Chương 78: 77. Confidence is Apotheosis

"You mock the nature of divinity!"

"To claim to be Perfection is to cease to seek it. This path will lead to shaming our god."

"Amusement. What if I'm just so great that I don't, though? Ever think of that? Amusement. Mocking amusement." Peter you asshole, don't you dare alienate all of the aliens in your colony before speaking more than a few sentences. I know you're doing this on purpose!

"I'm absolutely doing this on purpose, it's just kind of what I do. I don't actually believe myself to be the equal of a god, it merely amuses me to catch people off-guard. Wait. Expletive about biological waste. Expletive about fornication. Can I not even swear in this thing!?" Oh. Alright. He's immediately walking it back. That's not as bad as I was afraid of.

"I'm not walking it back! Well, I mean, I am because it's not really funny anymore, but I have to act like I'm not or the bit doesn't work. Horror! Expletive!"

"…Oh my god," Maria says, standing up as I slither off her lap and grow myself back to normal height.

"This is going to be so much funnier than his asshole class clown persona ever was, isn't it?"

"Query: are you entirely certain your new designs have not resulted in our chosen's madness?" Envy Proves Excellence asks.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I answer back.

"He's just like this. Greetings, Confidence is Apotheosis. You seem to be taking to the transformation well. Requesting location data."

"Sent. Woah! What? Do I have location functionality in my brain? Location functionality. Why can't I say location functionality? Wow we have a lot of workers. I mean workers. This language is stupid. This is so cool."

'Location functionality?' Oh, he's trying to send the concept of GPS.

"It's more like shared proprioception," I answer.

"Agreement. Addition: as a councilmember, your workers are like extensions of your limbs," Blossom chimes in.

"This was difficult for Twisting Scars Reshape Fate to internalize. Use your workers as you will, but first comprehend the needs of your colony before using your colony for your needs."

"But what if I just order all of the unblessed to form a giant living pyramid exclusively because it would be really funny?" Peter asks.

"Disagreement."

"DISAGREEMENT."

"Disagreement.

"Disagreement."

"Motion fails. Workers: maintain your current functions."

"That's lame. My council is lame. This is very exciting." I ignore the byplay, growing myself some wings and launching up into the air to go see the new Peter in the flesh for the first time. I'm weirdly looking forward to this. Plus, he's gonna be absolutely covered in womb goop, so I bet he's gonna want me to help clean that off.

"Yes, please." …Downside: Peter is now listening in on all my thoughts unless I intentionally detach from the entire network. Oh boy. I'm in for some relentless teasing.

"Teasing you stopped being fun when you filled my lungs with mucus. I still have nightmares about that. That was seriously messed up, but I haven't had the courage to call you out on it in the way I think you deserve to be. Wait, not again! Expletive!" What?

"He's right, that was a little much," Maria agrees.

"He's wrong. It was very funny. It would be fine if you do it again." Blossom defends me.

"I'm not doing it again," I sigh.

"Apologies, Confidence is Apotheosis. Arriving imminently." I touch down in front of the towering form of the Queen, her crystalline 'doors' opening up to disgorge Peter from inside herself. He stumbles into the light, shading his eyes with his perfectly normal-looking hand. In fact, all of him looks pretty much exactly the same as when he went inside. It's only through my powers that I can tell he has been comprehensively reconfigured. The similarities to his human form are literally only skin deep. …

None of it is that interesting, however. Amphibious lungs, generally improved physical capabilities, improved and added sensory organs, you know. Basic stuff. Still, it makes sense. He had his opportunity to be anything in the world, and he chose to be himself. What could Perfection love more than that?

"Hey Jules."

"Why did I say that, aagh," Peter smirks at me, trying to lean against his Queen all casual-like. My lips twitch into a brief smile.

"Hi, Peter," I greet him back.

"Sup."

"Oh thank god." I stare at him. His casual grin falters.

"Would you, uh, happen to have my clothes anywhere?" he asks me.

"You're not going to kill me, right?" he asks me.

"Why would you need to worry about that?" I ask.

"Of course I have your clothes." I summon my usual tupperware box into my hand, though it's starting to look a little pockmarked from all the low-level digestion it's being subjected to. Still, the clothes inside are fine, and after slurping up any excess gunk on my brother, I toss him something to get dressed in.

"Thanks."

"Affection. Surprise. She never calls me that."

"Call you what? Brother?" I blink, a bit caught off-guard.

"Huh?" Peter says, poking his head out from his shirt as he puts it on.

"…Never mind," I dismiss. I guess I've never really thought too much about it. Like, I usually only think of Peter as my family in the very technical sense. I'm sure I've referred to him as my brother in front of him before though, right…?

"I'm growing on you, though, right?" he says.

"Like a fungus?" Ack. God, our relationship is going to get so weird now that we can read each other's minds.

"Nah. It's not like you'll find anything but awesome in there."

"Stress. Stress. Fear. Stress. Worry. Stress."

"Wow," I say.

"Was all that confidence really just a front?"

"You wound me, Julietta," Peter pouts.

"How could you imply something so obviously false?"

"It is and it isn't. Confidence is either a coat you wear until it fits or a balloon that rises higher until it pops. It's important, and nearly impossible, to know which."

"Does that tie into your name, newest council member?" Pristine Truths Heal Imperfection asks.

"Surprise! Recognition. I forgot everyone is listening all the time now. This will take some getting used to," Peter says.

"Well, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate mentioned that our names are intended to be a representation of who we are and what we strive for, ideally in the context of our god. And since I'm blessed by Perfection—because like, duh, of course I am—I figure I should name myself around what I think perfection is."

"Appreciation, anticipation, relief. That is excellent logic! Share your thoughts with us, oh newest beloved," Pristine Truths Heal Imperfection encourages.

"Agreement," the other two Angels add.

"Uh… sure? I'm not sure anyone has ever asked me to discuss philosophy before."

"That's because you would have just turned it into a joke," Maria asks.

"Well yeah, obviously. Correction: I have never been compelled to genuinely convey my opinion before. Jokes are easy and fun. Why would I not default to them? I think it is strange that other people don't."

"What does this have to do with Perfection?" Simplicity Made Manifest asks.

"Irritation! I'm getting to it!" Peter huffs.

"I mean, it's not that novel or complicated. Perfection is subjective. Just… self-evidently."

"False. Perfection is a god. Gods exist independent of us."

"So? Gods can, and obviously DO, have opinions. Even Perfection's opinion on the nature of perfection isn't exclusive or definitive."

"That makes zero sense," Simplicity complains.

"For once, I must concur," Envy agrees.

"To claim that Perfection's nature does not define perfection itself is nonsense."

"Ah, but that's the thing," Peter says.

"You… hmm. Irritation."

"Hey Julietta?" Peter asks out loud.

"How do you say 'chucklefucks' in alien smell language?"

"You… don't," I answer.

"That kind of swearing isn't really how the language works."

"Well, I have no choice but to invent the first alien slurs then," Peter nods sagely.

"Please don't?"

"You whose brains produce feces instead of thoughts cannot comprehend it, but our world existed without gods at all for a long time," Peter says.

"But we still grappled with the concept of perfection because it isn't a particularly novel thought. Perfection is something that cannot be improved. Improvements are arbitrary. Perfection is arbitrary. Intelligent and slightly condescending-sounding phrase that effectively means 'my argument wins.'""Quod erat demonstrandum," I say out loud.

"Yeah, that!" Peter grins.

"Of course you know how to pronounce that. Of course."

"However, you failed to logically demonstrate that improvements are arbitrary, or that perfection is defined as something that can't be improved, so your argument isn't really proof of anything," I point out.

"I agree with the conclusion, of course, but still. It lacked rigor."

"More importantly, any conclusion that does not define perfection as the sole domain of Perfection is self-evidently incorrect," Envy Proves Excellence says.

"Look, if you want to define it that way, you're welcome to," Peter says.

"No one is stopping you from trying to figure out and exactly copy Perfection's view on the matter. But would Perfection have blessed me if my preexisting view on the matter didn't contain some level of truth? I consider myself nearly perfect because it brings me joy to do so. I like myself. I like living as myself. Isn't that about as perfect as you could ask a life to be?"

"If enjoyment were all it took to achieve perfection, we would worship Bliss," Pristine Truths Heal Imperfection disagrees.

"But Perfection is beyond any one of the other gods. It is the entirety of the universe acting in accordance with its ideal nature."

"Ah, see, that might be the difference between us, then," Peter says.

"I don't care if the world is perfect. I just want MY life to be perfect. Or to put it another way: a perfect world is a world which optimally benefits me."

"That is not a scalable philosophy," Pristine protests.

"It can never apply to more than one person at a time."

"It doesn't need to," Peter says.

"Your perfect can be different from mine. Additionally, the god of Perfection can probably contain all those different types of perfect simultaneously, right? It doesn't need to be one single thing." I sigh, leaving them all to argue it out. Peter seems to be bonding with his colony now rather than intentionally pissing them off—"That's how I bond, dearest sister!" —and that's ultimately all that matters to me. I think we've successfully won this colony over, meaning we've cleared our first big hurdle.

Now we just have to do it seven more times. Or maybe eight more times? I'm not sure if Maria by herself counts as support from a colony of Legion, but for some reason I feel like including her regardless. Well, it's not important. We can leave things to Peter here. Which… isn't something I ever thought I'd say, but I can… trust him. Right? It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

"Proud of you," Maria says when I fly back to her.

"For what?" I ask.

"For trusting somebody!" she laughs.

"Especially Peter, of all people. I know that must have been hard for you."

"I mean he did leave me to die in an incursion, yeah," I sigh.

"But he also saved Christine and Anastasia from what would have otherwise been certain death, so he's forgiven in my book. Not to mention, he's stuck with us through all of this crazy shit. He walked inside a Queen on nothing but our word. He's… way more reliable than I would have given him credit for."

"…But it's hard, right?" she smirks at me.

"It's very hard," I groan.

"I probably couldn't have done it for anyone other than Peter, but he's just so unbearably smug that I can only tolerate conversations with him in short doses."

"Ah, so you don't trust him, you're just tired of him," Maria nods sagely.

"I can relate. But you love him though, right?"

"Huh?" I ask.

"God, don't ask me that. I don't know."

"Please don't tell me you need your colony to 'empirically prove it' for you," Maria says, narrowing her eyes at me.

"I don't understand love, okay?" I sigh.

"Is that really so weird? There's like, endless volumes of human art and philosophy entirely dedicated to how insanely complex the subject is. If someone says they do understand love, wouldn't it make more sense to assume they're lying and I'm the normal one? I know I love you, sure, but if I do love Peter, it obviously wouldn't be in the same way. Eros versus philia, and all that. I assume it would be philia, anyway. I don't think storge would apply since we were only siblings for three years."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Maria admits.

"Oh, it's the four generally recognized types of love from like, a greek philosophy standpoint. To super oversimplify: Eros is romantic, philia is friendship, storge is instinctual, and agape is divine. The word 'love' is overburdened in the English language. We refer to too many separate concepts with the same designation, which contributes significantly to confusion on the subject."

"…This is another one of the things you've thought about a lot but have never once talked to anyone about, isn't it?" Maria sighs.

"Well, I've gone through most of my life without having anyone that I personally love, while also being told I'm loved by people who very obviously don't care for me all that much. I'll admit I probably have something of a complex about it." See? I can be self-aware. Especially when everyone I know keeps shoving my apparent need to be down my throat.

"Oh, I'm sorry Julietta. I didn't think about that. Is the foster system really that bad?"

"Right now? Yeah, it's pretty bad," I confirm.

"There are too many war orphans and not enough people willing to adopt them. Government-run orphanages are too inefficient, so they did what the American government is wont to do and functionally privatized the whole thing. People get paid with huge tax credits for adopting, and if you adopt enough kids, the government will start paying you. So… yeah, a lot of assholes with no actual interest in raising kids adopt a bunch of 'em anyway so they don't have to work jobs.

It should be a very preventable problem, but there isn't enough oversight right now because it's mostly an emergency measure implemented because our entire society is slowly collapsing."

"That's horrible!" Maria gasps.

"It's not great, yeah," I agree.

"Acts of desperation and necessity rarely are. The best thing we can do to stop it is to stop the war, so… we stay the course. Let's head back to the others and figure out our next move while Peter socializes."

"Oh, fine. Let's go, then." The remaining humans in our group (or at least our remaining non-aliens) are all hanging out near the van. There's not much sightseeing to do in a destroyed city… unless you and your parents used to live here, I suppose. When we get there, Emily is teaching Anastasia to play Chess on a tiny, travel-sized chess set she picked up from a gas station on our way here. Christine, meanwhile, offers advice from the side.

"See, it's called castling because you get to make a little castle out of your pieces to protect the king," she says.

"But it only works well if you haven't moved your pawns on that side too much. You're breaking the walls of your own castle. That's part of why we start in the center."

"This is complicated," Ana complains, wrinkling her nose.

"The king isn't supposed to be able to move two spaces at once, right? But he can here, but only sometimes?" Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"It's because chess got balance patches, basically," Christine says.

"The game is less fun if the king is too vulnerable."

"Christine, I'm still teaching her how knights move," Emily groans.

"None of this is important yet."

"Hey, ladies," I wave in greeting.

"Peter is done, and he's no less sane than before, so we'll be heading out soon. Have the three of you discussed who's going next?"

"I am," Ana says, which both surprises and slightly worries me.

"Are you sure?" I ask her, and she shrugs.

"We think my colony is the closest," she says, "because it only felt like the direction pointing to it changed when we got near here. So… it's more efficient if I go next."

"It doesn't need to just be a matter of efficiency," I insist.

"It kind of does," Emily argues, still looking at the chessboard.

"We've all agreed to this. The order doesn't actually matter. Ana says she's ready, so she's ready."

"None of you have to do this, though," I remind them.

"It's okay if someone wants to back out. And Ana… I know you've never fully been on board with the aliens being our friends."

"I don't like them," she agrees.

"But how am I going to yell at them if I can't talk to them?" Uh?

"Yell… at them?" I ask.

"Mhm," she agrees.

"Mom and dad always said I should use my words when I'm angry. I don't feel bad about not doing it before because I couldn't use my words. But you've been doing it and you're my big sister now and you're right. So I'll do it. I'm going to yell and yell and yell because they're awful and bad, but I'll only kill them if they make me." Oh, honey. I'm… more than a little scared about this. What if she gets hurt? What if it goes wrong? What if she changes in a way we can't fix? She's just a child. Her sense of…

everything, even her sense of self, is still developing. Am I doing something horrible by allowing this fundamental alteration of someone who has yet to fully be? Logically, the answer is no. Logically, I know I've given Ana every option I can to choose what's best for herself, and ultimately, a mistake she chooses for herself is far, far better than a mistake I choose for her. As her guardian, it's not my job to choose for her. It's just my job to help her with whatever choices she makes. But I'm still terrified.

And if anything goes wrong, no amount of support from friends or professional therapy could ever get me to stop blaming myself.

"Hey," Emily says, looking up at me.

"You're doing the shifty thing you do when you're stressed."

"Shifty… thing?" I ask.

"The thing where your face keeps swapping between different people like an AI trying to aggregate the most average human in the world by adding them all together," she answers.

"Also, y'know, I've lived with you long enough to know when you're worried about something, and it's not hard to guess what it is. But… don't."

"Don't?" I ask.

"We both know it's not that simple."

"Sure, but… look. My powers told me Maria would die. She's still here, though, thanks to you. Meanwhile, my powers are not telling me that Ana will die. They are in fact telling me that she's less likely to die if we go through with this, albeit not by a ton."

"Well, I don't just trust your powers to know everything," I say.

"If we can beat bad odds by making the right decisions, we can just as easily screw up good odds by making the wrong ones." Emily sighs.

"You aren't wrong, I guess."

"Yeah, I'm with Julietta on this one," Christine says.

"Reassembling someone's entire brain just feels like the sort of thing that has a billion possible points of failure. I know that's why we've spent so long waiting around here for you to get disintegrated over and over, but it's still spooky. I don't want anything to happen to the little tyke."

"Don't call me a tyke!" Anastasia pouts.

"Peter says that's a slur for ladies who like other ladies." Behind me, Maria tries so hard to hold back a laugh that she nearly chokes.

"Of course Peter taught you what slurs are," Christine scowls.

"I am going to strangle him. Also: no, Ana, it's not."

"Well that's what he said!"

"Yeah, and he's Peter." Ana nods thoughtfully, conceding the point.

"Well, anyway, we're doing me next," Ana says.

"It's not only that I want to yell at people. It also seems like Maria and Julietta are having more fun than everyone else." Behind me, I can feel Maria blush.

"Hmm, for certain kinds of fun, perhaps," Christine agrees mischievously.

"I think it's fairly obvious that Blossom is having more fun than any of us," I deflect.

"Well, her too!" Ana huffs.

"Ooh, yes yes! Blossom want fun Julietta and Maria have!" Blossom's familiar voice chimes in as the Angel's head pops out from behind a nearby building.

"Hello, friends!"

"Were you waiting for a cue before you showed up, or is your timing just another part of you that just naturally exists to embarrass me?" I complain. Now I'm blushing too. Ugh.

"My timing is whatever best for Blossom," Blossom answers.

"If you embarrassed, maybe stop letting embarrassment be so fun?"

"I… I'm like eighty percent sure that isn't actually how your power works." Blossom, of course, just laughs at me, skipping over to us with a cheerful expression.

"We going to Reciprocation next, then?" she asks.

"That's good. Nice break.""'Break?'" I ask.

"You mean like, in negotiations? I suppose a colony of Reciprocation certainly sounds like they'd be amicable to agreements as a general rule."

"Yes, correct," Blossom nods.

"We just walk up and say 'friends?' and they agree and now we friends. Best colony for diplomatic missions. Easy easy."

"That makes sense," I hum.

"I'm a little worried that the general thrust of our mission will be challenging for them. After all, we're trying to form an alliance to force the end to a war. And it goes both ways, right? Be good to allies, be bad to enemies. Reciprocation doesn't seem like they'd be inclined to take the initiative on breaking the cycle of violence."

"Pfft. It fine. You right in your element. We just manipulate them," Blossom dismisses. Oh, that's a good point. If we first establish that we're on a mission of friendship and cooperation, and we give them the 'gift' of their new council member (as much as I hate thinking of Ana that way) and the means to safely integrate her into the colony, they'll be pretty substantially indebted to us. We can just bring up the alliance after the fact, and they'll be religiously obligated to join if it's all we're asking for.

"Wait, if we manipulate them, won't that just encourage them to manipulate us?" Christine asks.

"Isn't that how this all works?"

"Well yeah, but if you're trying to manipulate them, you don't tell them about it," I say.

"That's like, the first step of successful manipulation. Things get way too complicated if you try to manipulate someone who knows you're doing it." Not impossible, sure, but it's generally more hassle than it's worth, especially for something that can usually be avoided by just being polite and not blabbing about how much of a skilled manipulator you are. Most people don't assume you're doing anything like that if you don't give them reason to, because most people don't think that way.

Hell, even people who do think that way often have their guard down, especially if you do them a solid first. I know I'm damn well not immune. I glare at Blossom good-naturedly. She waves. Smug bitch. I can't believe how much I care about her. For the next hour or so we do our best to plan a route. All we have for information is whatever direction Anastasia is pointing in, but overall that's quite a bit.

Wherever we're going, it's southeast of here, and there are only so many places that exact angle could be pointing.

"It's probably Texas," I conclude.

"Dallas, maybe. There was an incursion there eight or so years back, right?"

"Well, there must have been, since it's alien territory now," Emily agrees.

"That'd be… what, maybe an eight hour drive?"

"Nah, everything's farther away in these big states," I say.

"I'd guess more like twelve hours. We'll definitely have to take turns."

"Shame there's no internet out here," Christine sighs.

"Though I guess if we tried to find a route with GPS, it would just tell us to get the hell out of the exclusion zone."

"I mean we could just math out how long it'll take, the atlas is to scale, but ultimately the exact time isn't super important," I say.

"We're not in a big rush right now, even with the apocalypse looming. Better to do this right."

"I just hope we have enough gas," Emily hums.

"It might be worth scavenging for some while we're here. Can you ask if the colony would be okay with Christine disassembling a gas station?"

"Won't work," Christine says.

"Gasoline decomposes. It'll all be gunk by now. I could try to separate out good gas from bad gas, but it's been ten years."

"Eleven," I correct.

"And we stocked enough gas to get us to California and back. We should be fine."

"We stocked enough to get to California and back on a mostly-straight route," Emily corrects, "and my colony was north of our route here, so we'll be zig-zagging on the way back. We should probably get the gas out and calculate how many miles we can safely travel." I sigh. She's right. I wave at Christine, and she obligingly disassembles and reassembles our vehicle, dropping most of our storage at our feet. I get to counting gallons.

"You ladies having fun without me?" Ah, Peter's back. I give him a wave, though I don't look up so I can preserve my count.

"Hey, Peter," Christine greets him.

"We're just doing logistics."

"Hell yeah, talk nerdy to me," he says, rubbing his hands together.

"We think Ana's colony is going to be near Dallas," I say, "mainly because it's the most major city in that direction."

"Aw, man. Why can't we go to any good cities?" Peter groans.

"Because it's America, so there aren't any," Emily answers without missing a beat.

"How did… uh." She trails off, sounding a little surprised.

"Woah there," Christine says, and I feel Anastasia stand up, her body tense. I glance away from my work to spot a massive collection of Raptors emerging from between the various buildings behind Peter.

"Oh yeah! Meet Alpha team, Bravo team, and Sploopy team," Peter introduces them, though he just vaguely waves his hand in their direction rather than actually indicating which team is which. The Raptors move with eerie synchronization, their extra-angular bodies looking almost like something out of a really, really old 3D video game.

"Greetings," I send them, just to be polite. They don't respond.

"Queenie and the boys think it'll be impractical to provide aid or demonstrate their commitment to our cause without a relay system so we can communicate back with them directly," Peter says.

"Apparently the hive mind doesn't work over long distances?"

"Obviously not," I nod.

"Oh yeah, for sure, obviously," Peter agrees mockingly.

"Anyway, the important point is that they're gonna follow us and like, hang out at various points along the way. That way we can play a little game of telephone all the way to this colony and back."

"Peter, we'll be traveling in a van," I say.

"We don't have any room left after packing everything in. There's no way we can bring three squads of Raptors, and there's also no way they could keep up with us."

"They don't need to," he shrugs.

"We just have to teach them to read the roadmap. It can't be that hard, right? We're just sticking to the big freeways all the way there, and as long as they get close enough, it'll work, right?"

"That's… true," I say.

"It seems kind of cruel, though, having the Raptors do that for us."

"Why?" Peter asks.

"It's not like they won't be able to call home if they miss their mommy, that's literally the whole point. They can roam around, forage food, do Raptor stuff, and only ever be needed to pass along messages. It's like, the most freedom any of them are ever going to get."

"What happens to the network if one of them dies?" Emily asks.

"Uh… if anyone else asked that, I would say not to worry, but… there will be redundancies, and everyone will be close enough so that if one of them dies, we'll know it."

"There no need for this conversation," Blossom says.

"If council of Perfection decide it want to do this, it not our place to say no. Not our business. And it a good idea anyway. System has been used to talk Queen-to-Queen in past." I… guess that's all fair. And there's probably little point in asking the Raptors if they want to do this. It's not how they think.

"Agreement. Our task is set." Yeah. That. It still makes me a bit uncomfortable, but… I get it. I've been it. Fundamentally different reward structures hooked up in the brain means fundamentally different concepts of happiness.

"Alright, then," I say out loud.

"If you're ready to go, then… let's go."

"And welcome to the network, Confidence is Apotheosis," I say silently.

"And now I'm finally in exclusive cool kids private chat!"

"Appreciation. Hesitation. I am still adjusting, but happy to be here," Peter says.

"Aww," Maria smiles.

"He really does care."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Emily grouses.

"Oh, don't worry," I say.

"You're after Ana."

"Yippie," she deadpans, heading for the driver's seat. And so our road trip continues. Peter stays chatting with his colony for a little while, seeming to be in high spirits the whole time. Only once we're finally out of range does he quickly start to sag, exhaustion creeping into his features all at once as he lets out a deep breath in his seat.

"Wow," he mutters.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Hmm? I'm fine as always."

"I can finally hear myself think. Yet at the same time, I'm also strangely lonely?" he says.

"Your thoughts betray you, young padawan," Maria hums.

"Reassurance: it is okay to be overwhelmed. I don't have many clear memories of my council, but all that love at once is a lot to handle."

"I don't even know if love was the right word for it," Peter breathes back.

"But when I was trying to annoy them, they knew I was trying to annoy them, and they were usually annoyed by it, but also it was fine? I don't even think Simplicity Made Manifest likes me. But he still cared about me? It was weird."

"It's definitely a difficult bond to describe," I agree.

"You did very well, though."

"Of course I did," Peter grunts out loud. Christine raises an eyebrow at him, and he facepalms.

"Shit! Now I'm doing it too!"

"What's it like?" Anastasia asks.

"I guess you're gonna find out soon, aren't you, kid?" Peter sighs.

"That's going to be so fucking sad. I am going to have to make myself the butt of SO many jokes to get people not to think about how messed up her thoughts are gonna be."

"I knew it!" Maria says, pointing a finger at him.

"You do do that on purpose!"

"No I don't, shut the fuck up about it," Peter grouses.

"All of you are just annoying when you're mopey, is all. It makes me feel bad."

"Huh?" Anastasia asks.

"Forget about it," Peter says.

"You didn't answer my question, though," Anastasia points out, and Peter sighs.

"…You ever have those moments where you're thinking really deeply about something, and your mind just starts wandering and wandering in kind of that fuzzy, ephemeral way where, when you snap back to attention, it feels like you were sort of thinking about three or four things at the same time, but not really thinking about any of them?" Peter asks.

"Kind of?" Anastasia says.

"It's like that," Peter says, "but all the time, and a billion times more. And that sounds bad, but it's kind of fun somehow?"

"It's like always having a rapt audience," he thinks to himself and the rest of us.

"Everyone is interested in everything you could ever say, so there's no reason not to say everything. It feels… good."

"I'm going to go back there, aren't I?" he groans.

"When all this is over. Damn it. I hate caring about near-strangers."

"I could be happy if I never return. But would I be THAT happy? What did they do to me? Do I really want to go back because I enjoyed it that much, or did I just come back wrong?"

"I helped them design everything," I remind him.

"There's no mind control in your head, but there will definitely be some unfamiliar feelings just from the way we had to make your brain capable of the multitasking required for network management."

"So what you're saying is that I DID come back wrong. Awesome," Peter says.

"Admonishment. You humans are always so frustratingly existential," Blossom says.

"All of this 'nature of self' stuff is easy. You are who you are right now, and if you didn't count as you enough to be the same you as before, you would have lost your domain."

"So I'm me according to the god I've gone on record as being willing to disagree with," Peter says.

"How reassuring. But you know what? You've got a point about us dumb humans. I should just quit worrying about it and go with the flow. Unlike… what's her name? Twisting Scars Reshape Fate? Anyway, unlike Dumb Name Has Anxiety, I'm actually pretty good at that."

"Fuck you, Peter," I say, without heat.

"Fuck you, Jules," he fires back. And… fine. I'll allow it. This time.

"And I'll have you know that my laundry list of mental issues does not include anxiety, thank you very much," I say, though I immediately think back to my conversations with Maria and Emily earlier.

"…Probably. If I do have it, it's not crippling, and that's what matters."

"I feel like I should disagree with that, but actually you're so right," Christine says.

"Anxiety I can manage is a billion fucking times better than anxiety I can't."

"Well, if Christine says you've got a clean bill of mental health, then obviously you have nothing to worry about," Peter chimes in, laying the sarcasm on thick.

"Fuck you, Peter," Christine says.

"Fuck you, Christine," he responds.

"Sorry, still gay," Christine shrugs.

"Damn," Peter grins.

"That sucks. You're hot as hell now, too." The genuine compliment affects her a lot more than the barbs ever could, leaving her speechless and Peter beaming in victory. I really don't know what he was worried about. He's obviously still Peter. The banter dies down once it's Peter's turn to drive, Emily starting to fall asleep in the back as the sun goes down. I decide to shrink and give her an extra seat to lie down on, padding onto Anastasia's lap in my familiar feline form, much to her delight.

Of course, any cat form I take has a habit of getting very comfy and very sleepy almost immediately, and it doesn't take many scritches behind the ears for me to start nodding off as well. And as soon as I fall asleep, I wake up. The air is humid. The room is dark. The ground below me is soft, and as I crawl to my hands and knees, I feel it start to swallow them. And yet, somehow, in the middle of all of this, I can distantly feel the rumble of the car moving down the road. Ah.

It's been a while since I've had one of these dreams. I've wondered for a long time what triggers them. I've been mentally preparing myself to be back here for a while, after all. My theory is that this 'dream' isn't a dream at all, at least not in the same way my chats with Possibility are. I think this is my biomass storage, and there's an easy way to check: is there any tupperware in here? I feel out with my domain, but my domain is already everywhere here at once.

This space is a horror show of unrivaled proportions, a veritable mansion of meat and bone and blood. I can hardly blame myself for having been a little spooked by these dreams at first, but now? Now I know there's no place where I could be more at home. More myself. After all, this is me. The fullness of my power. Every bit of mass I have available to me. It's enormous, but the more of it, the better. There. Of all the things in here that I can't fully affect with my power, that one is the most telling. Plastic.

I bring it to myself, growing bioluminescent flesh on the inside of my current room. I've melted almost completely into the floor at this point, my elbows already partly merged with the pool of flowing muscle and skin, so I just extend a few tentacles out of that floor to hold my prize. The tupperware. Previously full of clothes, now empty. Heavily damaged. The entirety of this realm churns, after all, ever moving, ever shifting. Just like me when I lose focus on myself.

With similar focus, I could probably hold anything I want in here forever, as long as I didn't mind it becoming part of myself. Circling back, though. Why am I having this dream again? What's different? I don't even feel tired right now. Maybe a little groggy, but not enough to fall asleep. Perhaps that's exactly it. Maybe this dream happens when the 'me' in here stays awake while my body in the real world goes to sleep. Or, perhaps, if the 'me' in here wakes up while my body in the real world doesn't.

I'm not sure it fits everything, but it's a workable theory for now. To test it, though, I'll have to find my brain. Ah. Easy enough. There's a lot of brain matter in here, after all, but if I just start my search with where my humanoid body was before it sunk into the floor, I find it almost immediately. A fully intact brain, one that feels… off. I start to analyze it, about to take it apart and reconfigure it, when I suddenly get the most foreboding feeling of my entire life. Don't. Don't. Don't.

This, rather than anything else, will truly kill me. The reason I can operate my domain and move my body even when I don't have a brain… is because I do. The modifications I make to my brain to properly control them are letting me do so remotely. From the safety of inside my domain. Was this… my brain? Is this my brain? My real one? My original one, from before I had any powers? When I first shapeshifted it away, did it arrive here intact? This whole time, have I genuinely, actually, unequivocally just been me?

A bump on the road shakes my body on Earth awake, my claws briefly digging lightly into Anastasia's leg before I regain control of myself, questions swirling in my mind. What does this mean? Does it mean… anything? After all this time worrying about who I am, after every repeated mental mantra not to think about unproductive things, do I actually even care if I'm right?

"Somebody wake up Emily to be safe," Peter says from the front seat.

"I think we're getting close."

"What's up?" Maria asks.

"Well," Peter says, "it would appear somebody messed with Texas." I shift myself a bit larger, looking over the seat to see out the front window. And sure enough, off in the distance, we can see Dallas. Or what's left of it, anyway. The Queen sprawls outward throughout the entirety of the city, thin tendrils snaking through the streets and overtop the buildings. Each has one side covered in thin, conical growths like giant thorns, and one side flat and smooth.

Where two tendrils meet they spiral around each other, matching their sides: either both stab the other, or both are unharmed, but one way or another they cling to each other with ferocious tightness.

"Yeah, that's it," Ana says quietly, staring at one of the vast, bleeding branches.

"That's my Queen."