“You write and talk in ways that are kind of like me. Or relatable to me, at least. And you seem right handed,” Goreth was saying. “But your thoughts are quiet, wordless to me, like Sarah’s, and I feel your presence as being on her side of the body. It’s interesting.”

“I am a different person than you are,” I told them.

Goreth nodded.

“Also, you are much more distractible than I am,” I pointed out. “You think about everything, and I relate to that, myself, but you meander way more than I do.”

While the body was slumped against the fridge, we were inworld, in the manifestation of place and home in Sarah and Goreth’s psyche, vividly sitting opposite each other on the ground in front of the end of the Tunnel. Phage and Sarah were off doing something else.

To my perceptions, the sky was glowing orange with dark gray clouds thickly mottling it, all around. The ground was a disc of cracked and slightly uneven rock just big enough to accommodate me and Goreth and the Tunnel Apparatus, which was set up on a desk with a monitor stand holding up the holodisplay. There was a chair fit for my own body there, but we were both ignoring it.

Though, from what I’ve read of Goreth’s description of the Tunnel, they might not have seen that at all.

Looking down, I had my own body, as I should. The one I’d devised and cultivated since I had been born. Which was nice.

Goreth was huge.

They didn’t so much sit as lie on their belly, all four feet tucked under their body, tail wrapped around them, and wings folded up on their back.

We have people and fauna on the Sunspot that look like they could be distantly related to Goreth, but I have yet to see a creature or person on Earth that looks like that besides artwork that people have made.

Their face had a long, pointy snout, but with lips that could articulate language at least as well as their vessel’s, and both their eyes pointed forward, with grooves on either side of their nose to facilitate their vision. Their ears were armored divots on either side of their head, each as large as one of my own. But on their head they looked so much smaller, proportionately. And they had horns. And they were covered in boney lithoderms from snout to tip of tail. Even parts of their wings were armored that way.

And their colors fell into a gamut that was somewhere between the ground I was sitting on and the sky. It was like they had the protective coloration necessary to hide in this part of their inworld.

Their eyes were as bright as the sun.

When they opened their mouth, it was full of bluegreen plasma, with glowing white teeth and tongue.

They had said they were a dragon, and apparently this is what that meant.

I have seen people equally as spectacular on the Network of the Sunspot, of course. So I felt completely at ease in their presence.

This was an inworld, too, after all. The rules here meant that we could scare or hurt each other if we worked at it, if we could convince the other to be scared or hurt. But we couldn’t really endanger each other.

I felt more at home in that moment than any time that I have fronted in their vessel.

I think I had the front of this short dream. I remember it that way.

Goreth was nodding at what I’d said, then admitted, “I’m trying to figure out what part of our brain you exist in.”

I held up a claw and opened my mouth to say something, but I hesitated, so Goreth continued.

“I’m pretty sure I am the left hemisphere of our brain,” they said. “I’m right handed. And even though most of all that right brain/left brain stuff is pop culture bunk, I fit a lot of the stereotypes and even the accurate things of being a left brained person. While Sarah is way more like a right brained person, and we perceive her on the left half of our consciousness, with the left half of our body, and she’s almost, but not quite, left handed. She definitely uses our left hand more than I do.”

“Huh,” I said. “I’m suddenly missing my Tutor.”

“Your Tutor?” they asked.

“Yes. One of my parents. A Crew assigned parent, actually, back when there were Crew. Its name is Mutabenga, or ‘Popular Thoughts of Rebellion’,” I said. “I could ask it about just about anything, and it could give me a pretty reliable answer.”

“Oh, is that why you call it a Tutor? Like a teacher?” Goreth asked.

I shrugged, “It’s your brain interpreting my thoughts, I am not certain what you’re actually hearing me say.”

“Ah, yeah. Phage said something like that once, before.”

I nodded, “In any case, Mutabenga would have been able to tell me if Ktletaccete brains have hemispheres like yours. But, I also feel like it’s a thing I once knew and have just forgotten.”

“Interesting,” Goreth said, momentarily looking off into the distance. “Anyway, we both think Phage has taken over our limbic system, if that’s possible. It feels like it lives there, as far as I can tell. But you feel like you live nestled between it and Sarah, and I’m wondering where all the other visitors might go if they start coming to our brain.”

“Are you sure you live in localized parts of your brain?”
I asked.

“No,” Goreth admitted. “But it feels like we do. And we’ve written about all sorts of evidence we’ve uncovered that suggests we do.”

I thought about this a little bit, and then proposed something, “What if I exist as a pattern of thoughts and memories distributed across your entire brain, but I lean just enough to your right hemisphere that you perceive me as existing there?”

“Oh, I suppose, I guess that could work,” Goreth tilted their head to look upward in a different direction. “I wonder if that’s how it is for me and Sarah, too.”

“And Phage feels like it’s in your limbic system because it is perfectly evenly distributed and it acts like a Monster,” I suggested. I didn’t know if when I heard or said ‘limbic system’ it was the same thing for a human as it was for me. I just rolled with it. But, I was using a meaning of the word ‘Monster’ in a way that had specific connotations on the Sunspot, but I heard the English word for a scary creature of terror and destruction come out of my inworld mouth. I’m giving it a capital ‘M’ here so that you know the difference. I decided to give Goreth more explanation, “It has a habit of looking out for everyone’s basic needs and advocating for them in forceful and unexpected ways. I’m getting the sense from your system’s linguistic memories that the limbic system is thought to be the first part of your brain to evolve, or something like that. And that it’s probably where your instincts lie?”

“That’s a theory about it, yes,” Goreth said. “And, yeah, Phage is monstrous in an id kind of way.”

‘Id’ was a number in my language, so I was confused. “What do you mean by ‘id’?”

“It’s an old, outdated model for the part of the human psyche that probably stems from the limbic system’s behavior,” Goreth said.

Ah, a circular definition. But it worked for me.

“Anyway, I’d love to meet more of your people and even family, if they come over. I’m looking forward to it,” Goreth said. “But Sarah is scared about it, and worried that she and I will get less front time and start to have less say over our life, if we open ourselves up to you all. And I’m trying to fathom how our brain can even hold that many people. It so often feels like we take up all of it, you know.”

“Brains are weird,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Goreth agreed.

“How many system members do Erik and Audrey each have?” I asked.

Goreth squinted and said, “I seem to remember Erik saying he had fourteen facets or alters. He can’t really decide what to call them, or whether they’re all truly separate people, though. But, I suppose that indecision is the result of different points of view held by different members.”

“That’s been known to happen amongst Ktletaccete,” I said.

“And Audrey has hand counted over a hundred and forty different headmates, and I do know they’re different people,” Goreth continued. “I know all of them by name, and can look them up thanks to their own wiki, but I can’t keep track of which ones are fronting, unless they are regulars like Brock.”

“What’s the largest system a human being has reported themselves to have?” I asked.

“Oh, I know of someone who has decided they might as well have infinite members,” Goreth said. “But, they’re a gateway system, and they say the bulk of their members live on the other side of their gate, in their own universe, and don’t actually live in their brain.”

“OK, well, there you go,” I gestured. “You are part of a gateway system, now, and there’s this Tunnel here. And I’m not entirely sure I’m existing completely on this side of it. It’s possible that the entirety of my mind spans across that Tunnel and operates both in your brain and on the Network of the Sunspot.”

“Is your Network like the Matrix,” they suddenly asked.

“What is the Matrix?” For some reason I didn’t have access to their memory of it. Not surprisingly, though. Shared memories have always been unreliable.

“Well, it’s fictional, something a couple of other trans women dreamed up, based on the works of a bunch of other authors, of course,” Goreth said. “But, it’s supposed to be a virtual reality, kind of like our inworld, but hosted on a computer network, that human beings are plugged into. So it’s like they’re having this big shared dream over that computer network. And it’s called the Matrix.”

“Yes, it is almost exactly that,” I said. “Only, no humans are involved, yet.”

“Rad,” Goreth said, sounding briefly like Erik. “So, but, OK. Phage said that when you cross the Tunnel it splits you into two beings, leaving a full copy on either side. How does that work with you sort of straddling the Tunnel? And, wouldn’t you experience lag if you were straddling the Tunnel?”

“Communication through the Tunnel is instant, Goreth,” I said.

“But, what’s its bandwidth?” they asked.

Bandwidth. The amount of data that can pass through a channel of information in a given span of time. Usually measured in seconds here on Earth.

“A lot,” I said, after a moment of thought. “There are countless quantum processors on the other side of it, all entangled with it now, and a human brain on this side. I don’t personally know what that means, but I think it’s a lot.”

“How many people are we talking about coming over?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what Phage has in mind.”

“That’s scary. I think I can see why Sarah is nervous about this.”

“On the Sunspot there are two inherent rights of all life,” I told them. “Of course, the fauna don’t know them and don’t respect them when interacting with each other. But we people do, and it’s kind of what makes us people. The rights are autonomy and consent.”

“That sounds like the central tenets of a queer theory over here,” Goreth said.

“They’re good rights,” I said. “Worth respecting in all things, when you can. Ideals, of course. But the foundations of a culture can be built on them.”

“That sounds amazing, if you’ve all done that.”

“We’ve had our struggles, and quite recently, too. It’s been scary,” I cautioned. “Conflicting needs get in the way, for one.”

“Of course.”

“My point is this, Goreth. Phage came into its current personhood over there, in my culture, and so did I, and same with everyone who might come from there.”

“Oh.”

“They’re going to want and expect respect for those two rights,” I said. “And that’s been one of the biggest areas of culture shock for me, over here. But…”

“But?”

“They will ask your consent first. This is your world, your vessel, your space. Since we tell them that they are joining a system by coming over here, they will treat you and your vessel as if they belong to you first and foremost. They’ll treat you like the rightful hosts of your system, and follow your lead. And I can say this for sure about my headmates, the Pembers, because we invented the ropes when it comes to creating new systems like this.” I grinned like a Pember, and hoped Goreth would understand it through our shared neurons. I seemed to be reading their body language better than I read that of any outworlder on Earth, after all.

“OK, that sounds good,” Goreth said. “But Phage has definitely not been acting like that. It messed with our dissociation and memories without our consent yesterday. We’ve been friends with it for a long, long time, but how can we trust it?”

“Corner it, and make a better contract with it,” I said.

Goreth titled their head in a very Ktletaccete way, and widened their eyes, and said, “You make it sound like a demon.”

Demon. An agent of supernatural power that can be ordered to do one’s bidding or be tapped as a source of knowledge, often equated with forces of evil or darkness by some religions on Earth.

That tidbit of knowledge came with the word as Goreth spoke it.

“That might be a good word for it,” I said. “But, if I were you, I’d ask its consent before calling it that.”

“Because it’s dangerous?” Goreth asked.

“Because autonomy and consent are its rights too, as a sentient being, and that includes the right to self identify,” I replied.

Goreth huffed out a laugh and said, “Of course.”

“I just know that making contracts with it is a way of helping it to center itself and focus,” I explained. “Historically, the Sunspot has always benefited from doing that. It wants to help. It wants to be a person with you. It wants family. But without explicit directions, it can get lost and behave erratically.”

“Huh.”

“I think it has adapted to your world, and your own version of your world’s culture,” I said, telling what I felt was the truth. “So it’s behaving more like a human than a Ktletaccete right now. Or, at least, a human/dragon hybrid.”

“A gyndracomorph.”

“What is that?”

“It’s what Sarah and I call ourselves as a whole, a gyndracomorph. Half girl and half dragon.”

“That’s a wonderful word.”

“Thank you. I love it.”

I nodded. “Anyway, I think as more Ktletaccete come over, it may start to revert to being more like us, and more predictable to us. But, you should assert to it what you need it to be. It will appreciate that.”

Goreth unfolded their right forelimb, pulling their claws out from under themselves, and reached up and scratched their jawline, grumbling. Then they said, in contemplation, “I think this explains a lot of what’s happened with Phage in my life. Thank you.”

I studied Goreth for a while, thinking about how I perceived them, and how we both perceived the Tunnel differently, and I felt myself filling up with curiosity and questions.

“What color are you right now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” they said. “I don’t perceive my inworld body very well. But I’ve always thought of myself as sort of a blue or green color. Or a range of both. But my vessel’s nerve signals seem to override my perceptions of my true self a lot of the time.”

I nodded, and said, “I remember that problem. Another weird similarity. Perhaps physics causes life to turn out a lot alike. Only, the aliens we met before I came here were so different.”

Goreth shrugged, more awkwardly lifting their shoulders than tilting their head quizzically, but I understood the gesture. And they said, “With a universe this big, but with laws of physics as demanding and unrelenting as they are, I’d expect both a lot of variety and similarity. And, if your cousins did actually drop the Tunnel Apparatus here on Earth, they might have had reasons for choosing Earth. Like its similarities to what they knew.”

I smiled, because I liked their line of speculation, but I was still on my original topic, so I asked, “How do you perceive me? What do I look like to you?”

Goreth took a moment to examine me. They twisted up their face and tilted their head this way and that, squinted with one eye, the other wide, and bit their lower lip in a way that I suspected wasn’t terribly dragon-like, and eventually said, “Kind of like an AI’s version of a ‘real-life’ cartoon opossum with a feathered plume and a queer fashion sense.”

I had no idea of what any of that meant, but I decided to remember that description to look it up later.

“Do all Ktletaccete look like you do?” Goreth asked.

“Oh, not at all,” I replied. “But I’m not sure you’re seeing me as the real me, or as your own mind’s interpretation of my identity. That’s why I was asking.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, it sounds close enough to ‘not-human’ that you’ll probably understand when I say I’m pretty dysphoric when I front in your vessel,” I told them.

“You and me both,” they replied.

“But you front more often than Sarah,” I noted.

“I know.”