Ivory tusk

The more who were invested in their device, the more likely those who had claimed ownership of it were to arrive at a hedonistic utopia upon exiting the port. The war was one of manipulation - lies designed to herd lives into the structures which could best harvest their energy. After all, their technology permeated, to some degree, the cellular processes of each living organism on the planet. They had essentially dictated the future, entangling it, through the use of their device, with the present - their struggle was now to control those who threatened its ideal shape.

Order was their philosophical ideal. They considered those who were not invested in theirs to be inferior. Their criticism of mine went to some lengths to reveal the nature of their own. False starts - rushes for day, the unblinking decimation of entire species. What their order did not account for was the ground they stood on. To them, this was a given right, the transparency normally associated with the emergence of a unifying nervous system out of complex biological process. What their order did not account for was the world around them - the evolution of the eye. The unification, without conflict, of two individuals, and the light that could have never been seen without their communication, the linking of their arms in love framing the sky in light both true and beautiful.

I'm alone in my room, held in a fine mesh, hoping that the inner riches I amass will lead me to the next sunrise. A moth lands beside my head. It makes its way toward me, twitching its antennae. I watch its movements echo through time, feeding back to its mind, and for a split second I see as it sees. Feel as it feels. We dance together, its fear my own. I taste it, feel for the edges of its conception. In that short moment, we're linked, as efficiently as I care to understand it. Learning the language of this foreign creature is worth my time. Far more valuable a thing than threatening it is - to do so would be the admittance that I had given up hope of ever understanding it, to let the reins go to some instinctive imprint of desire for self validation through control. We communicate. I gesture in code, the best I can given the symbols I have access to. Its reactions are its response, my interpretation defining the clarity of its message. There are myriad potential directions taken, all as likely to lead to bloom as to the sight they enable. Order unifies the chaos of trillions upon trillions of fates intertwined. As for mine - they are as free here as I am within theirs.