Brainforest
It always rains in this part of the forest. Sometimes it pours, sometimes it spits, but never ever stops completely.
I’ve been lying on the ground of the glade and slowly, very slowly dissolving into the undergrowth. Diffusing myself into the networks of mycelia and tree roots. Getting chewed by moles and replenished by the rays of sunlight. Becoming a part of the forest in the most primal modus I could come up with.
Besides the precipitation pattern, another peculiarity of this part of the forest is the beavers’ semi-annual singing contest. Every June and every October, animals from faraway lands gather here for a week to sing their songs, party, mingle, and have a good time. The contest week concludes with awards for the best singer and the best songwriter, who are, traditionally, always two different beavers.
It is interesting to observe how their musical fashion has evolved over the years. In one decade, everybody writes sophisticated poetry about the meaning of life and doesn’t bother much about melodies. Gradually, it gets boring and upbeat silly songs about the joys of making little beavers become popular instead. Then they fall out of fashion too and get labelled as a guilty pleasure. Eventually, if you watch long enough, you will see how it all makes the complete cycle and starts over again.
A falcon landed on an ash branch and croaked, “I want to organise an armed uprising!”
I remembered that falcon, except that the last time I saw him, he was a stratocumulus cloud, and the last time we talked, we were both sturgeons.
“I want to organise an armed uprising,” repeated the falcon, “and so I need someone to do the government.”
I took my time to sculpt myself a face. Otherwise, to talk without having one would be impolite. I didn’t care much about precise shape or size, so the result was roughly a meter wide and vaguely feline.
“Why don’t you want to do both sides?” I asked.
“I find it distastefully cruel.”
“That’s an adorable thing to say when you want to make mortals kill each other for your amusement.”
“You know precisely what I mean,” the falcon cawed.
“Fair enough.”
I couldn’t think of any particular reasons not to play. So, I started to pull myself out of the ground. Slowly, tenderly, to make sure I don’t disturb the intricate entanglement of roots and hyphae.
“What race would you like to play?” I asked.
“I’m thinking insects,” the falcon replied, “like ants or bees.”
“Meh,” I added an inflexion to sound disappointed. “Then play both sides yourself.”
With insects, it’s virtually impossible to build up meaningful intrigue and complex negotiations, the situation devolves into violent carnage pretty much straight away, no matter what you do.
“What about humans?” I suggested.
In the meantime, I was creating myself a body. I fancied a bipedal animal shape, so I decided that today I would be a deinonychus covered in thick crimson fur.
“Nah,” the falcon replied, “it’s too much hassle.”
Humans are a lot of hassle indeed. Just to arrange a tiny, tidy skirmish, you’re pretty much required to craft an entire civilisation, and it might take years before you can start having the actual fun. I wouldn’t really mind, but the falcon seemed less excited.
A raccoon strolled into the glade, she was foraging for berries and bugs and seemed oblivious to our conversation.
“What about raccoons?” the falcon asked half in jest.
“Well, they have arms, so I guess they can have an armed uprising,” I said. “Also, how do you like my tail?”
“Yes, it’s pretty.”
In retrospect, we should’ve perhaps just played with humans.
We sped up the raccoons’ development as much as we could while maintaining a plausible semblance of natural evolution without blunt “divine” interventions. But even then, it took them almost five hundred years to reach an early agricultural society.
Not that it was a big deal, of course, we literally had all the time in the world.
But when, despite all our precautions, the smart beasts began worshipping oak trees and Eastern wind (those were our preferred corporeal shapes at that time), we agreed to call it quits, leave them alone, and part ways to do something else.
I decided to go travelling. For that, I made myself a human body. The human shape is nice for travelling because it slows you down just enough to see what’s going on around you but not to become a nuisance by itself like a caterpillar would be. Of course, if you want to get from place to place, it’s better to be a condor, but then en route you only see a lot of clouds, canopies, and sunsets.
So, I set to walk in a roughly eastward direction until I either encounter something interesting or I get bored, whatever happens first.
And that’s how I met the newb.
He was a male human, with barcodes on his forehead and his back, gripping a pointed branch in his hands. And he was visibly alert and scared, so he must’ve been a newcomer or a very accurate prankster.
I walked out of the grove to welcome him. Seeing me, he shrieked in terror and thrust his pointed branch into the right eye of my left head. Then he pulled it out and dropped back, seemingly undecided if he should fight or run.
This was painful!!!
By the way, I know a handful of dwellers who are really into pain, and they’re taking it to the extreme, like, make yourself a body with an extra-sensitive nervous system, and then get eaten alive or throw yourself into a volcano.
Never been my thing though.
I blinked a few times to repair the smashed eye, then peered at the newb and asked.
“Why would you do this to a stranger?”
“You…” he jabbered, “you have two heads.”
Oh, my bad. I never really studied human anatomy, so I honestly believed multiple heads are uncommon but normal. Judging from the newb’s reaction, this wasn’t normal at all.
As a matter of fact, when you’re wandering and looking for something interesting, having extra eyes and ears is actually pretty convenient.
I plucked my left head out and threw it into the bushes. Then I rolled my shoulders until the traces of the second neck had disappeared. As a finishing touch, I painted the fur on my remaining head with a light-grey tint that was supposed to make me look older and, thus, wiser and less dangerous.
“Looks better now?”
He quietly nodded a few times. His hands, still holding a stick with my blood on its’ tip, were shaking.
Oh well. Perhaps I should’ve made it less graphic, like clicking fingers and making the extra head disappear instantly. But then, at that point it was obvious that I’m not a human of the sort he’s used to anyway, so it didn’t matter.
“Look,” I said to him, “I just wanted to say, ‘Hello and welcome to the forest!’”
Strictly speaking, this was a lie. Whenever a dweller locates a newcomer, it’s their responsibility to get the newb up to speed and guide them in the new phase of their life.
Honestly speaking, this was a deeply hopeful lie. I had very little desire to tutor a newb, let alone a human.
I don’t really remember how I came here, to the world beyond. That’s because I don’t really know when exactly I came here.
Back where (and when) I was born as a mortal, I was a shark. Prowling the seas, hunting fish and octopi, admiring the beauty of coral reefs and hydrothermal vents, never staying in one place for too long.
Also, spending a lot of time meditating and contemplating the world within and without, enough for other sharks to notice and frown at me as a weirdo. I didn’t really mind.
That’s why, when I’ve transcended, not much really changed for me. I was still wandering across the ocean, still hunting squids, still falling asleep to the songs of the whales, still meditating a lot. Between the day I came here and the day I’ve been found, it could’ve been weeks or could’ve been decades, nobody knows.
When I’ve finally been found, my tutor was a nerpa, and our acquaintance began with me eating them and then them calling me a “stupid tube of teeth and shit and no brains” from inside my belly. That was fun.
“What kind of forest is that?” the newb asked.
“Let’s say,” I waved my hands pointing at the trees around us, “it’s just a forest.”
He seemed unsatisfied with my answer.
Humans are such a pitiful hassle. They, the vast majority of them anyway, spend their entire lives in artificial corrals they call “cities” and “villages,” and when they’re put into a natural environment like a forest or a steppe or a savannah, they get totally lost, confused, and scared.
Also, from a very early age they’re trained to overthink all the wrong things. A tiger or a bear would bow and say, “I’m grateful to be welcome in this forest,” and not pretend to be a botanist.
“And what about…” he started.
He got interrupted by a pack of hares rushing towards us. Yes, “a pack” is not the precise word to describe a group of hares, but these beasts were clearly carnivores, and they acted as a pack, there were two dozen of them, maybe three. They attacked us, jumping wildly, biting with their long teeth, aiming for eyes, arms, and bellies.
The newb passively held his stick, apparently even more shocked and confused than before.
I clapped my hands thrice to make the hares disappear. Specifically, I teleported them a few miles to the northwest; I was very much not in the mood to end any lives.
Newb was staring at his arms: despite the onslaught, his arms were intact, not a single bite mark.
Oh, that’s convenient.
“Rule one,” I began explaining, “nothing here can hurt you.”
Then I scratched my back and remembered that humans tend to prize themselves for their smartness and inquisitiveness. This is why for them, unlike badgers, bulls, or birches, everything must be explained in minute detail.
“This means you can’t be physically killed or injured. If it rains in the wrong part of the day, and it hurts your feelings, you’re not protected from that.”
“Rule two,” I continued, “you can injure or even kill yourself if you decide to. Rule three, you can die of old age if you decide to.”
“What does it mean?” he frowned. “Can I decide to not die of old age?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
Then I got an idea.
“Would you like to have sex with the most beautiful women in the world?” I asked.
He seemed excited about the proposal. His lower-body appendage seemed excited about it too.
“Then let’s go visit them,” I said.
I drew a circle in the air. Then I repeated the motion, the air in the circle getting thicker and darker with every round until it turned solid black.
“Step in,” I pointed at the portal, “and throw away your spear, please.”
He sheepishly followed both orders.
A few moments later, when the inky surface of the portal calmed down and stopped scintillating, I stepped into it too.
The mermaids lived in the middle of a vast lake. Not on an island in the middle of a lake, mind you, but in the middle of the lake itself. And, as they said, every creature that can neither fly nor swim away was at their mercy.
Just like the newb. He was underwater, entangled with two mermaids into a bodily knot of kissing, touching, pleasuring, and penetrating. Mermaids were gently but steadily pushing him into the depths. And their long kisses look less like passion and more like being scared of not having air to breathe.
The third mermaid stood on the water next to me as we watched the sensual dance below.
“Doesn’t he know he can’t drown?” she giggled.
“I told him he can’t die,” I winked.
Well, eventually he’ll connect the dots, I guess…
“Thank you very much,” the mermaid kissed me on the cheek, “human newbs are hard to come by, so lovely that you brought us one.”
Human sex is a peculiar pastime. When done properly, it’s not so much about physical contact and bodily pleasure but mostly about control, dominance, threats of violence, fear of denial, opinions of random humans that aren’t participating in the act, and sophisticated emotional interplay that simply can’t be had between the dwellers.
To me, this was too much of an acquired taste, but the mermaids loved it.
“Would you mind if he stays with us for some time?” the mermaid asked.
“Not at all,” I replied. “I met him literally today. If you promise to mentor him, he’s all yours.”
“Nice,” she said. Then she looked up at the sun, raised her left arm, and solemnly proclaimed, “I promise to take care of the newcomer.”
Then she looked back at me and added, “As soon as he gets bored of being raped.”
“What if he doesn’t get bored?”
“I’m sure you know the answer,” she replied, “if he doesn’t seek power, then he doesn’t seek power, and not even the creators can alter his choice.”
“Fair enough,” I nodded. “By the way, is this lake connected to the ocean?”
“As far as I know, not yet. Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “we’ll meet eventually.”
“We’ll meet,” she agreed.
I plunged into the water and then sank until my toes touched the bottom of the lake. Then I turned into a pickerel.
Back when I had just come to the world beyond, and my mentor was teaching me the art of transformation, we hit the proverbial wall with a seemingly simple question that I had and my mentor was unable to answer.
The question was, “why bother?”
As a matter of fact, it’s really not easy to explain the wonders of shapeshifting to someone who has been a shark for their entire existence. When one already possesses a perfect body shape for living in the sea and has no interest in moving to a different habitat, change is a tough sell. The same goes for bears, the same goes for leopards, the same goes for eagles.
At first, my mentor kept telling me various captivating stories about how exciting it is to live in the forest and be a tiger or an owl. I wasn’t particularly interested in those and got bored quite fast. And, when I did, I would just swim away. A couple of times, my mentor tried to chase me in their nerpa form but quickly learned that it was hopeless, so they morphed into a barracuda.
A bit later, they changed their approach, and instead of just telling stories, they also guided my voyage across the seas; apparently, they knew a great deal about those. We kept travelling together for some thirty or forty years until I, little by little, began to feel like I’d seen everything that was there to see underwater. Eventually, I conceded and asked my mentor to show me the sky, and so they taught me how to turn into an albatross.
After some time of exploring the lake, I, in my most recent time and in my pickerel form, found an underwater cave.
A cave is a relative term. Shaped as a larger shark or as a human, I would’ve called it a hole. As a whale, I wouldn’t notice it at all.
Also, caves are… Well, some of them are just that, holes in the ground with no specific meaning, excitement, or danger. Some are more than that, but you never know until you know.
So, I swam into the cave.
It didn’t feel any different from any other hole at the bottom of a freshwater lake. It smelled stale and a tad rotten, it was empty of any other creatures, and it was completely dark. I advanced until my muzzle nearly kissed the cold, slimy clay surface that must’ve been a dead end. I turned back to get out.
Then the cave turned from pitch-black to blood-red. The dead end disappeared, the current appeared, and it was sucking me inwards. I tried to resist it, but the flow was way too strong.
Then the scenery blinked once again, I was on a mountaintop, with chonky clouds passing through the valley below, my goat hooves sliding on snow-covered ice, and a mountain leopard grinning to my right.
“You broke the rules,” the leopard began the conversation, graciously walking towards me.
If this was a real goat against a real predator on a real mountain, the ungulate wouldn’t have any practical chance of surviving.
I tried to shapeshift into a bird and fly away. That didn’t work.
That’s when I had a feeling that I hadn’t experienced for millennia, and that isn’t particularly common among the dwellers in general.
I was scared.
“You broke the rules,” the leopard repeated.
“What did I do wrong?” I asked.
“The rules say, when you find a newcomer, you mentor them. The rules don’t say, when you find a newcomer, you immediately give them away as a toy.”
“So, what should I do now? Should I go back and mentor that newb?”
“No. Not unless the mermaids will give him back to you,” the leopard chuckled, “which I very much doubt.”
“What should I do then?”
“You must be cognisant that the world is constantly adjusting to you and your wishes. When you behave as if your infinite time is too precious to waste on a dumb human newcomer, the response might be surprising and unexpected.”
“Will I get punished?” I asked.
The leopard laughed with a roar.
“Only if you want to be punished.”
Then he pushed me down the cliff.
The cliff was a nearly vertical flat wall of smooth ice, with nothing to slow down my fall. I bounced twice off it until I landed on a terrace below.
I was unable to stand up, at least two legs were broken, and plenty of other bones likely too. Well above what this body could naturally heal before succumbing to cold and hunger. Shapeshifting into a healthy goat or, better yet, a healthy eagle would’ve saved the day, but I still couldn’t access that ability. I curled up, as good as my broken, bleeding body allowed, and began to prepare to die.
The sunset in the mountains was wild and beautiful. It was as if all these majestic giants of rock and ice were set on fire by an almighty force. I haven’t been here in the mountains very often, even after many millennia, the habits of a deep-sea creature were still strong.
It started to snow. A layer of fresh snow was burying me from above. While the snow below me was turning pink. I felt freezing cold, getting numb and drowsy, waiting for this to be over.
At the same time, I felt scorching heat. And the mountains weren’t metaphorically “set on fire by sunset” anymore, now they were covered in flames, they were burning, and the sky was black of smoke.
I pulled my attention towards the source of the heat sensation, and soon I… I remembered what was going on.
While my mind was absent from my pickerel body, simple instincts took it over. So, it got out of the cave, wandered around the lake a bit, ate a handful of hatchlings, and, before long, got caught by some fisherman.
And now he was frying me in a pan.
Which meant that now I had not one but two severely damaged and nearly dead bodies. How adorable.
For a moment, I thought about morphing into a bird and flying away to safety.
Then I found myself in the middle of an emotional avalanche. I was incredibly, immeasurably tired of having any corporeal form. All those physical bodies that always want to eat, that must be protected from whatever wants to eat them, that habitually get sick and old, that make you feel their pain, that force a variety of mechanical limitations on you.
I tried to detach my consciousness from both bodies and to become something like a ghost.
To my surprise, that worked immediately. It was so easy that it made me wonder why I never thought about this idea before.
Being a ghost was unlike anything I experienced earlier.
One thing was the perception of time. Typically, how one sees time is informed by the entropy of their decaying visceral form. Say, one can’t just sit on a seashore and listen to the rustle of the waves indefinitely: at some point their meat bag will get thirsty, hungry, sleepy, and eventually dead. This makes a minute different from an hour, and an hour from a day, and a day from a century.
For ghostly me, there was no such difference. If anyone asked me how long I’d been staring at this peculiar boulder, I wouldn’t know what to say. It could’ve been ten seconds; it could’ve been ten days. I could’ve counted the sunsets, of course, but I could’ve as well counted the heartbeats of the mouse hiding in the grass, and it wasn’t naturally evident to me which to prefer.
Another was the perception of space.
To put it simply, I was everywhere but also nowhere in particular. I was pure consciousness that permeated the fabric of reality.
When I wanted to see something that was ten days of raven flight away from my previous vantage point, I could shift my attention in an instant, without the hassle of transporting a body from place to place.
When I wanted to see the same mountain peak with twenty eyes from twenty angles, or when I peeked at the droplet of dew to see a vicious fight between amoebae, that was as easy and natural for me as blinking and breathing was before.
I could manipulate the world as well, but I preferred to observe. I thought the world was already perfect enough without my tinkering.
“Took you quite some time,” I heard one day. That was the first time another ghost talked to me. The voice belonged to my old mentor.
“Yes, I know,” I replied, “it’s embarrassing.”
In a certain sense, it was. I learned to morph into clouds and hills many millennia ago.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s no need to hurry.”
“Indeed.”
Then they pointed my attention at the desert chaparral.
“Look, there’s a student for you.”
“Another human?”
“Watch.”
I looked there and saw a coyote. I was relieved. Coyotes are great students. Unlike humans, or, for that matter, sharks.
Sharks are ignorant because they’re already perfect and don’t have an immediate use for more power.
A part of me turned into an owl and flew towards the coyote to welcome her.
Another part of me went to the mermaid lake.
Now, there was a tiny island in the middle of the lake. On that island stood a cage made of thick rusty metal bars. Inside the cage was the newb. He looked some ten or twenty years older, and he still had the barcode on his forehead, which meant he had never ever shapeshifted yet. The cage was so tiny that he couldn’t even stand upright, only sit, lay, or kneel. His fur was greyish and unkempt. I was disgusted.
I assumed a mermaid shape; this seemed a perfect fit for the place. One of the mermaids spotted my appearance and swam towards me.
“Hello,” she said, “we met again.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked, pointing at the caged newb.
“I promised to mentor him, and that’s what I’m doing,” she frowned. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Yes…”
There was a more important matter. I’ve been disembodied long enough to begin missing certain upsides of having a body.
“Do you want to make out?” I asked.
“Sure,” she smiled.
We embraced, our lips kissing, her sun-dried breasts rubbing against mine, and our hands exploring each other’s bodies for the most sensitive spots.
“Hurt me,” I whispered to her ear.
She slapped my buttock.
“Like this?”
“No. Hurt me.”
She smiled. Then she squeezed my thigh, so hard that her nails pierced my skin and went deep into the muscle tissue.
“Yes,” I panted, “yes!”
With her other hand, she scratched my back, so that the tips of her nails left marks on my spine and ribs.
“Thank you,” I wept, “thank you.”
Then we floated on the waves, holding hands, watching the clouds above, and not talking much, except when some cloud looked particularly funny.
Eventually, when the sun was about to set, I went to see the prisoner.
“Can you let me out of this cage?” he asked when I stepped on the shore.
“You can get out of it any time you want,” I replied.
“You’re just like them,” he spat bitterly. Apparently, “them” meant the other mermaids.
“All you need to do,” I continued, “is to accept that you’re not really a human. You’re a luminous being that just so happens to be shaped like a human. But you can be anything, you can be a bird, you can be a snake.”
“Okay, okay,” he raised his palms, “I accept that I’m a shiny, luminous, magical being. Now, can you let me out of the cage, please?”
“You don’t believe a single word of it,” I said.
“Of course I don’t! I’m a human!” he yelled. “I’m male, I’m white,” he then continued by listing which town he grew up in, what school he attended, the achievements of his maternal grandfather, the religion of his mother, his sexual and culinary preferences, and various other trivia that I didn’t bother to hear.
“That’s what I am, that’s my identity,” he concluded, “and you’re telling me to abandon it all to become… a snake?! That’s preposterous!”
Sharks are ignorant because they’re perfect. Humans are ignorant because they’re choke-full of shite.
“Moreover…” he continued his tirade.
I laughed so hard I nearly choked. His posture on all fours with his head bent upwards to see me was so out of touch with the tone of unquestionable intellectual superiority in his voice, it was hilarious.
“Moreover, even if I accept the rules of this game and become this magical luminous immortal creature, what’s the meaning of all that? What’s the purpose?”
“You must be a philosopher,” I remarked.
“I am.”
Oh well, that explains a lot.
Philosophy is a bizarre human enterprise when a group of humans appoints themselves as “wise” and thus exclusively allowed to think about various “deep matters” that “common” humans are too “dumb” to touch. Then they set up a never-ending contest to see who among them can think about “deep matters” in the most pretentious and incomprehensible way.
The purpose of this entire contraption is to convince the “common” people that they’re not “wise,” and thus, they must meekly obey their rulers.
Most of the humans who transcend to the world beyond are mystics and spiritual adventurers. They’re full of shite too, but they’re teachable. Somehow, philosophers manage to slip in as well, sometimes, and those are hopeless.
They’re also dull. Religious fanatics are hopeless too, but at least they’re entertaining. Calling us “demons,” hunting us with torches and religious imagery, it’s a lot of fun.
“The purpose of a creature is very easy to find. It’s simply what they do best because of their natural affinity to it. The purpose of an owl is to hunt mice. The purpose of a mouse is to feed an owl. The purpose of a tiger is to be awesome. The purpose of a human is to suffer because of imaginary bullshit.”
He tried to object, but I was getting bored of this argument, so I simply sank his little island until his cage was entirely underwater.
Some two thousand human heartbeats later, I pulled it back. By then, it was already dark.
“If you’re still human,” I asked, “how would you explain that you can survive without air for so long?”
“I will not…” he was drenched and shivering, but still arrogant, “explain anything to… such unsophisticated… thing!”
Fair enough. I turned around and prepared to dive.
“Please!” he shrieked at my back, with his tone of voice instantly switched from arrogant to begging. “Please let me out! Please! I don’t want to die like that!”
“Either you seek power,” I said over my shoulder, “or you don’t seek power. That’s it.”
Then I dissolved into darkness.
In the meantime, there were two owls playing hide and seek in the night over the desert.
Did I tell you that coyotes are great students? Well, this one bested them all.
I only had to explain the rules, and then she asked straight away.
“Can I be an owl like you?”
“Yes. But you won’t be a coyote anymore.”
“But I can become coyote again later if I want to?”
“Of course.”
“Cool,” she slapped my head with her right wing, “then catch me,” she laughed and flew away.
