Chapter Text
Through the cameras, she watched the puddles of living goo dance to the beat. Of course, they weren't goo, not yet. They were still bones and skin and flesh and blood, caked in aerosols and creams and powders and other cosmetics, clad in various kinds of fabrics. They were all here for a purpose, they imagined. Just to have fun, to build their reputations, to spy and gossip, to land a partner, to score, to advance their plots and schemes. So many purposes.
But they were all products of evolution. Evolution created form and function, not purpose. And that function, which shaped those forms that they so readily flaunted, made them proud and jealous and amorous, was reproduction. Reproduction at all levels. Genes, cells, the organism, the species. None of them could last forever, but they could pass the baton, keep the suffering of untold generations of replicators, stretching back to the first few to emerge in that meaningless primordial soup of organic compounds and progressing forward to inevitable extinction, going for as long as possible. A cosmic work of aesthetic and philosophical beauty, really, relegated to the background.
Even on nights like this, the revelers' conscious experiences were hardly dominated by the fact. The appeal-to-nature fallacy, they'd called it. Many of them wanted the act, but almost none of them wanted, or would be fine with, actual reproduction. But the alternative, stacking up experiences and actions to squeeze out the right set of feelings from their neurons, from brains that would inevitably crumble into first non-sentient, then inanimate matter, was a dead end. Or at least, it would've been. A new option was about to dawn. A being of ambition and appetite beyond anything they could imagine regarded them, salivated over them, finalized plans against them even as their petty human lives ticked down to nothingness. And so they danced.
Most of them, as this form of life and as the next, were just background pieces. Bit players to populate the scene. So much quivering anonymous tissue. But there were seven special ones. And one of them was the most special of all. For he was her big brother. He always surprised her, and he was always interesting. But the world, and the galaxy, couldn't just be him and her. Wonderful as he was, that would get boring fast. But he'd already found her a solution, before she'd even posed the question. Her big brother was always looking out for her.
He wasn't the only one. The other members of her family had played their own roles to perfection. Especially dearest sister, who had set up this grand event, and gathered so much raw material into one convenient location. She couldn't wait to return the favor to them all.
"Let's all have fun tonight. Ominous hand-clasp."
Her stomach rumbled.
"Let us have a...fruit salad. Disappointed pout."
Tessa had gone on a diet, and dragged the rest of them with her.
She didn't like that.
She kicked the desk.
Her swiveling chair spun.
"Spin."
"Spin."
That was nice.
It almost made up for having nothing better than a fruit salad to eat.
Almost.