Topic: Biophilia

NightRunner

Date: 2010-01-06 02:08 EST
Biophilia

"I don't trust a man who makes toys in a land where children are forbidden."
--Robert Helpmann; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang







Dust.

He was covered in dust when awareness of the material world returned.

Nothing was clear. The first few seconds, Renne thought he was still dancing in the everynothing, dancing and guarding the silvertime against anything that might come at it. It had been a frightening, dazzling state. Anchored at the time, he had felt and listened and touched the silvertime, guarded it, knew it was precious.
The darknothing had roared and he had fought back.

The darknothing roared against a small, misfit legion and lost.

He remembered that, assimilated that and when the anchors snapped, Renne for a moment knew absolutely nothing. The anchors snapped, leaving a vessel flung back except he wasn't a vessel. He wasn't, in this universal placetime, with a recognisable form. Renne had known this for years, adapted as well as he could but nature was nature. His Solidity hadn't been anything extraordinary until he and Time touched.

Renne's ears didn't move like they should have, didn't move at all. His legs burned, stung, hurt, ached. Bones and flesh weren't right. His head screamed fire and his face felt crushed. His hands felt comparative to a feline getting its claws removed.
When he opened his mouth to speak, it was by shock alone that he didn't simply scream. It was his voice and it wasn't. Breathe. Relief was small but there as breathing patterns remained unchanged. The blue dust covering his skin and hair coated him, covered him as the yellow ochre on a Hindu virgin's skin.

Renne went in a partial daze, followed the Dudes to the tea shop.

He crawled like a bumbling cross betwixt a bear and a chimpanzee; his back and hips rolled erratically with the unsure, clumsy motion. This wasn't natural. This wasn't him. The few times he'd opened his mouth, that too had come as a shock. Only one row of teeth, a tongue thicker and not split or forked. His face felt like it had been crushed.

At least a smile was managed when Renne knew for sure people had come out of the dancing chaos intact.

When he was alone, still trying to explore this twisted, painful shape, he wept.

NightRunner

Date: 2010-01-10 00:06 EST
Biophilia
Child V'Ger

"Natural. The word is as undefinable as what it is to simply be. What is natural to one, may not be to another."








The entire thing was remembered. It was all, had all been, completely crazy and he knew it. Should have been surprised at some of it, was a little perhaps but what shocked him most was that he thought things that hadn't been touched on in years.
When he had danced, spiraled and fell with the silver and the storm, nothing had occurred to him then that Time shouldn't be touched. Time shouldn't have anything close to tangible about it. Time, like Emotion, was an abstract in this here-and-now.
Don't touch

This wasn't the first time he was told that.

Some things aren't meant to be touched.

He was on the beach when the next wave of pain hit. It began in his chest and worked its way down, then through his arms and legs. The pain in his face was nothing compared to this. The sand was soft, then hard, then soft again as this twisted shape curled in on itself. The sound was sickening even to his ears but the question in his head drove it home.
Humans do not have ribcages like this
Indeed, humans do not have latticed ribcages. They do not have a single lung either but he didn't feel the twisting pain go that deep.
Breathe. Keep breathing.

The words sang through his head as the stars above silently watched. His body temperature soared, then dropped, then soared again as anatomy warred against...apparently, itself. Bones at the limbs cracked, twisted and remained in a too-human shape. His ribcage had more luck, remaining in the natural latticed pattern. For now.
He kept breathing and after a while, the pain receded.

Renne shook his head and rolled up to crawl. His mind raced with thoughts but his instincts took to a familiar, organised path. It was his triangle on the beach and he crawled along it in hopes of regaining a logical thought process.
It didn't take too long to deduce what had occurred -- that was decently easy to explain. He'd gone to the Labyrinth and done something a life-form isn't generally supposed to do. What he'd done was against a litany of what Humans call natural laws. What was he then, a criminal against nature?
Renne gave voice to his answer.
No. No, he was not a criminal against nature.

Nature in one place-time wasn't nature in another.

You are not in the other.

He crawled the first leg with the answer to his first question. There was no regret. No anger, no resentment. He'd done it because he had to. Wanted to. Made an oath, kept an oath, intended on keeping it. The experience had been strange yet familiar. Beyond touch, beyond sound, beyond instinct. It was Duty and Honour and...
It just had to be done.

The second leg ran from the statue in the mud to an unmarked section of sand. He knew this spot as he did each point in his triangular crawl but the questions that arose, he didn't know how to answer. The emotional remnants here were faint, and while he could still 'get' them, Renne somehow 'felt' them less intensely. And that wasn't right.
Unbidden, Oobie's voice came shrieking through his mind. It was a memory, true enough, but it was still a reality. It was a voice he couldn't shake off, couldn't drown out. Her voice echoed in him. This thing that his Solidity had become didn't feel natural. Wasn't natural. He still didn't feel regret.
Breathe. Keep breathing.

When he completed the third leg, Renne crawled back into the city. His movements were still too sharp, too arrhythmic. Too birdlike. Logic dictated that he couldn't get through this alone. Instinct dictated that he had to get through it alone. Oaths dictated that he might not have to. And logic came to his mind again as he found his way unsteadily through the city.

The what was answered. The how was not as crucial but it wasn't impossible to figure out.

It was the why that eluded him.

NightRunner

Date: 2010-01-25 16:18 EST
Biophilia
Right to Life

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
--Albert Camus






There were things everyone questioned.

There were things everyone naturally questioned, logically questioned and even found a kind of thrill in questioning. It was the way of things no matter where, when or what you happened to be. The 'big questions' could spur on deep discussions, bring about insights and do all sorts of intellectually stimulating things. They were the kind of questions that could make a being sure of himself or wonder in awe at the vastness of things. The beginnings, ends, continuings, advances of all things and where everything belonged in it.

And then there were those things you weren't supposed to question.

Those things many had called 'inalienable rights' easily fell under that category of what you weren't supposed to question. It was the question of life and its right to be. He knew the question and for years, hadn't thought it needed asking. He had survived in many worlds so far, adapted to those many as well as he could. But Renne remained who and what he was, determined to keep that of himself and still live in these strange worlds.
He'd done well at surviving alone, away from civilisation.

It was when he entered the Civilised world that things changed.

He lay on the dusty ground where a building once stood and thought of all this. The sea roared somewhere in front of him and the sand felt soft beneath him. Legs and lower back registered the painful tension of cramps but he'd somehow expected that. It hadn't been too long ago that Oobie had tried to teach him to walk.
Oobie. She didn't seem angry at him anymore and for that, he knew relief.

Others came to his mind then -- 'Nathan. The Dudes. And a slew of others he hadn't heard from in far too long. His thoughts took a turn here and at a particularly loud, crashing wave from the sea, Renne asked questions no life-form should have to ask. Did he have the right to live here?
The question sent chills down his spine.
Renne tried to shake the question off but it only spawned more. More questions that forced him to sit up on the sand and face them.

Why? How?

He didn't want to face them alone but knew one truth that had shown itself. Ultimately, he was alone.
So Renne faced the questions and went where his memory bade him go. Places were visited, names and voices remembered. Things touched and heard.
He did have the right to live.
And he had the right to live as his nature made him.

When the sun began to come up, Renne faced toward the sea and made some decisions.

This land was home and he'd make it so again. It was long past the times of tears and he was long past done trying to prove himself to an indifferent worldscape.