Homo Avatarius: ( Your Consciousness is an Alien ) (10 page)

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Black is not a color. Black is a concept. Black is an attitude towards life. Black doesn’t give out anything. Not even a single crumb can escape from it. In order to become black, you need to have a certain style. Either you can bear it or else you become helpless, and black will swallow you. If you become black, you approach a man in a steady and sticky way until you find a way inside. That’s the first step.

From there, you send signals to the brain. The human brain is full of emotions. With some effort and some skill, you can take out emotions that are close to each other from within the system. But once you achieve this, the system will scatter those emotions around as if it has exploded. So, you need other skills to suck whatever you can.

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I’m female. I don’t say this because I am capable of reproductive. What makes me female is my style. I am nourished by emotion. For an emotional explosion, I will poke and force the one opposite me, and I will try anything.

By the time you learn the emotional reactions of the human brain, you have gone inside the feelings it produces. You know what they mean, and you get pleasure from boring through them. Meanwhile, you infect the memory system of this strange creature, and collect its data. By analyzing the data you can use it to define the horizon of what else is possible. Over time, you understand the language of human beings and reach the condition of perceiving or even expressing, using their aphorisms.

…
[START]

Overconscious

At a very young age, while living in the north, I adapted to the cold and dry air. I had not tasted man yet, so I directed my efforts toward fleas and small rodents, which produced marginal emotional resources. I wasn’t full enough, but I could survive. I saw my potential when I successfully made my fleas attack everything around them with an endless appetite. They were thirsty for blood and dove into the warmth of large mammals like wolves, bears, and deer. I tasted them all, but it still wasn’t enough.

The turning point of my life happened when I was finally able to enter a human being. It was splendid to experience such a rich source of feelings. I slaked on him, but I got a bit sad when the body was not ready for me and died before it gave away all its fruits. He was too sensitive, and an overload caused him to die.

I couldn’t find another human resource for a long time, and returning to my old resources left me more unsatisfied. I was easily and quickly hooked on humans, and the deprivation of my new passion was incredibly agonizing. So I took my sticky and sucking black body everywhere. When I reached the hunting tribes, I was overcome with a ravenous hunger and I instantly consumed everything from them, causing the tribe to die our quickly. I was clumsy and greedy and soon I was left hungry again. Unable to control my rising appetite, I dragged my pitch-black greed everywhere.

When I couldn’t find a human resource, I was forced to settle for small rodents. I promised myself then that when I found another human being, I would not be so wasteful and careless. When I found my way onto a small pelt, I forced myself to be calm and clever and patient.

It was when I reached the large city of Crimea, that my opportunity presented itself. I learned of the vast human resources far beyond the seas. So I went to the harbor and boarded a merchant vessel, and on the cold, misty Black Sea, I moved on toward my future spoils. As I floated among the crew with subtle touches and tried to do no harm, the ships took me to an abundant human harvest in the south. On the long voyage, I had plenty of time and opportunity to get to know my victims. They fed on human emotions just like me.

They argued with each other. They fought. They exploited each other to define their positions in the community. They ate and made love, but they were unaware that they were in pursuit of the same emotional signals I hungered for. Somehow, their bodies must have learned about the rewards and punishments of the pleasures of orgasm and how it led to the continuation of their bloodline.

They have offspring to experience feelings, breed, and continue breeding for what it will make them feel, but they are still unaware that they are consuming each other’s emotions. Human beings and their communities are actually emotion-accumulators, collecting every type of emotional energy and using it for themselves.

If I wanted, I could have easily gorge myself on these humans, destroying them and ultimately starving myself. But I was patient and learned how to keep them alive long enough to continue feeding. It must be a reflection of the universe, like causing wheat to exist by interfering with its genetic process. Wheat is just a simple grass with giant seeds that are imperfect and don’t properly protect themselves. Still, humans nurture the plant, protect it from nature and help it to flourish, all so it can provide flour to man. In the same way, human beings offer me products that do not compete with nature.

On my voyage, I got many positive results and data from the experiments I did on the various crewmembers. Slightly distorting the balance of some of them in the form of disease, I observed different results.

In one experiment, I went through the blood in their veins directly. This allowed me to rapidly spread in their bodies and ensured a fast emotional absorption which resulted in death. However, as the victim didn’t grasp what was going on in the short term, only a small emotional product could be obtained. Such a quick death would have an incredible impact on the others, though. The appearance of the victim spitting up blood had an obvious effect on the community. Hence, I could easily harvest the emotions of the general public.

But to do the job fully and enjoy it, I learned another path was best: slowly spreading through the skin from the spot of the flea bite and creating a giant tumor in the nearest lymph node. Because it lasts long, the victim and people around them watch the process slowly as the whole body turns black (my favorite color). The purulent and inflammatory discharge of the tumor causes plenty of emotional pain, which is incredibly satisfying since it is mostly fear and helplessness. The side effect of this process, the smell of rotted flesh and pus, contributes to another wave of emotions. As time stretches out, the opportunity to reach other people also increases; this is an extra benefit.

In the course of my ongoing experiments, I infected all the living beings on the ship. When we arrived at the city on the strait, I had wasted only a few of my crew, and I was able to hide myself very successfully. I had the reward of mingling freely among the crowd in the harbor, and leaving some of my fleas there, I shoved off with my ships. I knew there would be a large harvest, but I never expected so many human treasures.

I began to lose my crew. I was hungry and hardly held myself back from attacking livestock to feed my huge body. After the long journey, I was finally in Sicily. When the harbor guard saw our ship, the scared harbor personnel attacked the ships with fireballs and even sunk one of the twelve in the fleet. But I still had the opportunity to send away particles that could suck away all the emotional resources on the island.

As the humans in the harbor of Venice gazed on my masterpiece, I saw the emotional resources of fear and terror begin to scatter. Thus began another ritual of dismissal by threats and fire, but this time I was prepared. I attacked the harbor more fiercely and left most of myself there. Then I sent off more particles with other ships.

The ships turned to the French and Spanish harbors and I carried out my plan to go ashore there and move through Middle Europe. Soon, I began to hear the name “Black Death,” because of how I turned my victims black after I killed them.

But Florence was my masterpiece.

It was an amazing place. There were houses on top of each other, and a huge number of people lived all together. I had never seen such a blessing, such a beauty, and so much abundance. As my mice scurried down the small stone streets and my fleas reached anyone within jumping distance, no one could stop me.

Like an ink stain on a wet tissue, I spread through the streets of the city. I killed the ones I could get inside, attacked those who tried to help the ones in agony and sucked away all the pity, despair, and fear I could find. I attacked everyone, from priests to those who carried dead bodies. The flood of emotions and the ethos of death spread more rapidly than I did. Those who tried to run away from the city only succeeded in taking me to other lands and communities.

I didn’t kill those who buried their children immediately. I took my time, sucking their intense emotional releases. I floated inside one who cried at the bedside of his dead mother and let everything absorb into my darkness. Setting a snare for those who secluded themselves in their houses by putting up walls on their doors, I tasted their long emotional fear of death. Inside the ones who lost their minds, I danced around and sucked the desperation of the others. I attacked everyone again and again and poked the agonizing bodies of those who hid behind the fire. I sucked everything up into my warm, sticky, and soft blackness.

The dark narrow streets, the surrounding earth were now covered with black bodies, and the smell of rotten flesh and pus. A tepid gloom hung over Florence and buried its head in the bellies of the bodies as they were dug up and torn into by dogs.

Limbo

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All the darkness of the known Earth was mine. Country borders defined by men in their dreams, the things they believed and took shelter behind, couldn’t stop me. I absorbed all the known civilizations into the borders of my own empire, still the greatest in history. No one could escape my rage. None except those whom I allowed.

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[STOP]

“
Sir! Sir, wake up! Snap out of it!”

I woke up with that familiar artificial voice and felt a rush of panic.

“
What happened? I thought I would be the over-conscious of the plague. What is it now?”

“
The program didn’t give a positive response to the partition, but it continued anyway. I tried to interfere, but its functionality was compromised.”

“
What does that mean? Can it hurt me? Has this happened before? How does it affect the process?”

“
Sir, it is…, it doesn’t happen very often, but it is possible—”

“
Damn it! Stop beating around the bush and tell me what happened.”

“
Yes, sir, I will explain. While the program is working, a direct connection to your information unit can cause little changes in some basic information.”

“
Idiot, what are you talking about? What situation did you put me in? A mutating microbe? Why weren’t you more careful?”

“
Sir, the effect is not common, and if it happens, the changes lose significance. It occurs in small increments, and risks with such low probability can be ignored—”

“
It’s all your fault. You created a Mongolian and then turned him into a microbe—“

“
Sir, it is not what you think. I controlled all the systems, and there is no sign of damage or side effects.”

“
I know that. But what will you do if I explode?”

“
Explode? What will explode, sir?”

“
Okay, forget it. Just tell me what I am supposed to understand.”

“
Sir, a man is composed of around one hundred trillion cells. They are out of your control, and you can’t interfere with them directly. Those cells have their own lifecycle. As an over-conscious, you can only use them and lead your organism. You can’t control the individual units of the virus. It is like members an ant colony, which consists of billions of individuals but moves like a single organism.”

“
So, there is a living being in a different dimension, a deciding mechanism that you call an over-conscious. Is that what you mean? That a plague is a species that has its own consciousness and way of directing movement?”

“
Almost right, sir. This plague can be managed on the conscious level and can be lived by going through it. The merchant fleet of Genoese consisted of two ships that left Crimea, carrying the organism that caused the plague. While crossing the Bosporus, it infected Istanbul. From there, it divided into two. One brought death to Anatolia and the Middle East. The other arm went to Sicily first, by ship. When it realized that the crew carried disease, they were expelled. From there, they went to Venice and then to France. When they were expelled again, they moved toward Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, infecting others.

“
The disease loomed over unprotected and defenseless people like a disaster. In a short time, half of the European population had perished. No one was left to bury the bodies. The streets were full of death and corpses. Everything—including cats and dogs—died and those who tried to escape only succeeded in infecting others. The strong ones put up walls on their doors and put up walls on the doors of the ill ones. Still, even though “safe” in their homes, many still died. In the end, 50 million people were erased from the gene pool, but the strong ones survived.