Scattered Thoughts

Nathalie Boisard-Beudin

Athanox was a shape shifter.

Well, it might feel like fancy stuff around here, but let me assure you that it is a very mundane thing on HIS planet.

In fact, you could not be more ordinary: EVERYONE there was a shape shifter.
Those beings are hatched without a shape and go through their existence evolving into different bodies or creations.

It was very simple to do, provided you kept two important rules in mind:
1 – The new shape is acquired by speaking the name of the form you want to achieve or by formulating a description for it, when no name is available.
AND
2 – There is no going back to a shape that has been already used.

Such concept of species’ evolution would of course have been a puzzle for our Darwin, but all in all it rather did well for the shape shifters.

Who, incidentally, have a very sophisticated name of their own, deriving from that of their home planet. We just cannot have it printed here because our alphabets are just not up to the sounds involved.

And really, it does not matter.

Athanox, obviously, is in fact called something much more complex but I have tried to make an estimation of what his name would sound like and that is the best I managed to come up with.
But, again, all this does not really matter.

It was depressed.

Of course, it is easy for us to think that a sentient being that must be referred to as a “IT” has all the reasons in the world to feel depressed, but all in all that is just a misconception caused by our in-build programme for evolution of our own specie. Athanox was bored to tears. And even if it had no eyes to cry, it thought life was treating it cruelly.

Look, I’m having problems calling the poor creature a “IT”: Let’s refer to it as a “HIM” instead. No gender inequity or latent chauvinism intended, rather an easy way out of a sticky situation.

So HE had an issue with life.

His companions were blaming it on adolescence. He had not yet evolved from his natural blank state to a more defining adult shape. The problem being that he could not make up his mind as to which form he should develop into. All the shapes available locally seemed already overused and standard: he did not want to grow into the shape of his elders; he had a craving for something new, something radical, something ORIGINAL.

Now, here on earth, he might have dyed his hair purple and adopt a few piercing and tattoos, but there was no such alternative on his planet. And besides that, tattooing or piercing a non existent body is a rather difficult business. So he was lingering in his prepubescent form, seeking a new himself in the limbs of cosmos beyond his home, ignoring the nifty remarks of his companions, when he found US.

His tracking device had intercepted the signals of a military observation satellite, and EARTH started to fill his field of perception. A new world of shapes and colours opened to him from that moment on and he started dreaming about coming over.

That was not as difficult as you might think. His lack of form did allow him to make use of molecular travel (yes, if you must know, a bit like in Star Trek, la!). So he signalled goodbye to his friends—I’m not really sure they were friends actually. These creatures are rather individualistic; let’s call them “relatives”—and disappeared.

Shortly before his arrival on our planet, he had to select a body to evolve into. Now that created some type of problem because he had no idea what earthly creatures were called nor what were their individual functions. In fact, he would have had problems differentiating between a living creature and an object or an inanimate being.

He had observed earth at length though, and spotted a few creatures that might offer a suitable body model for his new avatar. So when faced with the task of stating in what form he should progress, his decision was to look like “one of those small, living creatures, hanging out in groups and ruling the earth.”

I think he meant US, actually.

What he did end up as, however, was an ant.

That surprised him quite a bit, since he had more legs than he had hoped. But the shape was definitely classy and he had antennas! He was in fact using them to orient himself in the gallery where he had been dropped, when another ant came up to him and started yelling at him. He had not yet recovered from the shock when the other creature started to whip him too. It seemed to tell him to get to work and kept pushing him further into the gallery. A bit further they joined a column of workers that soldiers were keeping at their task with the use of tools that, in our sphere, would have been banned by the Geneva Convention. They did not chain him, but he did feel like a slave or a prisoner. He, who had led so far a purely intellectual and rather idle life, was put to work in the most violent manner and all day he toiled and toiled, carrying this and that this way or the other, building galleries and transporting more stuff along. He did collect a few blows on the way and ended up the day in such a state of despondency that his fellow workers—who had had their own share of misery—started to caress him with their antennas.

He was horrified.

You see, on his planet, the political regime—if one can refer to their social organisation as such—was rather liberal, what would, in our world, be passed as the equivalent of a mild form of socialism with a hefty dose of individualism.

Finding himself under a totalitarist administration was a far greater shock than all the blows he had received. He needed to escape. This became his immediate—and most frantic—goal as the days started to reproduce the same nightmare, over and over.

One day however, the workers were led out to bring back goodies to the store. Athanox was so desperate that he focused on the first thing he saw and articulated that he wanted to become “this tall slender green living thing”.

And so became a shoot of grass.

Not even a full clump. No: just one individual of a small five leaf bunch. He was soon to learn that “individual” was to be the operating word there.

You’d think: a tuft of grass, sharing the same root would automatically share the same identity between its components. But no. No single leaf was the same as the other. They all had seemingly different dreams and ambitions: One wanted to grow taller than the forest, the other wanted to make the best whistle in the world, one wanted to dance gracefully and mindlessly in the wind and another yet wanted to be greener than its colleagues.

Athanox only wanted to be left in peace.

He did soon discover however, that they all shared a common objective: survival. Apparently, they were under permanent attack.

Either that or his colleagues were suffering from acute paranoia.

They did disagree however on the best way to defend themselves. That they had to fear different predators might have accounted for the variety of defensive means devised by the vegetal beings, but their various ambitions also leaked into the debate. Because they had vicious debates about the issue. Or ANY issue.

Being all separate individuals, each and every one of them had socially the same weight and same authority (or lack thereof) upon its fellow “clumpers”. So each discussion was turning into a co-owners committee meeting from hell.

That one who wanted to grow the tallest was naturally concerned about land mowers and wanted barricades to be placed in order to choke said mechanism. That solution was horrifying to the others as it made use of dead leaves and dried fellow grass. The aspirant giant was not so much concerned on grounds of ethics. For that chap, that solution was the most efficient and had the added value to protect their roots as well as providing nourishment to the whole plant.

Now that last argument might have tilted in its favour the comrade who was cultivating its greener self, but this fellow was, in fact, more concerned with slugs and snails attack and for its part supported the production of massive poisonous lymph in order to defeat the enemy.

The whistle material chap would have supported that solution—not being keen on being used for snacks by various monopods—but it did conflict with the whole point of growing at all (in its humble opinion).

Ditto for the solution offered by the dancing partner, who proposed to make themselves as sharp as razor blades in order to deter cows and rabbits from nibbling on them.

Our little shape shifter was appalled to find out that what he had first contemplated as offering the best vegetative life could be both dangerous and—given the incessant debates on the part of his mates—extremely frustrating and infuriating.

He was constantly being dragged into cell disputes and bullied by his comrades into voicing opinions that were immediately seized upon, denigrated, contested and thereafter thoroughly ignored.

He had to admit to himself that living in a community was not for him and started to think about evolving again.

Until then he had only seen other bunches of grass and a few insects, none of which appealed to him as a suitable alternative to his present predicament.

But then one day, a strange creature appeared.

His first reaction on seeing it was “Fancy ! What is Asghartil doing here ?” for he had mistaken it for a prepubescent mate from his home planet.

However, shrills of horror from his fellow grass stalks informed him that THIS was one of the fierce enemies that had been mentioned over and over during the committee sessions.

While Mr. Green was screaming “Poison! Let’s produce poison!” and the others debated whether that was the best, most acceptable way, Athanox reviewed the creature and decided to become another one of its kind.

Now that went rather fine and he soon found himself snacking on his ex-comrades, who—it must be recorded—went down still debating.

He had become a snail.

And a happy one too. It did take him some time to get used to the strange contraption on his back, but once he settled in, he found it a rather cosy accommodation.
What was not so pleasant was the attention he suddenly was getting from the other snail.

Remember? The one that had caused all that frantic shrieking in the first place?

That other snail had finally reached him and was now proceeding to caress him with its—EYES? Eeeewww! That slimy touch was creepy (our fellow was a tad fastidious about these things) and although he tried to back away, the other one seemed quite bent on engaging him for its own wicked purposes (to him, anything THAT slimy was bound to be wicked, a preconception that might have originated from his passage as a vegetal).

After a few clumsy attempts at stating that he was not that sort of creature at all, and at asking what was the other one taking him for, he had to resort to retreat into his chambers. Firmly convinced that he was only trying to play hard-to-get, the admirer gallantly led siege to his mansion.

A few days passed.

Athanox was getting hungry when he was saved by the providential intervention of a bird, who seized his paramour and flew away with its prey.

Our hero hesitated for some time but, motivated by hunger, tried a sortie, one eye at a time. Nothing seemed to be moving around him, so he ventured out completely and marched—well, slithered—upon the nearest green patch.

He was just finishing a light lunch of tender grass shoots when he felt himself seized and airborne: he had been captured by a bird! He was watching his captor in fascination when he realised that this one had let him fall, with the obvious scope to break his shell on a rock. After a moment of panic, he managed to concentrate briefly and, just as he was about to collide with the hard stones underneath, became a bird himself.

He contained his fall just so—and a few centimetres from the ground too—but his subsequent landing was NOT a dignified one.

It’s all good and grand to sprout wings on demand but they do not come with a user manual and our little alien found himself in the position of a hatchling trying to fly for the first time. Which was ludicrous, given he was an adult size specimen.

Nearby sparrows started to poke fun at him and he soon found himself in the midst of birds off all kind, dropping by to watch him as he, again and again, failed to fly off but instead bashed his frame on the ground.

In the end, a compassionate hen did give him a few lessons and so he managed to, at least, not hurt himself by falling repetitively.

But it took him almost a week to finally ascend above the field where he had been hiding. A week during which he had to feed himself on bugs—he refused to eat worms after the first one, they were not slimy but the feeling of having your food wiggling down your throat was too much for him to bear—and to hide from foxes, cats and dogs. So it was a relief for him to finally start to fly in earnest.

He did find it an exhilarating sensation and began to swoop between trees at vertiginous speed and height, pouncing on unsuspecting butterflies and bees for snacks and creating havoc in various bird formations, thus exacting revenge for all the sarcasms he had to endure.

He felt supremely happy, so—obviously—it could not last.

He changed shape once going from a pigeon’s to that of a falcon and with the power afforded by his new wings starting to ascend to higher planes. The first cumulus he flew through did surprise him—it was wet! —but he soon got addicted to cloud bursting. And it was during one of these games that he was assaulted by a new predator.

It was huge and scaly, noisy and breathing fire.

Mmm, no: not exactly breathing fire, come to think of it. More like: farting fire.

And it threatened to swallow Athanox in one of its lateral mouths in a single big sucking action. Incapable of resisting the attraction, our little friend tried to once more resort to his favourite defence technique: i.e. becoming a sibling of his aggressor.

However, I am sorry to inform you that this was not successful.

Oh, his change happened, and it was as satisfactory as a change should be.

However, because of the synergy caused by the suction of the mouth of the monster, he was much too close to it when transforming. Becoming another identical plane—because that is what the other creature was—within meters of the other one’s left motor was disastrous.

They crashed in mid air.

Athanox’s nose broke, the other plane lost a wing and its tail and exploded little time afterwards. Our hero caught fire and started spiralling down. He tried to flap his wings, using the new science he had got from his life as a bird, but discovered to his utter horror that his new set of feathers was rigid and unmovable. The ground was getting closer and the heat unbearable. Athanox once again panicked and tried to think of another form he could change into.

In his agony, he ran through his mind all the creatures he had seen or been and even found himself thinking with some melancholy about his time as an ant.

It is at such a time that, forced by urgency to make a choice, he formulated the following injunction: He wanted ever so much to be “this little living creature made of little blackish beads!” Suffocated by the heat of the fire raging on board the cabin, he even added: “and let it be in a cool environment!”

That was the end of him.

Oh he did not crash, but you see, in his panic, he had forgotten about rule number two: once you have been through a shape, there is no turning back.

He could not become an ant anymore. So he became what fitted best to his hastily thought up definition: sturgeon eggs.

And it is as caviar that he ended his existence, on earth and everywhere else, on the canapés served during a 14th July buffet at the French embassy.

“Splendeur et Décadence.”

---

Nathalie Boisard-Beudin is French yet currently living in Rome, Italy, working by day as in-house lawyer for the European space Agency and by night scribbling furiously, with results being published in the multi national anthology “Wonderful World of Worders” (Guildhall-Press) in 2007, Six Sentences, Crime and Suspense, Micro Horror, Pen Pricks Micro Fiction and Qarrtsiluni.

Tags: Fiction Archive, Nathalie Boisard-Beudin