The pig didn’t know if it wanted change. The farm was all it knew. But it wanted answers.
Slowly coming out from behind the two-feet, the pig gazed into the viridescent depths. Spellbound, the boy and the pig watched the shooting star soar through the night sky, parting the inky expanse, before it exploded in a climactic emerald flash far in the horizon.
“That was awesome! Wait ‘til I tell Mom about this!”
The boy excitedly ran towards the house, before stopping as he noticed the pig not following him. Instead the pig was silent and unmoving, just staring out to where the meteorite had detonated.
“Mr Porkenstein? You okay?”
The boy bemusedly stepped towards the pig, wondering why it was acting so weird, when the pig made a deep growl. The boy paused, now worried.
“Uhh… Mr Porkenstein? Let’s get inside, you’ll be cold out here.”
The pig growled again, making the boy step back in caution. Was the pig sick? Was this rabies?
All at once, a cacophony sounded all across the farm. Every animal, from the pigs, to the cows, to the goats, all of them squealed, brayed and mooed as loudly as they could.
The unholy racket was so pervasive all the lights turned on in the house simultaneously, from the big two-feet all waking up to the noise.
The boy panicked, screaming for the pig to come inside the house with him as chaos erupted, with animals leaping their fences and breaking down gates. The pig gave another deep growl, then ran off, as a stampede of farm animals, mainly pigs, followed it.
They all piled onto the large main gate, the slight electric shock no longer deterring them. The gate was tough, but the collective force of multiple tons of animal flesh proved more than enough to overcome it. With a mighty push, they were free.
And, as one, disappeared across the road.
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Bruised, battered and limping, the pig dragged itself across the gate’s threshold. Painfully scraping its way to the main farmhouse, the pig let out weak squeals, on its last legs.
“Mr Porkenstein!”
When the boy saw it, excitedly shrieked through the window and quickly ran outside.
“I knew it! I knew you’d come back, they said you wouldn’t but… OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED!”
Immediately falling into a half-scream, half-cry as he saw the extent of the pig’s injuries and the trail of blood it had left, the boy wailed for help. Some of the big two-feet ran out to check on him.
“Uncle! We have to take Mr Porkenstein to the vet right now! He’s hurt, really really badly.”
“Kid, this thing has been missing for five days, along with every other animal we own. This is, or at least was, a farm. We’re ruined. I’m sorry but we have to keep every penny precious right now. We can’t afford the vet.”
The pig, still not understanding the weird noises the two-feet made, sensed the boy’s frustration, anger and worry. It grunted in a low tone, feeling closer to the boy than ever before. Somehow, it had a vague knowledge of his anxiety. The farm was empty? Not for long.
The pig let out an ear-splitting squeal, causing all the two-feet to clap their hands to their ears.
“Kid, I’m gonna put that pig out of its misery if this is what we’re in for until it- Holy mother of God, Thembi! Thembi! Come outside and see this! It’s a goddamn miracle.”
From their position in front of the farmhouse, they saw a procession of farm animals enter through the wrecked gate. Hundreds of them, more than they’d had before, were marching into the pastures. Cattle, fowl, all sorts of animals, in greater numbers than they could hold in their fields, made their way through but none more so than the pigs. There were multitudes of them, dozens upon dozens, a sea of pink. The boy didn’t care however.
“Look! See! Mr Porkenstein brought all the animals back! Let’s go, he needs help!”
The big two-feet stared in wonder at the windfall they’d just received.
“It seems he did, kid. Well shit, we’re rich now. That pig’ll get the best fucking vet in the country, mark my words. Uhh, don’t tell your mother I swore.”
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The pig lay on the boy’s “bed” in his “room”. It was contemplating.
Ever since that green light had shot across the sky, it had undergone changes. New connections were being forged in its mind, to the point it now understood what things like a bed or a room meant. Warm. Sleep. Safe.
These associations grew stronger and more complex as the boy continued talking to the pig over its healing period, as it had nothing to focus on but making sense of the two-feet’s gibberish. It began to comprehend more abstract concepts like home and beauty. It had always recognised its own reflection, but now truly saw what that represented.
I- I a-
Or at least, it was on the very cusp of that realisation. That single Ah Ha moment where it all clicked together and it finally knew its place in the world. It was close. The pig could almost feel it.
But it was missing something, some basic element that the two-feet seemingly were just innately given. The pig remembered when it happened for the boy. One day, he was wandering around in his blindly curious way, when all of a sudden his eyes gained an… an intent. At that moment, the boy went from passively experiencing the world, to seeing things, relating them to other things, creating an entire network of relations, connections and associations that the pig just… just couldn’t replicate.
The pig was turning these thoughts over in its head, when it heard shouting through the wooden walls.
“You’re ungrateful, that’s what you are! Ungrateful!”
“Ungrateful! Me?! Child, you don’t know who the fuck you’re talking to! When my brother died, I took you and your mother in, no hesitation! You think you’re better than this? What do you think paid for your father’s fancy university education? You sit up on your high horse as if you haven’t been eating, drinking and shitting the proceeds of this ‘evil business’ since you could fucking walk! I’m a pig farmer, Zozo. My father was a pig farmer, and his father was a pig farmer. We fucking sell pigs.”
“You wouldn’t have any pigs to sell if not for Mr Porkenstein! Any at all! And now you’re going to sell off his closest friends because they’re prime to eat? Sell the others! I won’t let you do this to Mr Porkenstein again, not after he saved the farm.”
“It’s a goddamn pig, Zozo. A pig. How do you even know it gets sad, hmm? Does it speak to you? Does it cry on your shoulder after every sale?”
“No, I… I can just tell. He gets different.”
“Oh, he gets different does he, he’s really fucking traumatised then. Listen to yourself. You’re giving human emotions to an animal that isn’t a human. You see whatever you want to see in that pet of yours. Maybe it helps you mentally, I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean your delusions should bind everyone else. I bet you got these ideas from that stupid Twatter app; that thing is poison. This is the real world, Zozo. In the real world, pigs are livestock. It is what it is.”
There was that word again. The pig understood that the big two-feet was referring to it or others like it. The word “pig” was one of the first associations it made. But “livestock”?
Such concepts still eluded it. The pig didn’t… the pig couldn’t understand.
It remained in its world of silence, looking through the portal but unable to cross.
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“We should run away, you and me. Just a boy and his pig on the open road.”
The pig grunted in response, spurring a laugh out of the boy. The pig was getting better at that, at reading the boy’s cues and predicting what he might react favourably to.
It was the dead of night and the boy had just received the summons from his mother to go to bed. The pig knew he’d stay out for a while longer, so they continued their relaxation under the stars, knowing it would come to an end soon.
Eventually, the boy stood up.
“Well, Mr Porkenstein, it’s about that time for us to-”
The boy abruptly paused as something distracted him. The same thing distracted the pig.
Saturation complete…
“Uhh, what’s going on?”
Scanning: dominant species…
Scanning: progenitor gene seed…
Scan complete.
Genome sequenced. Margin of error: 2%. Acceptable.
No overlap found.
Granting: lesser Atavism…
Lesser Atavism granted.
The boy fell asleep next to the pig, causing it to squeal in anxiety. What was going on?
Scanning: breakthrough species…
Scanning: progenitor gene seed…
Scan complete.
Overlap found.
Granting: greater Evolution…
And then the pig followed the boy into unconsciousness.
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The pig awoke to a rainbow-hued vista. Multi-coloured whorls and polychromatic swirls filled the entire sky, blocking out everything beyond the fence with a psychedelic wall. He nudged the boy, who still lay unconscious next to him.
Nothing.
Something big was happening outside the farm, but seeing that the boy remained unmoving, the pig sat down and focused on the apparitions in front of it.
Greater Evolution granted!
Congratulations, you have gained access to the Monstrum! Choose your Monster!
Scanning: lesser species…
Scanning: progenitor gene seed…
No overlap found.
Granting: lesser Evolution.
Lesser Evolution granted.
Scanning: optimal competitive environment…
Scan complete.
Competitive environment: Poor.
Terraforming…
The first and last boxes were persistent, refusing to disappear even as the pig willed them away.
Greater Evolution granted!
Congratulations, you have gained access to the Monstrum! Choose your Monster!
Terraforming…
He tried something different.
I… Choose.
Monstrum
Offense
Defence
Control
Stealth
The pig was taken aback. He had… thought. With words.
Warning: Pre-saturation success quantified: Very Good.
You are eligible for the Beast Descent. Delve deep, and find the answers you’ve been searching for.
Accept recommended Class: Pig Tyrant – Second Step?
The pig looked down at the sleeping boy next to him. He didn’t know what would change, but it felt like there was no going back. He didn’t know if he wanted that.
But he couldn’t live in ignorance any more. He had to know the part of the world that had been hidden from him, the part obscured from his understanding.
He had to see what was on the other side of silence.
I… accept.
And as the pig screamed, the transformation taking hold, cracking and reshaping bone and sinew, its physical discomfort was nothing compared to its mental turmoil. Like a lightning bolt, reason had struck the pig’s mind and stunned him frozen.
A new, real awareness bloomed in his mind, connecting ideas, concepts, all of it thought incomprehensible before this blessing of comprehension.
As the pig’s mind made associations, as its neurons networked a hundred, a million, a billion times more effectively, things started to make sense to the pig. Terrible things.
And as the ghastly truth became clear to the pig, it learned new emotions. Anger, horror, a deep-rooted terror, and most of all, the emotion burning even stronger than the pain of transformation, the pig learned there was an opposite to Love. An emotion threatening to consume him, to drown him in its viscous depths.
Hate.