odette's liquidy powers include the flowers, now!

   Now the rest of the night wasn’t spent doin’ anythin’ productive. I got drunk, and ate my pizza; the whole damn thing. Did my stomach make its grievances known? Yup, sure as shit did. But with a whatever moments I had before passin’ out were spent savin’ the work on my PC, organizin’ the papers on my desk, and glancing now and then at the portrait of this thing that I owned for whatever fuckin’ reason; I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t say it was mainly so I could bitch at it now and then because what else was I supposed to do, yell in its general direction. Well, yeah I did that too, let’s be honest. And between my drunken belches and grumbles I did eventually manage to get to bed, even if it took a while despite the specter of a hangover possibly loomin’ over me. Now if only I could do somethin’ about the dreams. Thankfully, they don’t happen often, as my “ability” to “tune in” to the Superorganism like some sorta meat-powered radio is…somethin’, that’s for sure. I should probably start my day. Get up you, at least brush your hair and teeth before you leave. But about ninety percent of the time I did it of my own volition. As to how it works? Well, we’ll put a pin in that for later. For now, I had no idea; all I knew was that it worked, once in a blue moon, during an eclipse, on a night when I was sober. The way I saw it was like this; imagine, if you will, receivin’ the entire encyclopedia britannica’s text – all of it – and only being able to make out three sentences at a time. Oh they weren’t consecutive sentences either, no, just three random sentences.
   Toothpaste first, then wet it, there you go. Just try to ignore your reflection please, it’ll be easier. But the dreams – those damn dreams – haunted me when they did happen. They were flashbacks almost, back to that day when I was wired directly to it; and I could feel almost everything. I still wasn’t able to make out what it was thinkin’ on a good day, but that’s different. They weren’t its thoughts – and by gods I’m going to sound batshit insane but hear me out – but they were glimpses into what the experience of being this organism is. This is what teenage me was trying to convey with parts of her writin’, albeit poorly. The sensations that could get through to me were profound, and hard to put into words. Imagine feeling massive-
   Oh gods I. For fuck’s sake… I was reminded of what I had been searchin’ for last night. That is to say, the scale of this thing. Sixty miles across not including limbs, 160 miles with the limbs. That knowledge would not sit well. Stupid idiot. Spit out your toothpaste.
   But, to get back on track. Imagine the state of Connecticut, except it’s alive and sentient. That’s what I was workin’ with. In these dreams, I was no longer just a six-foot-nothin’ human from Dallas; I was – and by the gods this sounds crazy – the superorganism. Not literally, no, but for fleetin’ moments in these dreams I would feel what it feels and as it feels them. I could feel its immense size, its weight, its ‘mood’ state if that was even the right word to use; I could vaguely sense malaise, contentment, and – with my tongue bein’ as limited as it is – its comfort, as well as many other aspects that words alone fail to communicate. But those were all human concepts, and you must never ascribe human concepts to somethin’ so profoundly inhuman. That did not, however, change the fact that those concepts mentioned were how I felt during these dreams; and given both the fact that I could feel what it was like bein’ that thing – like I did that day in ‘07 – and the fact that those feelings were powerfully real, I couldn’t help but make the connection. There was a strange exaltation during these episodes, a relief. A sense of fulfillment, certainty, comfort. It was as if I was back where I belonged. And that was the scary part. Seeing myself as a part of this thing meant to be rejoined to it brought solace, and seeing it and myself as the same thing? That was where it got scary; because that line of thinkin’ brought me a feeling so blissful that even the most open-minded of people would consider thowin’ me in a padded room lest I speak of it too much. Now I don’t think these dreams were me literally hookin’ up to this thing. My guess was that my mind was using the experiences from my time wired up to it and mish-moshin’ them with the effects that normally occurred when I was tuned in to this thing. And now is the part where we oughta get into what I thought it had done to me.
   Teeth are brushed, just get dressed and sit down. While getting dressed like I do every morning I would still be plagued with thoughts of what my – for the lack of a better term – link to this thing both was and meant. The working theory is that it didn’t exchange tissues with me, but that it also had implanted some of its own neurology in me. Assimilation was the term used, or at least it’s what’d come to mind. By this logic it had taken pieces of me almost as if it had been collectin’ samples, then it’d swapped in bits from itself in place of what it had taken. Those pieces would come to form the ballast bulbule tissue in my chest, as well as the alterations responsible for my vision changes. On top of that, it’d likely taken pieces of my neurology and swapped them out too. But I couldn’t begin to guess what that meant. One arm in, then the other, then your head. Right, now you’re all dressed. Just get back to your desk, alright? We’re not finished here…
   At least, that’d been the workin’ theory; to this day even I never knew if it had done so intentionally or not – though that requires it to be able to intend at all – or if what’d happened was simply the result of natural biological processes that the superorganism simply did without thinking much like how we digest food. The only thing that lead me to believe at the time that there could’ve been intention behind it was one particular bit from the disaster report about how people rescued from it had gone back into the thing for reasons unknown; no sane person would willingly give themselves to the maw of that thing. I had surmised that it’s simply curious about us. It sure seemed like it. Curiosity never indicated malevolence or benevolence; I for the longest time and to this day held the flesh pit to simply be indifferent to us, even if teenage me hadn’t written it that way. But curiosity can still be indifferent. What it’d done to me could still be done indifferently. And, most of all, my feelings never once indicated that it’d picked me that day. They instead – when inquired about – gave the impression of right/wrong place at the right/wrong time depending on how you looked at it. Regardless of its view – if the superorganism cared or not – one thing had been made clear to me that day.
   It wants to learn about us, for whatever reason.
   And I wanted nothin’ more than to learn about it to the fullest extent, even it killed me.

also an idea for what Memphis looks like.