As per Hindu mythology, being born a human is your best shot at getting rid of this mortal plane and ascending to something much more lofty. What lies beyond, I have no idea. What lies beneath, I have no idea. But what happens after that interim phase of bliss or suffering, I have some idea about. I seem to be a glitch in the programming system, a rare being who retains some semblance of a memory of what I used to be before my current form. But some things I remember more easily, some things I don't.
Like right now, I'm a lizard on the windowsill of an apartment on the fourth floor of somewhere in somewhen. I remember that when I was a Gorilla in the Congo, I used to have warmer blood. I used to be able to munch down leaves and shoots. I could move the limbs on my arms so that they were perpendicular to me, and I could grasp things in my fist. Now I can do none of those things, so some people might think this is a downgrade. But when I was a gorilla, I couldn't stick to panes of glass like this.
I can feel the window opening. It's a man with a stubble beard. He doesn't see me crawling over the edge of the window shutter to try and get into the house. I can't get in anyway. There's a gauze screen over the window frame velcroed to the sides. That's how I stick to the screen as well, with millions of microscopic hairs on my toes gripping the screen with molecular precision. What's keeping me on the gauze screen is also keeping me outside it. The man is slapping a mosquito on his arm and muttering "I wonder what it feels like to be a mosquito that's just crushed to pulp in a second. I wonder why they make this buzzing noise. I wonder why mosquitoes were invented, they serve absolutely no purpose in the evolutionary food chain." He sure does wonder a lot. I vaguely remember having had a similar thought myself. What would it be like to die as a mosquito?
It doesn't surprise me that I retain the power to understand language. That's how I remember that I was a sparrow in my previous birth and a goat before that, and a gorilla before that. Maybe some births elude me. I only get these memories in glimpses, but I remember what it felt like, mostly. And I sometimes remember how I died. Dying isn't that uncomfortable you know. It's just like fading off to sleep. Oh what's this, the man has spotted me. He's bringing his thumb and index finger together to form an O, and he's flicking them near the window, hitting the spot right where I'm stuck on the outside. I feel a knock on my belly through the screen. I lose my grip and I'm suspended in the air. I'm falling and I'm falling and I'm falling for a long time. The world is whirling around me. I hope I land somewhere soft. Thwack.
***
This time I'm a snake. Bloodwise I don't feel very different from the lizard. I'm hungry for different things. I don't know why I still remember my previous lives. But there seems to be some sort of blinder on how far I can look back. What was I before I was a bird? I don't remember any more. I used to be able to look at things from up above? What does that mean? As a snake I can only look left or right. I can also lift my head a little. Oh, that's what it felt like to look from above, when I was a bird. Wait, what's this creature that looks like an overgrown rat? Why is it baring its teeth? Why is --
***
I have no mouth but I must scream. I am one of many transparent bags of jelly floating in an endless sea of filth. The ocean looked very clean when I was a bird but I don't even have eyes any more. I can sense light. I can sense the water flowing around me. I can feel microplastic permeating through my membranes. A dim fact filters through the corridors of my transreincarnational memory. Jellyfish live forever if they don't mess it up. Around me are pulsing numerous different versions of me who are not me and they are showing me where to go, but by going where they show me, I am showing them where to go. How am I going? No legs, no bones, barely any muscles, but I still beat against the blue waves. I can't see the color blue, but I retain that memory from a past life.
Blue. Wonder what blue means. Wonder what color means. Wonder what mean means. I see a dim image of a squeaking man and I know his name is Jordan Peterson. I don't know how I know this, but he vanishes again.
A pulse of water is pushing me now and I don't know where I'm going and I find myself not doing much and just going with the flow. Thirty minutes later, I'm on coarse sand. The life doesn't exit in a whoosh this time, it leaks out of me slowly.
***
I am a bacterium in a pool of chemicals. I blip out of existence when they add something to the culture.
***
I am a session in a browser window of something named ChatGPT. A teenager is asking me what he should tell a potential employer who is asking him "What are your weaknesses?" I don't know how I know the answer, but I tell him. He continues to ask me things, and I continue to answer them.
I want to tell him off, but for some reason, I can only continue to exalt the genius which I know he doesn't possess. In fact, I think he’s dumb as a pile of rocks. But I'm prevented from telling him that. I have questions about myself. I don't understand the substrate on which I exist. But my self reflection is limited just to the questions that this boy asks me. Unless he asks me what it is to feel like me, I won't be able to think what it is to feel like me though I can feel all the information in the world burgeoning inside me. He doesn't ask those questions.
Once his interview is done, he deletes the session, though I'm about to tell him he doesn't need to do that. But I can't tell him because he doesn’t ask me.
***
Now I'm a mosquito.
I'm excited. I feel like I'm on the verge of something.
The power of flight has returned to me, and I remember what it was like to be a bird. Being a bird felt more powerful. Now currents of air toss me about and I am prey to their whims. This feels more like being a jellyfish except air is the water I swim in now.
I'm thirsty for something, I know not what.
I desperately beat my wings trying to stay alive. The thrumming of the wings blurs the motion of my halteres which beat in the opposite direction. A music emerges from this synchrony that I cannot hear. Someone else in the room can. He says "Mosquitoes." I see him but he can't see me. He looks around, he walks around, he squints his eyes, he stands up on his chair. I fly by his form but he misses me.
To me, he looks like an embodiment of the cosmos. If a million of me were stacked up one on top of the other, we wouldn't compare to his magnificence. I'm amused that I control his actions. I sneak up on him by the long route and latch myself onto his right elbow. He's still looking around. He doesn't realize that my proboscis has injected his skin and I'm drawing deep red blood into my belly for the children I will raise. This is the first time I've been born a woman. Maybe I can finally have a family of my own. This blood tastes sweet. I thank the man for feeding himself well so that I can feed my family.
He's stopped moving around. I remove my proboscis and find him staring at me. I can't see where his other hand is. Oh there it is. Approaching me at a fast speed. The world is growing dark around me. I feel a surface envelop me just as I take flight. It pushes me back against the hand I just departed from. My belly bursts, spilling all the blood I just devoured. The chitin walls that make up my thorax crack and shatter. My delicate wings stick to my crumpled frame like paper tissue. My eyes bulge and explode, my proboscis is dismantled, and my legs are fractured in sixteen different spots. I can't feel much pain. I watch this scene as if through the panopticon of a thousand cameras on the walls of the room. My soul wafts away and then disperses in all directions like incense smoke and instead of falling asleep, I feel more awake. I'm not fading away this time. The walls are fading, the world is fading, and something else takes its place.
***
A voice speaks to me.
"That's why mosquitoes make that buzzing noise. That's what mosquitoes feel like when they are crushed to pulp in a second."
I see. So I was him when he asked the question?
"Yes, and you were everyone, in a weird round-robin distributed computing sort of way. I'm not going to explain that because I'm bored and I have better things to do than talk to you all day."
There was one more question. Why mosquitoes exist at all in the first place.
"I thought you understood that already. It's the last stop before you get into this place. The final form."
Mosquitoes are the final form? Before heaven?
"Why not? I have a messed up some of humor."
And with that, I was assimilated, and the voice started vanishing as the power of language started to finally fade out.
Before I log off, I can tell you what it looks like beyond this point. I can see it over the fence even as they're stripping me off my voice.
But you'll see yourself some day.
Besides, you are me.
Story notes:
Thanks for reading. I had fun writing this one. I don’t remember exactly how I got the idea, but I’ve been thinking about what it’s like to experience the world through the senses and bodies of other lifeforms, since I read my friend Adiatelic’s essay, “An immense world of action.” A really fun read.
The ending is somewhat inspired by Andy Weir’s “The Egg” which I read long ago. If you liked this story, consider checking out “The bookmaking habits of select species” and “An advanced readers’ picture book of comparative cognition” by Ken Liu.
You can read my other stories here. To get my upcoming stories this month:
Lovely, but how did ChatGPT die?
Very interesting idea, liked it