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  Am I an animal?

  File name: Untold Stories

  Passcode: 8675309

  Pacing. Back and forth. Much like the dream I'd had last night—I was edgy and couldn’t shake the feeling there was something right around the corner pressing down on me.

  I’d already had my morning workout, but I couldn’t relax. Denten and I no longer met in dojo 6, so I'd re-started my morning flow in the common dojo like everyone else. Maybe I needed to spar someone? Get Peydran to dance? No, he was too busy.

  Write? Couldn't focus. Argh! I felt like I needed to run into the desert, wild and free.

  I tried tapping my fingertips just below my eyes since that usually helped me calm down. I just kept doing it and breathing, and started to realize that I wasn’t truly anxious. It wasn’t panic or worry.

  It was something else.

  Financially I was doing well. I had my savings plus a small stipend coming in from my new business.

  All the recipes I published had Shurwinn ingredients like chili powder or spice mixes, and while people on other spheres could easily find local substitutes, it was still considered a promotion of the goods exported from Shurwinn, so I got paid for advertising.

  Should I look for a house beyond the desert like in my dream?

  That—well, no. Something felt off about that. I had a niggling feeling, a sense that there was something more I had to do before I got to that point.

  I felt the decision turn a switch inside me: zoom! The pressure shifted, and I could think straight.

  Oh! Wait! I remembered something that I’d back-burnered weeks ago. I’d found a research paper from a university study in the Bootes Galaxy about uncooked vegetarian diets and cybernetics surgery.

  Yes, yes, yes! That was exactly what I'd been missing.

  I pulled up the study and re-read it then sent a request to the author, asking him if he would be willing to speak with me informally. If he saw my stream site, he’d see my crazy video, but hopefully he’d see it for the joke it was, and not unprofessionalism.

  Being able to connect across the galaxy with someone else who had questions about odd diets and was trying unusual solutions would be refreshing. Especially someone who was looking at things from a scientific viewpoint rather than a mystical one.

  Yeah, I'd become quite the mystic, but I still wanted to connect the science-y parts of myself into the whole I was becoming. Maybe Gentia Depran could help me do just that.

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  What a game! This is glorious! Will they figure out it’s me, do you think?

  - Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2782)

  Erotica is a force of nature which animates all things. Nature wishes to live. The breath of life animates. Erotica is sensual but not always sexual. Connect to erotica and you connect to the force of nature. Life springs from erotica through the intention of the forms that shape it.

  - The Art and Practice of Conception

  Journal

  Stand. Breathe. I feel my body. I feel my breath. I am my body. I am my breath. I am more than my body. I am more than my breath. I expand. I allow myself to feel. I allow my senses to stretch. I feel my body. I feel the floor. I stretch out.

  I tried one of the exercises in The Art and Practice of Conception in my room today. I'd been listening to Ren Crieve's song "Dance Among The Stars," and I just couldn't stop myself from moving.

  The book said to “follow your body as it flowed with erotica,” so I started bending, reaching, kicking, striking, and balancing.

  Two hands, one foot.

  Lift. Wrap. Tuck. Stretch. Strike.

  As I flowed into a combination of Jendo and Tindin forms, I felt a lightness in my chest. I did feel something. I felt connected to these two parts of myself—the old forms of Jendo mixing with the newer flow of Tindin.

  Two aspects of my life blending into one shape. It was exhilarating and freeing, and I lost myself in music and movement.

  Stretching. Jabbing. Rolling. Striking. Lunging.

  I came to a rest on my back on the floor. High. I was high as a cloud in the sky! I floated and felt so full of life. Was that erotica? The feeling of being alive?

  I inhaled deeply as a question leaked out of my inner being: “Are you erotica? Are you a force of nature?”

  I felt warmth and desire filling me. I let it fill me, and I let it subside. I didn’t have to do anything about it.

  Erotica was just one of the many forces of nature. I didn’t have to do anything about rain or wind or sun. All of those things just were. Erotica was a part of me like it was a part of all things.

  I slowly came back to myself and opened my eyes, feeling like I understood something. All things were connected. All things were animated by forces I didn't fully understand.

  What was gravity, really? What gave a fetus life? It was more than a sperm and an egg. It was a self. Like me. I had a self. An inner being-ness.

  And that self was connected to all.

  When Sorchen said I might be able to teach this to other people, was this what she meant? Did I want to?

  “Delightful! Please, Ryst, let us speak again,” said my new friend Gentia Depran from the Bootes Galaxy.

  I decided to plunge forward, “Would you be interested in doing a video with me on my stream site, Gentia? I could interview you as a guest, and we could chat like this about topics like your research, or just practical things.”

  “I would love to! Do you have a date in mind?”

  “I can get back to you in a couple weeks.”

  “Excellent. I’ll forward all the files I have to you, and that'll keep you busy for a few years,” he chuckled. He was an exuberant fellow with an easy humor and quick smile. Talking to him had been natural and profoundly encouraging.

  Gentia had tripped into uncooked diets years ago when his daughter had been augmented and the cybernetics surgery'd had too many complications. They'd been considering reversing it when he found information about vegetarianism, and she'd made a full recovery.

  Gentia wasn’t a medica; he was a pharmica who researched medications. In time, he'd decided to formalize his daughter’s dietary strategy into a research study which was ongoing, and the results were positive for all of the enrolled patients.

  Even though he didn’t know much about my own symptoms, he said all of their patients were on supplements and recommended lab work routinely to be sure no deficiencies arose over time.

  While he hadn’t been able to give me any specific materials on traumatic brain injury for my own personal situation, he did have a compilation of research from across the 9 Galaxies, and he was thrilled I had contacted him.

  He said he had other “friends” in other galaxies, and it was “nice to add Andromeda to the collection.”

  I closed the conversation with Gentia and turned to my little monastery room feeling tremendously accomplished. After the weird home across the desert dream, it was nice to have concrete progress.

  A new friend in another galaxy! Peydran would freak!

  I sent a message telling him we’d have a guest from Bootes Galaxy coming on my stream site and needed a video date. Yea me! Getting the off-galaxy connections going! Woo hoo!

  Peydran: NO WAY, Ryst! I said you were a superstar! I told you!!!

  Ryst: Couldn’t have done it without you

  Peydran: Headed to Equi tomorrow for convention. Massive project. Cross-galatic video plans forthcoming. SUPERSTAR!

  Ryst: Sunshine greet you on every shore!

  I closed my messages, smiling to myself.

  But I didn’t understand the impact of that conversation for a long time, and I also had no idea that what I’d felt pressing down on me was a lot more than one video conference could solve.