Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

(Rose)

R – Can’t you use your own?

N – I need to look at the differences.

Our bodies were not born from humans.

They made them. And yet they still hold some unknown secrets, even to her.

Her senses can read inside your mind and your proteins synthesis, possibly down to the atomic level.

And yet...

I sigh. Maybe her brain can see atoms, but not keep track of everything there is to see at once. She has a good intelligence, but maybe not that powerful.

I sigh for something more simple though. I knew this day would come eventually.

Maybe not precisely this one, but one where I would be asked to give a part of my body for an experiment, definitely.

R – The last time a being-like-you took some of my ova, it didn’t end well.

N – You know I’m nothing like them sister.

Her scary monochord tone and the gleam in her eyes are actually quite like a sinister other sister I had, but I promised myself to move on from them. So I sigh again.

R – Well, I’m dry anyway. I didn’t have any menstruation since Russia.

N – It doesn’t mean there isn’t anything useful left inside your ovaries. I just need a few cells.

R – You’re creeping me out! Use yours!

She probably already did.

Her colourful orbs of liquids are cluttered like eggs around the swamp and the cottage now. She’s been multiplying experiments and tests with more water in them.

At least she’s not asking for my blood, but I wish she was asking for that maybe.

B – If I craft copies outside, would that work?

We both look at Blume’s wings, a little surprised. I wasn’t sure on whose side she would lean for. I didn’t expect that.

N – Any ovum will work yes.

B – Ok. I can make them in a fruit then. And Rose’s privacy will be safe.

R – ... Thank you...

Freaks.

Well. Being human and being civilised are two very different things. At least they ask now.

So Blume grew a small red fleshy fruit along the flowers growing again on my chest.

My third ovary grew there, in a matter of days, soon ready to be plucked.

I still had mixed feelings about it.

R – Please don’t make any new copies of me.

B – You think there are more than enough derivatives of Rose already?

R – The understanding of one self is a repetitive task for us two Blume, right?

She mulls it over. What I mean is I often contemplate my own identity and story. The more roses out there, the more blurred and shifting reality is. To some extent.

We know who we are Blume and I. But if I can avoid a new round of confusion, let’s try to prevent it.

~

Nightmare plucked the fruit and dissected it. The seeds were dissolved in different translucent fleshy eggs growing around. Nightmare is actually smiling a lot more lately.

R – Have you found something good?

N – I’d call it a promising intuition. I may have a sight on the fundamental nature of life now.

R – Oh? On a biological ground you mean? Blume thought it would take a billion years in water.

N – Why so long? Well, I’ve broken down our cells and all other lifeforms we encountered, down to their elementary level to study them. Water helps obviously, but it’s definitely not essential, so I can dry the essence into seeds.

B – So what would be the essence of life then?

N – It’s down to chemistry and information. And Rose is right. T.I. is the key that allows me to bypass the current environmental limitations.

Life as Nightmare teaches us, is a self complexifying system of chemical reactions.

N – The conatus is entropy. There is chaos in life itself.

I’m not quite following her, but she looks like she had a breakthrough. She’s... radiant.

N – The enthalpies of the various reactions in our metabolism defines the priorities, the guidelines to our evolution.

She takes a clean slate from the nearest pile and carves some nonsensical segments of curves on it. I can’t read it, but I recognise the pattern. Well, Blume does and I remember as she does.

R – Fractal patterns?

N – Just optimisation, from repeating something with is physical uneven limitations. Patterns rise, and out of them, information.

Something clicks partially with me, but I still don’t understand the bigger picture that Nightmare seems to now enjoy. Her joy is rising as she observes the dissolved flesh of mine in her biological jars.

N – I was right. D.N.A, R.N.A, flora and proteins are irrelevant. Water is irrelevant. And you were right, T.I. can unlock life anywhere. Beings-like-us proved it!

Wind suddenly rises around us Nightmare is doing magic at the highest scale possible, spontaneously.

Night appears to fall too soon around us. Nightmare focuses on the grapes in the small pond. She dissolves everything in loud gurgles.

She begins crafting something while the wind blinds and deafens me around. I’m covering my forehead and eyes.

R – What is she doing Blume? I don’t follow...

B – I don’t know! It looks like she’s making an artefact of condensed T.I.

After a few minutes, the eclipse passes, and the calm weather settles back.

My sister is completely splattered with mud from the pond. She could not care less I can tell.

She holds something in the palms of her hands. I want to see now what it is.

She looks at me.

N – The differences in patterns between you and I... They’re insignificant. It helped me realise, what life is truly about.

She steps toward me. I’m a little scared now.

The details between individual, the genetic variety, is irrelevant she says.

What hasn’t she scratched as useless by now?

R – What is life about then?

N – Nothing.

She opens her hands. At first I don’t see a thing.

But as she picks it up, I notice a kind of transparent pearl. There’s no clear reflection of light on it, so it’s hard to spot.

N – Life isn’t about anything. It’s the chemical path of chaos through entropy, when it reaches sufficient structural complexity. And that is why T.I. can trigger everything much faster. Because it is a direct form of entropy, and time is a manifestation of it.

T.I. can cheat with time and life itself, but only in the way that overall cools down the universe?

I’m still lost. I don’t think I got what she implied. But she’s looking so confident.

She gives me the transparent pearl, letting it fall into my open hand.

N – I will make more.

R – What does it do? What is it?

N – it’s a kind of seed of course. One that will soften the fabric of physics wherever it is planted, thanks to T.I, until chemical reactions start creating a repetitive pattern. T.I. eases their initiation, and then their propagation.

R – So it’s a replicating magic? It’s just chemistry?

N – Essentially yes. With an aim at self-replicating patterns.

R – Where or when is the boundary between chemistry and life then?

N – There is no such thing Rose. That’s because I finally understood it that I was able to create this.

R – This... Can create life, anywhere?

N – Anywhere. It won’t create big animals that take rich environments and time to evolve, but it will create the beginning. Things similar to viruses, bacteria, blobs and archaea, for instance. The thing is, depending on where you activate it, it will structure life accordingly to what is there. Do it here between mud, water and air, sunlight and soil, and eventually you’ll see something grow not too different from what you’re used to. Do it in the sky or inside a rock, and something different will become alive. Do it in the void, and something purely made of T.I. will eventually appear.

It is a bowl of primordial soup in a way, as Blume thought of it.

What I hold seems amazing and a little scary as well.

R – So you just did it? You created the elixir of fundamental life?

N – Yes. And it can have its uses. But now I realise I was getting a little side-tracked from my true ambition with this research.

R – Pursuing the understanding of life itself was still a noble research.

N – Thank you.

R – This... This is amazing. Although, what should we do with it then?

Nightmare snatches it back from my hands with a smirk.

N – It’s not a toy. It’s a tool and a prototype. I’m going to refine it.

R – But to what end?

N – There could be many. One could be your Jovian dream. But mine is to create new birds. With a little more work, this could create animals as large as Snake, out of dust and rocks. It could become a philosophical stone that turns inorganic materials into this planet’s basis for warm life, organic materials. Imagine, new birds born from the rocks of the desert themselves? We could go so far...

Her eyes gleam at the possibilities, that now rest in the palm of her hand.

I grin.

R – Didn’t I tell you before? It’s nice to have dreams.

She looks at me, and the brightest smile follows.

~