Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

(Rose)

After a few peaks behind us, we lost all sight of Eldorado. We passed by another seed stone, more or less recent, along the bare slopes of the next plateaux.

We didn’t have to get back at Blume for misleading us. That was quite a sight.

We’re back on Earth now.

Walking slowly, and pondering where to go next. I’m still thinking of New York, although it’s a continent away.

Without any other idea to go with currently, we’re heading north.

Our wings travel along, but we’re still walking. There’s no reason in the world to rush. Aside for the pleasure of flying that is.

So sometimes, when we find nice open skies and valleys to cross, we do fly.

As we keep going along the Andes, one evening, Blume expressed a desire.

B – I want to see the Amazon.

R – Oh?

I didn’t expect that. But I can rapidly guess why.

R – Is it for your floral affinities? You want to see how things grow and live in the jungle?

B – That’s about it yes.

R – Now that you mention it. Given how old life and daiûas mixed together can give surprising results everywhere we’ve been... I’m getting curious about how a jungle could have transformed. Any idea Night?

Nightmare ponders. She’s unsure.

N – It’s a very complex environment with heavy competition... So if there wasn’t any complete collapse, if there is still a jungle, I would expect it to appear pretty much the same as before.

It’s pretty down to earth. Either the new elements wrecked it, or they were crushed fast in the existing competition. This is her opinion.

Me and Blume expect it to be a little more whimsical than before, with various new creatures and plants sprinkled all over.

Were I alone and still hundred percent human, I would be a little shy and concerned entering the Amazon. It’s not a kind environment to people like I was.

But as a human-kind daiûa, surrounded by two of the smartest and strongest of them all, I can’t picture anything I should be worry about. There’s no disease they couldn’t cure or gorge they couldn’t pass. I trust them blindly, with my life.

I’m happy of the bonds we share between us.

~

Nightmare isn’t doing senseless killing.

One other day, after a good hunt, I saw her let go of a few boars and little rats or mink that were caught in her net.

We already were carrying about as much dry meat as we could carry.

The bloody grape on her backpack was also quite full.

R – Would you like a day or two to just focus on your experiments? You look like you’re carrying too much now.

N – Hm... Yes. Let’s do that when we next make good camp.

She has too many dreams to follow through all of them at once. Travelling. Experimenting. Hunting.

R – How close are you to your elixir?

N – Still farther than I’d like.

The closest thing I know to an all-purpose biologic enhancer is T.I. itself. But she’s pursuing something deeper. The way a seed or an egg-cell works, but purer, faster, more versatile and less dependent of the environment.

Pure life, ready to grow.

Such an extract of concentrated and essential life, it’s beyond my knowledge of biology.

Blume seems to think it’s possible as well as Nightmare though.

B – I would see it as a primeval soup of aminoacids in a solution of lipids and other constituents. You could add some viruses to spice things up. It wouldn’t be a seed of any sort, but rather a cradle where any kind of lifeform could be created over millennia.

R – I think she’s looking for a much simpler philosophical stone.

B – It’s sure that a level of T.I. similar to the artefacts would make it possible. But that’s the flesh of the fruit. The seed is the hard part to conceptualise.

Defining life is already trickier than it sounds. We all know that an abrupt definition will work most of the time, but will also meet a few counter examples here and there.

And T.I. spreads the possibilities even further. We can’t see any common root to it all anymore.

~

I sit on the edge of a bench, beside an old house in the middle of nowhere. We’ve made camp.

It’s still only mountains all around. And just us. The world is so wide.

The pairs of wings are asleep aside me. Even they are some unusual kind of lifeform but alive nonetheless. They’re under control of different bodies.

Nightmare is working behind the house we found, in the small pond that a stream of water created there.

A long time ago, it was probably pastoral and made for cattle to drink.

Today, a strange lady bathes in it, surrounded by large bright red orbs. Some of them float listless above the water and reflect each other.

Strings of blood link them to her. She thinks. She imagines.

And she tries experiments I don’t understand.

The first step is often to remove the colour I notice. The iron complex isn’t the most important thing in these fluids to her. Blume and I take occasional glances at her and chat about it.

Nightmare works from magic, her will turning into reality gradually, so she doesn’t need any tools, only power and patience. She sees things like Blume can, down to a molecular level at will, with something else than eyes. She has other sensory organs that remain on the other side and allow her things only advanced human tooling could challenge.

She’s working meanwhile, on a dream of creating life.

R – Can you really create life ex-nihilo?

B – We can, but it’s very difficult without any template to start from. And intelligence is even harder to craft from scratch. It’s much, much easier to start with pre-existing cells or work, like spores or gametes. They already hold a world of information you’d need incredible dedication to replicate from start.

R – So even gods are at odds with replicating the works of evolution, hm?

B – Even I, as one of the oldest of us, am only alive since a few hundred years. I can do a lot with what’s available to me now, but redoing a billion years’ worth of chemical tweaks is just not worth it. They are huge challenging gaps to go multicellular to name just that one, and shifting metabolic pathways in network. Furthermore, as I live with a consciousness that apprehends time at the same rate as you currently, it would be painful to spend centuries working. The metabolic pathways again, also...

I’m smiling more and more gleefully, hearing the flower in my mind speaking a long monologue of explanations. I kind of missed that.

B – Hey, you’re not listening, are you?

R – No, not really, but please continue.

I lie down while Blume pesters at me.

I’m glad neither of them is as serious and obsessed as they once were.

We’ve all gained a lot of humanity over time.

R – Come have a nap with me, would you kindly?

Blume’s wings flutter and soften. They crawl up along me like a weird animal and slide under the blankets I pull around us. She’s like a pet right now. But human in spirits mostly.

R – How much we’ve grown... Haven’t we Blume?

B – Hm...

I close my eyes. The one thing I value most in nature...

~