One Being to Many

[TheMonotonePuppet]

The writing prompt is this: you are an organism of incalculable size and complexity (how that is expressed is up to you). You go about life as you always have, until one day, through some event (again, this is up to you) the “small” parts that make up you start to gain sentience and/or sapience and live lives of their own. How do you respond? Do you smother this life and keep it apart of you? Or do you let yourself disintegrate into these lesser beings as they are deserving of life? I wish to hear your response and thought process as one of these inestimable beings.

 

[Nolff]

The writing prompt is this: you are an organism of incalculable size and complexity (how that is expressed is up to you). You go about life as you always have, until one day, through some event (again, this is up to you) the “small” parts that make up you start to gain sentience and live lives of their own. How do you respond? Do you smother this life and keep it apart of you? Or do you let yourself disintegrate into these lesser beings as they are deserving of life? I wish to hear your response and thought process as one of these inestimable beings.

So my inner brain cell starts to have brain cells and you ask me whether I'll let my brain cells live by commit die-ing myself or cutting it off my body?

 

[Deleted member 84247]

The void. That is me. I am it. I always was. I will always be. These are intrinsic facets of my being.

Little parts of me drifted. It was though the void itself rejected my unfathomability. But how can I reject myself? The preposterous nature of myself denied me.

That’s why little bits of me went. For them to go, meant that a core tenant of mine ended. Some concord signed by myself long ago drifted away from me—just as those little pieces of me now spread.

They form their own functionality. I know the inevitable conclusion. No, that’s not right. It’s already happened. From my point of view, everything already happened, so this moment is like a spot. I could have seen this moment eons ago, and I could see it as it’s happening now.

Therefore, I know how this ends. The little bits are me, but they’re not quite me. They will forget this part of the veil. I will not snuff out their fires, for doing so would be going against me. If me or I want to split off into several pieces, then so be it.

They will amass new things by themselves, even without my help. Eventually, “I” will fade away into obscurity. However, there will always be a small piece of them that remembers. Deep in their souls they can feel it.

I can feel it. The call of myself. The void.

 

[MintiLime]

They say that a whale’s corpse leads to the bursting of life on the ocean floor.

Am I already dead?

I feel like I am breaking.

Small pieces of me flake off, pursuing their own paths.

I pick at my ‘self,’ grind bits off here, tearing pieces off there. Some begin moving, experiencing on their own. Other pieces stay lifeless and still.

The biological cogs of myself swirl and push and turn to allow perception of what I consider ‘myself,’ if such a thing exists.

I am not quite sure what ‘I’ am, but I do know that I am something.

And that ‘something’ that makes up ‘me’ is changing.

Of course, I had changed before. I had become hot and then cooled, been young and then old, passionate and then dull.

I had been finding ‘myself’ cumbersome recently.

As more and more pieces flake off, I am unperturbed. Perhaps I will be shaped into a smaller and lighter thing, ridding me of the horrible dragging feeling that comes with my mass.

A week passes.
I assist the pieces in leaving me. May we be happier apart. I feel little stirring of what might have been the corpse of joy.

A month passes.
I am half my original mass, that is my most recent mass, that is the greatest mass I had come to be, as up until now I had only become bigger.

A year passes.
I feel a pulsating in my core. I would have once called this fear. I thought I would become lighter and more ‘real.’ Instead, I do not know how much of me was ever ‘me.’

Another half year goes.
Where do my thoughts come from? At which point is there none of me left?

And so the second half of the second year goes.
Do those bits of what was once me know what ‘I’ am?

Would they be comforted to know that I mourn for them?

Another year gone.
I still exist. I do not know how. I feel hollow, my heart having fled. Perhaps this is punishment for not utilizing it.

Years continue to pass.
More and more of me flees, to what purpose I do not know. They never return.

Sometimes I wish they would, if only to take a bit more with them. Do they not desire a greater share of what ‘I’ was?

Do the corpse worms of the gods weep for the flesh they devour?

If so, they would be more feeling than these flakes of mine.

Although, why would they want to have more of ‘me’? Even I did not want me.

Now I cannot tell whether the parts that have left were superfluous or all that I had. Did I ever know? Did I ever care? I do not know. Maybe that part of me has already left.


My perception betrays me. I know not how much time passes. Perhaps that never mattered anyway. I am much silkier now. I am no longer cogs, more of oil’s kin. I seem to hear bits of what once was me. They seem livelier. I hear them as echoes in the depths of a cave, as memories barely recalled upon waking, as sensations described from one lifeform to another: transient, fleeting, barely real.

But I am the one barely real.

Maybe I never was.

Do the corpses of gods cry for themselves or for the worms doomed to eat them?

I do not know.

But they would be more feeling than I.

I never cried.

 

[Nolff]

The void. That is me. I am it. I always was. I will always be. These are intrinsic facets of my being.

Little parts of me drifted. It was though the void itself rejected my unfathomability. But how can I reject myself? The preposterous nature of myself denied me.

That’s why little bits of me went. For them to go, meant that a core tenant of mine ended. Some concord signed by myself long ago drifted away from me—just as those little pieces of me now spread.

They form their own functionality. I know the inevitable conclusion. No, that’s not right. It’s already happened. From my point of view, everything already happened, so this moment is like a spot. I could have seen this moment eons ago, and I could see it as it’s happening now.

Therefore, I know how this ends. The little bits are me, but they’re not quite me. They will forget this part of the veil. I will not snuff out their fires, for doing so would be going against me. If me or I want to split off into several pieces, then so be it.

They will amass new things by themselves, even without my help. Eventually, “I” will fade away into obscurity. However, there will always be a small piece of them that remembers. Deep in their souls they can feel it.

I can feel it. The call of myself. The void.

You are envy, not void.

 

[HelloHound]

Something inside of "me" has shifted, grown in ways I didn't intend. Nothing has grown unplanned so this feels new, dangerous. I focus around it, this shifting mass of what isn't quite me anymore and look until the squirming lines start to show...something.
It's like a cancer, I decided this early on, but one that would be a shame to remove this early. I watch as it gathers more of myself and others it. A porcelain bowl turned back to clay and molded elsewhere.
I grow tired of watching what isn't me, and sleep for a long time until something new is felt. Pain.
What isn't me anymore has grown into a completely new creature, hungry and feasting on my shrinking self. With my final arm I gouge great scars into the gluttonous beast and fling it towards a distant flame, hoping to hurt it one last time as the ungrateful thing consumes the rest of me.
I hope the same thing happens to this cosmos

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

So my inner brain cell starts to have brain cells and you ask me whether I'll let my brain cells live by commit die-ing myself or cutting it off my body?

So what I’m getting from your post is “Hell no! I’m not letting myself disintegrate into a bunch of creatures. Screw their sentience and sapience!

The void. That is me. I am it. I always was. I will always be. These are intrinsic facets of my being.

Little parts of me drifted. It was though the void itself rejected my unfathomability. But how can I reject myself? The preposterous nature of myself denied me.

That’s why little bits of me went. For them to go, meant that a core tenant of mine ended. Some concord signed by myself long ago drifted away from me—just as those little pieces of me now spread.

They form their own functionality. I know the inevitable conclusion. No, that’s not right. It’s already happened. From my point of view, everything already happened, so this moment is like a spot. I could have seen this moment eons ago, and I could see it as it’s happening now.

Therefore, I know how this ends. The little bits are me, but they’re not quite me. They will forget this part of the veil. I will not snuff out their fires, for doing so would be going against me. If me or I want to split off into several pieces, then so be it.

They will amass new things by themselves, even without my help. Eventually, “I” will fade away into obscurity. However, there will always be a small piece of them that remembers. Deep in their souls they can feel it.

I can feel it. The call of myself. The void.

That was many streams of spray paint of color in clouds most puffy! The stars above glimmer appreciably at this. The tongue licks void-condensed lips at the tantalizing taste.

They say that a whale’s corpse leads to the bursting of life on the ocean floor.

Am I already dead?

I feel like I am breaking.

Small pieces of me flake off, pursuing their own paths.

I pick at my ‘self,’ grind bits off here, tearing pieces off there. Some begin moving, experiencing on their own. Other pieces stay lifeless and still.

The biological cogs of myself swirl and push and turn to allow perception of what I consider ‘myself,’ if such a thing exists.

I am not quite sure what ‘I’ am, but I do know that I am something.

And that ‘something’ that makes up ‘me’ is changing.

Of course, I had changed before. I had become hot and then cooled, been young and then old, passionate and then dull.

I had been finding ‘myself’ cumbersome recently.

As more and more pieces flake off, I am unperturbed. Perhaps I will be shaped into a smaller and lighter thing, ridding me of the horrible dragging feeling that comes with my mass.

A week passes.
I assist the pieces in leaving me. May we be happier apart. I feel little stirring of what might have been the corpse of joy.

A month passes.
I am half my original mass, that is my most recent mass, that is the greatest mass I had come to be, as up until now I had only become bigger.

A year passes.
I feel a pulsating in my core. I would have once called this fear. I thought I would become lighter and more ‘real.’ Instead, I do not know how much of me was ever ‘me.’

Another half year goes.
Where do my thoughts come from? At which point is there none of me left?

And so the second half of the second year goes.
Do those bits of what was once me know what ‘I’ am?

Would they be comforted to know that I mourn for them?

Another year gone.
I still exist. I do not know how. I feel hollow, my heart having fled. Perhaps this is punishment for not utilizing it.

Years continue to pass.
More and more of me flees, to what purpose I do not know. They never return.

Sometimes I wish they would, if only to take a bit more with them. Do they not desire a greater share of what ‘I’ was?

Do the corpse worms of the gods weep for the flesh they devour?

If so, they would be more feeling than these flakes of mine.

Although, why would they want to have more of ‘me’? Even I did not want me.

Now I cannot tell whether the parts that have left were superfluous or all that I had. Did I ever know? Did I ever care? I do not know. Maybe that part of me has already left.


My perception betrays me. I know not how much time passes. Perhaps that never mattered anyway. I am much silkier now. I am no longer cogs, more of oil’s kin. I seem to hear bits of what once was me. They seem livelier. I hear them as echoes in the depths of a cave, as memories barely recalled upon waking, as sensations described from one lifeform to another: transient, fleeting, barely real.

But I am the one barely real.

Maybe I never was.

Do the corpses of gods cry for themselves or for the worms doomed to eat them?

I do not know.

But they would be more feeling than I.

I never cried.

Most sinking of sensations, this puppet’s chambers of the heart have been pulled apart like the locules of a pomegranate by an unwittingly callous child.

This was as deeply depressing as I could hope for!

Something inside of "me" has shifted, grown in ways I didn't intend. Nothing has grown unplanned so this feels new, dangerous. I focus around it, this shifting mass of what isn't quite me anymore and look until the squirming lines start to show...something.
It's like a cancer, I decided this early on, but one that would be a shame to remove this early. I watch as it gathers more of myself and others it. A porcelain bowl turned back to clay and molded elsewhere.
I grow tired of watching what isn't me, and sleep for a long time until something new is felt. Pain.
What isn't me anymore has grown into a completely new creature, hungry and feasting on my shrinking self. With my final arm I gouge great scars into the gluttonous beast and fling it towards a distant flame, hoping to hurt it one last time as the ungrateful thing consumes the rest of me.
I hope the same thing happens to this cosmos

And this one makes me scared! Like watching over a mole on your skin that looks suspiciously irregular and larger than it should be, then losing vigilance, and finding it has grown far past its benign state. If you can’t tell, that’s something I worry about a lot. I inherited my grandma’s predilection to skin cancer (lots of moles and freckles, but thankfully none that are obvious on my face), so…
I’m going to have nightmares tonight! Whoopee! *sarcasm*
Great one, HelloHound! *genuine*

 

[Jemini]

The writing prompt is this: you are an organism of incalculable size and complexity (how that is expressed is up to you). You go about life as you always have, until one day, through some event (again, this is up to you) the “small” parts that make up you start to gain sentience and/or sapience and live lives of their own. How do you respond? Do you smother this life and keep it apart of you? Or do you let yourself disintegrate into these lesser beings as they are deserving of life? I wish to hear your response and thought process as one of these inestimable beings.

I am a Sandworm. I live on Arrakis.

 

[theInmara]

The writing prompt is this: you are an organism of incalculable size and complexity (how that is expressed is up to you). You go about life as you always have, until one day, through some event (again, this is up to you) the “small” parts that make up you start to gain sentience and/or sapience and live lives of their own. How do you respond? Do you smother this life and keep it apart of you? Or do you let yourself disintegrate into these lesser beings as they are deserving of life? I wish to hear your response and thought process as one of these inestimable beings.

Oh.

This actually happened to us in real life. Or seemed to.

For most of our life we perceived ourselves as one person. And then, around the age of 40, we started to split off and make our individual selves known. Still with one body, of course, but psychologically we were quite separate. And, over a short period of time, it became clear that there was no original, no host, no one person in control, and that the one person we had thought we were was a collective identity that we all contributed to. This included our sense of singular consciousness, which is a persistent illusion that we can break when we want to (we have many).

At first, it was terrifying and weird, and deeply unsettling, and there were lots of things like blackouts, episodes of amnesia, and other fun stuff.

But, once we accepted it we kind of when back to our original state of being able to pretend thoroughly that we were one person and sharing our thoughts and emotions easily most of the time, only now with the knowledge that we are not. And the "we" and "us" pronouns started popping up in our language more and more, because it felt wrong to use anything else.

We didn't lose anything by accepting it, and gained so much more instead.

We're fortunate, in some ways, in that because we share a body and a brain we have this very physical connection and mechanism where we get to remain connected and maintain the strong group identity that we had developed over our previous 40 years of life. So we're not hit with the dilemma of true obliteration for that "person" and full disintegration.

But, we suggest that, even if it were all entirely physical, if each cell of our body decided to go off and live on its own, there is still a chance that that greater person could still exist.

Every group of humans develops a group identity of sorts, if they are cooperative enough with each other. A team spirit, a national identity, a culture. That sort of thing. And sometimes it can take on a personality and will of its own.

(took your writing prompt and went, "Ooh! Autobiography!")

 

[PancakesWitch]

you've described what's giving birth like

 

[Nolff]

So what I’m getting from your post is “Hell no! I’m not letting myself disintegrate into a bunch of creatures. Screw their sentience and sapience!

Cap, I didn't say that.

Also, @RepresentingEnvy. If you were Good, then change your surename to RepresentingVoid. I dare you.

you've described what's giving birth like

Oh no... What have you spoken of...

 

[greyblob]

This description screams slime mold to me. It's a collection of single-cells. They have a network for communication where each cell can 'talk' but the whole organism respondes.

 

[MintiLime]

So what I’m getting from your post is “Hell no! I’m not letting myself disintegrate into a bunch of creatures. Screw their sentience and sapience!

That was many streams of spray paint of color in clouds most puffy! The stars above glimmer appreciably at this. The tongue licks void-condensed lips at the tantalizing taste.

Most sinking of sensations, this puppet’s chambers of the heart have been pulled apart like the locules of a pomegranate by an unwittingly callous child.

This was as deeply depressing as I could hope for!

And this one makes me scared! Like watching over a mole on your skin that looks suspiciously irregular and larger than it should be, then losing vigilance, and finding it has grown far past its benign state. If you can’t tell, that’s something I worry about a lot. I inherited my grandma’s predilection to skin cancer (lots of moles and freckles, but thankfully none that are obvious on my face), so…
I’m going to have nightmares tonight! Whoopee! *sarcasm*
Great one, HelloHound! *genuine*

Entity 1: I am all.

Entity 2: I am nothing.

Entity 3: I am scared.


The pieces that fleentity 2 converge to entity 1, seeking reunion. Entity 3 seems to be the convergent nexus of the swirling pieces of entities 1 and 2, the most solid and humanoid of the entities.

Our research has indicated that, over time, entities 1 and 2 will exchange energy in a manner most like that of the pair of dying stars, with Entity 1 resembling a vampire star closely.

Entity 3 is perhaps the most permanent of the enities as the pendulum does stay in the middle of its course at all times in terms of average, and in never ending processes of recurrent changes average does seem to be most relevant. The minor moments when either entity 1 or 2 gain full control are brief enough that William Shakespeare would consider it witty (after all brevity is the soul of it). It appears that each complete pendulum swing results in the rebirth of Entity 3 into one of two contrasting forms, each competing to consume the other as the power tilts towards the All Void and the Nothing Shadow.


Entity 1 is associated with the All Void, with characteristics including all devouring, soul calling, and Inevitability.

Entity 2 is associated with the Nothing Shadow, with characteristics including ambivalent bonds, chameleonism, and Dissolution.

It is believed that Entity 1 actively recalls parts of itself along with parts of Entity 2 as an active growth phase. The release of sentient “hunter particles” is due to the need for fresh matter to join the Motherbody.

Entity 2 seems to passively attract pieces of Entity 1 during the “hunting process” of the growth phase. It is believed that this attraction is due to Dissolution’s effects on Entity 1’s “hunter particles” to the chagrin of Entity 2, who then cycles through a self-culling phase of Dissolution.