Chapter 464 – Hybrids
Chapter 464 The Hybrid
Duncan stepped confidently to the edge of the White Oak’s deck and probed the sea below.
At this moment, both the White Oak and the Lost Country had withdrawn from the spirit state, and in the calm blue normal sea, the water around the White Oak was as clear as a mirror, while the Black Oak, which was shrouded in fog and darkness, was reflected in the water like a shadow, and there were lights faintly lit in the depths of the shadow of the obscure and hazy ship.
After a long time, Duncan withdrew his eyes from looking at the sea, and spoke softly with a hint of exclamation, “Interesting phenomenon, Lawrence, you have experienced an incredible adventure.”
“Indeed …… it is incredible,” Lawrence stood aside and replied with a respectful and cautious posture, “I have been begging for my life on this great sea for decades, but I have seen many unbelievable things, but this time of Frost’s experience is still far beyond the past, but in any case, I brought Martha back, and all the adventures were worth it.”
“Your wife, Martha-what exactly is her current state? And how did you two establish contact with these two ships that you each control?”
“She and her Black Oak are now the equivalent of the White Oak’s shadow,” Lawrence answered honestly, “as you can see, she is on that reflected ship, but when the situation calls for it, the Black Oak can also enter the real world as a phantom and sail with the White Oak, or have the the two ships to perform a light reversal, in which case we can navigate the depths of the spirit world, avoiding real-world obstacles – we did that once when traveling through the war zone around the Frost, and it worked well.”
“Your wife told you all this? I mean, these …… tricks.”
“Yes,” Lawrence nodded, “Martha has been wandering in the mirror space beneath the Frost Sea for over a decade, she knows a lot about a lot of things, and she was the equivalent of our guide during the previous operation.”
Duncan didn’t say anything for a while, he just stared silently at the reflection below, and after a long time, he suddenly broke the silence, “Can I talk to her alone?”
Lawrence was stunned for a moment, a trace of surprise surfaced in his complexion, followed by nervousness and hesitation, “This …… may I ask you ……”
“Don’t worry, I just need to get to know each and every one of my men, it’s true that the Black Oak is a bit spooky, but there is no ship more spooky than the Lost Country on this ocean, and I’m very inclusive in that regard – provided the Black Oak can’t have secrets.”
Lawrence was then slightly relieved, and although still hesitant, he nodded, “Okay, I’ll make the arrangements, and tell Martha by the way.”
Duncan nodded slightly, then craned his head to look a little further away.
Alice and the Sailor were crouching on the deck over there, and the two of them were enthusiastically fiddling with a small bug they had caught somewhere with a small wooden stick, discussing passionately whether the bug had a soul or not–” Duncan nodded slightly, and then turned his head to look at the other side. -Alice thought not.
Alice thought not, because she could not see the threads of the bugs, and the Sailor insisted that there were, because he had heard that there were bugs in Bartok’s garden, and he even thought that there were “little gatekeepers” as big as bugs, who were responsible for bringing the souls of the dead mosquitoes of the earthly world to their deaths in the summer time. The souls of dead earthly mosquitoes are brought to their resting place to bite those who are buried in June and July. ……
The two “men” were both bluffed by each other.
This scene is like two retards.
One more look will feel that the brain is suffering from pollution kind of.
Duncan silently watched the undisturbed scene on the deck, next to him Lawrence also watched in silence, after a long time, Duncan shook his head, “Let them play.”
“…… I think so, it’s better than continuing to hang from the flagpole and ghosting.”
……
Soon after, Lawrence ordered a room to be prepared on the White Oak that was undisturbed, and a huge mirror was set up in the room.
After the uninvolved men had left, Duncan turned and gazed silently at the one-man-high mirror.
“I need to talk to you.” He said to the mirror.
In the next instant, the mirror became pitch black, as if a fluid as thick as ink had suddenly covered the entire surface, while in the depths of the darkness, a rising and shrinking shadow gradually formed an outline.
A lady dressed in a white shirt, brown vest and pants came out from the rising and shrinking shadow.
“I heard Lawrence say that you wanted to speak with me alone,” the lady said as she came to the mirror, calmly responding to Duncan’s gaze, “and it looks …… like you noticed.”
“There are too many impurities, repeated overlapping shadows obscuring details that don’t belong on the Black Oak, but it’s not enough to hide them from my flames,” Duncan said slowly, then reached over and grabbed a chair from the side, on which he sat and looked at the figure in the mirror – the and the vast darkness behind it, tangled like some phantom curtain, “How much of ‘Martha’ is there?”
“…… Less than a thousandth.”
“One thousandth, a very small number,” Duncan looked at the other, and that huge chaotic “hybrid” also frankly met his gaze, “even so, you still call yourself Martha, and it seems that …… you have a genuine ‘self-identification’ with that identity.”
“Because ‘Martha’ is the only complete personality in it,” replied the Adventuress in the mirror, “without a personality to support it, memories are Without a personality to support them, memories are pale scrolls, and poring over them is not enough to form a ‘self’, and after countless reorganizations of the vast jumble of memories in blind disarray, I decided that ‘Martha’ was the only ‘representative’ who could manage it all. ‘ – I needed to be Martha, and Martha needed to exist.”
“So, you’re a mix, you’re a mix of far more than you’ve told Lawrence, and a good portion of the minds that have fallen into that sea over the last fifty years have flowed into you ‘within’ you, or to put it another way . . it was you who devoured those minds?”
“Devouring …… that’s a very offensive way of putting it, but I don’t feel that way, I’ve never devoured anything, and I’m not interested in souls, it’s the vast power deep within that mirror space that devours everything, and those ‘memories’ that make up me ‘, are merely the residue left behind after being crushed by that vast power, tiny tributaries that will come together like dust coalescing into a mass; I do not exist before those fragments, but those fragments coalesce into me – Martha, merely a ghost awakened from the fragments, with the hindsight to assume the the role of the collector.” “The residue left behind after crushing ……” Duncan frowned, “Why wasn’t Martha crushed?”
“Because Lawrence came to these waters,” a small smile appeared on the face of the adventuress in the mirror, “He was favored by you, so Martha was favored by you.”
Duncan did not speak, he was lost in long thought, and it was a long time before he broke the silence thoughtfully, “The world in the mirror is discontinuous ……”
“Yes, the world in the mirror is discontinuous, space is discontinuous, time is discontinuous – the end is born before the beginning, you made Martha, and Martha is now answering your questions.”
Duncan breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“A vast mixture of information …… that would explain why you know so much,” he pulled back, “not just because you wandered around that mirror space for long enough, but because you housed enough ‘memories’ …… So back to the beginning, is less than one-thousandth of a ‘Martha’ really enough to support your stable personality and allow you to maintain your current forever self-perception? Will there come a day when this ‘collector’ personality of yours will be drowned in that vast sea of memories, and will you forget your own name and become a chaotic, huge, dangerous undead soul?”
The female adventurer lifted her eyes, and in her calm expression, she seemed to summon up great courage, “Like you once were?”
“No, I traveled farther than you did back then, subspace is a deeper and darker place than the Mirror Worlds – and thus I was more dangerous then than you were as well,” Duncan did not care for the other woman’s bold statement, but maintained his usual calm tone of voice. “So I have a better understanding of how much harm an out-of-control undead can do – even if that undead is a little ‘safer’ than I was back then.”
The female adventurer in the mirror fell silent for a moment.
After a long moment, she suddenly spoke, “Do you think I can be considered ‘Martha’ now?”
Duncan thought for a few seconds.
Martha was only one thousandth of this vast, mixed mass, but to the self-recognized “Martha” personality, what was contained in this mass was one hundred percent of her.
Who this huge hybrid is, and what state its future personality will be in, seems to be in a state of complete “TBD” – the probability of loss of control is there, but its current personality and self-perception are also in a state of “TBD”. There is a possibility of loss of control, but there is also no doubt about the existence of the current personality and self-perception.
Duncan fell into a brief hesitation, but just at the moment when this hesitation arose, a scene that seemed to be real suddenly appeared in his mind….
The sea breeze was gentle, the waves gentle.
He stood on the surface of the water, and the blue waves spread out at his feet.
There were fish leaping out of the water, and under the brilliant sunlight, the fish swam in the air around them, encircling leisurely.
He lowered his head and looked down at his feet.
The slowly rippling water looked clear and transparent, yet its depths seemed to be shrouded in mist, indistinguishable and difficult to see through.
Something new leapt out of the water and swam around him.
They were fish.
Duncan awoke suddenly and looked into the mirror in front of him.
The shadows in the mirror rose and wriggled as if waiting for an answer.
“…… Ms. Martha,” Duncan finally broke the silence after a long time, “welcome to the Lost Country Fleet.”
The rising and shrinking darkness, filled with chaos and confusion and completely lacking any tangible outline, suddenly contracted and once again transformed into the female adventurer dressed in a white shirt, brown vest and pants.
Behind her, the mass of shadows had calmed down.
At the same time, on the deck of the White Oak, Lawrence, who was acting like a temporary guardian, watching the doll Alice and the dry body “sailor” poking at the bugs, also looked down at his own body in confusion.
Those uncontrollably rising and spreading green flames were rapidly converging, and the body that had been passively maintaining the ghost form since three days ago was also rapidly recovering, and in his perception, those “ghost flames” that would be activated from time to time due to inexplicable reasons appeared to have truly gained peace for the first time, and had become a part of his body that he could control. He was able to control the “Ghost Fire” for the first time.
It seemed that some kind of “source of stimulation” that caused the spirit fire to be activated frequently had suddenly disappeared.
“…… under control?”
Lawrence blinked and muttered in confusion.
(End of chapter)