My name is Temrash. The human I live inside is named Tom.
I can't tell you my last name . . . because I don't have one. That's a human thing. Or a Hork-Bajir thing. Yeerks like me just have one name.
We used to have numbers in our names. A long time ago, before my ancestors left our native planet, there were dozens of thousands of Yeerks living in every pool. There were so many of us, we needed numbers just to keep track of everyone. There was a Temrash 111, a Temrash 112, a Temrash 113, and so on.
This generation, there are so few of us left that we don't need to double-up on names. I am the only Yeerk in the universe named Temrash. I am Temrash 001, I suppose.
I lived in a city filled with humans, and none of them knew my name. No one can see me while I'm bonded to my host. When people looked at Tom's body, they had no way of knowing I was inside his head, watching and listening.
It's a lonely way to live. But that's the way it had to be because the Andalites were out there.
Tom walked down the sidewalk, his long legs carrying us through his neighborhood. We passed by a pet dog on a leash, being walked by its human owner - at least that's what it looked like.
"Hey there," Tom smiled politely at the older human woman. But we did a cautious glance at the dog.
We passed someone's front yard, and we noticed a squirrel sitting on a tree branch. It looked at Tom for a second, then it turned and ran up the tree trunk.
They could be anything.
We left the suburbs and entered the downtown area. A stray cat stared at Tom as it relaxed on a window sill. Tom kept walking, though he and I both felt uneasy under its gaze.
We heard wings flapping. Tom looked up and saw a black bird flying across the rooftops. We ignored it. To a crow, Tom just looked like an ordinary human.
Andalites could morph into the shape of any animal they touched. They're as good at hiding as us Yeerks. There were only a couple of them on Earth, so they weren't everywhere. But they were anywhere.
In the old part of the downtown district, we came up to a certain building. As Tom walked he looked around himself, acting casual, checking that no one was watching him - and without breaking stride he turned and went around to the building's back door.
The back door was sealed with a shiny new padlock. Tom took a key out of his pocket and unlocked it.
Again, he looked around the back alley and up in the sky. No creatures in sight - human or otherwise. Then Tom quickly went inside the building and closed the door behind him.
.
The underground Yeerk pool cavern. The Sharing's secret headquarters. Tom wanted to name it "the Batcave" but he was solidly outvoted. Right then, it was mostly a mess of unpacked boxes, but it was starting to "shape up", as the humans say. The core computer terminal was against the wall, and a few long wires connected it to the pool itself.
Tom crouched down with his right ear above the pool. I disconnected from his brain, squeezed out through his ear, and dropped.
This part was always a little scary and fun. For half a second, I was falling through the air. Blind, touching nothing, moving fast and completely out of my control.
Then I hit the surface. I sank into the liquid with a splash. It wasn't water. It was thicker, warm, filled with nutrients, and energized with Kandrona rays. I soaked it up. Once again, I was inside the Yeerk pool.
I couldn't hear Tom's thoughts anymore. I was just me again. Yeerk in body, individual in mind.
I was blind. I was deaf - well, sort of deaf. Yeerks can sense sound vibrations, but it's different from "hearing" as humans know it.
But unlike a deafblind human, I had another sense. Like sonar or echolocation, it told me the distance and the vague shape of things. It was mostly useless in air; I would only notice something that was right next to me. But the range was farther in liquid.
Another Yeerk brushed up against me. They moved to touch their palps to my palps. That's how we talked; we transfered our thoughts through touch. Yeerks couldn't read each other's thoughts as seamlessly as we could connect to a host's brain, but it was enough to communicate.
Every Yeerk conversation starts the same: [Who is this?] We identified ourselves. [Welcome back, Temrash.] I was famous as one of the few Yeerks living outside the pool. They tried to make small talk, but I politely ended the conversation and moved away. I wasn't in the mood to talk during this feeding.
Since I got a host, some other Yeerks accused me of acting, as humans put it, "stuck up". I wasn't, though. I hoped. I didn't think I was better than them . . . but there's no denying I was different. The proof was that I kept thinking in human expressions.
It's easy for a host to imprint on you. Before I met Tom, I didn't realize how easy it was. It was more than just switching my pronouns from "they/them" to "he/him".
Maybe I wasn't a "normal" Yeerk anymore . . . whatever that meant.
.
I wasn't born on the Yeerk home world. I was never in a natural pool dug into rock or soil. Instead, I was born inside a refugee ship traveling through zero-space. It was, as literally as possible, the middle of nowhere. My pool was held in sleek and sterile metal, with a community of about a hundred people, eating artificial sunlight from a generator.
But it had a great computer. I could plug in my palps and upload the words directly to my mind. It was so much more advanced than Earth technology (just saying). I loved reading information that way. I used to read through the encyclopedia for almost a whole cycle at a time.
To be blunt, there was nothing else to do . . . except talk with my Yeerk siblings. And they're nice - most of them - but they didn't have any more to say than I did.
Some of the other Yeerks were fine with the way things were. They're content just swimming in the pool and eating Kandrona rays. Relaxing all day, every day. But I hated it. I hated being stuck inside a pool, inside a ship, in the middle of deep space, and later in the middle of a forest, on an alien planet. I felt isolated from everything.
Yeerks are symbionts. We didn't evolve to stay in our pools forever. We're meant to bond with other creatures and explore the world.
The Ancient Yeerks - the space-travelling Yeerk Empire - took their hosts by force and enslaved them. The Andalites counter-attacked with a prion virus that mutated the whole species. As a result, Modern Yeerks like me have a whole mess of health problems to deal with. Most importantly, we can't control a host who resists us. Even when they don't resist, we don't have the strength to move the body for long periods.
On one side, that might be a good thing. Without the temptation to control hosts by force, it was easier for Yeerks and their hosts to have a peaceful relationship. We could live together as one creature, like the Ancient Yeerks should have done from the start.
But on the other side, that only works if you're lucky enough to find a cooperative host. You don't know what their mind will be like ahead of time. Imagine bonding with another person only to find out that they're evil. Oops! Too late now! You're completely in your host's power. You have no way of stopping them from bringing you away from the pool and starving you to death.
I was unbelievably lucky to get Tom as a host. He's not selfish or xenophobic at all. He has some self-esteem issues because he's, let's say, not a genius. But he'll fight with everything he has to protect those he cares about. And the body itself is nice too. He didn't even plan to become a host, but once it happened he "embraced it with open arms", as the humans say.
I remembered when I first felt that violent current in the pool - Tom shoving his hand in and trying to grab a Yeerk. The other Yeerks were startled and swam away from the thrashing. But I thought: This is my chance! And swam towards it.
In retrospect, it was more likely to be an attacker trying to hurt us than a potential host. I rushed in without thinking things through at all. Maybe it's not just imprinting. Maybe Tom and I were similar from the start.
.
I finished feeding on Kandrona rays. I was good for another three days.
I swam towards the surface. My sonar found the outline of a human ear submerged in the liquid. I pressed myself against the ear, felt for the hole, and squeezed myself into it.
The human ear canal really wasn't designed for Yeerk entry. The first time I made this trip, I basically had to break through by force. I did some damage to the small bones and eardrum, not knowing what they were. Fortunately, they mostly healed, and I now knew how to move them aside without breaking them.
Soon I reached the skull. It had a small hole sealed by a membrane. I slid it open and went inside. I touched the brain and felt the tingle of electricity. I kept moving forward, stretching my body flat, until I was completely inside the skull and covering as much of the brain as possible. I sank down deep into the brain matter, attaching my neurons to its neurons.
Then, I was plugged into the senses. I could feel everything in that body. It's like I transformed into a human. His body was my body. Our body was our body.
This body didn't have sonar. But it had sight, which was much more effective. I could sense things from very, very far away. Even at a distance, I noticed not just the basic shape but precise details. I saw colors and brightness and other things unhosted Yeerks didn't even have a concept of. If I didn't have Tom's memories to work with, I wouldn't even know how to use most of this information.
Another major change was my size. In Earth measurements, as a Yeerk, I was a few ounces in weight and a few inches in length. As a human, I was hundreds of times heavier, and my head was several feet above the ground. Sonar wouldn't even be able to reach that far down.
I was a giant! Even by human standards, Tom's body was above-average height.
[Thank you,] Tom proudly replied after I thought that.
This body was athletic too. Tom spent years practicing sports, which is a type of human game that tests physical ability. As a result his muscles were strong, he could run fast, and he had lots of stamina. Tom was a little vain about his body, but I suppose he was right to be. I was lucky to have a body like this.
It wasn't all good, though. Unlike us Yeerks, who reproduce by fission, humans reproduce sexually. And Tom happened to be at the stage of maturity where he had enough hormones to fill up a pool and spill over . . . The dreams I have been forced to watch. You don't want to know . . .
[I didn't exactly ask for all these hormones either,] Tom often reminded me.
But having a host was more than just a body and hormones. It's connecting your mind to their mind. For three days at a time, I knew everything Tom ever did in his life. I felt his emotions. We heard everything the other thought, sharing information as fast as we could think it. Communication was redundant. Addressing each other was done merely for making conversation. It was a closer friendship than I could ever have with another Yeerk.
It was possible to hide my thoughts from Tom. I think that was normal for the Ancient Yeerks. But doing it all the time would have been so much effort. It felt more natural to just let our minds blend together.
We weren't two separate creatures: Temrash and Tom. But we also weren't one creature. It was a strange middle ground between the two. Only someone who experienced mental symbiosis themselves could really understand.
And I loved it. But sometimes I wondered . . . was it possible to bond too deeply?
When we separated during my feedings, I didn't keep perfect recall of his memories, but I still had my own memories of our time together. They changed my perspective on things.
There were some Yeerks who believed bonding with a host was like being reduced to software for the human brain to use. I dismissed that as paranoid nonsense. But wasn't it true that human culture, and Tom specifically, was rubbing off on me? Was I "going native"?
That never seemed to happen to the Ancient Yeerks. But post-virus Yeerks were almost like a new species. There was little information on the long-term effects symbiosis would have on us.
I wasn't scared exactly, but now and then, I wondered.
Author's Notes: The first scene of Tom walking through his neighborhood was meant to be a parallel to the start of episode 2 of the Animorphs TV series.