Conversation · Insulindian Phasmid

Even when you're sleeping... And when you wake, you carry it around on your neck. With eyes open that cannot help but swallow more behind the mirror. I feel great, mute empathy for you.

It was very disorienting at first, but I'm keeping my shit together.

That must be incredibly hard. The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you. Know that we are watching -- when you're tired, when the vision spins out of control. The insects will be looking on. Rooting for you.

And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral. In honour of your passing. (But not me, because I am just a leaf eater.)

In honour of your shit, lieutenant-yefreitor. Which you kept together in the face of total, unrelenting terror. Day after day. Second by second.

DETECTIVE

ARRIVING

ON THE SCENE

In honour of your will, lieutenant-yefreitor. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second by second.

It's hell. I change my mind. I want to be you.

You want to be a phasmid? Are you sure?

The fuck is happening to me right now?

I don't know. You're just a shadow for me. Far away, faintly transmitting, but for a curious smell.

"Kim. Am I having a violent epileptic seizure?"

"It doesn't look like that, no."

"Okay good. Forget it."

"No. What's going on?"

"I think I'm having a vision. About the final fate of mankind."

"Okay." After a second the lieutenant asks: "Is it somehow related to the case?"

"The case? The case is meaningless compared to this." (Laugh nervously.) "I have totally transcended the case."

"I think you should back away from the unstudied species now..."

"I think we should take the picture -- and then you should back away from the unstudied species."

"No. I told you what it's about. Our fate."

"Sort of."

"Nothing. Just looking at the stick insect. Everything is normal."

"What does it look like?"

"You're just staring at it," he whispers.

"Then, I think I'm having a vision. About the final fate of mankind."

That's insane.

No. You are. The moral of our encounter is: I am a relatively median lifeform -- while it is you who are total, extreme madness. A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet.

The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetricals do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all.

Wait, what is the pale?

It is a nervous shadow cast into the world by you, eating away at reality. A great, unnatural territory. Its advent coincides with the arrival of the human mind.

I don't have that kind of power.

You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing -- just by accident.

...how?

We suspect it will be something like the oxygen holocaust that wiped out anaerobic life 2.6 billion years ago -- when organisms first started breathing. Only much worse.

Instead of air, you exhale thoughts. There are no trees that eat thoughts.

I don't want to know.

Also very, very dangerous.

Worse how?

Everything your eyes touch goes back there -- behind the nerve mirror. What if you blink? Are we still here? (Please don't blink). What if you misplace us all one day -- or just forget?

I have already forgotten the whole world once -- when I drank too much.

So it is already happening. Soon, one of you will close your eyes -- and open them to see that none of this ever existed.

Blink. (Quick.)

Please do not do that again.

This is the Gloaming I've been waiting for. Ever since I woke up in the hotel room.

So it is already happening. One day, one of you will close your eyes and sigh -- and open them to see that none of this ever existed.

But I want to blink and undo 12 billion years of matter expansion.

Simian butcherer... Soon, one of you will close your eyes -- and open them to see that none of this ever existed.

Have I always thought this way?

No -- you're only thinking it now. This is a revelation.

I will be extra extra careful not to blink, stick insect. Don't worry.

Please be. Or one day one of you will close your eyes and sigh -- and open them to see that none of this ever existed.

Wait, the pale is human made?

I have to say good bye now. I have no more thoughts. That was all.

Good bye. A series of chirrups surrounds you, like swallows on a cliff side, as the phasmid moves its forearms -- tymbals visible on the inside of its white stalks...

No. There is one more.

Of all the creatures I've met you are the scariest.

Thank you. I also have one final thing to say to you: that woman -- turn from the ruin. Turn and go forward.