Before we introduced our hosts to their end of the Tunnel, Phage spoke to me in my own dream.

I was engulfed in its darkness, which I have experienced many times before. It can take shapes in visions as needed, but usually prefers not to.

“We will need more assistance than you can provide,” it said. “We will need to invite others over, and we will need to negotiate that with our hosts. I’m hoping to do that tonight while showing them the Tunnel.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Life on this planet is beyond me to manage, and it is overwhelming to Sarah and Goreth even with my help. We need skills and expertise that neither you nor I have, that our hosts do not have. Therefore, we need others,” it explained. “And we need our hosts to live long enough to find the nanites and make their decision regarding them. More importantly to me, and the reason they should live to command the nanites, I gave them my word when they were children that I would help them live as long and as happily as possible. I intend to keep it.”

“I see,” I said.

“You acted as a Tutor to your own headmates when your body was dying, and helped them to transition to Ancestorhood,” Phage said. “It may not be your Art, Ashwin, but when you are not unduly stressed, you do help put people at ease. Can I ask you to try to do that here?”

I thought about this, perhaps not as long as I should have, and said, “Yes. If I could figure out how. Maybe a subtler touch than what we just attempted?”

“Of course.”

“We’re going to need to say just the right things to prep them for this influx of Ktletaccete you want for them, though. And I don’t think a dream is a good place to do that.”

“It is the only way to show them the Tunnel, with the way their psyche works. I can make sure they remember it clearly upon awakening. And it will lay the groundwork for conscious discussions later.”

“It didn’t work so well with Sarah, Mau. She was furious with you for that stunt you pulled with her dissociation and amnesia,” I reminded it. “And you did actually get consent, but in a dream, as you’re suggesting here.”

“I’ll do better,” it said, terminating any further argument. “They’re dreaming. It is time.”

And then its darkness lifted, leaving a vision of it standing next to the Tunnel as I was familiar with the device. Phage took the form of its child, Ni’a, but with a tufted tail, as it liked to do lately.

Phage then called the names of our hosts to bring them to us through association, and they drifted into our little reality.

And we talked to them.

Goreth was skeptical of Phage’s propositions, but also excited. Their responses gave me hope, at least.

Sarah was focused on negotiating passage through the Tunnel, and became livid when Phage suggested bringing more of my siblings and peers over instead.

And the conversation both devolved and evolved from there.

It did have an impact, at least, as we would see the next day.

Goreth awoke first.

Then, when I later followed, Sarah was telling Phage that if she was staying on Earth and having to put up with more headmates, she would not put off working on her premature disability claim until the next day. She insisted she had to start work on it as soon as possible.

Phage was responding that she should wait until someone skilled at bureaucratic Arts came over, but she wouldn’t have it.

I left before I heard the rest of that. I had work I wanted to do with Goreth. And I had an idea.

The conversation of the taxi ride the day before had changed my mind about some things. Being too secretive about our involvement would put too much strain and stress on their system, and we could get away with a lot more openness, if we just framed it in the right way.

Cooperation was almost always better than conflict, even on a subtle level.

—

Goreth woke up the next day from the middle of a pretty frustrating dream. Sarah was still wrapped up in it, arguing with Phage, and refusing to wake up, but the body needed to pee again, and someone had to do it.

Ashwin had been there, too, and had offered to be the one to wake up. But Sarah had looked askance at Goreth, and they agreed to be the one to take care of it.

From what they could tell, or remember, they’d been the frontrunner in the dream anyway.

It was always a little weird how consciousness and switching worked the same way in dreams as it did when they were awake. Maybe it made sense, with how the brain supposedly worked according to scientists. But Goreth had had the front, was the dreamer for most of the dream, but if they had switched with Sarah then the point of view of the dream would have switched to where Sarah was standing. And, even though Sarah would then perceive Goreth in the third person, and standing opposite her in the argument that had been going on, Goreth would be seeing themself through her eyes and experiencing her thoughts as if they were their own.

But then, later that morning, or whenever Sarah woke up, if they both remembered it and compared notes, they’d each remember the whole dream from their own point of view.

So, like, now that Goreth was awake, Goreth remembered it entirely from their point of view, and couldn’t be sure they’d switched at all.

Brains.

Weird things.

But first, before thinking any more about that, bladders.

Or, the Bladder.

Goreth and Sarah had an old in-joke about how their bladder had become their fourth headmate. Though all it ever did was tickle in that way that could become something like pain when it needed to be relieved.

Their bedroom was painted bright yellow with a white plastered ceiling covered with glow-in-the-dark stars. The one window in it faced east.

It had a closet, which was where all of their clothes went, on the floor of it. There wasn’t any room for a dresser. They did have a laundry basket, which they used for clothes that were too smelly to wear until they were washed again, and that was by the door. It took up the room that would go to the dresser. But that was OK, they couldn’t afford a dresser anyway.

They also had a rickety old desk and a folding chair, where they left their second hand laptop most of the time.

And the bed, a queen sized piece of junk, and the bed stand.

And probably too many bookshelves full of books.

The tops of the shelves had all the knicknacks they couldn’t bear to put in the attic.

No posters. But on the big wall was a large piece of drawing paper, tacked up, with one of Sarah’s drawings half finished on it. A constant work in progress.

The door was plastered with scraps of paper with doodles and amazing works of art on them, drawn by friends.

Maybe they should have prioritized a dresser for their clothes over shelves for their books, which they really couldn’t expect to lug with them if they ever had to move out again.

But, Goreth lay there thinking, if we had had the dresser we wouldn’t use it properly anyway.

It’s such an extra burden of work to open and close the drawers, let alone fold the clothes that would go in them. Neither of them had ever managed to take it on.

At least, unlike when they lived with their parents, they could see the floor of their room now, and walk on it without stepping on anything or stubbing their now extremely sensitive toes.

That was important.

Goreth was now lying on their side, ignoring the Bladder, in order to stare at the square of sunlight on the floor, cast there by the one window, which faced east and caught the sunrise.

While their body seemed to want a very irregular sleep schedule, maybe to the point that they had some kind of non-24 hour cycle, Goreth always enjoyed waking up in this particular room to the morning sunlight. So they tried to make it a point to leave the blinds open when they went to bed.

And, while the true sunrise happened long before the sun peeked over the roof of their neighbor’s house, the second sunrise over that roof was still nice. And having it happen later in the morning was also good.

Goreth took a deep breath, counting the loops of pile in the rug that the sun was creeping across.

Today was a day they’d have to try to write something for their Patreon patrons.

Maybe, instead of the novel they were trying to finally figure out how to craft, they’d write about what happened yesterday.

Or that dream that they could feel still happening in their subconscious.

It was kind of like hearing their parents argue in the living room when they were five and in their bedroom. Sometimes a word was understandable, but for the most part it was a dull, nearly subaudible, unintelligible roar of vocal sounding thought, punctuated by what felt kind of like being hit in the ribs from the inside by a pillow.

Not a truly physical sensation, more like a bodily manifestation of emotion.

This wasn’t anything new. Dreams had been behaving like this on occasion since they could remember. But it always felt cool and affirming to notice it. And thinking about it and focusing on the sensations while staring at the morning sunlight was pleasant, despite Sarah’s obvious distress at Phage’s stubbornness.

But the Bladder was getting more and more insistent, and taking Goreth’s attention away from the dream, and their awareness of subconscious shenanigans began to fade. Or maybe the dream was wrapping up, and in so doing it made Goreth more aware of the Bladder.

Either way, it was probably time to overcome the morning aches and pains to get up and take care of that.

They were only twenty-seven, dammit, but their body was behaving like their grandma’s already.

Goreth closed their eyes for a breath, and then pushed themselves up and flipped their empty duvet cover aside. It was their only ‘blanket’. Their body ran hot, and anything more would cause them to sweat uncomfortably, even post transition, even in the winter. Also, it was cheaper and easier to just have the one extra heavy, two ply sheet. Less laundry to haul around and clean.

The feet clumsily took their places on the floor, and Goreth took a moment adjusting them properly for getting up, then reached for their cane to help them do that.

They felt lightheaded upon standing, so they closed their eyes again and waited for that to pass, before reaching over to grab their nightgown from the back of their chair.

Wearing that when going to bed would also make them sweat at night, so they left it nearby for going to the bathroom first thing. Not as convenient as a robe, because they had to slip it on over their head, but they couldn’t find any robes they liked that they could afford.

Robes for women looked good in the photos of online shops, but always arrived turning out to be made with ridiculously useless fabric and horrible shapes, uncomfortable and unflattering to wear. At least, the ones in the $0 to $50 range. And, also, most were just not big enough.

Similar problems were to be had in thrift shops, only with a worse selection, and the difficulty of facing staff who might object to them using the women’s changing rooms. It didn’t happen often, but the once or twice in the past made it hard to go there in the future.

Also, it wasn’t like they could regularly shop for anything, anyway. Now that they had a sexy black slip that worked as a nightgown, that was silk, and fit, and made them feel happy when they wore it, why bother with the trouble of looking for anything else.

Oh, it felt good to put that on. And stretching their muscles to do so was an achy endeavor, but in a good way.

They had to lean their cane against the bed to put it on, but they didn’t need the cane 100% of the time anyway. Or even at all most of the time. It was just a help for standing up or sitting down, or something to lean on when the exhaustion and pain became too much, like it had yesterday.

Ooh, Goreth did remember that.

They made their way to the toilet, smiling to themself about remembering things they weren’t there for.

The bathroom was across the hall from the kitchen, and Abigail was in there, making something smelly in the microwave.

“Hi,” Goreth said, before turning to go into the bathroom.

“Hey, Goreth,” Abigail said.

It was nice that she was bothering to recognize them this morning.

Sarah and Goreth had decided together to be out as plural to everyone who wasn’t a person of some power, such as teachers, government clerks, police officers, doctors, therapists, and such. Which, in theory, included housemates. Housemates had power over them, due to their financial situation. But, housemates were also ideally found family, and people you had to live with, and it was important to not have to mask at home. So they were out as plural to both their housemates.

Sometimes Abigail recognized Goreth’s existence, and sometimes she didn’t. Her default was to call them all Sarah, when she wasn’t thinking about it.

Goreth had long ago decided it wasn’t worth the effort of correcting her when she did that. Abigail was her own kind of protogenic plural, too, actually. Probably. She just didn’t think of herself that way. It depended on how you decided to define ‘a single human consciousness’. And self determination.

She didn’t identify as plural, so she wasn’t.

But she’d been born without a corpus callosum, and experienced some of the same impairments that Sarah and Goreth did when they were more traumatized and locked down with dissociation. Only Abigail experienced it all the time, and also with some fundamental differences.

Like Sarah and Goreth, she’d grown up with her neural condition and had adapted to it for the most part. But sometimes, one side of her brain couldn’t remember what the other side of her brain had thought and processed, and she behaved slightly differently than one might expect because of it. And it was usually better to tell her important things both verbally and in writing.

Unlike Sarah and Goreth, she had a job, and was busy getting the calories she needed in the morning to go and do it. She worked in daycare.

There was a time when Goreth had wanted to be a daycare worker, or a teacher. But being trans feminine made that improbable, due to transmisogyny. They sensed that it would be too dangerous to be autistic, plural, and trans feminine with an unreliable femme voice and a bad wardrobe in the childcare business. Too easy to be accused of being a predator by coworkers or parents just for being themself.

But, then they’d had their surgery, thanks to Medicaid, and ironically their disabilities had gotten even worse after that, and working any kind of normal job was out of the question.

Ah! Enough of thinking about this shit. Time to pee and think about what to write to Patreon. Or maybe where to sit and write it.

Door closed, panties down, sitting on the toilet, waiting for the Bladder to finally relax enough to pee, Goreth found themself thinking about being a dragon instead.

The window of the bathroom was frosted, of course, so they stared at the counter in front of the toilet and imagined the world outside as they knew it to be, and daydreamt about climbing to the top of their house and roaring at the sky, stretching their wings, tail lashing.

They didn’t even reliably have that anatomy in their dreams, but ever since they’d figured out they were a dragon at three years old, they’d had phantom limbs on and off when awake.

They couldn’t explain how or why they experienced this. They weren’t ever satisfied with anything other therians wrote about online. Their theories were either too assimilationist with modern psychology, or too froo-froo woo feeling. The best that Goreth had come up with on their own was this idea they had about ‘memetic entities’.

Using a term coined by Richard Dawkins and associated with social Darwinism made Goreth’s skin crawl, but it was also the best word for the idea. It was easier to talk about it with nearly anybody when using that tiny bit of jargon.

Hm.

Maybe this would be a good way to segue into writing about Phage and Ashwin and the Tunnel, and that dream. To give their patrons a framework in which to understand what their brain was doing.

They resolved to do that.

And when Abigail was done with the kitchen, they’d make bacon and tea and sit in the living room with their phone and start the post there.

So, their idea was that identity was constructed of memes. To their mind, memes were real enough, and functioned similarly enough to genes to warrant the name.

But they adhered more to Stephen J. Gould’s ideas of evolution than Dawkins’, which postulated that mutations, genes, and ideas that were good enough were what survived and propagated. Not the fittest, but the fit enough. And that there wasn’t a drive, or goal, or purpose to evolution, just an obvious increase in variety over time. So they didn’t have to accept any of the social Darwinism crap that Dawkins had infused memetics with before distancing himself from the theory.

Whatever.

The point was that maybe there was a big difference between identity and consciousness. A person was maybe a combination of the two things, an identity given consciousness. But, while a lot of psychologists and neurologists considered consciousness to be an emergent behavior of systems that were complex enough to hold identity, Goreth had personal experience to show that sometimes a system of identity could develop and collect memories and alter its behavior separately from consciousness. And consciousness could continue with the absence of that identity. And a system of identity could exist as something bigger and broader than the system of consciousness. And maybe even touch and exist in other systems of consciousness.

For instance, Goreth had written about themself in their own social media accounts, and other systems that were prone to creating introjects on the drop of a hat had already developed factive introjects, or copies of Goreth, upon reading their blog. Goreth already existed in multiple heads, because of this.

Of course, those other Goreths were separate people, practically speaking, and continued to grow and develop independently of their source, and didn’t send memories back to them except via the odd anonymized comment on their original blog posts.

So, it wasn’t a perfect theory. But Goreth felt like they did really exist as larger than their body, and were achieving something of an immortality that way. It was, at the very least, a kind of reproduction.

And that’s how they thought about the way they were a dragon and felt dragon things.

Their identity as a dragon, with the gender of dragon, was made of memes, and those memes had come from somewhere.

It began with their half of their brain, and how it had developed in the womb, they thought.

They’d been born with a corpus callosum, and the two halves of their brain could communicate with each other normally, for the most part. They weren’t like Abigail in that way.

But Goreth was an enby and Sarah was a girl, and they’d been that way since birth as far as they could tell. And this difference was why they couldn’t integrate. Because Goreth’s dysphoric and euphoric needs, their sense of gender, their self schema, was incompatible with Sarah’s on a neurological level right from the beginning.

But they didn’t have the word ‘dragon’ as the name for their gender to begin with. Just like Sarah didn’t have the words ‘girl’ or ‘woman’. And their parents and everyone else had called them ‘a boy’ for the longest time.

So the first several years of their life had been all about subconsciously soaking up information about their true, subconsciously encoded identities.

Their halves of their brain had maybe had slightly different washes of hormones as a fetus, or something like that, and that had maybe resulted in their mirror neurons and grouping instincts reaching for different things to identify with when developing their self schemas.

While Sarah would see a girl in a story book and subconsciously identify with her, Goreth would identify with the dragon and what the dragon did.

Which made the Dragon of Og by Rumor Godden their absolute most favorite book in the entire universe.

They’d realized who they were when their dad had read that book to them. For a while, they’d even gone by the names of the lady and the dragon in the book. But then they’d found the Pern books in fifth grade and had fallen in love with those, too. And Goreth had wanted a name that was more like those of McCaffery’s dragons.

And then, when they’d transitioned, Sarah had taken the name Sarah because it had just felt the most right. Goreth suspected that it was because she was trying to distance herself as much as possible from the world of her childhood, even as much as she loved Lady Matilda from the book. So she’d taken the time to sit with various girls’ names until one felt right, and Sarah had been it.

Also, she later said that being a separate person from Matilda was nice. Because she had grown up to be a different person, and she could now imagine herself having tea with Matilda and talking about dragons with her.

And naming herself Lessa or Menolly, after one of McCaffery’s Pern characters hadn’t appealed to her, either.

Goreth was totally OK with all of that, and felt that the name Sarah went very well with their own name. Sarah and Goreth felt like it could be the title of their own book someday, maybe.

So anyway.

Oh, finally, the pee was coming out, and they could hear Abigail shuffling back to her room.

So, as they were wiping and getting up to wash their hands, they continued to review their theory.

It didn’t happen to all trans people. Just like with autism or plurality, there were a myriad of different ways to end up becoming transgender, and science would never be able to root them all out, even if Goreth and Sarah were trans because of what happened in their fetal development.

But that development had made Goreth an enby. And since there weren’t any models of non-binary people in common culture such as story books, the Bible, science classes, movies, or TV shows at the time of their childhood, their subconscious sense of identity had latched onto the closest group of beings that described who and what they were, and how they felt they fit into the world. Dragons.

And so, Goreth had inherited the memetics of dragons. And since dragons were, generally speaking, a social construct just like any gender, and made entirely of memes, they were a class of memetic beings. Just like Goreth was.

So Goreth was literally a dragon.

But that didn’t really explain the phantom limbs thing, just the identity.

So, either the phantom limbs were an artifact of a super strong imagination driven by subconscious needs and hours and hours and hours of daydreaming. Or they were something weirder.

And Goreth wasn’t satisfied with the psychological explanation of them being a result of daydreaming too much, but didn’t feel ready to accept any of the weirder explanations.

So what they were trying to do, and this is what they were going to try to write about, maybe, is come up with an explanation for how memes, real memes not the new word for collaged comics, could be complex enough to create and maybe even carry experiential data or information. Memories. Exomemories.

But they weren’t a scientist with a grant and lab assistants. Just a poor, amateur writer, and a congenital nerd with a dying laptop and a government issued cell phone with access to the internet.

But a nerd with personal experience with these things that most scientists didn’t have.

They went over all of that in their head as they were finishing up in the bathroom and making their way into the kitchen.

They opened the fridge and pulled the bacon out.

Unfortunately, the bacon had gone bad. It was slimy and smelled just enough off that Goreth didn’t want to risk it.

They had a friend that had eaten things out of the dumpster and had survived a bout of e. coli and then done it again because it ‘hadn’t been that bad’. But, Sarah and Goreth’s gut and immune system were not that robust.

Peanut butter toast it would be.

The toast would be eaten and gone by the time they got to the living room, though, because they could eat it that fast, so while the bread was toasting and the tea was teaing, they went into the bedroom and put on some outdoor clothes. Something easy and warmish. Leggings and a t-shirt they could wear under one of their heavier coats. And then slipped their feet into their Birks, vocally admitting that the mules had been a bad idea.

Good shoes were a thing they’d managed to scrounge for, after agreeing with Terry Pratchet and commander Vimes about their boots theory.

Also, they’d managed to sell it to their support network on the grounds that giving trans women good shoes was a medical necessity.

Most of that money had come from other trans women, of course. Most of all their spending money did.

Anyway, then, back to the now cooling bread and boiled water, and turning them both into breakfast.

They peanut buttered the toast first, then stirred the teabag around in the thermos mug to accelerate the infusion, with a piece of toast in their mouth, occasionally reaching up with their hand to hold it while they chewed and swallowed a bite.

The first piece of toast was gone by the time they dropped the tea bag into the trash. And the second one was halfway gone by the time they’d put on their coat, and they were thinking about how funny it was that they weren’t sitting down on the sofa to write after all, but headed out to somewhere to sit and write, with their right thumb and their phone, under the open sky.

It would have to be a park, because, besides the odd bus stop, that’s where the only benches were.

Tea mug in backpack, toast remnants in mouth, phone in purse, they eased themselves down the porch stairs with one hand on the railing and the other on their cane, thinking about which park they’d prefer.

Half an hour later, they found themselves getting off the MAX at Pioneer Square and growling at the presence of a fence and a bunch of tents taking up most of the Square.

This meant that the city was hosting some sort of movie or music event there, on a weekday, and that even if there wasn’t a crowd yet, there wouldn’t be any of the usual seating available to anybody who was just passing through and needed to sit.

This kind of bullshit was intermittent enough that Goreth had never gotten a hang of the schedule and had also gotten used to usually being able to sit here and people watch. But not today, apparently.

So they went to lean against one of the awning pillars to think while they drank their tea.

Today was turning overcast and dropping water on their hat and shoulders, anyway. And the wind was cold enough they now wanted to be indoors. So, heading to the library was probably in order.

Which, in their mind, meant drinking all the tea before heading over there.

Every little thing was disrupting their attempt to start writing. And it was frustrating. But, at least, they could keep thinking.

While they were here, though, they had the urge to breathe deep, taste the air on their tongue, and watch the life around them for a bit. Even to look up at the buildings they’d passed countless times in the past few years, and take in the architecture.

And there was something about how the sunlight filtered through the clouds and rain and cast shadows between the mortared stones of a couple of the older style buildings that caught their attention and held it.

While they gaped at the sky, with crows and seagulls careening between the buildings across their eyesight, they had a vision of a cloudless sky with what looked remarkably like the Olympic peninsula on the other side of it, the daily sun not yet far enough across the world to obscure the sight of it.

A landmass remarkably like the Olympic peninsula in a justifiably coincidental way. The vision, the memory, was so crisp and vivid that Goreth could pick out what they thought were critical differences. Pretty significant differences in coastline, islands, mountain tops, and colors. But it was a peninsula that reached out into the sea and curved around a smaller, island filled body of water that could be called a sound, and it had a mountain on it.

And for a split second it was almost as if Goreth was there, and recognized the purple of the trees on the other side of the habitat cylinder.

And then they were back in Portland and in a human body, and they felt what they presumed was Ashwin pulling away from the front of their consciousness and leaving them to grasp at the fading vision to try to keep it.

They let their breath out with mouth open and felt their whole body relax as tears collected in their eyes. Oxygen had flooded their veins and they felt more alive and present in the world than they had for a while, as various forms of humanity bustled around them, preparing for the next MAX train.

If not the library, there were a couple of other parks near-ish by that had actual trees in them. If they could stand to walk that far.

In their Birks, maybe they could do that.

But, then, typing on their phone when it was raining would suck. And their butt would get wet, because those parks didn’t have awnings.

They wanted to look at the trees and the sky for a while to see if they could trigger more of Ashwin’s memories like that.

Exomemories. Memories from outside the system.

Goreth found themself giddy and grinning, with the urge to crouch a little and look around madly like a dog with the zoomies.

They resisted that impulse and closed their mouth and eyes and turned their face downward, still smiling, feeling exalted.

Exalted was definitely the word for that feeling.

And, in that stance, they reached for their intuition to feel where it was pulling them, and then got on the MAX to head to the Library.

Which they would have felt silly about just a few years ago, because it took them exactly two blocks before they had to get off again, and they still had to walk another block to get to the Central Library itself. But their fatigue and the pain in their legs and feet had taught them to take any ride they could get.

Best to save any energy they had for writing, if they could.

Which is probably why they should have stayed at home, in the living room.

But a dragon has to make their rounds, stake their territory and claim it, and be amongst the humans, even if humans don’t understand them. A dragon must be seen.

And also, this was one of those days when they just couldn’t start writing until their emotions were properly regulated, even if they were burning to write down everything amazing that was happening to them.

Also, a little exercise was supposedly better than no exercise. Or the even littler exercise of walking between their couch and the bathroom and kitchen.

The laptop in their bedroom was more Sarah’s favorite writing place, for later that night.

Sometimes, Goreth felt more ADHD than Sarah, and Sarah felt more autistic than Goreth, with Goreth needing variety and stimuli and Sarah needing routine and quiet darkness, which was interesting and not quite how Goreth felt things should work.

Maybe it was a matter of masking. Goreth was better at masking their distinctly stereotyped autistic traits, and Sarah was better at masking their distinctly stereotyped ADHD traits. And they got through the world by trading off.

Goreth had had that thought so many times before. It kept coming back whenever their racing mind came near it.

They had to admit, sometimes they felt more like a weasel than a dragon, furrowing around and investigating everything, over and over again. Except that they couldn’t match that energy physically. Their body preferred long periods of rest, like a dragon’s body would.

And their dysautonomia was almost like being exothermic. Almost. Except where they constantly ran hot. Like, they had almost no heat regulation to speak of. The weather was either too hot or too cold for them, with no in between, but it was also like they had an internal furnace that was always turned up to maximum. And maybe if they could just actually breathe fire it would be OK somehow.

The Multnoma County Central Library, that they were now walking up the steps of, was a brick and mortar building with concrete trim. Kind of old looking in style, but kept in fairly good condition. And the inside had tall ceilings, bright lights, and large enough windows to let in a substantial amount of sunlight, even on an overcast day.

A large man in an REI jacket held the double doors open for Goreth, and Goreth smiled and said, “thank you.”

The man blinked, but didn’t say anything.

Did Goreth’s voice sound jarring with their appearance? Did the man just then clock them as trans? Or had he been someone who was quiet and blinky? Was he an ally, or a bigot in the grips of the Pacific Northwest cultural demand to stay out of other people’s business?

If only the man could have seen that Goreth was literally a dragon, a girl, a monster, and an alien in a literal second hand trench coat. What would he be thinking then?

It shouldn’t matter.

But, after that short bout of social anxiety, Goreth briefly indulged themself in one of their childhood daydreams and thought, if only I had scales, wings, claws, horns, and a tail and could still use the library. And then they tacked on, and no chronic pain or exhaustion.

They cane-hopped over to one of the computers and made a show of using its search tools to look for The Dragon of Og, making sure it was available to check out, before looking around for a good seat.

They weren’t actually going to check out The Dragon of Og. They just liked knowing it was there. And it also felt better and more proper to use the library by doing library things, rather than to just sit in it and write.

Maybe they’d support the library by checking it out and then turning it immediately back in. Or by pulling it off the shelf and putting it in one of the book carts. Those kinds of actions were supposed to be recorded and reported to justify funding the place, after all.

But knowing that it was there for someone else to check out was more important to Goreth than anything.

There was an empty table closer to one of the walls of windows where they could sit and face most of the rest of the library, so they hobbled over to it. Perfect.

They placed their backpack and purse on the table, in front of where they intended to sit, then leaned their cane on the table, hooked through a backpack strap, while they took off their coat to put it on the chair.

Then, sitting down, they realized their phone was still in their coat pocket, where it had moved to from their purse while they were on the MAX. So they had to contort to reach it.

And they sighed, and breathed, and let their eyes gaze at the windows across the room from them, and dreamt about flying out into the sky, across the habitat cylinder that should be on the other side of the clouds, and dancing around the sunpath, and was this one of Ashwin’s childhood daydreams?

Hey, new friend, Goreth thought. I’m going to write about you.

Goreth felt a mild surprise arise from where they imagined Ashwin to be resting. Sort of near their heart, just to the left of where it felt like Phage came from.

Is that OK, they asked.

They felt Ashwin come closer to the front, but not quite merge their thoughts and perceptions with Goreth’s. They were a fuzzy, squirmy, room temperature mental pressure with some give to them.

And then they felt a cautious ascent come from them.

What’s your worry? Goreth asked.

The reply from Ashwin didn’t come in words, but it was complete and thorough, clearly understood, and Goreth found themself translating it into words as if they were their own thoughts, a question in return. Who will be reading it?

Sarah’s thoughts were often very similar, wordless but easily and quickly translated into words. But Goreth heard her translated words in her voice anyway.

It wasn’t quite that way with Ashwin. The accent was missing.

And Goreth remembered in the dream hearing Ashwin clearly, and hearing that alien language as if through their own ears, but understanding it.

How did that work?

To reply to Ashwin’s inquiry, Goreth held their phone up and hit the shortcut for their Patreon page, then navigated over to the list of people, and thought, We have a list of subscribers who pay us a small amount of money to write about what we experience as an autistic trans feminine plural system. It keeps us in toothpaste, shaving cream, clothes, and the occasional mocha.

Goreth ran their hand over their stubble, realizing they hadn’t shaved that morning. Ah well, slightly less than a day’s worth of growth. People shouldn’t be able to see it. But maybe it was what that man had blinked about.

Not that Goreth was dysphoric about the beard, but it was a matter of safety as a trans feminine person, and Sarah definitely was dysphoric about it.

After a pause, Ashwin replied, OK, go ahead. Tell them ‘hi’ from me.

Goreth had a thought.

Do you want to write it, they asked.

I wouldn’t know what to write, came the reply. I’m not a writer like some of my peers. And I don’t know your audience. I’ll just sit and watch, and learn.

I don’t think I’m a writer, either, Goreth responded. And didn’t you offer to do some writing, yesterday? Nevermind. I just have to tell my supporters what I’m up to, really. You could at least type ‘hi’ yourself, and maybe introduce yourself personally.

Maybe.

—

Hi.

My name is ʔashwin. Or maybe Ashwin in English. It sounds the same written either way. Goreth will have to tell you how to pronounce it, I think. And my pronouns are either nem/nemself, or they/them/their, whichever feels right in the moment.

I came here through the Tunnel Apparatus, which is a thing that we haven’t decided whether to tell you all about yet. I am a person from many, many, many lightyears away and a different evolutionary source than you are. Like a planet, we think. I’ve never seen it because I was born on a spaceship. A worldship? It’s big. Call it the Sunspot.

I’m writing in English by using Goreth and Sarah’s linguistic centers of their brain. My thoughts don’t originate in language, so it’s natural for them to become the language that the brain knows. But I can still access my own language if I concentrate, however.

I don’t know how that works. Maybe the Tunnel and the Network of the Sunspot are involved somehow.

The brain is translating the name my people call themselves into ‘the Children of Eh’. But the word is Ktletaccete.

I’ve just argued with Goreth about how to spell that. They recommended the silent ‘t’ at the beginning, to let you know it isn’t just like the beginning of the word ‘clam’. They said something about IPA, and I’ll let them write all about that. But, I think it’s OK if you ignore the ‘t’ and pronounce it as best you can like it isn’t there.

I’m a lot older than anyone currently living on Earth, but because of relativity I haven’t been born yet, either.

I lived a long and full life on the Sunspot, and I got to encounter aliens there. People who were alien to me and the other Ktletaccete. And then I wanted to see the rest of the universe. And the Tunnel let me do that, effectively traveling here in an instant.

I followed Phage, whom I’m told that you know, and that’s how I ended up here.

For reasons I don’t fully know or understand, the end of the Tunnel is in Goreth and Sarah’s head now, so you have to be a part of their system to see it.

I don’t know if I’m going to stay. We’re still discussing that.

I don’t know how much of my story I should tell. We’re still discussing that, too.

It’s possible that, for you, reading this in my future, the story has already been written.

Right now, this much is a little exhausting.

So, I would like to say that it is an honor to be here amongst you. Please believe Goreth and Sarah when they talk about me. And keep giving them your support.

Thank you.

—

Goreth watched Ashwin use their thumb’s muscle memory to type that out, and chuckled to themself as it quickly became longer than just ‘hi’.

Then, when Ashwin was done, and satisfied with what they’d written, Goreth took the front again to wrap up the post.

—

So, Goreth, here.

Let me tell you about our new headmate and the dream we all had last night!

I’m not sure how much I can remember, but I think the others can help me fill in, so let’s try this.

Yesterday, we had a blackout for the first time in years. Since before our surgery, at least. And during that time, our friends E. and A. got to talk at length with our walk-in here, Ashwin.

Just like we do with Phage, and what we ask for ourselves, we’re taking Ashwin at their word about who and what they are. So, you should do the same if you ever get to meet nem.

You don’t have to let their story change your own worldview, but maybe it’d be cool if you did. Mine is definitely shaken. And it feels good, to me.

Sarah is struggling with it, though, and I want to respect that, too.

So, here’s the thing, Ashwin above says that they got here through a Tunnel, which is apparently in our head because of something Phage did, which our friend E. says makes us a gateway system.

We’ve been so quiet for so long, just the three of us, Sarah, me, and Phage, that this is pretty surprising and jarring. I’m sure the sysmeds out there will be saying it’s unhealthy and we should seek help, if they ever hear of this.

And sure, I’d love to talk to a therapist or even psychologist about this. My instinct is to get my experiences on record. That would excite me. But
we’ve tried.

E. is staunchly anti-psyche, too, and tells us that we’re lucky not to have a therapist. And to be under the thumb of someone who could easily institutionalize us would be a scary thing, I admit. But we also need as thick of a medical file as possible to support our disability claim, you know?

But, as we’ve written before, whenever we go looking for a therapist or a psychologist, or even a psychiatrist, they all turn us down. They’re either booked up, or our case is outside the scope of their expertise. There are no mental health professionals within bussing or Telehealthing distance who will talk to an openly protogenic system with CPTSD. Let alone an
autistic one.

We keep trying, and there just aren’t.

We’ve asked before, but if any of you have any more leads, we’ll try again.

By now, you gotta know how it is, right?

You’d think a progressive place like Portland would be good for this sort of thing. But, nope. An open minded therapist willing to take on DID, even if it isn’t actually DID, is about as common as a public bench to sit on.

Anyway, sorry to whine about all that.

So.

After the blackout, Sarah came to the front again first and talked to E. and A. about what just happened. And when she talked to Phage about its role in bringing Ashwin to our system – which is a whole story in and of itself that we’ll tell some other time – she insisted that Phage show us our gateway, our end of the Tunnel. And it agreed, and we had a dream about it last night as a result. And Ashwin was there, so we got to meet nem face to face.

Inworld, of course.

Not all of our dreams take place in our inworld. And we have a lot of memory echoes of people in our dreams who we know are not headmates. Not even factives. Just people-like constructs, like singlets have, right? I think some people call them ephemerals.

But we could tell this dream was different. We could feel each other. Or, at least, I could feel the presences of the others myself. Palpably. I even hugged Sarah to confirm it. I’ll ask if she remembers doing that, later, when she’s awake.

Now, to me, the Tunnel looked like a disc of dark gray static about as tall as I am when I’m inworld. Which is pretty big. It hovered about half a foot above the ground, and ended about half a foot above my head. It sort of dwarfed the others.

Sarah said she sees something that looks kind of like a comet, all white and sparkly.

Phage just says it’s ‘an entanglement’ and doesn’t bother with anything more than that, so I have no idea how it perceives it.

And what Ashwin describes sounds an awful lot like an old, vintage radio receiver somehow hooked up to a keyboard and a big CRT computer monitor. Maybe.

Once again, we each interpret what we see in our inworld differently, and consistently differently. And Ashwin apparently is no exception to that.

Now, I don’t remember the dream word for word, but I’ve got the gist of what happened.

We argued about the Tunnel, and Ashwin’s presence, and whether or not Ashwin could or should go back through the Tunnel. And then whether Sarah or I could go through the Tunnel, to see the Sunspot, where Ashwin comes from.

And if I’m remembering this correctly, Ashwin can go back, but they’d leave an echo of nemself here on this side, and for us they’d effectively still be here. And, I don’t mean a memory echo like a dream NPC. I mean a full copy of themself, split into two people like a headmate in a traumagenic system that deals with trauma that way.

And when it comes to Sarah and I, it might work the same way, if we can go through it at all.

I distinctly remember trying to touch the tunnel myself, and it was like trying to touch a hologram. It visually stayed in place, but the closer my claws got to it, the further away it seemed to be.

That might be my subconscious self refusing to believe in it, or let it happen, or something like that. Or it might be an inherent property of the Tunnel. I don’t know.

But, if I wanted to go through the Tunnel, I think I’d need Phage’s help to do so, and it is utterly reluctant to do so yet.

Then I had to wake up to go pee, and Sarah was insistent in still arguing with it when I got up.

I had some other really cool experiences on the way to sit down and write this, but I want to keep them to myself right now. I’m going to write them down as soon as I post this, of course, but I want to savor them before I share them, if you’re OK with that.

Thank you for supporting us. Maybe this can be an actual book some day. It sure doesn’t feel like one, yet. But this weirdness could make it fun to read.

Let us know.

Stay queer!

Goreth, the Dragon

—

Goreth sat in the library for a while longer after writing everything, listening to music and watching people.

The smell here was, of course, distinctly different than at Pioneer Square. The filtered indoor air smelled of books. There wasn’t a Starbucks to fill the atmosphere with odors of burnt coffee, milk, and chocolate. And Goreth was seated just far enough away from other people to avoid the worst of the colognes and perfumes that some of them wore.

Someone sitting two tables away, facing Goreth’s direction, looked up from their book as someone else approached them, and stood up with arms outstretched to hug them.

They looked gay, and they looked like they were being gay, and it was nice.

One of them seemed to glance Goreth’s way, so they nodded and then looked elsewhere.

There was no nod back, or Goreth wasn’t looking when it happened.

That was OK.

They started feeling lonely, and felt a pang of regret for past relationships that had never happened. All that Sarah and Goreth had were each other, Phage, and a bunch of empty holes where people should be. And their housemates, Abigail and Peter.

They probably owed their life to Abigail and Peter, honestly. If they hadn’t been taken in by them, they’d have to be living on the street by now, and with their disabilities they weren’t sure they could last long there. Not mentally, at least. But the bitter cold of winters were scary whenever they contemplated it. The idea of not having even a sofa to sleep on made their bones hurt just thinking about it.

They knew of people with similar disabilities who did live on the street, for years and years, who survived. But they still couldn’t imagine it, and it scared them.

Goreth heaved a weighty sigh.

Doing that a lot today for different reasons.

But how could the two, or four, of them expect to find someone to spend their life with (or just a healthy portion of it) when they barely had a life? And with the disabilities they had, the neurotypes they were, who’d even be compatible?

Most people they got along well enough with, like Erik and the Audreys, had enough of their own problems that they couldn’t really support each other.

Peter, for instance, was the one supporting their current household. A cishet man supporting his disabled girlfriend who at least could work, and the stray(s) she’d brought in.

Ethically, that was only right. Peter was using his privilege to keep a few marginalized people alive and relatively happy. And Goreth was grateful.

But it wasn’t a safe basis for any sort of deeper relationship. They worked better as housemates and keeping everything as light and humorous as possible. The power differential could lead to a dangerous situation all too easily.

Relationships happen, came a thought from Ashwin.

It sounded kind of like a thing Phage would say.

Then, Ashwin was bold enough to say something with their vessel’s mouth, heavily accented and not at all Phage-like, quiet enough that only the rest of the system could hear it, “I’ve had several partners, and I would share my memories of them with you. Maybe that can help somehow.”

Goreth wondered if alien relationships could even be comparable to living with humans in any way, but they were deeply curious anyway.

So, they spent some time with Ashwin recalling nems life with other people on the Sunspot. And while it didn’t really help, it did give Goreth a taste for that life.

—

Lunch was had by stopping by Freddy’s and buying sandwich fixings with EBT and eating it there in the little cafeteria space next to the in-store Starbucks.

And dinner was planned by buying a head of broccoli and a bag of pasta along with it. There was enough cheese, oil, and brewer’s yeast at home to make it a decent and filling meal with minimal work.

By the time Goreth made it to the top of the porch stairs of their house, their feet were just done.

They made it to the fridge to store the broccoli, and then slumped down to the floor leaning their back against the fridge door to cry about the pain. They would have a lot of trouble getting back up again, even with their cane, but they were just too tired to make it to a chair, their bed, or the sofa.

Not for the first time in their life, they thought, I wish Phage could use its supposed magic powers to make this go away.

Ever since it had joined their system when they were seven, Phage had claimed that it was some kind of primordial or advanced being that should be able to do things. Fantastic things. But, for some reason, it never managed to do anything verifiable.

That’s part of what this is all about, Phage replied.

Now, Goreth thought.

Soon.

How soon?

As I’ve told Sarah, we need a few more experts and a way to get some resources.

Really.

Really.

I don’t know how we’re going to do that.

Bring more of my children over, to begin with.

Then it wandered off, and Ashwin appeared.

Author’s note: The Dragon of Og is also a real book, and you should read it. It’s very good.