"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland

The visor descends over my head, and everything goes black. The rest of the world goes away, and, after a period in the pitch, I see the words I was expecting.

MEAT.

Begin?

I breathe in, long and slow, feeling, for a moment, the coolness of air-conditioned wind, the taste of my room as it is.

And then, I exhale… and accept.

And the world shifts.

Once again, the blackness opens up, and I am faced with that single glowing orb of flesh up above.

On one side- MODEL. On the other, STATS.

I move quick, shifting over to the STATS page. The four options pop back up, same as before- and yet again, a single difference. Something new.

ADAPTATION

CANALISATION

EVOLUTION

SYNCHRONICITY

🔺

An extra point. Synchronicity is already starting me off at one, a bit of red already in its place.

I can't help but laugh, even as I notice that the air already tastes different. Yeah, I guess you could fucking say I'm a little bit more synchronized with all this shit than before.

I raise my avatar's arm, noting the pale, thin limb of something seemingly designed to be worse off than homo sapiens in every way, and begin to fill up the sections of what I'm about to become.

By the end, I have things arranged a little differently, filling each of the circles enough that they alter, forming into the strange symbols I associate them with. I drain the avatar's limb dry, letting it turn pale and mummified as vitality flows from it into whatever this thing that I am making is.

ADAPTATION

CANALISATION

EVOLUTION

SYNCHRONICITY

🔺🔺

🔺

🔺

🔺🔺🔺🔺

Technically the most well-balanced sheet I've had yet. The point I started with in SYNCHRONICITY allows me to build it to the highest point I've had it yet, considering how it had some sort of weird caveat on it last time, reducing my total as I explored the mechanics of BLEED for the first time. ADAPTATION at a two should, hopefully, allow me to transform as much as I need, if I really push myself, and CANALISATION to balance it out. That's as far as I'm willing to gamble this time around- maybe CANALISATION will be like radiation resistance in some sections of the game-world, or maybe it'll allow me to better pick and choose what transformations I get. Either way, having a little bit of it can only be a positive right now, even if it potentially works to minimize ADAPTATION's ability.

And yes, one point in EVOLUTION. I'm not doing just one run tonight. If I die, I'm coming back- and I need to see what that stat can do, moving through multiple bodies. I need to know if it's worth investing in, considering it's a stat that followed me into the real world.

I exhale, and let the prompts fade away.

The essence drains up to the polyp in the sky, the orb functioning almost like a light source in this place of all-black as it grows and expands and descends towards me. It bursts, and from it, once again, "I" am born.

The Fleshling is as tall as ever, still pale and malformed, as if made from clay with an inexpert sculptor's hand. In many ways, it looks like if a human being was starved, and then left to melt like runny wax, just a bit.

But once again, there's something new.

Amidst the dozens of menu options, the stuff for follicle-type and coloration and claws and height and measurements, there's a singular new category, sitting at the end of the list as it imports most of my previous choices.

Amidst the fur and feathers and pale skin and purple-red coloration, the Fleshling's right hand remains static, all six of its fingers, half-raw, skinless, and full of sharp-edged implements within.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The Glove.

It carried over. A symbiont, created in the real world, in my world, and just as present on the Fleshling's hand as on my own.

One of the earlier descriptions comes back to me.

This is an avatar. An avatar of a… manifestation of something.

The same thing that it says on my character sheet in the real world.

And… apparently, whatever it's a manifestation of? Whatever "I'm" a manifestation of? It seems that certain aspects carry over between hosts.

I shake my head, the sensation dull and strange in the headset. The thought… it feels right, I think. Mostly? Or… it did, a second ago. I-

Hmm.

What was I thinking about?

The Symbiont. The Glove. It's… it's in the character creator. A part of the Fleshling, which even now I'm shifting the setup for, making it appear as it "should". Purple and red, the irises, the strands of fur and feathers, hunched but still long-limbed and dangerous- and now, wielding in one hand a modified version of a human limb, flush with an added number of fingers and internal mechanisms I can see twitching inside of it.

And… that thought led to something. Which was…

Hmm. Can't remember.

Focus. Keep to the important bits.

If I have the Glove, then that means I have the Bloodling too. They'll both carry over into a new body, into a new game avatar. That didn't happen with the Symbionts previously- I needed to rely on the EVOLUTION stat to work with me and allow things to follow from one avatar to the next. Apparently, having the Symbionts in the "real world" allows me to carry them over into whatever player avatar I create here.

That's big. That's excellent. I can already imagine what I might be able to do without needing to worry about death-by-Bloodling, and what sorts of new creations I'll be able to work on with the Glove in a world that has actual resources.

Concerning, maybe- but fuck yes anyways.

And… that's all she wrote.

I accept the changes, and wait to wake up.

As always, the process is messy. Without the limited expectation that I'm only sensing this through haptic feedback, it's like my senses have opened up, and I can feel the feverish heat on my skin, the thick wetness of something like amniotic fluid, the pressure of being pulled together tight in a foetal position. The world becomes dark, and then lighter, step by step, note by note, until-

Culmination.

I feel my muscles solidify and move them out, tearing through the polyp, and emerge back out into the world of MEAT.

It's as intense, if not more than before. I cough, feeling, tasting the strange fluids in my throat, feeling it stick to my eyelids and pull apart only gradually. My body aches, and my mind gets to work adjusting to skin that's too loose, muscles that are in the wrong places, bones that are too long and too light and too heavy.

I sob, the sound cutting through the ooze in my mouth as I force air in and out of my lungs. It makes me cough as the wetness tries to go down the wrong tunnel, easier than it would in a human body, and the convulsions make my ribs ache, arranged crudely.

It takes me a few minutes to finally breathe properly. It takes me another after that to get my eyes open and get my limbs beneath me, forcing myself to my feet.

I look out, and see the world.

Rolling hills of grass-that-is-not-grass greet me yet again, miles on miles of sloping inclines stretching out to a mountainous horizon. Little trees of pale, slender bone poke out of the surface in random intervals, brittle and waving in a humid wind that smells of carnal matter.

As my eyes look towards the heavens, I feel something in them squirm, and the world speaks to me three familiar phrases, the sound of their manifestation ringing like thunder.

OBJECTIVE: LEAVE THE VALLEY

SIDE-MISSION 1: FEED

SIDE MISSION 2: GROW

Three floating lines of text, hovering in the air. Judging by how small the stalactites of bone and organic matter look compared to the words, they're large.

I wonder, briefly, if they announce my presence to the world every time I arrive. Mile-wide words manifesting, spontaneously and out of something that doesn't look quite organic, every time I arrive.

Another problem for another day. I have other priorities.

I turn to look out at the rest of the world, tracing everything as best I can. I'm getting the impression that Fleshling's are relatively near-sighted- not enough to be blind past a certain range, but noticeably worse than what a normal human can see. The mountains far-off are fuzzy, blurry on the outlines, and while it's not easily noticed when you think it's a game rendering distances, it is noticeable if you assume you're seeing through real, actual eyes.

It's enough for major features, which is the most important part right now. I can see movement in the grasses, the digestive sludgelings squirming slowly through the terrain, and even notice some moments of faster movement as meatballs roll up and down some of the hillsides. They're less numerous, but their movement makes them easier to spot, and I know that if I look long enough, I'll find the trails I need to follow back to my "friend" again.

That's on the list. But not yet.

Feed, Grow, and, most importantly of all, escape the valley. There are useful materials here, but other than the many-eyed pillar-head from before, they all seem to be relatively weak. Even if it wasn't the mission objective, I'd still eventually need to leave this place, if only to acquire stronger materials, or new skills.

I look to the horizon, panning all around in a 360-degree turn. If I can find a spot where the mountains look slimmer, or where there's a gap between them-

Oh.

Huh.

Behind me, at the very furthest edges of where my vision starts to give out, I notice a difference in one of the mountains. Two, actually. Nothing physical- the definition of specific shapes, out to that extent, doesn't really exist, per se, just a blurry mess. No, out that far, I can see a little bit of movement, and color.

One of the mountains, right along the edge of where it meets another, is grey.

No. No, that's not right, it's… it's not grey, it's Grey. Capitalized.

Like the mill.

If I can bring my Glove in here… if the Symbionts in the real world can get absorbed and brought back into this place with me, why not something else?

I got a game cartridge to pull the blood into this place, spawning the Bloodling and the weird scab or blood-clump that it came from. Maybe I didn't pull anything directly into the headset, didn't plug in a physical object to the console… but that's not the only way to bring something in here with me, is it?

I don't know if that implies that I'm infected, or if having the little fungal growth cultures in my room is enough to bridge a connection, or if it's just my own experiences. I don't think it really matters, does it?

It's here. The Grey is here, right alongside my Symbionts and the Bloodling and all the other weirdly capitalized words in my head.

I look back around to the rest of the mountains, trying to see anything from any of them. They all look the same, though. Every one of them, their strange edges and indistinct forms speaking of messy organics and strange architecture.

Back to the one to my "south" (behind me when I woke up), and the familiar strangeness crawling up along its sides and edges.

As good a direction to start as any.

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