Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I unwind from her slow, one coil at a time, careful the way you’d be careful picking up something you didn’t know could break until now. She stirs but doesn’t wake, just curls tighter into the blanket where I’d been, chasing the warmth like it’s instinct.

[System: Aw, look at you, getting all soft. You want a tissue.]

Shut up, Old Mate.

[System: Can’t, mate. Got a grind arc to run, chop chop.]

Wait, hold on, hold on, I can’t just leave like this. She’s gonna wake up and think I ran off after using her, like some kind of hit-it-and-slither type. That’s not me, probably; never had the option.

[System: Nah, she’ll be right, mate. Stop spinning out.]

Rude. I’m leaving a note.

[System: Write it with what, exactly? You don’t have hands. You gonna hold the pen with those little bat wings?]

They’re not bat wings; they’re succubus wings, thank you very much, very sleek, very alluring.

[System: Sure, sure, you red mouth-turret looking bastard.]

Okay fine, I don’t actually know how to write. Never got my pen license. Sue me, but I’m gonna try anyway, because that’s the kind of guy I am now, apparently, a guy who tries.

I nudge a pen off the nightstand with my tail. It comes out crooked, more scratch than sentence, but there’s a heart at the end of it, wobbly and lopsided, drawn by something that has never held a pen in its life. I’ll be back, it says. Or something close enough that she’ll get the idea.

Good enough.

I coil off the bed, glossy dark red scales catching the low light, two meters of snake trying to be considerate, and head for the elevator.

[System: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. Not the elevator.]

What? Why not?

[System: We’re going up. Not down; there’s a little maintenance ladder behind you, mate. That’s way.]

Do I even want to know why?

[System: Nah yeah nah. But I’ll chuck you four IP if you just do it without asking questions.]

Fine. Whatever, I’m a whore for indulgence points.

I slither and coil my way up through the access hatch, scales scraping metal, hood brushing the low ceiling, until I push out onto the penthouse roof and the whole underground skyline spreads out below me, tangled wires and bioluminescent signs and the distant orange smear of market lights. Somewhere way down there, past all of it, is the wrecked little farmers market where I first opened my eyes as something smaller than a shoelace, blind, starving, and about as threatening as a wet noodle.

Look at that. Two meters of scale and bone plating now. Bulletproof, apparently. Hood flaring whenever I feel like being dramatic and a long way from hiding under a crate praying a rat wouldn’t find me first.

[System: Exactly. Glad you’re catching up.]

Catching up to what?

[System: To why I need you to jump off the building.]

Excuse me? Old Mate, do you need to reboot or something?

[System: You heard me. Jump off the building.]

No. Absolutely not. Let me lay this out for you nice and slow so it sinks in: I am a two-meter-long bag of concrete with scales. I have tiny wings that do nothing; you are asking a sausage to fly.

[System: Never said fly, I said jump.]

Same thing when there’s fifty stories between me and the ground, Old Mate.

[System: Nah, it’s not, it’s like 65 actually. Jumping is easy. Any drongo can jump; flying’s the hard part, don’t worry, one thing at a time.]

I am not doing the hard part or the easy part. I am doing zero parts. I am going back down the ladder and pretending this conversation never happened.

[System: You know what baby ducks do?]

I’m not a duck.

[System: They hatch up in a tree, right, in the nest, no feathers, no nothing, and the mum just shoves them out. They fall right out of the tree, bounce off the grass. Get up and waddle off. Job done.]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

[System: It’s science, mate. Ducks have been doing it for thousands of years, works a bloody treat.]

Ducks have feathers, Old Mate. Actual feathers. I have two leather flaps that flap uselessly whenever I get excited or scared, which, by the way, I am currently both.

[System: Fine, don’t jump, your loss.]

Good. Glad we agree.

[System: Fifteen IP if you do it though.]

I think about that; I mean, my IP points are in the hundreds right now, but what if something amazing pops up?

[System: Just saying. Sitting right there, free points. All you gotta do is fall off a building.]

That is not a fair number of points for the amount of dying I might do.

[System: It’s nothing though, is it.]

It’s really nothing. Fine, FINE, but if I die I am haunting you specifically, not the building, not the city, you. Personally.

[System: Can’t wait.]

I slither up to the edge of the roof, feeling the wind hit me different up here, colder, sharper, like the whole city is breathing on me at once. Sixty floors down, the street lights blur into one long orange smear and somewhere in that smear is a dumpster that looks, from this height, roughly the size of a postage stamp. My tail curls tight around the lip of the roof like it’s trying to hold on for both of us. My wings flap once.

whap-whap-whap.

Useless as ever, just nerves finding somewhere to go.

Okay. Okay okay okay, I can do this. I’m bulletproof. I’ve survived worse than gravity, probably; maybe, I haven’t actually checked.

[System: Ready?]

No.

Give me a second; I need to psych myself up. Something I can breathe through, so wait, am I just killing myself or do we have a plan here?

[System: Nah yeah, no worries. One...]

One. Okay, one is good. One is manageable. I can work with one for a while-