2024-06-15 - West

It was not alone. It was not alone! Labyrinth had sensed them from afar once before, barely more than a snippet of existence but now...

It reaches for them, thrumming with fast-beating excitement.

'More! Us!' It sends these words to the others. Language was still a work in progress.

One shivered when the words came into focus, something to grasp onto while me had been resting. It was not part of one, part of those not-ones, the others, that one had come to enjoy watching. Still, the sudden contact startled me, and ripped out a question.

One of many that were and one of many that will come to pass.

‘Us?’

A simple question, testing the water of companionship - one was accepted here?

Words, said-thought-sent by others, startle. The Person-Egg doesn't like this at all – is it too to be studied? When it is the researcher? Unthinking. To be included in a mass when it has only just broken out from being One with the Warm-Mother shape around it? It crackles with sparks in return, no friendly companionship here.

'You. You. I. Separate.'

How small the pool of words-concepts-ideas it has to send back.

'Us!' Labyrinth's consciousness surges forward, excitement quickly turning to insistence. 'Us.'

Did they not see? Mother often left, but this meant it did not have to be alone in her absence.

'Together.'

Despite the previous excitement that one felt upon reaching the others, connecting with them, it quickly became clear that not many wanted the same connection. One shrunk back just enough that the hesitation was now palpable. Would this be some trick? Something hiding another change?

‘Not all of us,’ one settled on, seeming morose and even a little frightened. Were they not meant to be from the same Mother? Were they not meant to want to be together? To be us?

The logic of Input and Output is undeniable, even by the External – but their Output response is disappointing. Only one of them has achieved An Understanding? The Person-Egg is affronted. It rushes back with another quick spark to correct the 'mistakes' of the stronger presence.

'No, no, no! Separate. Beyond together. Unique.'

The sad-morose one at least knows what's right. The Person-Egg softens towards it, Output becoming curious. 'Ideas? Tell.'

It had discovered new feelings over the past week. Now, anger wells up inside Labyrinth at the continued insistence of separation.

It tries to wrap itself around Atom's presence, attempts to twine them both together.

'No.' It seethes at Circuits. It does not like, 'Alone.'

Were the two of them fighting already? Caught between the two opposing forces, one couldn't help but curl in on oneself. One tries so very hard to think, to understand what it is that both are saying, could this be a misunderstanding? Could this be something much more simple than it seems?

'Together but unique,' one insists meekly to the other two. They are separate after all. But they can still be together, can they not? Still be from the same Mother? 'Not alone, but not the same.'

One was not confident in speech, but in listening to Mother, in replicating it as much as possible when one was alone, one was reasonably sure that one can communicate well with these two.

The response continues to be illogical, and the Person-Egg seethes in its own way in reply. Sparks and circuits. Loops of information on repeat to drive home the idea it wishes to convey in. Clearly this is a result of not enough data, and not with its idea, despite both opposing forces being confused.

'Yes-no. Not alone, not together. Nearness...Not connection.'

It is not their fault, the Person-Egg supposes. They just have not been exposed to the right stimuli from Warm-Something to Understand. Perhaps in different places, the order of Input is different...It is a curious thought.

'Know...Warm-Something?' The word comes with all the emotion the Person-Egg remembers of its experience. The feeling of being a part of, the separation, the caretaking, but as though through a pane of glass. Tinged with the Person-Egg's treatment of all memory as merely...Data.

'Mother.' Labyrinth supplies the word with confidence, wrong as it may be. There are feelings that boil beneath its surface, felt as it thinks of the concept. Comfort when she is there. Anger when she is gone. It is the latter that is conveyed most prominently.

Separation. It hates the idea of it and sulks at the mere thought.

011 says, "One curls up miserably, the overload of information causing a particularly ugly sense of vibration. Too much, there's too much going on with the other two, too many sudden-ties and heaviness. Why were they not happy?

'Why not make connection?' one asks quietly, voice practically drowned out by the static of one's own mind, and, one prayed, drowning the others out as well. It was perhaps far better to be alone and eavesdropping, rather than be anywhere close to this center of attention."

'Mother'? The word-thought makes the Person-Egg recoil and finally – finally – stutter into static silence.

How did something else know before it? It does not even think to roll the emotion-thoughts that come with the word around. Their Input clearly has been different – or are their Priorities simply different? A new filter on the same overheard sensation?

'Connection not Understanding. Connection...Connection biases.' The lack of words to go with the ideas makes the Person-Egg more frustrated than before, but the frustration is turned inward at its own lack, not outward at their great collections of Understanding.

Biases? Labyrinth did not understand, and it led to further sulking. This would all be much simpler if it could go back to a time before it held any concept of words, or Others. It slinks away now, searching for She. Perhaps, if their hearts beat together for a few moments, it would find comfort.

This was a disaster, nothing but a disaster. Why did this have to happen? The static only grew worse with the sea of upset that one was currently wading through.

‘We can MAKE understanding!’ One finally snaps, bares its teeth like a caged animal cornered into anger. Were neither of them wanting to cooperate?

Make? Make? The Person-Egg throws itself back at Atom with all the current of an open circuit. Labyrinth escapes only by virtue of their retreat. It wasn't going to chase someone who refused Understanding at all...If the mind-expansion-reaching could be called chasing. But Atom is there and Wrong.

'No! No! Invention? No! Only truth. Existing only.' You cannot taint the Input you have by making up whatever you want! How would they ever know what was true? Circuits is a little storm on the edge of everyone's minds, distraught.

One only responds in kind, the static growing uncomfortable, itching at Circuits’ very being, showing one’s irritation without bothering to respond - or if one did, it wasn’t clear beyond the noise that they let out.

The silence is worse than getting a response, even if it is telling in its own way. Circuits bristles, throws its storm elsewhere, and seethes. If it checks in every now and then afterwards to see if either of the Others has improved their take on the world it cannot be blamed.