ic Meeting of the Minds On An Exponential Level

[Ari]

Dol-Druth's harsh, deep voice whispered "Our thoughts, two streams that meet an ocean..."

 

There was a tug.

 

And Elias opened his eyes on a snowy wasteland. The hunt had been long and grueling, all but he and two others had perished at the blades and fangs of the great ice worm, there was only one more lance left on his back and a fresh storm would be on them in days. With a grunt he got to his feet, feeling the well-worn wormfur cushioning and insulting the thick pelts encompassing his tall, strong body. But even through them, Rae's icy breath cut like blades. 

 

Elias bent his head and groped at his belt for the snow mask, knowing time would not wait. After bearing three children with Den-Sof he could feel how much thicker and heavier he had grown. Days would pass before they could even get the worm back to the underhalls. The bone mask slid over his eyes, for just a moment shutting out the bleak, windblown wasteland.

 

"El!"

 

Elias jerked his eyes open, the blare of the club roaring back into his ears. Across the tiny table, a woman with golden eyes and small birdlike wings...Zante frowned at him, the shimmering flares of light illuminating her stark nurse's uniform. The flares revealed the club in spurts, glimpses of the raging party thrashing and screaming around them, drowning out the light-synth waves that stabbed the brain with pure exhilaration.

 

"You've been lapsing in and out all night. I need to take you home, Ar. Bor-Scroo doesn't joke about a patient's wellbeing." She got up and slipped around the table, reaching for his arm...

 

"Elias!"

 

Dol-Druth's massive, fleshy hand grabbed Elias' shoulder, and the world shattered, spiraling away into a maelstrom of senses. It was like standing on an island surrounded by waterfalls.  

 

The Speaker was shaking, sweat beading on his bald, corpse-white skin as he panted, red tongue almost lolling out of his mouth from exertion.

 

"I am so sorry. It...I had forgotten." He gulped "I forgot how I was lost my first time. Are you alright? You know who you are?"

 

[TheAbsurdist]

It was chaos.

 

Complete chaos.  A cacophony.  A chorus.  A susurrus.  At once and at disparate times.  His eyes were closed at the pressure.  There was no rivers, only ocean.  Always the ocean.

 

It never stops.  Never stops.  Again and again and again, past the point of ad nauseum, to the point of exhaustion.  Depletion.

 

But it doesn't stop.  Even when unconscious comes, the hammering is there, across senses dulled and raked open raw.

Breathe.  Slow.  In.  Out.

 

The goal was to share in Elias' mind.  And in touching the human's shoulder, Dol-Duth fell into the deep end with the damaged psionic.  It was purely defensive, or... something else.  The Speaker could feel the scars that lay through the human's psyche, deep from the burden he seemed seemed to need to take from those around him.  Blurry, uncertain images of what the arms dealer and inventor Horatio did to him.  Wires driven deep, drugs drowning his consciousness, reshaping his mind into a gun.

 

The bullets fired in a test.  His mind, his conscious driven through another's, leaving a trail of their life amidst the smoke and wreckage.  Ephemeral.

Deeper.

 

The sound of a lost voice, faint, and full of hate.

 

There is focus suddenly, sharp.  Memories, instincts that weren't his pushed to the fore, and Dol-Druth saw himself through Errant's eyes.  Detached, examination of what was happening.

 

He was being weighed, examined.  Weak points illuminating at his joints, where the carapace thins.  The strikes would be disabling.  A press back against Dol-Druth's mind.  Seeking weaknesses there.  Then plotting the escape.  The paths people take.  Their habits.  All laid out as the calculus played to it's logical conclusion.

 

Something lurked under that.  Worming through the substrate, flowing through the depths.

 

The Speaker asked for this.  He was used to sharing.  Elias was not.  Errant was not.  And his abilities were... diminished, no that wasn't the word... they were changed.

 

Deeper...

[Ari]

Dol-Druth saw himself, for the first time, as meat.

 

More to the point, he saw himself. Alone, cut off from the herd, metaphorical jaws and claws and lashing blades skulking, waiting for that perfect moment.

 

His huge black eyes blinked and twitched, atavism setting in slowly as the carapace and mandibles, the soft, sensitive fur, all the countless signs of their distant ancestry sliding back in as the animal inside quavered. Bloated from lack of mental exercise, weak from leaning on billions of other minds for protection, swimming with distracting minutia. He hadn't a chance against the lean psychic predator he had brought into the heart of Dotrae. Even the Hounds of the Khans, starved and beaten and twisted into balls of seething psychic aggression and hunting-instinct, were nothing like this. This was like nothing natural, not training but conditioning, not skill but programming, not power but load-out.

 

For the first time, Dotrae turned countless eyes to behold a true abomination, a psionic blade sheathed in human flesh.

 

Tears spilled from Dol-Druth's now-compound eyes as he stared at the repeating flashes of sensation, felt all that had been done to ensure "Elias" would turn out like this. "This...this is monstrous" he breathed, wobbling with sympathy and terror. He took a stumping fumble backwards "Who...why would anyone do this?"

 

You know

 

Dotrae was best envisioned as eyes, so eyes were what the duo on that towering pillar saw cluster about them. A night sky made of black, pitiless insect, spider-like eyes. The visions of lives past and present flickered out, replaced with bloodless scrutiny.

 

This is what they're all like, deep down. Terres is a prison, this is an inmate born into the system, they cannot be allowed to escape.

 

"Then why did we decide we should move to their system?" Dol-Druth briefly regained some of his own features as he boggled  furiously at the psi-sky "If we all thought that, then how in Bird's own name didn't we know?!"

 

Your predecessor learned to hide his thoughts from us. The reverse was therefore possible. We learned how.

 

Throwing up his pudgy, ham-sized hands, Dol-Druth turned back to Elias with a profound grimace on his face "W-Iee  beg your pardon, Sri Silvestri, Iee had no idea my fellow Dotrae wanted to-" he twisted his improbably-thick neck to glare up at the manymind "-do what, specifically?"

 

We will teach him better coping methods, shoulder some of his mental burden to give his plan greater odds of success and absorb his memories so we can forestall the enslavement of the stars by these creatures.

 

"That last was much more eloquently put by ourself, but Iee cannot deny our part in this, Elias" Dol-Druth fumed, crossing his arms and sitting down with a *whump*, rear legs folding under the distended thorax "If you desire an exit I can arrange one."

 

Elias, we are ready, through our Speaker we see your suffering and stand ready to receive it. Reach out to us.

 

 

[TheAbsurdist]

Errant's eyes locked onto the Dotrae, and searched him.  He didn't need his telepathic powers, he examined, he dissected Dol-Druth, and what was behind those eyes.  Them. "You see."

As soon as it happened, the human's thoughts shifted, how they were organized was not the same.  From radial progression, to linear, to a web.  "But you don't understand."  He was a knife pressed to thoughts, and then he was an ocean eroding the foundation.  Sometimes at the same time.  "You wont understand.  But I can make you understand, but that would require you to step down, and wallow in the spaces I draw breath in."

 

His gaze changed as he regarding Drol-Duth for a moment, "I know you didn't know... I know that this is a bottle neck, that it would harm you."

 

'You are mistaken.  I can cope.  Because I am alone, because I've been damaged.  I am one.  You don't know how to contend with one.  And exposing me to your collective is unwise.  I am use to adapting from a state of drowning.  And assuming that we are all like this is a cognitive dissonance, just as making sure you only have data that fits your theory.'

[Ari]

Your idea of coping is what you yourself admit is a suicide mission. Do not mistake our lack of empathic connection with lack of empathy itself. We've all grown up seeing what Terres' strongest psychics rarely do

 

The waves were shaking the ground beneath them, the knife was drawing blood, and the slender cord tying the voyager to the outer selves was fraying under the strain. Dol-Druth had to keep his mouth shut, eyes squinted almost invisible in the skin folds of his face, forcing away the emerging bestial features. His body was a crawling morass of legs, chitin, hairs and fangs struggling to coalesce into something solid. His antennae were a lost cause, great hairy, feathery things taller than he was.

 

With your memories we can better assimilate into Terresi culture, help teach your kind to understand thoughts born in other bloods. They barely listen to others of their own, entry into galactic culture for your kind is dangerous for any race that cannot also spawn defiers of physical law. Xenophobia backed by the power to destroy worlds is something that cannot be allowed to fester and grow.

 

With a jolt like they were being forced awake by some horrible phantom scream the mind-world shuddered, cracked. 

 

Speaker, you at least he will listen long enough to condescend to, explain it to him.

 

"Not the time. Later, when Iee haven't mandibles."

 

...Very well. Elias, what will you listen to?

[TheAbsurdist]

Elias sighed and closed his eyes, one hand pressing to a temple and rubbing.  He was getting the headache he used to get in high school.  Just like high school.  Where they wouldn't understand, when he said he was fine, or okay.  They would press and say he wasn't.  Telling him he was wrong, and broken.

 

The narrative didn't change.  The casual condescension didn't seem any different.

 

You are not listening, he thought in response, and he started to form something else, he stopped, the thought there, hovering.  Not quite formed.  Before he reached out and grasped them, and he pulled them away from Dol-Druth.  He changed fulcrum, and let the weight of them shift from the Speaker, to him.  That is not me coping.  You are drawing conclusions.

 

The irony of your concern over a suicide mission is not lost on me.  A task weighed of an individuals concerns versus a group seems to be something you would more inclined to agree with.  The irony of calling us a xenophobic scourge is also amusing, considering your first interaction with intelligent species external to your own.  The issue at hand: we are not one.  We are a collection of individuals. And extrapolating a final totality from what amounts to mathematical outliers tells me you are engaging in decisions out of fear, out of irrationality.  When not speaking, Elias was something else, that he was focusing on them showed the dagger he had been made into.  See earlier point about conclusions.

 

Elias continued, pushing back, and squaring his metaphorical jaw.  Or at least are being reactionary.  Especially for fellow defiers of physical law, as let us be frank your ability to space interstellar reaches with telepathic projection .  And you've told me.  You've told me your intent.  And I can tell them before you can kill me.  Then you get your fear.  You declare a war, and then we unite and go after you, made into the xenophobic scourge you fear us to be.

You are appealing to my fear, and that doesn't work.  After all, why wasn't I asked about the good I've seen in spite of what I have endured?  You wanted answers to fit the narrative you've established.  So which do you want?  Me to listen, while you pronounce? Or did you want to learn

 

I've learned about about fear, despair, and hopelessness.  I've learned what happens when we're beaten down.  When there is no hope.  And then a sliver is given to you.  Do you know what happens?

 

He was hurt.  Ankle sprained.  Ribs bruised, probably broken.  And he pushed himself up.   Elias was not a strong man, he wasn't superhumanly durable.  But he got up.  They were hurting her.  That was the focus, that was more important than his pain.

 

This narrative repeats, this thought, and it's related thoughts exploded outward like an engineering diagram, lines of interconnectivity moving from object, to person, to emotion, to memory, in a nonlinear web.

 

So he stopped them.  It was a mechanical response, efficient, though filled with hate.  They were hurting her.

You are my sunshine/my only sunshine...

Quote

"What you are feeling is helplessness."  His voice so cold, so distant, as usual.  Despite the palpable anger.  "I've turned off the part of your brain that controls your autonomic breathing."

 

Stopstopstopstopstopstopstop!  And they did, dragged down by the bull terrier of a mind.  Even knowing what the reaction to this would be, what she would think.  Would feel.

 

Jump to a sidereal thought, memory.

 

Horatio laughed a little bit, he had them over a barrel.  Not that he cared about them.  He had the little sh**, he had done the tests, drive wires into his mind.  Caused irreparable damage to Elias, to him.  To his mind, memories, self.  And if he could off these other quote-unquote heroes , then that would be a net positive in his ledger.

 

The problem was Elias' attachment to the people.  A quantitative thing that he couldn't see.  Until it was too late.  The fingers, the blade, the subtle crashing of waves were eroding before he noticed it.  That slow, creeping, terrible focus.  And then, well...

 

Quote

"What you are feeling is helplessness..."

 

Don't you take my sunshine away

 

Related to that, another connection.

 

He hit the assassin in the face.  With a brick.  One could argue it was luck.  But it was something else.  A blind spot.  He created it, he lived there.  The man was after Fast-Forward, a man who actually cared about Elias, when he had no need to.  There was nothing demanding anything of the concern for his well being that made him uncomfortable, like the former hero idolizing of his daughter.

 

Elias became the thing Fast-Forward hated because as that he could protect man he associated the concept of 'father' with.

 

Bleeding, concussed, and out of his league Elias was clawing, scratching and using masonry to win.

 

 

In the midst of this he singled out one of the mind.  Just.  One.  What you need to hear is that we aren't your enemy, we are growing in fits and starts.  You call us Xenophobic, but you're willing to end us because our growth hasn't been congruous to yours yet.  What I see is your willingness to throw this Speaker away.  To throw the others.  To not trust their judgement when it doesn't match what you expect?  

What evidence have you given me to place faith in you.  What rope is offered, what sliver shown?  Because right now I am alone with you.  And you are alone with me.  And if I was the monster you believe us to be, then why are you still alive after you threatened every I care about?  Everyone I have to yet to care about.

 

[Ari]

Emotions boiled from every side, hurt, outrage at the temerity of one soul daring to defy them, billions of hearts surging-

 

Wait, what war?

 

And all at once the searing hostility, the wall of eyes, was replaced with a depthless sea of confusion.

 

"Yeff, Eef am puffled by that worfd myfelf" Dol-Druth said, best he could through a mouthful of clacking mandibles.

 

What do we gain by attacking Earth or its people? The Grue have done that, plenty of others too, all with enormous resources we do not ourselves possess. How could we hope to win a war with Earth?

 

Yes, that would be an absurdly bad idea. One might almost call it inhumanly bad.

 

Agreed, Dotrae,

 

Thanks, Dotrae,

 

More to the point, we do not want to "kill" anything, aside from in a metaphorical sense. Since changing your culture, society, and belief structures is not only less violent, it's a lot easier to keep secret. You do it yourselves every few decades all over the planet.

 

If you met someone from 200 or so years back, Mr. Errant, you would be mutually incomprehensible. People used to think the divine right of kings was a real fact that controlled their lives. They even used to think the blind, staggering monsters their implicit cooperation created were a natural, inviolable part of existence. Some aliens talking about how wouldn't it be nice to have a more equal economic system would hardly raise any eyebrows.

 

Why would we need blasters or psych-bombs when just incessantly talking about something for a decade will get us what we want?