I am lounging on a beanbag in a dimly-lit familiar room from my childhood home. Or at least I am in a space that is keeping up that illusion.
On the nearby couch, a vampire is in an argument with a self-procimed “storm demon” - a floating being wearing little other than jewelry with the lower body of a snake and a jagged horn protruding from his otherwise human head. The demon is criticizing the vampire’s tendency to draw out its feedings or to even keep its victims alive for multiple feedings. He insists that if you’re going to kill a human, it is both more dignified and more ethical to do so in a single moment, like he does with his lightning. The vampire retorts that they’re not looking to kill humans at all.
A woman dressed in white with a face shrouded in shadow shushes their bickering and comes over to me, asking if I’ve made up my mind yet or if she should choose for me. She puts her hands on either side of my face and turns my head this way and that while musing that I would look good with a snowy white owl’s head. As difficult as it is for any of us to disagree with her about anything, I manage to shake her soft grip and say that I have something in mind. Or at least a vague idea.
A loving hive mind that only assimites those who wish for it and leaves each of its members with some core part of themselves intact. That is what I tell her I wish to become the center of. She finds it to be an interesting challenge; a novelty not yet seen in the new world she is creating. She asks me how I imagine the physical transformation her change to me must necessarily entail and my mind drifts towards the porcein and clockwork doll lying in the corner of the room. I don’t think I wish to be so Still and empty as that one asked her to make it, but something about the form seems appropriate. And maybe I could even make that one the first to join with me so that it may have some Purpose rather than lying there gathering dust.
The woman agrees to my proposal, bemused.
Grateful, I leave the room and find myself in the dining area of an antique tavern and inn with no door behind me to that pce I just came from. I have not yet visibly changed and do not yet feel any different, but all the same I begin my search for those who might be willing to join their minds to mine as the first members of a new collective. As, the tavern seems to be all but empty. I open the front door to look outside and find it to be the middle of the night. The bell that jingles when I open the door causes two wolves a little way down the mp-lit cobblestone street to rouse from their rest and start towards me, only to be stopped by the chains leashing them to that other building’s doorframe. Startled, I close the door and step back inside.
I notice a voice coming from above and ascend the nearby stairs to find an elderly, gray-bearded, dark-skinned man wearing a gray-green robe and matching round cap. He at first appears to be talking to himself while he eats, but as I finish climbing the stairs I see that he is addressing a calico cat underneath a nearby table. I greet him and the cat alike. It does not take long for me to coax the cat out from under the table, and the man and I both remark on how friendly she is and how loudly she purrs while she allows herself to be pet and rubs against us. I marvel over how soft and well-groomed her fur is, despite the strange patchwork quality to how some spots are long-haired and some spots are short. I barely pay any mind to the white substance somewhere between soap suds and mucus that coats my hand after I pet her.
The man and I get to talking. He is a philosopher of sorts; wise and well-traveled and funny. I think to myself that he would make a wonderful addition to the hive mind I seek to become. Perhaps the offer of a clockwork body to escape his old age and continue learning for ages to come would entice him.
Before I get the chance to make my offer, the cat gets into his dinner. We ugh and comment on her appetite, unsated even after we’ve been feeding her bits all night.
The cat looks up at us and speaks:
“I will eat all of Ra.”
