FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The conversation I was engaged in was improving with each passing moment. It was no wonder there was a certain amount of incompatibility in our dialogue; for when you are used to dealing with only one language, the off chance that you'd run across another being with the mental capacity to understand it was pretty slim. Thankfully this strange fellow was quick on the uptake. That bode well for me and my immediate future.

"You. Are. Strange."

"I was just thinking the same thing about you."

"I. Am. Not. Strange. I. Am. The. One!"

He (I call it male for lack of a better term) was quite the surprise.

"I must say that to me you are very strange. I suppose I am strange to you as well." I was keeping to proper speech patterns until he picked up the nuances. Contractions sort of threw him off.

"You are. Strange. You are. Not normal."

He was getting the hang of my means of communication.

"I am normal from where I come from. You are quite the thing to behold."

He was silent for a moment, seeming to rummage through memories and concepts.

"You are different. I have never. Seen your kind before. You are not part of the. Whole."

"The whole?"

"Yes. That is correct. The whole."

"What is the whole?"

"Me. I am the whole."

I believe I sensed something akin to pride in his tone.

"I see. It seems to me that there is an awful lot of diversity in this place. I mean, I don't know what you call them but to my eye there are trees and plants, herbivores and some variety of carnivores, plus who knows what else I haven't even come across yet."

There was a pause as the thing contemplated.

"Trees? You mean the bodies. That collect light from the sky? They feed the portion that you call herbivores."

"Yes, just like I'm familiar with, though I must say that yours are radically different."

"Not different. The same. All are the same."

I was hardly in a position to argue with someone on their own world, but he seemed to have a limited grasp of his surroundings. It was possible that his great size limited his movement. I couldn't say because I had not yet witnessed him moving much more than a tentacle or two.

"If you say so. I don't understand the idea. Everything is different. I mean really, look at all of this biodiversity!"

"Look? Oh, you have. Sensory organs for light. I do not need them."

"I suppose you if don't have a need for them then it's alright. That is too bad for you though for you miss out on a lot."

"It makes a. Difference?"

"I don't know. I can see things and all of the majesty of their colors and forms."

"But all forms are. Me."

He was certainly a cheeky bastard. Of all the things I could have run into, this thing was probably the strangest. I would have never given it a second thought, leastwise in the intelligence department, had it not been for our chance encounter. I mean, after all, I was here just because I had to see this incredible huge thing rising up from the scenery. What were the chances it was going have even a glimmer of intelligence?

I figured he was alluding to the difference between my form and his. It made good sense, because I was the outsider here. I didn't belong. But then, I didn't belong in some of the familiar places back where I had come from either. Earth could be an inhospitable planet depending on where you were on it.

"Fine. All forms are you. When in Rome..."

He spent some time on that.

"Yes. I see your thought. You wish to befriend me. You wish not to. Irritate me."

"Yes, that's pretty much it."

"I do not understand. Emotion."

"It is difficult to explain. Emotions are chemically driven responses within our bodies."

Again there was the pause as he tried to grasp the concept. This took a while as he used whatever constituted brain cells to determine an answer to his puzzle. Time seemed suspended while he mulled over the possible ramifications.

"You. Are you feeling emotion now?"

"Yes I am. You might call if a mixture though; of awe, fear, elation and nervousness."

"Fear? I do not understand."

"Fear is when you are uneasy about something. You may fear death, or fear ridicule or embarrassment."

"I know not. These things."

"Are you saying you have no concept of death?"

"Death? What is death?"

"Tell me you can't be immortal!"

"I can't be. Immortal."

Now he was just taking me too literally.

"I mean, don't things die on your world?"

"Die?" He took a few moments to assimilate that. "No, things do not die."

"Now wait just a moment! I saw plant eaters eating plants, and carnivores eating the herbivores. Don't you dare tell me that things on this miserable rock don't die!"

He was silent for longer this time until I finally propped him. "Well?"

"I was waiting the requirement. Moment."

"And?"

"And. What?"

"I said that things die here, just like they die anywhere else in this stupid universe."

"The concept of dying is foreign to me. There is no death here."

"So if I were to go out there and start shooting things, you're telling me that they would not die?"

Again there was a delay.

"Shooting. A strange concept. Things do not die. I do not die. I always live on."

"Well good for you. What about everything else living on this planet?"

"What about everything else living on this. Planet?"

I was about to show him a few more emotions. He might not like them one bit. "Things are born, things live, and things die."

"Born?"

If he was the only one of his kind, explaining that was going to get tricky."Born. Two of a type of an animal come together and merge their bodies to create a third."

"I comprehend. You bring together two of your kind and make. More?"

"Yes."

"There is only one. I am the. One."

I was beginning to think that engaging with this creature was a mistake. No matter how interesting he might be, in the long run he was going to drive me crazy.

"I suppose it's possible to breed with only one. Some animals on my planet do it, and some plants can be started from cuttings."

"There is only one. I am the. One!"

I think the concept of emotions was rubbing off on him, for I swore he was getting exasperated with me. What could I say? He was as dense as they come. I know what I saw before I came across him. While nothing looked even close to any listed animals from the database, they were obviously animated living creatures. I wasn't going to quibble over defining them. That would take a taxonomist. I was a field observer, a scout if you will. I made notes. I gathered information. Heck, this was one of the first planets I had ever encountered that had anything akin to life living on it and it was enough to boggle the mind.

There was life in the universe, but not as much as was first thought, and definitely not in forms anyone had predicted. For example, there were life-forms on one freezing ball of rock in the Halpion System, but it was silicon/hydrogen based. There was a notation concerning it in the databanks, but the description was hardly comparable to this planet. There had to be thousands of forms here, just like back home. I still couldn't understand how this big moron failed to comprehend the variety that flourished around him.

"Fine. You are the one. I mean, I haven't seen anything else around here that looks like you so you must be the only one."

"Yes. There is only me."

God, this was getting old. "So, what do you do with your time?" It was a stupid question, but I figured the answer couldn't be much more inane than the present conversation.

"Do? I live."

At least I tried to mix it up.

"I mean, do you sing, or make any art, or compose poetry? Do you do anything to entertain yourself?"

Again there was a pause in our conversation.

"I do not understand these concepts. Can you elaborate?"

I did notice his communications were getting better. I thought it over for a while before trying to answer. Knowing what those concepts were in your head wasn't always the same as voicing them out loud. There was so much to say and so few words. A painting was open to interpretation. So were things like the appreciation of gemstones, minerals and fossils. This matter could occupy weeks of discussion.

"I'm sorry, but I do not know where to begin."

"I believe you have. I do not know how smearing pigment on a flat surface is considered better that molding and redistributing yourself, but your world is as you have said. Different."

That was a rather stark determination. I happened to like a lot of the more famous artists. Smears indeed. Then I paused.

"You can change your appearance?"

"Yes. I do it constantly. I found long ago that the best way to exist was to take advantage of. Variety.'

"What can you become?"

"Everything."

I was obviously misunderstanding him. He was huge. He couldn't be everything because some of the things I had seen were very small. And he seemed very much immobile. As it was, I was standing inside him now. It was like being inside a living cavern.

"You simply can't be everything!"

There was a touch of anger in his reply.

"I am! Your words come slowly to me, but I think I can explain. Each thing that you have encountered is me. They are my. Essence. They are all parts of the whole. Some make energy from the. Great star. Some take that energy and focus it and others consume them. They come here and I consume them, and eventually I start the process again. I am me - they are me."

And then he added;

"And now you are. Me."

I should have been more alarmed by that statement, but the thin tendrils that had been working into my skull had an anesthetic effect. Once they had penetrated the bone, his memories and mine became slowly mixed. He had a much larger view of life than I did, for he was truly the size of this planet. He was surprised at the contents of my much smaller brain, which he had to admit was a much more efficient design than his own.

"I will incorporate you, and then I. Can. Be. We."

As my body was dissolved, my mind expanded to a far greater degree than I had ever experienced before. I found that I could move from animated form to animated form. He had been correct. He was everything there was on this planet.

And now I was him.