Hive Minds Give Good Hugs

When you don't have to worry about running out of air, swimming is basically the same as flying.

In some ways, it's even cooler. When high up in the air, it's kind of a huge deal if you want to stop flying. If my tiny bug bodies stop beating their wings, or if my ESTOLs put their wings away and stop jetting out air, I sign myself a one-way ticket to ground city. Wings and siphons can get pretty darn sore working themselves nonstop all day, same as any other muscle. Even if I'm just gliding, I have to keep my wings outstretched to catch enough air and that takes serious effort if I'm going fast or turning hard or if the atmosphere is tumultuous. But in the water… I can just stop.

Darting forward down the stream, I give into just a little bit of indulgence and let my body relax, going slack in the water and allowing the current to take me wherever it pleases. I went swimming a decent amount back on Earth, especially in the summer when I was a little kid and my mom just wanted to lie by the poolside and let the lifeguards be the ones making sure I don't kill myself for a while. I've always thought the idea of being in space was pretty cool, and to me being underwater was the closest I ever thought I'd get to zero-G. I'd fantasize about floating around the inside of a starship, swimming through air instead of water, watching the Milky Way out the window… I thought it was really fun.

And then that fantasy would end ten to thirty seconds later, at most, when I inevitably had to come up for air. With my lungs burning for oxygen, it never really gave me much time to appreciate how incredibly comfortable moving around underwater can be. My current lung capacity is better measured in hours than seconds, though, so I'm definitely reveling in it now.

I'm not just slowing down because it's fun and cool, either! As I coast to match the river's speed, I let out a bit of air and start to sink to the rocks at the bottom, grabbing any loose ones and moving them in an attempt to reveal any space-crustaceans, also known as Water Friends. Crustacea is well below Chelicerata, Myriapoda, and Hexapoda on my "favorite arthropod subphyla" list, but they are still buggo-adjacent enough to trigger my cuddle instinct. And who knows, maybe on this planet the water bugs will be extra cute! I never found any when searching around with EE, but that was only in one super-tiny segment of river. So maybe now I'll luck out!

...And, uh, hopefully the space crab will cure diseases. Somehow. Which is why I'm out here.

I do eventually find something, but it's not at all what I expected. A radially symmetric set of flat, interlocking chitin plates suddenly darts away from me as I start investigating nearby, waving its body rhythmically in order to dash through the water. It was disguised as a river stone until that moment, brown and hard and smooth. Four equally-flat limbs jut out from around its body, and after quickly catching and eating the cute little guy I learn they possess the majority of its sensory organs. Beyond the impressive camouflage and the delightfully sour toxin running through its body, though, there's little noteworthy to say about the creature. At least it was pretty easy to catch.

I'm having no such luck over in the swamp. Like, sure, there are big, juicy, awesome organisms all over the place. (I found a family of six-legged pigs! Space bacon!!!) The problem is that I didn't quite anticipate the downsides of being able to murder things with superacid. Namely that a full volley of ESTOL shots kills things incredibly dead, but also reduces those things to chemically cannibalized mush. The results are edible, but so much biomass gets burned away in the process that I struggle to get much information out of it. I might be able to get a complete picture if I kill multiple members of the same species and make sure they all die with differently-placed holes, but for now I'm leaving the piggies and that sweet fire-loving pterodactyl thing alone until I get some larger bodies in the swamp as backup. There are plenty of bugs and plants to eat in the meantime.

On the subject of larger hunting bodies: enter DB, the Dire Bork. Bigger, tougher, and not even a little bit meaner, the Dire Bork integrates the best features of my new biological data into the classic bug-dog design that everyone knows and loves, and by everyone I mean literally just me. I've mostly removed the acid bite effect and doubled down on bite strength, packing the reaper maw musculature as powerfully as I can into huge, toothy jaws that should absolutely shatter anything that gets caught inside them. With the reaper maw's tough skin reinforcing my whip-tongue and the ghost trap's glue making it even more difficult to escape, most of the rest of the Dire Bork is details like increased size (DB is slightly larger than a tiger) integration of general upgrades (the ghost trap's chemical crypsis is basically just an extension of the pheromones EP started with) and small details (chitin spikes make me difficult to attack, and more importantly are incredibly cool). I'm obviously making myself immune to hydrogen sulfide poisoning as well. With EE still healing, I have little else to do with that body beyond devour food and plop out bodies, so I do exactly that, making two DB eggs before I run out of food stockpile. The OMNIDOME's stomach should finish growing soon, but unfortunately I've acquired more important problems than my own safety since designing it.

"I'll save you, Katrk," I mutter to myself, staring at his unconscious, poultice-covered body. "Don't worry, just rest and wait."

"I'm not entirely sure how you intend to do that while sitting around and clogging up space in my home," Healer Katrs complains.

"I have to be here," I insist. "When I find something, I'm going to recreate it on-site. Odds are that will be faster than transporting it."

"...Okay, but how are you going to find anything if you're in my house."

I huff in annoyance. Right, I'm still keeping the hive mind thing on the down-low.

"I'll know when something is found," I answer simply. "Sorry for bothering you."

As the hours pass by, however, my frustration rapidly mounts as I continue to find nothing. It's well into nighttime by now, and while the fires of the swamp help a lot with visibility, my ability to hunt near my home and in the water have been significantly hampered. I have The Little Evelyn focus instead on speed, rushing downriver to the ocean as quickly as possible. This is exhausting, but I focus as best I can on optimizing my movement, learning when to push my muscles and when to wait for them to cycle out waste. It's like a rhythm/puzzle game, almost, and it helps distract from my repeated failures in the swamp.

When dawn breaks and Warrior Katrs has an estimated one day left to live, I finally spot the ocean. Poking my head up out of the river water, I can see how the river widens and briefly splits into a massive delta before all flowing into the sea. Part of the swamp Squad Evelyn is exploring is actually right to my left, which is somewhat embarrassing, but in my defense I'm still many miles from any of my other bodies. The swamp is just really big! And I'm sure, I'm sure that the terrifying purple tint to the ocean water is just a trick of the sunrise, and not evidence that this horrible, awful planet has god damn acid oceans. Nope. I won't believe it. Acid oceans are just too much! How the hell could carbon-based life even form unless there was a proper, non-murdery ocean?

I swim hesitantly forward, kicking my fish tail carefully through the winding waters of the Mooshi River Delta (I just now remembered I discovered all this stuff, and that means I get to name it). It's quite beautiful here, I have to admit. To the right of the delta, facing ocean-ward (and what I think should be south of my position, assuming the sun rises in the east like it does on Earth) is an actual beach, complete with gorgeous, white sand that goes on for a ways before the shoreline rises and transforms into a cliff face about a half mile or so away. The water does actually start to get a bit more purple as I approach the ocean but it does not, thank fuck, start scouring my flesh from my bones. Hmm… algae blooms, probably? I confirm my suspicion when I make it to the ocean proper, a largely calm and not-very-wavy mass of water and salt. The water is quite shallow near the beach, and when I submerge myself it's obvious that the purple color is some kind of colonial organism congealed to the surface of the water. I'm not sure how much biological data I can get from a colonial organism devoid of any organs or tissue, unfortunately, but… wait. No, I can absolutely comprehend organisms on the cellular level, it's just difficult. That's what I did in order to allow myself to metabolize hydrogen sulfide, after all.

The smartest play here is obviously to start chugging salt water.

It tastes terrible, and my body immediately starts getting angry at me as it tries to metabolize and filter out the excess of salt, but somehow this absolute zero-IQ strategy actually works. My head starts to explode with information about microorganisms, enough that it's paralyzing to try to consciously analyze them all. Excited, I start scanning for any that might hold the secret to a general antibiotic, but… nope. No luck. I grit my teeth and get back to swimming.

At least I understand the purple crap. It's similar to the purple blooms of life around the sulfuric acid ponds in the swamp, and in fact is probably here due to the proximity this part of the shoreline has to said swamp. This algae eats all the dangerous acids that pour out from that nasty biome, protecting the rest of the ocean from the awful pH dump that is the acid swamp. Or, y'know, arguably just ruining this part of the ocean instead. There doesn't seem to be much life here. I find and eat a few very sad clams, who are just absolutely driving the struggle bus trying to get calcium carbonate shells to work well on a planet literally named Acidsucks. CaCO3 kinda gets fucked by acid. Maybe it wasn't always like this? Or maybe—and this is me being unreasonably optimistic here—maybe the whole planet isn't an acid hell world and most of it is generally pretty normal and nice!

"Hah!" I laugh to myself. "Ah, Evelyn, you crack me up."

"Thanks, Evelyn. I've always thought humor is one of the best ways to deal with stress."

"That and making up imaginary friends, apparently," Mr. Mooshi butts in.

I flinch.

"Mr. Mooshi…" I grimace. "Please don't talk about Hsthressis like that."

He must be embarrassed, because he just returns to eating grass instead of responding. Well, good! In the meantime, I have more things to eat. A very flat, wide, and lazy-looking fish floats near the surface, its wide-open mouth obviously filter feeding. I easily catch and kill it, ignoring the spicy, gooey toxins covering its flesh as I peel it apart and systematically swallow its organs. Oh boy, baleen filter feeding, oh boy, poison slime… but still nothing useful! God damnit!

Yet more hours pass, and soon the sun is high in the sky. The most interesting thing that happens during this time is Priestess Saslitak taking me to see where the Sthrenslian weavers work and, more importantly, where the Sthrenslian children play. They're even tinier versions of the tiny bug people! It's quite possibly the most adorable thing I've ever seen, and I just had to join in.

"EEEEEK! It's the sky monster, it's the sky monster! Everybody run!"

A gaggle of giggling Sthrenslian children bolt away from me, shrieking with glee. I buzz after them, making playful growls as they zip down through the tunnels they've been allowed for their game. These parts of the cave are rough and unfinished, the efforts of little kids just getting their acid glands, learning to dig in a quest to expand their area of play. I'm a bit surprised at first that Priestess Saslitak seems to have no objections to me playing with the kids, but I suppose that, despite being far smaller than an adult Sthrenslian, not one of them is less than twice my weight. If the strange fairy monster threatens a child, perhaps the expectation is for that child to beat the shit out of me. Though I should be pretty well-known by now for hunting ghost traps, so they should know I'm scary in a fight… ah, well. It's not like I expect it to be a problem. I'm honestly having the time of my life.

"Grr! Hiss! I'm the sky fairy! I'll cook you all into a stew!" I growl, eliciting another round of delighted shrieks.

"Eat Threslets first, sky monster!" suggests one of the children, causing a chorus of frightening laughter.

"Just for that, I'm coming after you!" I respond in my most evil voice, zipping towards the offending Sthrenslian.

The whole group screams and scatters down every which-way, splitting up to flee down different paths in the maze of tunnels. I imitate a Sthrenslian laugh as best I can (hopefully it sounds as creepy to them as it does to me) and zip after, easily keeping pace with my quarry through the scattered tunnels. He runs through circles of tunnels as I cackle madly behind him, buying time for the other children to hide where the tunnels re-converge. As I pass by an intersection they all leap at me, and I purposefully swerve to let the smallest of the bunch hit me with a tackle.

"Curses!" I gasp, wind knocked out of me from the impact. "I have... huff... been captured!"

They all cheer and lift me onto the back of my vanquisher, which I gratefully rest on as the parade featuring my broken body begins. That tackle is gonna bruise.

So worth it, though.

"Momma, momma!" the little one says, still deep in the tunnels. "I caught the sky monster!"

"You did!" his mom encourages absentmindedly, having watched (well, listened to) the whole thing from far above.

"Okay, kiddos, the sky fairy is pretty exhausted," I tell them. "She's gonna need to take a break."

The chorus of disappointed noises hits my heart like a bullet.

"Well... okay. Maybe one more."

The positive energy from that one lucky body is perhaps the only thing keeping me sane, though. My Dire Bork hasn't hatched yet, Squad Evelyn has been having less and less luck finding new organisms small enough for them to eat the deeper they go into the swamp, and The Little Evelyn has been traveling the shoreline, trying to find where the algae bloom that seems to be choking out the expected biodiversity ends. I'm hesitant to head out to the open ocean; while there are no doubt countless organisms out there, oceans are massive, and if I don't know what I'm doing (I don't.) there's a high chance I'll end up somewhere with absolutely fuck-all except water. So I'm looking for some kind of shoreline or shallow-water biome with a high concentration and variety of life, like a coral reef or—wait. What's that patch of color?

I finally distance myself from the purple mass of algae, and now that the water is brighter and clearer I spot many more animals swimming or scurrying around on the ocean floor. That's kind of nice, but none of them are that helpful and there really doesn't seem to be much this close to shore. Glancing out in the other direction, however, something beautiful catches my eye. Something stretching throughout the deeper surf, full of movement and flashes of beautiful color. It's a reef!

I can’t help it. I let out a high-pitched scream, the likes of which hasn’t left my lungs since I was six years old. Holy shit, yes! An alien coral reef, or whatever the coral equivalent was going to turn out to be! This is incredible! I can already spot hundreds of fish from all the way out here, I can't even imagine how much stuff there must be! There has to be something that can save Katrk here, and on top of that I bet it's going to be fucking gorgeous.

I'm not disappointed. Skimming just under the surface of the water, I stare down as the ocean floor curves steeper downwards. Below me, the reef begins, just barely touching this close to shore. The sun still gleams brightly through the waters, and it highlights the most beautiful display of color I have ever seen.

As much as I liked to swim I never lived by the ocean, back on Earth. I've been to aquariums, but I certainly never swam around in them. This is all gloriously new. So much color! It's not like the reefs on Earth, either: the multicolored “coral” is shaped in long, thin spindles that span incredible lengths, sometimes dozens of feet. They seem individually fragile, but they form and grow together into vast, spiderweb-like networks of living stone. The structures are anchored to the ground, growing up from it in long sticks about two fingers thick and randomly branching apart, intersecting with other branches, splitting off again… it all looks so brittle! How does it stay together?

Fish swim not just around but in, over, under, and through the beautiful network of color. Hanging gardens of moss-like growths drape from them, flowing in the current, getting nibbled by smaller fish. A long, pulsing, tube-like creature twists itself among the net, pushing water through its hollow body and trapping the tiny organisms that get sucked in. My eyes spot movement shifting on one of the coral strands; a camouflaged shell creature I wouldn’t have otherwise seen scuttles along the side. And not to mention, every color and shape of fish imaginable swarms the area, swimming and munching and relaxing and doing whatever fish do all day. Most of them swim away from me as I approach, but many don't seem to care, content to hang around as long as I don't make any sudden moves.

This! Is! So! Cooooool!

Okay, first thing's first. I form and lay two more TLE eggs at the edge of the reef zone, trying very very hard not to think about the lubricant that splorted out into the water alongside the eggs which I am now swimming in trace amounts of. I have plenty of biomass and it's important to quickly multiply myself so I can sample things as efficiently as possible. Then I start fuckin' eating, catching and chomping down on every new animal I see as soon as I see it. Swimming through the coral web is like navigating an underwater maze, and I nearly make a game out of twisting, turning, and weaving my way through the beautiful underwater garden when suddenly my back feels like it just caught on fucking fire.

Ow, ow, ow, fuck, shit, stop. I do not have any time to panic. Numb the pain. Investigate the area. Swelling? Inflammation? Puncture? Stupid to be here with just one body, no external reference. Fine. Don't need to see. Focus on cells. Mmm... puncture. Microscopic. Venom barbs on the "coral." Immunoresponse... succeeding. Toxin not lethal in this quantity. I'm fine.

Don't touch the coral, got it. Fuck. That explains why big creatures don't bump into it and break it all, I guess. Well, if it has these barbs it's probably alive, so I guess I'm going to try to eat it.

I follow a tube of coral upwards to a point at which it ends. Hmm... the tip is actually kinda different from the rest! Glossier. Ah well, down the hatch! I chip it off and chomp it down and let my mind shriek with pleasure and comprehension.

It's an animal. A delicious, fascinating, but ultimately very simple animal. The creatures excrete calcified tubes, pushing themselves along as they go. They grow towards others of their kind, finding them in the current through scent, and after months of growth they join together, creating stable connections that enable them to climb higher, fertilize each other, and eventually branch off again. Together, over months and years of effort, they do the work of a single spider in an afternoon... but on a massive scale, creating not a trap but a home for thousands upon thousands of other life-forms.

One of said life-forms being the creature that poisoned me. Tiny and completely separate from the calcite-producing worms that create the network they live on, these microscopic animals have a symbiotic bond with the coral-producers, protecting the networks from destruction with their agonizing venom in exchange for having somewhere to grow and collect plankton that swirls around the ocean.

Mmm-mmm! Pretty yummy, overall: crunchy, and with a kick! I'm gonna name this tasty duo the Spiderweb Snail and its good buddy the Pain Polyp. Two in one! Now let's see if either of them can work as Sthrenslian medicine. Hmm…

The simulation once again says no.

With a pained sigh, I flush away the excess dopamine from my meal and return to eating more new creatures. More time passes, and the sun starts to set. Hours into the night, I still have nothing. The Dire Bork bodies are too big; I miscalculated how long they'd take to hatch and it's unlikely they'll be able to do anything in time. The swamp is a bust. The tunnels are a bust. Even the reef is a bust.

I watch as Healer Katrs starts changing out Warrior Katrk's bandages and poultices, revealing a horrid mound of infected pus that happen to be in the shape of a Sthrenslian. If not for the fact that I have conscious control over my autonomic processes, I would have vomited. The smell is wretched, the infection pooling in wounds all over his body… it's bad. It's incredibly bad.

"It's too late," Healer Katrs grunts. "He's dead."

Time seems to slow down as he says those words. No. False. Liar. Katrk is breathing.

"He isn't," I insist.

"Sure, not technically," the healer shrugs off. "But the infection has progressed too far. Even if you brought me popmold now, I wouldn't be able to save him."

"I… I should have another four hours."

"I don't know what that means, but it doesn't matter. I gave you an estimate. Now I'm giving you the facts. No amount of popmold is going to bring this guy from the brink. All we can do now is hope he doesn't wake up and suffer before he dies."

"No," I say firmly, my mind blank.

"Look, I appreciate that you've been searching for a way to help. I appreciate that you brought him back to us. But this happens. He's dead."

"No," I repeat, snapping my wings out and floating up above Warrior Katrk. "He's alive. He'll stay alive."

Katrs says something in response, but I don't hear him. Every other body I possess goes limp, all of my brains fully devoted to the problem in front of me. He's sick. He has no medicine. I have no medicine. I am not a Sthrenslian doctor. Even with arguably-perfect knowledge of Sthrenslian biology, how am I supposed to help him? He has an infection. He has an immune system. It's losing. What can I do to make it win? I have poison, but it will hurt him as much as it would bacteria. What can I do? If only I knew what exactly the infection was…!

Wait. I'm so fucking stupid. I swallow, staring at the pus-rich discharge of blood and bacteria leaking out from all over his body and twisting my perception to recognize it not as the instinctively revolting substance my human brain evolved to recognize as dangerous, but as the complex microbiome of potential food my new body knows it to be. I can comprehend and produce life on a cellular level.

I can save him.

"Don't touch me while I do this," I order Healer Katrs. "I might hurt you to make you stop."

Then I drop down next to Katrk, bite one of his wounds, and start to drink.