…the spheres, the cubes. The swipes, the taps. The clicks. For aye, it's available for every device, the constructiblobs sequencing their crystal shells per interaction, addressing machine. Responding to your mind. Take a left. No, right. Straight ahead!
AIEEEEEE!!!
Spend some rods, to escape! Or just go with it, trust the process.
Could you, too, be an alien in disguise?
Perhaps.
How about the rest of your blobitron group?
[ REPLICATE ME, BABY ]
My blobitron and I had quickly tired of the game's laughable abstraction and descent into "madness" which would reveal the person we knew we were. Yes, it was unfair of us to judge it to our standard. And yes, there were some (barely) interesting twists here and there, some borderline innovations in constructiblob relations. And yes, to be fair, the natives were simply lovin' it. But we'd expected more from this planet, gifted with an Orb, a strong connection to the particle.
"The tenth evolution is too much for these native fools! Our so-called children. While it is dribble-play for our youngest children. If they cannot contextualise the simplest of gateways – a 3, if I'm being generous – surely their minds would explode were we to expose even a suggestion of the truth. Let us away from this pitiful world, my gorgeous blobitron!"
"Blobitron, did you say? Dare I say you have commenced subconscious integration of their contextualisation? :)"
"Ach! A slip of the tongue. You and your defence of this pointless exercise. Surely you are as bored as I?"
"Well… no. But… yes, I am bored tbh. Exceptionally so. And you? You?"
"Also bored."
"As well."
[ REPLICATE ME, BABY ]
Away from this place? The blobitron wasn't going anywhere. It would be decades, in the native thoughtspace, before the lightships arrived, when the natives were finally ready for the coming of 10-V, for a next-next-next-gen+++-plus – oh, so very plus! – cerebral implant, initiating the merging of the virtual and the real which was the next major step in the planet's evolution. As for the gate which had brought the scout here, it had been a one-way affair, what with the vast energy required to ground it in such an abstract-deficient realm.
And what was one was now four, and far weaker than the first, even when collected. Very little of its power remained. The traveller had had to divide, and divide, during transport in order to complete the transfer, the world being denser than expected – considerably so – that it would fail to connect with even the most basic setting-sets of a near-infinite range of reality-warping devices through which the entity had cycled (with 100% relaxed concentration) as it sped through time and space. It was divide, or be squashed, and the higher form was transformed into, basically, four exceptionally advanced natives of similar design, same family name, each of whom, by day, even in their weakened state, through a magic impossible to us, would effortlessly manifest as a team-building donut from the non-existent Galaxy Donuts 4 U 123, quietly assisting Vogenomic's efforts.
And by night, they'd rematerialise in Alien HQ, wiping off the glaze, squirting out the cream, brushing bacon from their hair, plus unspeakable remnants from the digestive process, particularly on this day, when n-Vogen had exploded through his various holes. Disgusting, to be sure, but also strangely amusing, a relief from the heaviness of this world. They would smile. Even laugh. They stood together, in the bathroom, watching themselves.
"I am Grey."
"I am Green."
"I am Pink."
"I am Blue."