Quoted By:
"Ah. Stay with me here. I am not a snake. I am, in actuality, far closer to you than I am to a snake."
"But you're not a person."
"I am certainly a person. I am not <span class="mu-i">human.</span> If you could look at me, though, I think you would recognize my body as, in very broad strokes, similar to your own. Bipedal and so on. Opposable thumbs. You were plagiarized from us, really— but I get off track. You are not a snake, I am not a snake."
Months of the dumb animal on the table yelling lies at you. It's lying there on the table flicking its tongue. "You were a snake."
"And yet I was, yes, and yet I am. See?" Richard leans his head way back, and the snake rears up; opens his mouth, and the snake exposes its fangs; swivels his forearm, and the snake shows its belly. "It's complex. I'll start at the beginning. This is not really a snake."
You sigh deeply.
"It was a snake, certainly, but it's been altered in systematic ways. Hollowed out, more-or-less, for as much as you can hollow a snake in the first place. This is the purview of an entirely separate department; I have nothing to do with it. I was provided with a pre-hollowed snake. It is called a chassis."
So when you thought the snake's eyes were all beady and blank, they really were blank. Damn. "Hollowed out so you can go in it?"
"Ah, the lightbulb flickers on. The purpose of these chassis are to bridge the divide between our dimension and yours. Again, we can't stroll over. For all intents and purposes, there is no physical way to be here. Emphasis physical."
"Snakes aren't real."
"Good. They're not. They're also extremely unusual, metaphysically speaking, closer to an idea than an animal. With the correct machinery, transmitting an idea is comparatively simple. The order of operations, then, goes like this. My body remains in place as my consciousness is projected into the chassis. The chassis is projected, across dimensions, into your mind."
You fondly remember biting Richard's neck and setting him on fire. Life was so much less complicated then. "But then you're a person? Um, again, I guess?"
"That's a third step removed. Your mind then <span class="mu-i">converts</span> the chassis into your preferred image of it, e.g. your father, e.g. me."
"And the key?"
"At no point is my consciousness ever inside a key, if that's what you're asking. The trouble with a chassis is that, after years of near-constant exposure, you start to get mixed up with it. Thus the hollowing, so there's nothing inside to be mixed with." Richard locks eyes with you, shuts his mouth. «It just lets me do party tricks,» the snake says.
"That doesn't answer—"
(3/4)