Popular Post Kali Nicholotti Posted December 19, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted December 19, 2021 Two sims spanning much of the mission elapsed time, knit together to create this amazing masterpiece. (( The "Midnight" Planet - Crashed Pod Site; Immediately after the crash )) Amanda fought to open her eyes, but everything was dark and smelled of smoke and burnt metal. Strange colors blurred in and out of existence. A haze of heavy heat pressed on her chest. A weak arm that seemed attached to her reached out, trying to find a way to move in vain. The bustle of worried voices were too distant to be truly real. Finally that flailing hand found something as it dropped back onto the chest of its owner. The physical pain wasn't nearly as much as the shock of realizing how bad it must be if she could only barely feel it until that moment. She had enough medical training, even as a cadet, to know full well the prognosis. She tried to call out. She couldn't. Fortunately, it wasn't needed because a blonde Bajoran ensign was at her side. Amanda almost relaxed - she could remember filling the woman's medical records just recently. Amanda, being the chatterbox about home she usually was, had shared lots about home. Jacin: Hey there. Amanda. It’s Ayemet. How are you doing? Amanda drew a raspy breath in an attempt to reply, only to manage a wet cough. oO How am I doing? I'm dying, is how I'm doing... Oo At first the realization was half-sarcastic, but the severity set in with a wave of panic. She was dying. There was no sickbay to go to. No emergency transporters to rely on. No chance of being resuscitated. This was it. The true final frontier. The one you didn't come back from. A warm hand passed through her hair. It was the kind of thing her mother would do for her when she was young, and it was a small blessing that it kept the true weight of reality from crushing her. Jacin: I know you’re scared ::she continued to lightly caress Crossley’s left hand:: But there’s nothing to be afraid of. You are safe and warm. Surrounded by that bright orange sun that shone down on you that time you went to the Barrier Reef. Amanda grasped onto Ayemet's, as if her grip could keep her tether to the world of the living. She smiled faintly. But she knew the biological processes. She could already feel the slow fuzz of blood loss creeping over her mind, the chemistry slowly diminishing, quieting to a dull unfocused hum. She tried to look at the kind ensign, but the very act of doing so was so very hard... Jacin: You’re not alone. You are about to go on a great adventure. I remember you telling me how much you lived for adventure.I’m with you. Saying with you. You’re not alone. I want to think of your favorite place in the world, the place that makes you the happiest. You’re going there. Amanda nearly smiled her girlish smile, but her body simply wouldn't let her. Just breathing was enough of a chore. Softly, sweetly, the strange air came alive with music. Something familiar, yet not, the Ayemet's voice filled that slow backward slip of the mind and body forgetting it was supposed to be alive. The Bajoran's voice, though hoarse with grief over the inevitable, took her back home. To peace. For a moment she was on a golden beach, a dog running by her side with some kind of green ball in its mouth, a man ahead laughing at her. Amanda was not alone in her memory. Man: Come on Amanda! Do you really want to be beaten in a race with a pug? At last, the night took Amanda Crossley. But it was not the end. (( Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. )) Before all things, there was the Great Light. The Great Light, seeing the totality of darkness and its cruel grasp over the universe, gave its life in a great exhalation that spread a trillion trillion spores across the entirety of everything. In time, its sacrifice would utterly banish the darkness, forcing it to hide from the Light's brilliantly luminous children in the smallest cracks and crevices of space. One child of the Light was bestowed a very particular curse. There was a ball of rock, just inside of it's reach, that stubbornly insisted on hiding so much of its face from the warmth and life the light gave it. So, the child of the Light made a decision to act, unlike many of its brothers and sisters: it would come to inhabit the planet. To give its energy to the primordial life that had just begun to form on the rock. To ensure that even when the skies faced outward to the moonless darkness of space, every corner would be filled with a richness of color and luminous power. In a billion years, this place would be a garden the likes of which would be unimaginable by the curious space-dwellers whose feet tramped the ground, scampering about looking for technology or science to save them when they only needed Light. In another billion years, maybe they too would come to truly understand the Light. For now, their visit was barely noticeable. I had lasted (was going to last?) only a fleeting femtosecond from the perspective of the Light's child. It was like a fly had landed on a dirty plate, only to take off again the moment someone bothered to look, disappearing to wherever it came from. The child of the Great Light rarely took an interest in the creatures that inhabited its planet. Their lives were like the moment a stone dropped into water, the instant it was neither dry nor wet. But everything on this planet was inextricably part of it, and in return it was part of them. Such was the nature of choosing to dwell on this planet, rather than in the high throne of its star. Every living being, from the most humble proto-bacteria to the altogether-too-clever-Zelph had their energies bound up with that of the Great Light's child. Such was its promise to this place. Few entities in the universe understood the importance death had for life better than the Great Light's child. It's own existence depended on the death of another being. Every living creature on its planet depended on the stuff of the Light child's dead brothers and sisters. Every act of creation was equally an act of creative destruction. Little wonder then, that life was short and vigorous on its planet, each cycle giving way to another form of life yet more bizarre and wondrous and complex. Death and life were perfectly balanced, their energies pushing diversity and light to dizzying new heights. The first fleck of rich wet soil had yet to cover the body of what used to be Amanda Crossley, and already her body had been colonized by the spores of at least a dozen different species of fungi - this planet's great recycler of dead things. In minutes, invisible tendrils had already sunken into the decaying flesh around her wound, seeing as it was no longer being used. From there, they followed the highways of blood vessels and nerves, pulled on the muscles, discovering and exploring a shape and structure as alien to them as they were to it. However, a human body does not decay all in one go. As ruined as the vessel the fungi now colonized was, a great deal of material was vastly more useful when supplied with nothing more than a splash of oxygen, glucose, and a smattering of other compounds and minerals that were surpassingly easy to come by as a fungus. In fact, they found that this vessel was capable of emitting tremendous Light along its long inner tendrils, and there was a particularly useful mass of cells that could emit Light at one end, just inside a hard shell. Chemical messengers were dispatched. Enzymes were manufactured. The fungi would work together to supply the cells with whatever they needed. To rebuild. Amanda's life replayed inside her mind as neural bridges were repaired and electrical activity swung upwards. Instead of her father, she saw the Great Light. The sands on her favorite beach were spores of fungus, sparkling and glittering like multi-spectral Christmas lights. The waves of water were the cycle of life and death of entire stars. Instead of her pug, it was a Fungaluf[...]us, playing fetch with a tricorder. The academy, her time on the Arrow - all of it was there, but understood and remembered in an entirely new way. The next thing she knew, Amanda was standing, looking down on her own grave. (( The "Midnight" Planet - Crashed Pod Site; Current Time )) Amanda took a breath on instinct, but she no longer had use of her lungs. An incredible sensation washed over her limbs, simultaneously strong as steel and frail as a flower. She curled and wiggled her fingers, only beginning to grasp what had happened to her. As all beings born of the midnight planet, she shared in the link with the Light that spread through all things, but her new form had only just come into existence and fear was a powerful instinct. That instinct overwhelmed her almost immediately as she saw herself glowing in a thousand different shades. So, she ran as fast as she could into the night. But running couldn't help her escape herself. She didn't make it far. Once she stopped, she finally saw the forest around her for the first time. It vibrated with light. It spoke to her, in a way. She saw her own golden-white light spread out through the sheet of mycelial webbing beneath her. She sucked in the air filled with billions of sparkling spores she couldn't have seen before, feeling her own dual alien nature steadily tangling and welding itself together. Amanda was a branch grafted onto the planet's fungal tree of life. She reached out, and the forest responded to her, breathing with her, living with her, sensing with her - and she with it. A shiver went down her spine. Something was calling her. She stood back up, and a path revealed itself to her, leading back to the camp. Red and white pulsed and flowed through the vines - or at least her perception of them. One step carefully in front of the other, leading back to the camp. Her back shook again, she could hear it this time, a feeling in every one of her bones (or what was left of them). The call was getting louder. Alvarez: MEDIC! A voice from the clearing rang out. A familiar voice, yet one totally alien. She found herself helplessly drawn closer and closer to call, despite her primal human fear slowly rising again. She didn't even know who or what she was? How would the others react? There was no stopping though. Her new instincts drew her to the call, overriding even fight-or-flight. She continued stepping, until she had to push aside a canvas flap to reach the source of the call. The moment she did, she understood. (( The "Midnight" Planet - Crashed Pod Site )) Amanda - the luminous reincarnate fungal being, not the cadet - saw something very different from anything she could have ever seen when she stepped into that tent. Immediately, she was transfixed by the two-legged, two-arm form laying on the ground, and the lights twinkling inside of that living body. They were brilliant, but erratic, and thousands of spores had landed on him seeking to convert the rapid dimming of death into a blaze of life. She could see them all - it was as if he was covered in sparkling sand. Black tendrils of darkness spread through his chest and head only to be banished back again by the resilient strength of his body. She had been called here to help reclaim dead matter, but he was not yet dead. She could feel the primal urge to feed, to add to the planet's light. So, she stepped forward utterly engulfed in the new instinct, even though part of her knew better. The human part did. She stopped short at the sight of a tall human form in front of her, lit by a passionate and vibrant inner red light. Red like fire. It suddenly got very large, and bared its teeth. The suddenness of it frightened Amanda, who still held onto many of her humanisms. She backed up, uncertain of how to proceed. When she did, she found her cornered by another woman. Soon enough, there was a third woman, and another man. Outnumbered, and her instinct to banish the darkness no less diminished, there was nowhere to go. Alvarez: Crossley? A flash of recognition flooded through the newly-reconstructed gray matter at the sound of that particular configuration of sounds washing across the soft membranes of fungus. Yes. That was her name, once. Jacin: No. The realizations came fast and furious. Her brain had been scrambled, reassembled, parasitized, reincarnated, and experienced many other things that escaped the limited imagination of words. So, it was more a matter of the emergent memories being properly filed away. Or misfiled, as the case may be. As she faced one of the women (her light was dappled and of a most beautiful blend of ruddy, earthen orange and piercing blue like lightning; mixing like oil paints on a palette), her new body responded to the smells of fear and rage that rose in a steam from the other's skin. Jacin: No. The sensation of her light was familiar - that was the only thing keeping the hostility from being responded with like action. There was no escape for Amanda-of-the-fungi from the four individuals now, but this light was a great comfort. Still, Amanda needed to do something about the darkening of the form on the ground. She was slowly coming to understand her own relationship to these creatures around her. That they were somehow close to her. Part of her prior existence. If only she could somehow make them understand... Rodan: Stand down, Ensign. Let's all take a moment... The words bore meaning, even if the even tone carried more weight than the vocabulary, which her mind was still struggling with. But this woman in front of her... She could almost place the connection she felt. Jacin: No. The single sound meant nothing to her. She had to find out why. Why the orange-and-blue woman hated and feared her. Why Amanda felt such a bond with her in return, despite that. So, the fungus did the only thing it knew how to do. It reached out. To touch. To taste. To read. To know. Amanda's arm jerked out instinctively in a flash. The body shrieked in shock by vibrating its skin when it found itself in pain for the very first time with a vice-like grip squishing its tender fungal flesh. Fungus, lacking a true nervous system, had never felt even the slightest discomfort before. The experience was like receiving news that a thousand acres of forest had been squashed and burnt by a meteorite, only a thousand times more immediate. Rodan: That's enough! The standing man intervened, and the red-lit woman's fire turned to a comfortable hearth-glow as she took the woman in her embrace. Somehow, the body knew to relax, to retreat again. As it did, the essence of her living kin seeped into her veins, broken down and integrated into her very being. The dead skin and oils and DNA were read in by the fungus, and she fully understood. These people were once the trees that stood next to her in the grove; their roots were once tangled with hers. Where she had succumbed to calamity and fallen to the forest floor, their trunks still stood tall, their branches still bore leaves and flowers aplenty. Their inner lights still shone bright where hers had faded, only to be re-lit by a million spores. Rodan: Alvarez, get her out of here! Alvarez: ::Quietly. :: You're okay. I've got you. Waters: Response Rodan: Take a walk, get some air. Any: Response Amanda truly understood, finally, what was transpiring. The body felt something else entirely new - a wash of immense guilt. She should never have made a move like that towards someone so afraid. The fungus never before had the ability to understand what it meant to make a mistake. It simply just was. There was no choice in the matter. Anywhere there was death, it would bring back life. Rodan: Did you do this? Amanda's comprehension of the crude auditory language she once spoke was still slowly returning, but she could piece enough together to get the gist. She attempted verbal communication, for her lights clearly could not be read. Given the body lacked any semblance of breath or working lungs, a strange wet bubbling and burbling noise was all the body could manage. Crossley: brrsssbsbb Alvarez: He was like that when I got here. It - :: She nodded in the direction of Crossley :: showed up after I did. Waters: Response Some semblance of calm seemed to take over the tent again, and somehow Amanda understood her new existence was safe again. More than that, she understood that she could not heed the call that still beckoned her. The man on the ground... he still lived. There was no need for his light to leave him. The Great Light had already received its tribute in the form of the flesh she now occupied. She knew she had to help, but how? Her understanding of herself was so limited, how could she give back? She watched the standing man for a moment, his twin stars of light - one a fabulous rainbow of color that somehow didn't mix - trying to do something, but to no avail. Rodan: If he dies, will he transform too? Alvarez: I think we have to assume so... The secret already lay within her. Perhaps it was fortunate that some remaining piece of the woman who once trained to be a physician understood something of the biology of what had happened to her. Now, that knowledge existed on a liminal plane, more like a subconscious suggestion of what to do. Simple chemistry. That's all her body was. The fungi had brought her back because they happened to supply the body with the right nutrients, and because the scaffolding her old body provided gave a new way for the fungus to cooperate and understand itself. The tools already existed quite literally at her fingertips: control of the fungus, control of the body's natural processes, and most importantly the Light itself. Perhaps she could use those intentionally, rather than instinctually. In fact, as the thought appeared, she knew she could. Or rather, her body knew it could. She stepped cautiously forward, not wishing to repeat her mistake. She motioned carefully at the rainbow-man, lightly pushing the tricorder down and away. She wouldn't need it, even if she remembered what the device was for. She could already see the entirety of the problem laid out before her, equally with the solution - now plain as day. She knelt down, and her hand went to the black gash at the doctor's head, covered in a multi-spectral dusting of spores setting to work on someone who's time hadn't yet come. She breathed in their light. Her body accepted at last its true existence. She was the Light. The Light was her. Her form was not limited to the mangled toes and fingers and face of this body, her awareness and existence spread across the entirety of the rock she might have once called the Midnight planet. She drew forth its power, its life and energy, sucking it into herself until the tent became as brilliantly bright as high noon. Jacin :Whispering: It’s healing him. Waters: Response She could feel the presence of the man under her fingertips in her mind too, the beginnings of this planet's invasion of his being. His fear and pain became hers, at least until she transferred a piece of her Light to him, along with the critical biological elements his body needed. It was a trivial gift for a globe spanning network of fungus to give, but a critical one for him to receive. She could feel the spores retreating from him into her. His body stitching itself back together as if observed in time-lapse. In moments, it was over. The man's light was restored to a full, verdant strength. The call had quieted to a steady thrum. One miracle completed, her work continued. Rodan: Oh, boy... She stood again, and stepped to the rainbow-man. She reached forward, her ruined face asking for permission to do the same for him. He did not retreat, which she took to mean that it was given. Again, she touched the invading sparkle on his torso, almost as if in a form of rebuke against the fungus for so rudely going somewhere it should not have. Her power came more easily this time, her bond with the Light and the planet it lived on intensifying with exercise. It was all over within seconds. Amanda understood the reaction as gratitude. She didn't know how to communicate anything back. Rodan: Remarkable! The still-human part of Amanda agreed. The fungal form simply was doing what it always knew it could. Alvarez: Well, then! Why don't we all get in line for a mushroom light pick-me-up! Waters: Response The green-lighted man she'd restored first sat up. She felt a new emotion she'd never known before - something that oscillated between pride and joy at seeing his light and health restored. Ar’Gorvalei: Crossley? There was that word again. She was beginning to understand it as the label that belonged to her before her bark turned to mulch. Alvarez: It certainly looks like her. But it doesn't act very much like her. Maybe we could ask? Ar’Gorvalei: It’s still her, I think, or some part of her. But she can’t speak. :: Looking at Chloe :: Were you able to make the modifications on your crown? Alvarez: If we were looking for something with actual intelligence, possibly sentience, to communicate with, I think we found it… Waters/Any: Response Amanda found herself drawn back towards the orange-and-blue woman. The one she could just barely remember. The one that made her feel comfortable, despite everything. There was a tiny little nut of black hanging just above the woman's belly. She wasn't sure how, but she could vaguely sense the woman's thoughts - something about her was different from the others. Amanda stretched out a hand, offering to dispel the darkness. o0 Broken? 0o Jacin : nodding.: Sorry. She repeated the offer. o0 Mend? 0o Jacin : shaking head: Can’t mend. Broken. Amanda-of-the-fungus considered. She wouldn't do something against the woman's will, however much that absence of light went against her nature. There was another thing that would bring back the light. o0 Time. 0o She reached out, and attempted to comfort the orange-and-blue woman. The one that had been there when her trunk had succumbed to rot. The touch returned was satisfactory reassurance, if only just. Jacin: Sorry. :: She turned to face the others. :: You’re wrong Mr Ar’Gorvalei. It's not Crossley. There’s nothing of her left. It’s the planet. It’s a physical representation of a perfect ecosystem.. She turned to the one whose light leaked from her head into a wreath of light-filled flowers. Jacin: The Crown should work perfectly. It’s not only able to understand. It should be able to communicate on a rudimentary basis. Alvarez: What? How can you know that? Jacin: Response? Alvarez: This stuff is way outside my area of expertise. But I say we try it. How much crazier can things really get? :: She smirked. :: Amanda could only just tell, but she sensed something was afoot by the way their noises had changed. Something possibly very good. She desperately wanted to tell them everything was okay, to explain how much she now knew, and how little she still understood. Part of her still felt that bond with her grove-mates, and wanted to share with them everything. Ar'Gorvalei/Waters/Jacin/Rodan: Response Alvarez: Well, here goes nothing, right? Ar'Gorvalei/Waters/Jacin/Rodan: Response Tag/TBC... Amanda Crossley Former Cadet, USS Arrow Child of the Midnight Planet as simmed by Lieutenant JG Maria Alvarez Operations Officer USS Arrow - NCC-69829 A239710MA0 Wiki Operator 6 Quote Link to comment
Tallera Posted December 19, 2021 Share Posted December 19, 2021 Wow. I don't think my writing has ever been called a "masterpiece" before, I'm truly humbled. Thank you so much! 4 Quote Link to comment
Alora DeVeau Posted December 19, 2021 Share Posted December 19, 2021 Very well written, @Maria Alvarez. And I have to admit, I'm rather fond of the name you chose. (My IRL name is Amanda) 😄 1 Quote Link to comment
Tallera Posted December 19, 2021 Share Posted December 19, 2021 @Alora DeVeau the name actually came from our fabulous ensign @Jicen Ayemet, who introduced this character at the very beginning of the mission in a wonderful sim of her own! 2 Quote Link to comment
Kali Nicholotti Posted December 19, 2021 Author Share Posted December 19, 2021 1 hour ago, Maria Alvarez said: @Alora DeVeau the name actually came from our fabulous ensign @Jicen Ayemet, who introduced this character at the very beginning of the mission in a wonderful sim of her own! Which is also here... 3 Quote Link to comment
Alora DeVeau Posted December 20, 2021 Share Posted December 20, 2021 It's a great name. 😉 1 Quote Link to comment
Jacin Ayemet Posted December 27, 2021 Share Posted December 27, 2021 (edited) Awhh thanks everyone . I was genuinely blown away by @Maria Alvarez writing, and am lucky to be a tiny part of such a talented crew. Edited December 27, 2021 by Jacin Ayemet Adding to comment Quote Link to comment
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