Phase Q/Another Time

In the white hot light, you feel fantastic.

New rhythms pass mysteriously through your being. Your whole self feels more like a vague aura, a dream, rather than the simply embodied nature that you were used to. Like a ghost with a million minds.

Sometimes, you merge with nearby ghost-people, for a while, then split apart. You don’t always split apart into the same mindset that you were before joining together.

Occasionally a subtle, barely present note registers on your virtual dashboard, notifying you of some minor hazard. A passing particle, an incoming emotion, something, anything, that would pose the slightest annoyance. Usually you discard the irritant, carrying on with your vibrations according to your desires.

A tingle comes through. This time, you decide to check it out, just because.

A beautiful face comes into view. Into one of your views. Now that you have a million minds, you have multiple awarenesses of the world.

Along with the face, you see a stunning body. It resembles no creature you’ve known before.

With its complex curves following some kind of logic that makes intuitive sense, you realize that it’s a very illusory sort of awareness. There’s no dimensional spacetime equivalent to what you’re seeing, merely the abstract concept itself.

“What a lovely form!” you say.

The being bends and sways flirtatiously.

Before you’ve even completed the thought, you’re engaging in a pattern of gliding motions that seem to complement the curvy figure even more than perfectly.

It feels like a velvet holo filtering through a subterranean network of ultrasensors – although it all takes place in a small part of your minds.

After your brief bout together, the exotic thing and you disengage. Inviting the motion portion of that concept to stay with you in this strange new place, it takes on a more tangible form.

The form of Zank, now a manifold metamagoric ghost, floats in and around and through you. Somehow, without his gangly dimensional manifestation, Zank seems even more likeable. Between the two of you, a river-fountain of charged passions flow.

“You know,” says Zank. “I don’t think I realized before quite how fully a friendship can fuel my imagination.”

Lupak flies by. “Too true, chum!” And in a swirl of emotions, your whole world melts into its basic components. The setup, including you, reformulates itself like paint droplets rising into the air. A kind of palatial skyscape, which looks trillions of lightyears across, fills with glowing sweetness.

Yet none of it has any dimension. You instantly teleport from one end of the oasis to the other. Faster than you can say “light,” your many thought processes have produced every kind of conscious experience that you can concoct from the plasticious mental palette.

You let yourself fade into the world, which also fades into you. Together, you roll around in joy.

• Disappear.
• Sleep.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.