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<span class="mu-i">Think positive.</span> You haven't even tried, you guess. If it's the same result, you'll feel like shit, but you've felt like shit for two weeks. If you put a lot of effort into it, you'll feel like shit and like a moron, but it isn't like anyone will know. You sigh and turn your head from the desk and rub your eyes and try to relax. Try to...
And before you can articulate your goal, summon your willpower, before you can walk yourself back through the process or even name the process (your stupid made-up name of) "beetlefication"; with only the barest trace of effort, your human body falls cleanly and smoothly and willingly apart into beetles.
You are several hundred beetles on your cot, in real life. "What the fuck," you say, out of no mouth, in real life. Rising into the air, you see your tent from all angles. Landing on the ceiling is no trouble. Crawling around is no trouble. There has to be a catch. Are you stuck like this? You are not. Another wisp of intention whaps you back together, sending you falling seven feet straight onto the cot.
You lie there, jarred and processing. You're still in your clothes. How does that work? Are the beetles real? Do they breathe water? How does <span class="mu-i">that</span> work? Raising your hand over your face, you idly wish it apart, and it <span class="mu-i">comes</span> apart— your wrist blank and stumpy below it. None of the rest of you changes. The hand-beetles hover in place, and when you spread and flex and ball your "hand" they mimic your movements obligingly. You aren't putting in any work at all.
Holy shit. You are probably the only person in the world who'd appreciate this. Or, no: Richard would've. Richard understood how your beetles worked, which was you weren't beetles at all. You were an intangible thing, a spiderweb-mind, who was <span class="mu-i">possessing</span> and <span class="mu-i">controlling</span> a swarm of beetles, which from the outside was the same, and from the inside was very different.
No longer. Now you're one-of-a-kind. Now you <span class="mu-i">are</span> goddamn beetles.
You could've been occupied for several hours, reveling in this, were you not interrupted. Someone bangs on the tent post. "Hey! Welfare check! You better be decent, Gilman, because I'm coming—"
Fuck! "Wait! Wait, I'm not..." Hand, first, but it's back to normal so quick it's hardly worth mentioning, and then you're scrambling to get jizz boxers off and clean ones on and pants over them, and Madrigal will have to deal with your undershirt. Whatever. You hop-slide over to the door and scrabble it open and shove your head out. "What's going on?"
"Holy shit, did I wake you up?" Madrigal squints at you. Unlike some people, she's exactly the same, at least on the outside. "You're aware what time it is?"
"I was awake," you say, and try not to sound bleary, and also surprised. You didn't stutter. "What's going on?"
(2/TBC)
