*C*O*N*T*A*C*T*
Volos screamed, suddenly engulfed up to his torso in amorphous goo from which sprouted masses of clawed, slimy tentacles.
"Help me! Napir! Get it off me! Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff—" The tentacles branched; the ropey masses wrapped tightly around him and squeezed.
Napir actually heard Volos's bones crack.
The stinking, gelatinous blob heaved amidst a flurry of unearthly roars and insane chittering noises. The monster—it glowed—it glowed like—like—? A sickness—rotting—? Purple and gray and blood red— Glistening mucous dripped. With vile, rhythmic contractions and a burst of unearthly light and heat, it engulfed Volos and his last horrible shrieks.
"Volos! No—" Napir couldn't help him. He turned and ran. It happened so fast. One moment they'd been exploring the crater, the next the terrain had come to horrifying life, had become that—that thing. He had to get away—
The landscape before him morphed into another incomprehensible monster that rose up, blocking his escape. Roars and piping sounds filled the air as tentacles grabbed him and broke his bones, crushed his chest, tore one arm out of its socket. Blood sprayed. He screamed in agony, and his last sight was of eldritch light and the obscene, crawling flesh transforming into a giant, toothy maw that came down over him.
Panic. Screams. Horror. Pain. Denial. All nothing more than the last expressions of primal survival instinct.
Awareness of death. Dissolution.
Interesting. Aside from language and the understanding of finality, these were no more sophisticated in their end throes than the other lifeforms on this world.
Absorption and integration were completed.
"Look at that, Volos. It goes on forever!" Napir exclaimed, his voice shrill with excitement and horror combined. He leaned heavily on his walking staff, gaping at the broken landscape.
From his vantage point on a rock outcropping at the cliff edge of the impact crater, Volos surveyed the near-endless devastation. "That must have been a huge meteorite. It created such a giant wound in the land," he said to his cousin and best friend. "Bigger than the Elders realized, I think."
"A lot bigger. No wonder the Lifestream is so—so agitated. The Planet must be in agony." Napir's eyes followed the wild, green flows of spirit energy, lingering on the glowing fountains and wells, at the small, newly forming crystals. "Look at how it's hemorrhaging so much of its power just into this site. It's sucking life energy from the rest of the continent and even draining some from everywhere else in order to heal itself. It must be a crippling injury!"
Volos understood his older cousin's concern. The Lifestream's display was beautiful—and utterly horrible when one considered what it really meant.
Napir went silent for a moment, rubbing his mouth. "No wonder the Elders sent us out here after they did that Planet Reading. This must be why the Knowlespole is getting cold so fast out of season. This injury could traumatize the Planet for millennia if it doesn't heal properly. It's...it's like it's bleeding out. Dying." He shook his head. "Look how hard it's working to staunch the flow."
"And failing. We need to do something." Of that Volos was absolutely certain. A wound this large to the Planet—the consequences were probably as bad as Napir thought. They might even be far worse.
"We're just scouts," Napir said helplessly, looking like he wanted to jump into the middle of all that green energy and direct it all by himself. He always did have a better sense of the Planet's life and rhythms than Volos. Some might say rather uncharitably that he was oversensitive where the Planet was concerned. "The Planet told the Elders that something fell from the sky, a meteorite, and it made this wound, but... We need to report back. The clans are gathering, the ones here on this continent have already started the healing rites, but none of them know how bad it really is. They just know the Planet is crying."
Volos agreed, but they needed to be more thorough before they returned to the capital city. The Elders had sent them to investigate, so investigate they would. There was no sense in bringing thousands of Cetra to the crater without knowing exactly what they would be up against. Precious time would be wasted if they all needed to investigate before they began, and with that many Cetra in one place, even the capital city that could accommodate multitudes—it would be chaos. The wound was horrific—that much was obvious—but how far did it reach, really? Did it extend underground? Had more than one meteorite penetrated the Planet? "We should examine more closely what is happening here, and then inform them. Our people will help the Planet heal, but we need to have some concrete information for them to use."
Memory. Memories. Eyes. Electromagnetic spectrum. Sight. Ears. Air vibrations. Sound. Mouths. Air vibrations. Speech. Language. Vocabulary. Language. Language. Language.
More organs. Specialized organs. Intelligence. Self-awareness. Identity. Communication. Communication on multiple levels. Language. Sensation. Aetheric awareness—Communion?
Young. Older? Younger? Male. Male. Clothing. Staff. Planet. Planet.
Others. Others. Others. Cetra. Cetra. Cetra.
Names. Names for things. Names for lifeforms. Volos. Napir. Cetra. Lifestream. Planet.
Lifestream. Lifestream. Quintessence was Lifestream?
Definitions were required.
Napir sat with his youngest sister, Siliwe, along with Volos and some other cousins in a ring around Grandmother, the most revered elder of their extended family. At his very grown up age of eight years, making him the oldest child in the group, Napir already knew everything Grandmother was telling them. She was his grandmother! He'd heard it all before from her many times, but he listened politely anyway. Some might be new to his other relatives.
"Ah, the Lifestream," Grandmother sighed. "The blood of the Planet, but also its very life, its existence. The repository of the memories and emotions of all life that came before, and the wellspring of all new life that will be born. It is the beginning and the end, the collective gestalt of all that is, the purest essence of the Planet. Listen well, children, for some of you may one day commune with the Blessed and talk to the Planet itself."
Napir repressed a sigh. Grandmother was getting all poetical again. He glanced around at his cousins. They were captivated by the lilting rhythm of her voice and her reverence for the Lifestream. Once Napir had been, as well, but now he'd listened to these stories a thousand times before.
It came from living in an extended household with Grandmother, his parents, himself and his sisters.
"Our souls go there when we die, right? It's the Promised Land?" asked five-year-old Siliwe. She looked excited. "If we talk to the Planet, does that mean we can talk to our gone friends and relatives?"
Napir remembered that Siliwe's best friend Meri had died just under a year ago. Drowned in a river accident, he recalled. Siliwe had been four at the time, and had a child's understanding of death and afterlife. As the elder sibling by three very important years, Napir himself understood much better. He gazed at her fondly and wondered if she'd figure it out this time. Probably not. She was still just a baby, after all.
Grandmother's brown eyes softened. Napir thought she had remembered Siliwe's friend, too. "Not in the way you seem to be imagining, my dear," Grandmother said.
"Then how?"
"Dear Siliwe, when we die our spirits return to the Lifestream, it is true. But we do not remain individuals. We...well, our spirits dissolve, in a sense."
"Dissolve? You mean, like, like, be destroyed?" Siliwe's lips trembled.
"Oh, no, my dear," Grandmother hastened to reassure her. "Our spirits just cease to be individual and isolated. We are all just fragments of the Lifestream, and we return to it when our time on the Planet ends. We join—rejoin—with everyone and everything that has ever existed and ever will exist. We become one with the greater whole. It is a great joy to join with the Lifestream. The attachments of this life fall away, and we become one with the Planet. It is fulfillment. When it happens, it will be natural and wonderful, I promise."
Ratih, Volos's younger brother, ventured, "So we are how the Lifestream experiences life and the world? That's what my father told me."
"In a sense, though if you are chosen to commune with the Planet, you will find that there is much, much more. You learn that, compared to being One with the Planet, our small lives are like illusions or dreams."
Grandmother was getting too metaphysical for these children, Napir thought. They were too young to comprehend the deep mysticism. He recited, "She means our spirits become one with the Lifestream, but when we commune with the Planet we can pick up memories and knowledge of everyone and everything throughout the entire history of the world that came before us."
Grandmother's lips twitched, but she nodded solemnly. "Yes, Napir. But again, there is much more than that. It is too great for our limited minds to truly, fully comprehend in its entirety, but basically it is the compendium of all things. All of us, all animals, all plants, even amoebae and bacteria. All life, from the greatest to the most miniscule. The Lifestream is the soul of the Planet, and flows through it just as blood flows through our own bodies. Without it, there is no life, the Planet would die, and everything we are, everything the Planet is—all would be lost forever."
Spirit. Soul. Memories of the dead. Knowledge knowledge knowledge knowledge knowledge. Knowledge of everything on this world. Everything. The source of life. The beginning and the end and the great whole of oneness, of perfect unity.
It had names for things now. Names that belonged to this world.
Quintessence was Spirit Energy was Soul was Lifestream.
All life was Lifestream. This world, this planet, The Planet...
Spirit. Soul. Afterlife. Lifestream. All worlds with life had quintessence—it was a requirement, both for True Life like the One Self as well as for the lesser life that provided nutrients.
As was common throughout the universe, the lesser life engaged in denial of termination, of oblivion, in the cessation of metabolism and, ultimately, all chemical reactions when the energy was gone. So many lifeforms on so many worlds found ways to deny the inevitable. Here, the lesser life found solace for its brevity, the recycling of its energy and chemicals, in...the word used was mysticism? A simple variation on denial of cessation that routinely appeared among the many worlds.
Worlds with life were like the One Self. All portions were part of the greater whole. All individuals were connected. All knowledge was shared. All the pieces that broke away from the One would return when purpose was fulfilled, and all would be One again. Energy recycled. Chemicals recycled. True Life continued, and lesser life fulfilled its role to support and sustain True Life.
The One Self found this world to be like all the others. The Planet, as it was called here—such a simple name—was comprehensible.