Living again

‘You know what? Fuck it, I don’t care about AI logic or whatever. I was human, considered a living being before, and I don’t think my spirit, soul, call it whatever you want, is any different. So yes, I am living!’ Convinced by his own words, he felt it was time to search what else he could test about his new life.

‘So, what can I… Wait, I. Me… I don’t remember my damn NAME! And here I thought my mind didn’t change.’ First feeling anger, and then consternation at his own cluelessness, he tried remembering his name.

‘I don’t have the slightest idea of what my name is. Carl and I never really called each others’ names either. It was all based on “hey” or directly stating our mind. The only moment I can remember saying Carls’ name is in my thoughts.’

‘Well, I can continue not having a name for now, but it sure is weird. I should at least take a pseudonym while I try to remember it.’ He tried thinking of something, but nothing came to mind. Then he tried remembering one of those he used when playing games or talking online.

‘Wait, it’s weird. Why does it feel like I know a lot of things but the details are missing?’ Inspecting his memories revealed that even if he still has some knowledge, some critical parts of it are missing. ‘so, I know I did have childrens. In plurals, but I don’t remember how many, their genders, ages, names or anything.’

After some time spent pondering the problem, he came back to him thinking about him missing a name. ‘Even if I felt them I couldn’t recognise anyone anyway.’

‘Now to find a name or pseudonym. I remember people calling me weird, let’s take the w of it and find some name with it.’ He thought a little and came with some that he could take for himself.

‘Mmhm, so it is between Walt, Will and Winston.’ He tested how each sounded like in his mind and took Winston out. ‘I think I will take one that can be said in one syllable. Now to choose Walt or Will.’ After some more thinking he decided to call himself Will for the time being. ‘At least playing tic tac toe in my head served a purpose this time.’

Having chosen a name for himself, Will decides that the next test should be about how he can control his -air- and if it interacts with the -air- that is not a part of him. At first he tries to feel the -air- that is not him, but failing to do so prompts him to change his methode.

First he gets back all his -air- inside of him except for enough to make a recipient. He then forms a hollow sphere with his -air- while making sure to encapsulate a current of what he calls natural -air- for now.

He feels the current at the surface of his body being disturbed, meaning that there is at least a physical interaction. The two can touch each other. And now to start if he can feel it by the resistance it should have, it is why he chose to do it with a hollow sphere.

Or rather natural -air- surrounded by his -air-. And to know if he can feel the resistance, then why not use the system of a rubber balloon? The tighter the space inside, the more air inside. Simple pressure propriety.

It seems Will can indeed feel it, he barely started compressing the not so hollow space and immediately started feeling it resist the movement. ‘So I can feel it with my own.’

Next Will tested if he could prevent himself from taking outside -air- by blocking its passage.

Normally, or rather when he didn’t try to stop it from passing through, the outside -air- just pierce his -air- at a point and comes right to him. But now that he actively tries to stop it from piercing his -air-, he finds that no natural -air- is able to pass through it. It does form some ripples at the surface of his -air-, but nothing drastic.

On the other hand, when he tries breathing in and he blocks it, it feels like he is suffocating. The sensation giving him no pleasure or wanting to continue, Will ended this experiment here. Without doing anything though, he discovered something new. Even without trying to breathe in, there is still some natural -air- piercing his non-resistant -air- and entering him.

The quantity is nearly nothing at all compared to what he gets from breathing in, but knowing that even without concentrating on it he would still gather -air- feels somewhat satisfying to him.

Experimenting with all that took some time, and Will estimated having gathered around half of what he had before changing to feel his -air- and himself. Before, this quantity felt like quite a lot, but now it doesn’t feel like much at all.

‘I wonder how long I’ve been here, experimenting just so I don’t think about my situation and how much I hate it.’ Following his spontaneous question, he tried finding something to tell the time, or at least have an idea of its passage.

The fact that he does not have sight evidently makes it harder to tell the time, but Will found a flower in his little sphere of -air-. ‘If I remember correctly, flowers open during the day and close when the cold of night comes. Now I just have to hope it’s not only some species that does so.’

‘I should do something else while I wait to sense a change in the flower, but what to do?’ It took Will a minute to find something. ‘I tested my control of -air- in the ground and the air. Why don’t I test it in the plants now?’

Pushing his -air- inside the grass touching his body, Will noted a difference. While he still lost control of his -air-, his capacity to feel it was kept for much longer, similarly as how a kept it for longer if he used more.

Another oddity was the fact that he felt something happen inside the blade of grass. And so, wanting more information about it, Will repeated the process with much more of his -air-. This time instead of completely losing control of his -air-, he felt it change, like if it was not his anymore but still wanted to obey him. And he kept the ability to feel with it all!

Feeling for the little grass blade, Will felt his -air- inside of it, and there was a lot happening inside! A lot of little spirals crossing and interlinking each other, lines forming micro-streams of air up and down the grass blade, going and coming from its roots.

Another thing he found out was that the plant sent him some of its -air- now. Before there was absolutely nothing coming from it, and Will inspected all the grass around him, but only this one now fed him some -air-.

It was nearly nothing, he was even barely capable of feeling his -air- letting it pass through. It is like trying to see one hair from 5 meters away, quite hard but still feasible with the right conditions.

Another thing that happened was that there was an excess of his -air- inside the grass blade, not everything was changed. Will took his -air- out of it, and it happened effortlessly, same thing for re-entering.

He tried doing the same thing with another grass blade to see if the quantity of his -air- needed to make this change happen would be similar. And after doing it 3 more times he concluded that the amount of -air- needed was proportional to the size of the grass blade.

Another thought passed Wills’ mind: ‘what if I could do the same with the ground?’ He immediately tried, and succeeded! But the quantity of soil changed this way was less than he thought it would. ‘Other variables existe for the change to happen then.’

‘But there is a big difference between the grass and the ground. The grass changed his -air-, but the ground barely altered it. It still felt like his, just now tied to the ground. This change was way more costly to happen though, and Will didn’t want to waste too much -air- to experiment with the ground.

What he did was send more -air- inside his soil, and like with the plant it did not change or assimilate. But there was another thing, a sensation that interested Will. He willed his -air- assimilated with the soil to move upwards while keeping the bond it has with it. And under his scrutiny, Will saw the assimilated -air- consume his -air- not tied to the soil to move the soil upwards.

‘Wait, did I just do magic?’ Will could only conclude his deed as some kind of magic, and it made him reconsider his naming system. ‘Well, calling it -air- now seems rather weird. So I’ll call it mana now, it seems way more appropriate I think.’

Will continued playing with his discovery, spending around half the mana he gathers from the air. He used little bursts of mana to make the soil move around and make forms. But his playtime was interrupted when he felt something land on him.

‘What is that?’ He thought while trying to inspect the thing with his mana. ‘Oh, that’s a spider.’ Will never feared the arachnids species, that he was sure. But the enthusiasm he felt when feeling it crawl on him was totally new.

An idea was already raging inside his mind. ‘The grass blade is organic, I spent some mana on it and I now feel it and it gives me mana. What will happen if I try to do the same with this spider?’

Without waiting, he exhales a lot of his mana and tries forcing it inside of the spider. At first it didn’t work, Will looked at it better and found that the spider already had some mana in itself. But he had no desire of giving up this time, so he covered it with his mana and began forming pressure with it.

Little by little his mana gained strength and began to mush itself inside of the spider. The arachnid didn’t just settle there without doing anything, it tried fleeing, feeling something happening to it. But Will used the soil to trap the legs of the spider in it, successfully immobilizing it.

The thing tried to move every which way it could, but Will kept it in place easily. After a few minutes the mana in the spider began changing, the only mana not from Will in the spider was in its abdomen. And when Will pushed some mana to enter it, it mixed with the spider’s mana.

It was not much, he could barely feel anything from the mixed mana, but the more he mixed them together, the clearer it connected to him. ‘What happens if I just dilute the spider’s mana so much it doesn’t really have a trace of itself?’

Will started thinking of mana as some liquid, imagining his to be water, and the spider’s to be syrup. His question being: what happens when you add so much water to a drop of syrup that you don’t even taste it?

Will tried mixing the mana by fractions. When one out of four parts of the mana was his, he felt the spider’s body as if it was his own. At half he started smelling things through the spider, three out of four he began seeing what the spider saw. But then he hit a limit, adding anymore mana inside the spider was infeasible.

When some enters, some exits at the same rate. ‘So, that means I filled it with mana? Wait, if it leaks its own mana, I should be able to just absorb it and replace its mana with my own. Then it will be filled with only my mana.’

Will tried this, and his guess worked. The spider’s mana mixed with his own exited the spider and flowed towards him. Once it entered him it got changed like the natural mana did. Simultaneously, the spider filled itself with Wills’ mana, and once it was only his mana inside, it changed to be spider’s again.

The mana felt similar as with the grass, while not really being his anymore, it would still try to obey his will. When the spider tried her bindings again, Will felt two things: The first was some emotions, largely subdued, but he would still feel it. The second was that of the spiders’ body moving, and a feeling that he could make it move to his will.

Will tried making the spider move one of its legs up while letting it out of the soil, and it worked. ‘I can feel and control the spiders’ body? Doesn’t that mean that I am both a sphere and this spider? Then that means I do have an organic body, so I AM, alive!’

Will continued contemplating his new body for some time, trying its movements and his discovered capacity to produce webs with his spinneret.