Mange is rather dangerous in this environment. While what it strips away is not one’s only form of insulation, its impact is enough to leave one afraid of the outside. One loiters inside the fetid subterranean, much despised, but now preferred to the bitter aerie. With nothing to do crouched, the thoughts idle over to wondering at the erratic circles flown by rarely witnessed insects, unable to survive outside the suffocating confines of this bolthole, a fate now shared by one being fed on by such insects delighted at bare skin unshielded by the lost icy fiber forest. The idea that one exists only inside of this hide now has more opportunity to be remembered, such is the attention that it demands. The insects, oblivious to one’s crisis, suck vital fluid from past the barrier–- Barrier? Precisely the subject of the crisis. For one has a worldview unusual to one’s species, being that this is a barrier between oneself and everything else; indeed, that these are separated at all. Not that one would know its unusuality, never having an ariensk to call one's own, never having had an opportunity to form one, never having witnessed communication or intimacy beyond the very barest service provided by the womb. Mayhap there was some suckling, but it is as forgotten as the experience of the fetus. For all one knows, neither may have happened at all. The thought makes one feel anxious, and sick. Emotion. A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others: something that can have words ascribed to each state, described, communicated in any number of ways but always private, always except through symbols and at secondhand incommunicable. Information can be pooled about the experiences one of which being this, but never the experiences themselves. Always and in all circumstances one is by oneself. Now, in isolation from those who one has never met, one finds oneself missing what one never had, the futile yet somehow connecting struggle to fuse insulated minds into a single self-transcendence. Skin even, that perceived barrier, disappearing, fusing with the one no longer the other, melting into a forgotten slop on the floor to be trampled and licked by the newborns unknowing that soon their feeble brains will become more in the main eliminative than productive than ever before, smothering all experience and sensum beneath a blanket of the concept, "things I know". Not something to be undertaken with an island universe disliked. Yet, this longed-for end may be found repellent once accomplished, so all-consuming and overwhelming it be to a mind accustomed to living in a world of symbols only, mistaken for actual things. This fact was to be appreciated too late for one to avoid the resulting mental agony. Giving up on swatting at the unending assault of overjoyed insects, one crawls on all legs--unusual, that--towards somewhere. In this accursed cavity, one place is as good as another. Or as bad. One idly picks at fungi with a claw, a spongy cushion saturating the air with spores with every move. Perpetual sneezing. Making sure beforehand of a lack of a boiling spring to fall in, no algae lights the way to a better place to step to. Assuming, of course, that there was a better place to lie steeped in self-pity. Fear of inhaling eliminates scent as a guide. Rolling on one's back, thinking if only one had gone to some inhabited place, one could have been taken care of, not reduced to this state as if there was some higher point one was once at that one fell from, lost the updraft, some reason, some excuse for the thought regarding the mushroom in hand: at any rate it is not possible to drink it, the only remaining option is to eat it. Perhaps it will grow in the stomach unaided, one thinks, spitting out the fungus. It lands with a wet squish in what now qualifies as the distance, so impaired is one's mobility. The transcendence will soon come, one is sure, though for what reason one does not know. Come it does, the squishing having continued long past the single time it should have occurred. The oncoming stench manages to cut through the omnipresent spores and reach oneself on the rare inhale. Its bioelectricity is sensed as well, and with this comes a realization one finds unconcerning; odd, considering its irregularity. One has decided previously that since no difference in sight is made whether one's outer eyelids cover the eye, it is better to close them to reduce stains to the nictitating membrane. Now, even with the approach of the only thing in this blasted warren presumed worthy of being seen, one tells oneself one cannot be bothered to turn and look; yes, it is a voluntary decision. All at once the sense of being in an insect hive comes upon oneself: dark, hot, humid, and always clicking, clicking, clicking. The fungal carpet being mostly crushed by this time, one is overcome by a coughing fit. Already there is a puddle forming over the floor no longer living, not to be continued by something unlike it, for what this . . . thing . . . does could not by any stretch be called living. Nowhere near as unknowingly necrophilious as its creator, but still unfortunately so; superficially organic while approaching life mechanically as though all living persons were things. The living, though hardly so, person now approached by this knows a different intention for it. The thoughts of intent may yet be reconciled. The crisis may reach a resolution. The insectal torrent subsides at this. They know something, something in them that one does not possess warns them of it. Ten io'aons to contact--one is really just going to lie there and let it do it? The speaker of that ignores that it is not something one can disallow. One would never think of doing so in the first place, even if it was:.. Seven io'aons, evanesce before it is too late-- :..within one's capability. One welcomes this, the boat coming to liberate one from one's island, so what if it is the only one on the..: --Oh, one will, but in a manner inadvised-- :..mainland, even that would be overwhelming. The miracle of communication::: --Five io'aons, save that very skin-- :::The barrier. Of course. It is not to be saved, for that would hinder the goal::: --Two, there goes the last vestige of pride and dignity-- :::What useless things. Many times one has wondered just why they stubbornly remain in the brain::: --of self-- :::And the fear of its loss, a mild motivation... --survival is separation-- Precisely! Precisely the thing to be avoided, the subject of this entire undertaking. Keratin, nerves, muscles, organs, the misleading flesh descends upon one now mildly conflicted. The survival instinct, much suppressed, is the instigator; how primitive it is, to not realize that this is like drowning, it is easier if one does not struggle. But it should not be easy, the instinct screams, unheard beneath one's own impressive volume. The barrier, the conglomeration of scabs, scars, insect bites, lacerations, spores, ungrown, regrown, overgrown, ingrown, now peeling away, very intentionally, uncaring of how unpleasant it is for one's nerves. This is what is necessary to know, to truly know, anyone else, to leave the island, cross the ocean. Pinioned at birth, crippled evermore. Unless, unless this, this opportunity, it will free one. Nothing neat about this necessity. Distantly, one feels the fluids insects so coveted joining the growing puddle beneath oneself. Remotely, one tastes the unusual organic in one's mouth, hears the clicking of the soon to be un-other and one of its reflexes loudly protesting. One smelled oneself, flayed, eviscerated, opened to the community so essential to sanity prodding, snuffling, rooting about in the entirely public cavity one used to think of as oneself. One rises from the puddle, though not unaided; the thing knows that were the barrier still present in either of them their skin would be one skin, merging, melting together, melted already into the puddle now an ocean on the floor, the ocean of division it must drain, so all become one landmass, one being, never to be separated, synaptic clusters with no wall, nothing between I and not-I, no required intermediate stages from mind to mind, all-consuming, no concepts, nothing to say this is where this wiggle ends and the other begins, to impose straight rigid lines to force everything to conform to what is known as order by those who exist only inside themselves, the poor fools-- --This, this barrier, this is no longer a barrier but a bridge, a bridge between the World and-- No-one, the We, We are an appendage, an auxiliary, a facilitator of Elysium Everlasting, We shall subsume, We shall assimilate, We shall disappear the barrier between Us and Them, We shall liberate-- --We shall extend the message to all people--