7. Not Going Crazy (Patreon)

A rush of ecstasy fills my body, one that is quickly becoming all-too-familiar. The grass’ fuzzy fronds tickle my tongue as they dissolve, decomposing cell by cell, protein by protein to tell the story of how they germinate. It's pollen, kind of. The fuzz holds the gametes, which pass their way onto the ankles of animals, brushing through the fields and pollinating as they travel, none the wiser to the stowaways. The long, red blades blow in the breeze, catching glimpses of sunlight that they metabolize into precious, precious glucose.

Ah, photosynthesis. My good friend 6CO2 + 6H20 + (energy) → C6H12O6 + 6O2. Such a well-respected method for sedentary creatures to slurp up energy basically for free. The interplanetary convergent evolution here is hardly surprising, although considering the red coloration, planet Acidsucks clearly hasn't opted for chlorophyll to be a component of the process. I wonder why. Perhaps it simply turned out this way, or perhaps the star this planet orbits is a different enough color for the red pigment to function better than any other.

As incredible and revolutionary as this is, however, the best part of it all is the fact that I can apparently eat plants! I can feel it: I get nutrients from these! I'm not going to starve! I can't help but dance a victory dance at this revelation, cheering and whooping in joy as tears of relief fall down my face. I'm! Not! Going! To! Starve! My happiness is apparently infectious, and a few of the Mooshians start to wiggle their adorable bodies alongside me.

…Eventually, I realize it's pretty darn late in the afternoon. I have the food I need to survive, a bowl of dead bugs, and an egg that I have no idea how to protect or raise and for all I know it's hatching right now oh shit here comes an anxiety attack. Trying to breathe deep, I climb on top of Mr. Mooshi and convince him to head back home with some fresh grass, headpats, and a concoction of pheromones. Now that I think about it, the pheromones are probably making him think I'm his kid. The Mooshians don't seem to be herd animals, since I only see them en masse when they are drinking from the river. They probably only have social instincts for parenting and breeding scenarios, so… yeah. I am probably brainwashing my friend into thinking that I am his freakish, deformed daughter or something like that. Oh boy. I resolve to never think about that again, and then inevitably continue thinking about it.

How do Mooshians raise their kids normally? Mr. Mooshi is kind of big, slow and (though I would never say so to his face) dumb like a cow.  Do Mooshians make milk? Does Mr. Mooshi? Is Mr. Mooshi even male? I don't know how to determine the sex of a Mooshian and I have no intention of ever trying. Any such organs are probably on the underside of the Mooshi anyway, and I have no hope of lifting his fat butt off the ground in the first place. Maybe her fat butt? Whatever, girls can be misters too.

Of course, all this thinking about Mooshian parentage reminds me that I have a kid. Fuck. Am I going to have to name them? Name her? I suppose it might as well be her, considering that I'm apparently a biologically asexual species. Which sort of makes sense, I suppose, considering I get genetic diversity from… elsewhere. God, what am I gonna name her? I can't believe I didn't think about this. What about... Bethany?  Rousseau?  Rusalka?  Rebec—

Woah.

My antennae start to twitch, and a wave of disorientation causes me to fall right off Mr. Mooshi, clutching my forehead. Concerned, he stops his blistering pace and takes about thirty seconds to turn around to face me. Something is wrong. Way wrong.

I feel... I don't even know. Trapped? No, not trapped, I'm still lying here on the ground, clutching my head. I'm stuck in the fetal position, so I stand up... except I don't stand up? No, I do, I mean I'm definitely standing.  I blink and look around, seeing the forest, except I just see blackness. I'm restricted, trapped in cold, wet gunk, yet I sit back down onto Mr. Mooshi's shell without issue. What... what the fuck is happening!?

I stay still, yet I strike out at the darkness with my fist. I hit the inside of my eggshell. That's me. I feel it.

I'm my child.

Okay!  All right!  I can deal with this!  It’s fine, this is fine!

I press on the inside of my eggshell. It feels pretty much the same as it did the first time, with the exception that I'm also a few miles away, simultaneously sitting on a friendly alien and trying not to go completely batshit insane.

Holy shit, I'm two people now. Or am I just one person with two bodies? Oh god, oh god! How does this even work!?

I don't want to be in this egg anymore. I pull back my fist and give it a solid punch. One, two, three, four hits later, it finally cracks. I see with two sets of eyes at once.

Holy shit, this… It’s so weird.  It’s too weird! I look at my hand in front of my face and I look at my hand in front of my face. One is brown like the silt of the riverbed, slightly glossy, covered in gunk. The other is grey, covered in chitin, the hand of the monster I’ve come to know as myself. Both are me! At the same time!

My thoughts have doubled. But it’s still me thinking the thoughts.  It’s loud and confusing! But at the same time, I don’t have trouble understanding it.  It’s just… different.

Disturbing.

Yet kind of exciting?

It’s terrifying.  This is a drastic change to my mind.  My mind is who I am!  If that changes without my consent, that’s a corruption of my very being.

But I’m in two places at once, doing two things at the same time.  My chances of surviving this place have just gone from hopelessly abysmal to genuinely significant. The possibilities of what I may be able to truly do with this fill me with hope.

I step out of my egg while I rest atop my friend, trying not to hyperventilate. I have my bodies each pat their bellies and rub their heads at the same time. I'm pretty bad at it, but each body is no worse than when I only had one of them. It's beyond strange, beyond surreal. It's like… an epiphany, a true moment of clear and perfect understanding, while at the same time being more confusing than anything I've ever experienced in my entire life. …Yeah, that didn't really explain anything, did it?

I look down at my new body while my old body stretches, gets up, and walks beside my first and only friend on this planet. It's easier to walk while I walk, but I don't have to. I look around for threats, investigating the tree canopy as I simultaneously examine my new self.

There are definite similarities to the design I made in my head, but this freshly-hatched body doesn't seem to be fully developed yet. I'd wanted to give this form chitin over its entire body, but instead I don't have any, presumably because I am also under 4 feet tall, by my reckoning. I have a lot of growing to do, so perhaps I will start getting armor once I'm large enough that I won't have to just molt it off again. Still, there are pieces of me that I know I changed myself. My vision is sharper, like I've needed glasses this whole time and hadn't realized it. Wide flippers replace my feet, and both my arms and legs are thicker and stronger than the bug limbs I have been slowly getting used to. Most notably, two tendrils much like the whip eel's pseudo-tongues extend from above my shoulder blades, moving as I will them to.  The muscles controlling these new limbs are both alien and instinctively usable, a disturbing juxtaposition of feelings that at this point I probably just need to start expecting. It's becoming a bit of a trend.

After all, I am starving but I also feel full. One of my bodies desperately needs food, while the other has spent all morning and afternoon stuffing her face. I move my new self back to my cave, consuming the eggshell and left over egg goop for nutrients. When I finish that off, I head out to the hillside to stuff my face with grass.

Calling myself 'myself' or 'my body' is probably going to get real confusing real fast. I need names for my mes. Hmm... How about my original body is Evelyn Prime, because that just sounds awesome, and my new body can be Evelyn Experimental, since I pretty much made it entirely on accident and I have no idea what to do now that I have it.  I will call them EP and EE for short.  Er, I mean I'll call me EP and EE for short?  Gah, whatever!

Lost in general pontification and a mild background level of unceasing existential panic, I... er, as in the EP me, finally make it back to the hill alongside Mr. Mooshi, where I find myself munching happily on the grass that I am currently munching happily on.  ...Jesus christ.

I look up at myself, seeing both of my existences in third person simultaneously. I am a mirror that watches back. I note that the face on my new body is still the same. I guess I forgot to change it.

I approach myself. And, I approach myself. Both of my mes squat down in front of each other. I inhale, then exhale, watching the rise and fall of each of my chests as I feel the air flow within me. I raise my hands, palms forward. Mr. Mooshi watches my ancient, alien ritual with rapt attention, chewing on grass as I chant the ancient words handed down through generations of my people. I clap my hands together to that timeless beat.

"Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man!"

"Bake me a cake as fast as you can."

"Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with B."

"And put it in the oven for me and me!"

The nursery rhyme complete, I engage in a staring contest with myself before busting out laughing, both of me sprawled full-body out on the ground. God, that was so dumb! But just like that, a bit of home is brought to this alien place. Looking myself over, I know there's one more thing I have to do to make myself feel better.

I give myself a hug.

It's awkward and strange. Being both halves of the hug is nowhere near as soothing an experience as having another person. Not to mention, I've always felt a little weird hugging someone in their underwear, which is at best all I can claim to be wearing. Still, it's about the best self-hug I could possibly ask for. It calms me down a bit, and I wipe a drop of water from my eye that accumulated from my laughing fit.

"Hey, Evelyn," I say. "Nice to meet you."

"Yeah," I agree. "Nice to meet you too, Evelyn."

"You're literally going insane," Mr. Mooshi chimes in. "You need to see a psychiatrist."

Yeah. He's probably right. But if I'm going to find one of those, I'll probably need to figure out how to not die on an alien planet first. Retrieving my bowl full of bugs, I devour them all with EE so I'm no longer starving. Still, I want something new. New things taste the best. But where am I going to get something new? ...Hmm. I suppose I can eat plants, so why not eat a tree?

First, a test.  Heading back to the phenomenally shitty nest I made for my egg, I pick up and chow down on one of the branches.

Hmm.

Hmmmm.

It's very... fibrous. I haven't had to poop since I got here, but if anything was going to evacuate my bowels, it would be this. The amount of mass on this thing compared to the amount I can actually helpfully digest is not feeling like a great ratio to me. Still, I pick up another branch and start chewing on that too. The more I nibble on these things, the more I kind of want to down an entire tree. The branch has the beginnings of some neat stuff; bark is a super-cool structure and I'm starting to wonder if the trees have any other cool things like sap. Maybe they have nuts or fruit in some season or another... Damn, I really do want to eat a whole-ass tree.

If I'm going to accomplish this, I will definitely need to dig the tree up. The roots are just as important as all the bits above ground.  Now that I know I can eat plants, however, I should be able to afford the effort required to dig a hole, and it will be so, so much easier to focus on farming harmless autotrophs than to try to hunt down an animal of some sort. Plus, I can maybe cover up the resulting hole and hopefully catch something in a pit trap! Two for one!

Thankfully, while digging up an adult tree would be an insane, many-day undertaking, I'm pretty sure a sapling will work just as well. It's the same composition, just substantially smaller. Getting some nice rock chunks, me and other me start our task of digging up one of the ambitious young trees struggling to grow at the edge of the clearing. It takes a couple hours and some grassy snack breaks (after which Mr. Mooshi seems incredibly relieved, now that his apparent daughters are finally eating something sensible) but eventually I have a small yet deep hole and a delicious, intact shroom-tree sapling.  Down the hatch!

Rigid yet sturdy bark, straight and deep-reaching roots... these strange trees and their lattice of net-like branches seem to hint at the possibility of an aquifer far below, as otherwise I'm not sure how they'd get enough water to survive.  They make nuts when the season is right, which are no doubt carried by countless creatures I've yet to even see and spread around the land. Truly, this tastes like the miracle of evolution.

I sit down, back to back with myself, hugging my knees to my chest. EE burps loudly, the last of the wood dissolving in my stomach. This is it, huh? This is what I am now. I feel like, normally, I would be panicking a lot more. This is absolutely fucking insane, after all. I just cloned myself and ate a god damn tree. Yet all my dumbass brain can think about right now is...

...Did I technically get isekai'd?

I mean like, I did, didn't I?  I am on another world. Normally people get isekai'd to a fantasy world, I guess, so maybe I'm in one of those.  My wacky-ass eating habits sure feel like magic, but somehow I think it's more likely that I'm still in the same universe.  I'm like a hyper-advanced organic bio-lab, or something.  God, I'm so tired. The sun hasn't quite set yet, but between digging this big hole and giving birth, I am about as pooped as a creature that can't poop can be.  I guess things aren't all bad.  I have food, I have water, and I have shelter. I'm not going to die, not unless some alien monster bursts out of the forest and eats me. Which might happen, I don't know, but it can't be that bad of an idea to just take a little nap here, right?

Yeah. I should keep my stamina up.  Trudging up the hill, I collapse down in my cave and prepare for rest. I also trudge up the hill, collapse down in my cave, and prepare for rest. This double-body thing is... I don't even know what it is.

At least it's warmer to have someone to hold, even if it's only me.