17. War is Hell (Patreon)

My hill looks exactly the same as when I left it, which I suppose is only to be expected when all of my enemies live underground. Now, however, I have new ways of seeing.

It doesn't take long to find a hole, and I saunter up to it as Evelyn Bork and stick my tongue down inside. Yes, extending my prehensile tongue down a dirt tunnel doesn't sound very tasty, but I've placed the same whisker structure that the triloweasels use to navigate their underground homes onto the tongue of the Borks. I let out a quick click of noise, and soon my brain is overwhelmed by a host of new and incomprehensible information.

Fortunately, I have many brains. My entire self is here, waiting at the edge of the clearing. I start to identify and decode the sensations of echolocation. Some part of me instinctively references my knowledge of the weasel brain itself, and the moment I begin focusing on that I start to see the tunnel as these creatures do. A huge segment of interconnected passageways fills my mind, and a few clicks later I have not only identified most of the traps around my hill, but I have identified the trappers.

A huge collection of these creatures remain under my home, as if making some new colony. They hear the very sound I use to locate them, locating me in turn, and immediately a contingent dispatches to identify and deal with this new threat. I listen carefully, retracting my tongue just enough to be able to spur it outwards at a moment's notice and grab my prey. My second Bork body is ready and waiting, able to snap into action whenever I need to. It is time.

As soon as the closest weasel gets in range, I strike. My tongue lashes out, grabs a target, and whips back into my mouth, letting me bite down on delicious segmented chitin. Then all hell breaks loose.

I rush the giant EE into position as well. She doesn't have the ability to see within the tunnels, but she does have the ability to grab things with tentacles... and can functionally see into tunnels anyway since I can see them with my Borks. Coordinating between my different bodies is startlingly natural, and when my stomping feet send the rest of the weasel swarm into a tizzy, it's not long before I catch one with that body as well.

My catches shriek and hiss at me, twisting to claw at me, to spray acid at me, to do everything they can to make me hurt before I turn them into Evelyn chow. Unfortunately, I don't have time to eat them. With my Bork I bite down, piercing through exoskeleton and letting acid from my teeth—the very acid these things have been trying to kill me with—sink into the creature's flesh before tossing it behind me, back to my other bodies. A crushing fist to the brain of Evelyn Experimental's catch likewise kills it instantly, and I continue my work.

The weasels scream at me, like a war cry, and I feel an inexplicable indignance as if I've just been insulted. I scream back, letting all my pent-up fury over the past few days be heard in a raging, every-bodied shriek. The sheer volume of my response is enough to send a quake through the ranks of the weasels, but a few more hisses from members on their and courage is restored. I feel a twinge of worry at that, but I have no time to investigate it as the battle starts in earnest.

These damn weasels are smart. Rather than charging blindly through the tunnels I'm camping, they start digging new ones, flanking in and around the areas I control. A few scout groups prod at my range, attaching to each other in interlocking lines like a bridge of soldier ants, preventing me from yanking them away. Damnit, there must be some sort of creature that already tries to hunt the weasels by snaking tendrils down their tunnels. They've previously evolved countermeasures to the strategy I made up, or maybe they are just smart enough to figure something like this out. Still, I bet I can adapt faster than they can. That's pretty much my whole thing.

I can extend my EB tongues a solid eight feet, hiding the majority of them inside a nice little cavity within my body designed for the purpose. This gives me quite a bit of leeway in terms of attacking within tunnels. I understand what these stupid animals want to do to me, and I take advantage of it. I shoot off my tongue and try to grab one of the scout groups anyway, pretending not to notice the tunnelers making new routes with which to flank and attack my prehensile limb. I can hear them just fine thanks to repositioning EB2's tongue close enough to a nearby tunnel. An instant before their flankers surround me in an attempt to grab and attack the middle of EB's anti-weasel weapon, I disengage from my tug-of-war with the scouts, pull my tongue back, and fire it off again right when the flankers emerge. I catch one by surprise, pulling it out as well and adding it to my food pile with an acidic crunch.

Honestly, I should have designed more bodies before heading into this fight. Something that could simply walk into the tunnel and start wrecking shit would allow me to penetrate a lot deeper. I can hear the main weasel colony, and it is well outside the reach of my questing tentacles. So in the interest of a more complete conquest, I start letting EP think about that. I haven't confirmed it in practice, but I am almost entirely certain that any and all of my bodies are capable of the same reproductive feats as Evelyn Prime. Still, with Evelyn Prime's leg out of commission, I don't have much to do with that failure of a body other than breed.

Wait. No, that's not a failure body, I didn't even design that one! Also, more importantly, it's me! I disengage from the fight, partly to give myself a bit of a breather and mostly to tease through that fucking mess of a thought process I just had. I don't need complete conquest, I just want to get these things far enough away from my home that I can feel safe. Thinking about new bodies doesn't help me right now, not unless I intend to disengage for the better part of a day in order to design, create, and hatch them. And Evelyn Prime is me! That aspect of myself is no more a failure than any other part of me, and while that might not be a very impressive qualifier it is one that I am sticking to, dammit. Fuck off, alien instinct! Fuck off, attention deficit disorder! EP's brain is going to focus on decoding the trilowasel brain I ate.

I can simulate how entire bodies will function in reality within my own mind. That's pretty crazy, right? My brain can somehow contain all of the physics necessary to run a tiny, extremely limited universe. There are probably a lot of heuristics going into such a simulation, shortcuts and inaccuracies, little imperfections that make such a ridiculous feat possible. But I know for a fact that I can still do it. What if I take that simulation further? What if I simulate a brain... inside my brain?

I should have the raw hardware to pull it off. I am, of course, many brains, and many of those brains are significantly more advanced than the one I devoured from within my first weasel victim. So let's say that, hypothetically, I simulate this weasel brain. I simulate this brain's body. And I simulate putting this brain's body, with the brain inside, into a situation analogous to my enemy’s current situation. Can I not judge how such a brain chooses to react, and then anticipate the movement of my enemy under the assumption that it will act similarly? It sounds absolutely fucking crazy, but isn't everything I am crazy?

I let EP's body go limp on Mr. Mooshi's back, putting every bit of that body's processing power into the task. And then—

I wake up, the last thing I remember being a rock falling to crush my body. Serves me right for being curious, I suppose. Where am—I am currently fighting a creature of unknown origin, a prehensile predator questing into my territory. My colony family clan surrounds me, I am in a scout group frontline warrior band. Our flanking maneuver has failed, as if anticipated.

It's working! It's actually working! I send EE and both Borks back into the breach, taking the chances I get to snag other weasels and crush them. I'm going to have so much fucking food!

I don't have authority to I'm not a I don't understand what I call my band to retreat.

As my simulation predicts, the weasels quickly start to retreat. I whoop in victory, sending my Borks up the hill to ensure the way is clear before scooping EP up in my big, strong EE hands and carrying myself towards the cave. They're scared! Perfect! All I really want is for them to leave me alone; I have plenty of food from fish and sloths, both of which are much less intelligent creatures. I'd rather eat dumber animals than something like a monkey or a dolphin.

I don't know what that was. Where were we fighting. Where am I. What happe—

How likely is it that you will return?

I'm still retreating. It's important that I think about how likely it is that we'll return here. I hope we don't. I expect we don't. I do not make that decision, however.

Nice! Okay, so I should be home free. I lay EP down in the cave, sending my other bodies to start filling in the many potholes around my hill so that grass can regrow and I don't break another fucking ankle. I suppose I could just halt the mental simulation now, but it's interesting and I don't have anything else to do with that brain anyway. Plus, something is just feeling very off right now. I almost feel like I am the mind that I'm simulating, bestowing on it some measure of personification.

The War Leader will decide where we go from here—

See, like that. I keep thinking of specific aspects of this weird weasel colony as like, a tribe or something.

—as will my mother, the chieftain.

No, no way. These weasels are not people, they don't have a culture. They don't wear clothes, they don't use tools, they don't even have a language, they just hiss and screech.  Like animals.

I will have to speak with her. I seem to be in a walking dream. Maybe I’ve been cursed?

No. No, no, no. This is just me going crazy again, right? I stick my tongue back down the tunnel, trying to listen for hisses and identify the sounds. They're not talking. They can't be talking.

I'm not even a warrior. Mother is trying to shape me into the next chieftain, but I lacked both the skill and the desire to speak for a god.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Hisses ring through the tunnels, glimpses of sound carrying glimpses of meaning. I feed the noises into the simulated mind, converting them through it—through her—into meaning. I start to hear words where there was once only animalistic gibberish. Her species does not have lips, and they have very limited control of their tongues, but they compensate for this in a language that takes relative pitch and duration into account as much as diction. I didn’t notice. That’s why it all sounded the same to me. I never noticed until I knew!

She will scold me when I get home. I can already imagine what she will say.

No please. I didn’t know. Please don't have a name!

"Hsthressis!" She'll snap, knowing full well I hate to be called that. "Were you foraging for roots again? You know that if you spend too much time by the surface—"

I start to hyperventilate, most of my body's sinking to their knees as the tears start. I had one rule. One objective! One thing I assured myself I would never do, and one thing I wanted to find more than anything. My values and my goals were perfectly dovetailed, and I fucked it all up immediately.

"—you'll be killed by a demon."

I wail in despair, feeling the tipping point where my higher functions all collapse into agonizing, paralyzing guilt. I let it happen, I lean into it even, because I deserve it more than anything. Idiot. Bigot. Murderer. The worst case scenario has been under my nose the entire time, and I never had the mind to notice it. I saw some creature acting like a subterranean bug and assumed it was as simple as one. Do I really think that clothes make someone civilized? I'm not even wearing any! Tools? I'm not fucking using any!

I wonder what my mom would even do if I died out here. Maybe nothing. Maybe she'd nab War Leader Talrissark and start a crusade to avenge my death. He'd love that, honestly. I feel bad for any demon that goes up against Talrissark the Purger.

I want to stop, to halt the simulation. I don't want to hear this anymore, I don't want to invade the thoughts of a dead girl, I don't want to know that I murdered someone named Hsthressis and three other people just today. People! I killed people! What kind of fucking pacifist am I? I can't—I can't eat them. I have to bury them. What are their names?

Three bodies flash through my senses, warriors of my clan mangled and broken on the ground. Dead. What are their names? I have to no, I have to think the answer, but I only know one of them. Kisklichna. He's dead? No, no no. This has to be a dream.

No, no no. This has to be a dream. How could I do this. How could I have let myself do this!? I know I'm a wretched failure, but to let my failures extend this far, I—

I hear a crack and a clatter, like falling stone. A vibration runs below me, and the simulation ends the instant my body detects danger. An overwhelming surge of despair drowns out the adrenaline, however, and I make no move to act. The cracking gets louder until finally the stone floor under Evelyn Prime shatters, and I fall.

It reminds me a lot of Evelyn Tinkerbell falling down the pit trap. Yet I am no longer the size of a fairy, and gravity is a harsh mistress to the massive. I land on my back with a sickening crunch, chitin shattering and gravel raining down over my body. I slowly opened my eyes and see the walls of a pit nearly twenty feet deep, the dim light above coming from the mouth of the cave that I, in my arrogance, thought these creatures could never breach. I thought they were too simple. I thought they would not, could not hurt me here. These weasels—no, the Sthrenslians, the name they call themselves, in their language, which is something I now know because I violated the dead brain of a living, thinking person—they are very capable of hurting me. And they will, because they are also capable of love, and I hurt them first.

The walls of the pit are lined with tunnels, and peeking out of each one is a furious, tiny person. The Sthrenslians watch from all directions, cheering and jeering and screaming for justice. My mind starts to compensate automatically, absorbing information and translating their words, their furious cries, their curses and their wails.

"The demon has fallen," the loudest voice of them all intones, though not a single one of the words sound anything like what I would have identified as language a mere five minutes ago. "Now is the time to wet our claws in Sss's glory!"

With a triumphant roar of agreement, they pour from the tunnels, descending on me. I don't move, though I'm not sure I could even if I tried. My ankle is still far from healed and now my spine is damaged. My remaining bodies rush to the lip of the pit, but it is too deep. I can't reach a tentacle down and grab myself, I can't leap down without risking injury, and I can't fly down and expect to be able to accomplish anything with Evelyn Tinkerbells.

Not that it matters. I don't want to move or save myself or do anything at all. I watch the host of furious people, rightfully furious people, swarm over my body. I don't turn off my pain as tendrils yank at my hair, acid burns into my armor, and claws rip into my skin. I deserve this.

I wish I could say the agony brought some relief, like the overwhelming torture releasing some sort of cathartic feeling of having paid my dues, but the pain is neither overwhelming nor satisfying. It just is. My first body is torn to shreds before my eyes, and Evelyn Prime dies.

But as I feared, I do not.