On Being Human

Excerpt from On Being Human

by Will Kolbrener

 

Research Study 1: Lou Rennerblok

Age: 15

Weight: 205 lbs

Height 6′ 0”

 

Habitation of Lou’s stream of thought was not at all difficult. Most humans actually never suspect us being a constant intruder to their subconscious unless they really try to dissect their inner thoughts–which most people are extremely reluctant to take a look at in the first place. Most of it is filled with pain. Lots and lots of pain. That, and anger. If anything, the two basic human emotions consist of only these two base feelings. They are not kind, they are not soft, and they are not nurturing. They are sharp and they are hard. They seek to destroy and consume everything in sight in earthly fire. That, and not much else can be said for the purpose of human pain and rage.

Lou was a perfect specimen for this kind of thought study, being in the early stages of adolescent development. His cognition was not fully developed, and he spent a great deal of his time milling about in his own head. During these times I was able to directly converse with his subconscious manifestation and peel out of him bits of invaluable information that I could not have otherwise obtained if I were to personify myself in an anthropomorphic shape (e.g. a close friend) and simply ask him about his day. Most humans are reluctant to even give you the time if you so much come off as even slightly threatening to their well-being. So–a word of caution to any of my fellow scientists who are planning an expedition to Earth to study Humans any time soon: be wary of your body language. It may be the difference between dissection on an autopsy table and some very valuable data.

Inhabitation of human stream-of-thought is relatively simple. One simply needs to induce a loss of consciousness in the host for a very short period of time and a close proximity to the host that you wish to inhabit. Then, you simply need to jump from the synapse of the previous host, or current body, into the new host’s cochlear nerve, and from there into the rest of the human’s brain. Simple as that! Now, you have full access to absolutely everything and anything in that specific human’s head. It’s marvelous, really. The inside of most human’s heads are simply collections of intrusive thoughts, of which they can choose to give weight to or not.

I elaborate by saying that a subject could have a very, very powerful urge to push an elderly human down the stairs, possibly causing mortal harm to them. However, almost ninety-nine-point nine percent of the time, no subject would ever actually carry out this morally reprehensible act.

Why, one may ask? The answer to that lies in humans’ magnificent articulation of their thoughts. Although they may only be a loose conglomeration of many, many multiple thoughts and threads of consciousness at once, they have the power to give weight to the thoughts that they so desire to give weight to. They do this through the process of acknowledgment of the thought for what it is and what it stands for. Then, they simply decide “Am I going to designate mental energy towards this thought, or am I going to allow it to pass through my subconscious without a second thought?”

This very articulation is impressive, and very few humans have yet to actually even acknowledge that there is a process that can be utilized to actually take control of the contents inside of their own heads.

Lou, subject one, was just beginning to understand the basic mechanics of this process, labeling him as a perfect candidate. I managed the jump into his cochlear nerve during a sporting event that he was attending: something involving jumping into very large volumes of dihydrogen-monoxide and flailing about in controlled gestures to generate movement through a liquid medium.

I believe humans call it swimming.

 

Lou is considered an overweight human adolescent by health standards on the western continent of his planet, so he was relatively easy to discern which human was him at this particular athletic event.

He was wearing some sort of swimming garment: a small, black, tight looking thing around his groin area. And his face, although covered by two plastic visor lenses (presumably to protect his vision from the water), was flushed and slightly red.

I’m not familiar with the full spectrum of human emotion, but I assume the one he was feeling in that moment was rather unpleasant, given his paralanguage of staring excessively at the floor-tile.

This particular athletic event required participants to step up to a raised and slanted plastic-polymer rectangle, and, at the signal of a loud beep, the athletes would dive off of this rectangle and into the water. They would perform, what looked like, controlled flailing of their extremities in this water, back and forth in the medium, until touching a rubber pad at one end of this container that stopped a timer hanging on one of the walls of the facility.

At around 7:48 P.M. EET, Lou got up from the metal bench that he was sitting on and began walking across the floor-tile to one end of the water-container. His designated performance time had come.

Me, observing this, and having obtained possession and habitation of one of the members of the swim-team, closely followed.

Lou was unaware.

Just before he was about to stop and talk with one of his teammates, I managed to feign a fall, push Lou, and trip him, cranium first, into the floor-tile.

I stumbled and looked around, feigning bewilderment.

I could see that his teammates all had their eyebrows raised and foreheads wrinkled, even under those plastic eye-visors.

Their reaction time was slow enough to allow me to regain my balance and crouch next to Lou, brushing my host’s hand across his ear as I pretended to check for vital signals.

The crowd went silent (finally) after processing that a team member had hurt himself. Humans really are slow creatures in every field other than self-consciousness.

Lou was still unconscious on the floor.

A heavyset man wearing some sort of polystyrene material with a large, earth sea-creature emblazoned on the back lightly jogged over to Lou, and took the adolescent’s head in his hands (I believe this man was the team’s supervisor).

Lou opened his eyes, blinked, and stared at the coach.

All he remembered was the blunt force against his head and the blinding flash of light.

I saw it all–

and more.

 

Hooking: an Exercise in Parasitism

 

I could hear heartbeat. That was one thing I could discern clearly. Humans have a funny fascination for their own heartbeats. They say that sometimes when they get close enough to each other, their heartbeats synchronize into one simultaneous pulse. Beating away at the horizon of eternity.

I’m not sure whether their scientists have proved it, but from what I have gathered in my own field reports, I believe it to be absolutely true.

The sound though–the sound is what interests me most of all. It’s this pure, bass-y thum-thump…thum-thump. Over and over and over again until these creatures die. And then it just stops. It halts.

The very thing that pumps the vital essence of humanity–the liquid through their veins and the emotion from their hormones–literal love and hate and everything in between is all taken and dispersed throughout the whole organism.

There’s something beautiful about it; the life-sound of these humans.

They’re such primitive creatures…and yet I cannot help but constantly be drawn to their most basic vital functions.

Curious.

 

Thought-habitation is sometimes unsuccessful, to tell you the truth. Human brains, have some sort of defense mechanism against outside intrusion.

Most developed species do, but since Humans are rational creatures (like any other developed species), their defences are quite a bit more advanced.

They are, however, usually very un-honed and un-refined, to the point that habitation is nigh always guaranteed.

There are special cases, such as in subject number two, in which he has practiced the art of analyzing his own threads of consciousness–but, I’ll elaborate upon that later.

 

Lou’s subconscious did give me some trouble, though.

Once one initiates a transfer into the conscious mind, a struggle occurs within the brain. As the subject is unconscious, the habitator’s own consciousness must enter into the subject’s unconscious stream of thought (a neural backdoor, per-se), and hook into the subject’s presence.

This allows the habitator to directly inject their own thoughts into the subject’s stream of consciousness with immediate results.

Most of the time, the subject is completely unaware of a habitator’s presence.

We’ve visited this planet countless times, and inhabited many, many humans, but my expedition is the first to try an obtain a pure sample of the larger spectrum of the Humans’ Immediate Subconsciousness.

 

When I entered into Lou’s subconscious vessel, all I could see around me was grey. Infinitely into the horizon and seemingly without end: the conscious neural space.

The inside of most human’s heads look like this. Blank, monochromatic landscapes with a barely noticeable line that separates the horizon from the–from the whatever it is that makes up the ceiling of this place. We still don’t know what it’s made of.

About three feet in front of me was Lou (or at least, his conscious manifestation), standing there and staring at the grey ceiling.

His arms dangled at his sides and his mouth was agape. His eyes were wide open, and he hadn’t noticed me appearing behind him a few moments earlier.

Stunned humans’ stream of thought halts for a moment when concussed with enough force. This proves to be extremely useful to us when we want to hook into a subject’s stream of thought.

Unfortunately though, the inward manifestation becomes aware of what is happening if either properly startled, if it’s been properly trained, or, of course, if one lingers too long inside of a subject’s mind when attempting to hook into it.

I lightly clenched my hands as I pulled out my hook from my pack.

The devices aren’t exactly the most graceful instruments in the world. They’re simply a decrypter pack with a long metal cable running out of it and into a metal hook that has a thought node attached to the end of the barb, of which you jam as hard as you can into the top of the manifestation’s skull.

Easy enough.

Unless, of course, the manifestation is fully aware of what you’re about to do.

For some reason, most entities in this universe aren’t exactly the friendliest beings when you’re trying to jam sharp things into them.

I wonder why?

 

As I cranked my arm back, I hadn’t noticed Lou’s manifestation beginning to move again.

At first, it was barely noticeable. His fingers twitched, his arms seemed to be less made of lead than they did human flesh.

 

Then, I slammed my arm downwards in an arc, smashing the barb of the hook into its skull.

Lou’s manifestation shuddered and went stiff, its arms snapped out to its sides like an electrical current had just passed through it, and it made a sound like it was trying to cry out for help. Only for a moment, though.

It went silent for after a moment later. And, slumping to its knees, I began pressing the buttons on the decrypter pack to begin the hooking process.