My Brains!!! ep 9

"Hey, got the cat," he said from outside. A moment later we saw his legs float by the window. "Where'd you go?"

"Don't go out there," she said and kissed me. I didn't kiss her back. "I could show you some boob." She reached to her shirt.

"No!" I said.

"You have to stay here with me. With us." She adjusted her fedora. "I'll level with you. There's a three-sided war. His side—" she pointed to the window—"my side, and another."

"So you're the leaders?"

"No. Yes." She put her head in her hands and all I could see was the top of her hat and her fingers. The pose was very adult-like. She looked back up. "It doesn't work like that. It's more of a… community. All our minds are… linked."

"So what—you're telepaths or something?"

"Yes. No." She shook her head and was a teenager again. "Something like that. If I could—" she put her hand up to touch my face. Her palm was warm. And tingly. "He's already done so much damage in there."

"What do you mean?"

"We have a hive consciousness. All of us. At some point there was a rift and for the most part we were split down the middle. It's really a minor disagreement that got blown way out of proportion, but we couldn't settle it. So we decided this would be our theater."

"This?"

"Earth. We created a corporeal construct where we could settle our differences in a way we couldn't in the Channel—"

"The what?"

"Channel."

"What's that?"

"That's what we call the hive mind."

"Oh, okay."

"What we are—truly are—are creatures of pure energy. We don't die; we simply convert to other forms of energy. So we species that had something unique we could use to help settle the difference."

"Humans."

"Right. Your former kind dies all the time. Studying you gave us an appreciation for what we now understand as life because of how you so recklessly disregard it."

"So you're using our bodies to fight your war? Do you die when one of you is killed in a human body?"

"Oh no." She shook her head. "We're not the construct. It's just a physical copy of us to participate in the conflict."

"So you're just a… recording?" I felt myself drawing back from her.

"It's a little more than that. The construct actually melds with the brain of the host, creating an entirely new persona."

"So that's what's been happening to me?" My voice was a lot louder than intended. I stood.

"Keep your voice down. He'll hear."