[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #52: The Surrogate Sovereignty, part 2

[Drew Perron]

On 2/17/2016 2:27 PM, wilalambre at gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
>      I close my eyes on one world, I open them again on another forty trillion
> miles away. My consciousness splits and is transmitted over astronomical
> distances, into a surrogate body made of electric honey.

Surrogate surrogate. Soon it'll stop looking like a word.

>      Volsci isn't what it used to be. I stand at the base of a mountain, looking
> down on what used to be expanses of riverways and fields of wild grass. There's
> an ache in my heart to see it choked by black mud and tangled brown vines, the
> result of the swarm's harsh terraforming. On the horizon, I see an endless line
> of jagged pillars; skyscraper hives of hexagonical wax, like knives in my
> homeworld's back.

Yeesh. ^^;

> When I'm in
> one, I can't ever get it to take any shape but my own. Not the miserable thing I
> am now. My _original_ form. Mousey. Clumsy. And not fit for scrambling over
> boulders. It has small fingers that can't find grip and awkward feet that slip
> on loose gravel. But it's a comforting, familiar form. These are _my_ fingers
> and these are _my_ feet.

awwwwwww...

>      And it isn't _physically_ tiring. I'm only here by remote, more or less.
> It's _mentally_ exhausting. It's the lack of sleep. A weariness that only gets
> heavier. How much sleep did I manage to get last time? An hour. Maybe less. And
> I was awake for... I don't know. _Days_, before that. I lost count. It blurs
> together. Into a smear of moments.

augh. Nice and intense.

> They're... not like the ones that
> followed me off-planet; those were Volsci's population. These are strange and
> aberrant, the terrifying results of simple animals and inanimate objects given a
> stuttering, bizarre sort of life. They stayed behind to torture the ecosystem
> into its new frame.

*shiver*

>      "You know who I am," she says with a sneer. "Or, at least, you szhould. You
> knew szomeone would be coming. My name'sz Melisende Buzz. I'm your _replacement_."

Dun dun dunnnnn! :o

> "And _yet_, when you're provided a szurrogate, a _malleable_ avatar, you szhape
> it into... thisz. A puny animal of a dead world. Tszk."
>      I cross my arms. "_You've_ taken a similar form."

Yeah! Stand up for yourself, Sybilla!

>      "Yesz, but I'm _szlumming_.

pfffff

> They don't even look at me until I speak to them. "You have her safe somewhere,
> don't you? On some planet far away from mummy robots and solar gods and
> everything else. You found someone fiercZer and sZmarter and _better_ than me...
> and you let her come here to rub it all in my facZe?"
>      Tears are running down my eyes, I'm so angry. The bees takes unsteady steps
> back, suddenly wary and skittish. I reach out and seize one of them by its wings.
>      "Take me to her."

Yessssssss. :D :D :D You're *cool*.

Drew "love the individual stories" Perron