Before I sleep
One way I help myself fall asleep is by challenging myself to tell an original story. The stories are never good; albeit, they are interesting. Ideas are cheap and it’s easy to get lost in the world of make believe. Here’s a story idea I’ve had recently:
Imagine that you are an animal. Pick any animal. It doesn’t matter which starting animal you pick. Usually I pick a squirrel. Your animal has your same consciousness. So I’m assuming your animal is intelligent, has valuable life experience, and knows a lot about life. Basically it’s you in the body of an animal except with animal appetites (i.e., you eat animal food and it’s fine). You can start your animal anywhere on the earth.
Your animal has two special abilities. The first ability is the power to transform into any other animal. So in my case, I can go squirrel, to snake, to ostrich, back to squirrel… Your second ability is the power to multiply your consciousness by touching another animal. As my squirrel character, if I touch a bear I now have control over that bear. You don’t have to split your conscious, but rather have an entirely new character at your disposal. For example, I can simultaneously move as both the squirrel and the bear. Eventually you can get to the point where you have thousands of animals. To clarify, you don’t have to switch consciousness to control the animals at your disposal, but rather, they all operate independently each with a copy of your consciousness. It’s a difficult thought to explain, so hopefully I made the idea clear enough.
There are some important caveats. Only your primary animal (the squirrel in my example) has the special abilities. Your starting animal is immortal. It won’t die from age but can die from starvation, mortal wounds, [insert way to die here] (you obviously know how death works). If you’re shot as a lion and morph into an ant, your wound will follow you to the ant form. If you’d bleed out in 15 minutes as the lion, you’d bleed out in 15 minutes as the ant. The final caveat is if one of your conscious animals reproduces, then the offspring will also have the consciousness. With this circumstance, you can grow an army. This last caveat is probably the most important, so go re-read the last two sentences to make sure you’ve got it.
Finally we arrive at the story! Given everything from above, how long would it take you to concur the human race? How would you do it? You lose if your primary animal dies. I’ve spent countless nights thinking through this story idea, but I’m not going to give you my story because a) it would take too long to write in a single blog post and b) I want you to use your imagination. Go wild!
