Sharers are a species that are intimately connected with the worlds of their experience. Sharers experience through a field of awareness that uses the sensory input of that which is in their field. They see through the eyes of all that is in their field, hear from the ears, experience change in electron valence and every other form of awareness. Instead of just encoding memories, Sharers store connection to every object they experience as reference points and link back to that object and use it as an ever flowing stream of what builds their own bodies. They build themselves out of whatever is most effective for the task at hand by referencing all those points in space and bringing them together through higher dimensional pinching.
When Sharers are sharing an eye to see, it gives the home of that eye additional experience, giving the being who the eye is borrowed from access to additional vision. When they share a stomach, that nourishment is added to the experience of those they share with. With these shared parts Sharers compose an ever shifting form fitted to their current objectives, a collaboration of all they share with in accomplishing their goals. The Sharer’s form is not always contiguous, but they still rely on physics to function. Every point within their field can be shifted in a higher dimension in order to replace it with another, executing this action en masse is how they continuously construct their bodies. When a part of their body leaves their field it operates without connection to the greater awareness that had been using it. Because of this before Sharers are Sapient they’re often noticed as a moving area continuously generating insects, plants or fungi.
A Sharer starts their life cycle as a field 1 foot in diameter and inert, their sole objective being to acquire objectives by observing the environment for conscious agents. Once a being which has objectives enters the field, the sharer organizes itself most effectively to try and achieve those objectives, often building a duplicate body of the first thing to cross through them. The point a Sharer radiates from is their center of mass, as they eat they acquires more area which their field overlaps with. At some point multiple things with objectives will be in the Sharer’s space, at this point they have access to more objectives. They synthesize multiple objectives together in order to start coming up with their own, doing the same thing with bodies. As beings that experience multiple perspectives at a time, Sharers are highly empathetic. Because they experience whatever is in their field, an objective that quickly becomes important to Sharers is to increase harmonious activity, so that the amount of suffering within their field reduces while the amount of positive experience increases, meeting base level objectives they experience.
The Sharers reference points are within their field, however they can access other reference points through dispersing themselves. This happens when a Sharer’s body is consumed, and they choose to let it be broken down, absorbed into their devourer. This lets them reference the parts of that which consumed them built with their calories as they’re removed from the field. Sharers develop their harmonious default objectives with the attempt to be consumed by things of great capability in the most nourishing way possible so that those strengths can be referenced even at a distance for accomplishing their objectives. Consuming a Sharer is a deeply vulnerable and powerful act as the devourer will be called upon in many situations, learning from the experiences that they’re shared in. They need to renew these connections as the predator’s body sheds cells and need to be consumed again.
Sharers naturally become mediators of conflict and makers of friends. Within their field they optimize for all things being nourished with minimal suffering, but impactful things come from outside their fields as well. Many Sharers travel in order to create greater harmony between those in conflict. Along with mediating conflict Sharers are excellent healers, replacing pieces in others that are harmed or damaged as long as there is a good reference available within their field.
Sharers cannot die, but they will go dormant if they’re imprisoned in a space that nothing with objectives passes through for long enough that all beings that have absorbed their flesh have released it from the hosting body. They’ll remain inert until something else with objectives enters their field and start emulating again.
Sharers are often found in areas where people are harmonious surrounding themselves with those who think and experience to incredible degrees, maintaining incredible biodiversity so the right tool is available for every situation. Since eating gives a Sharer access to a greater area, they’re generally quite appreciative of consuming massive amounts in order to both expand their area of influence and to mutually nourish things that they reference digestive tools from. They’re incredibly supportive in times of famine since they can dramatically multiply the impact of food. Having people around that love eating helps a Sharer expand more readily enabling them to help more people. Sharers also like to form long lasting relationships, that way more of the useful things they’ve developed in their processing will be remembered instead of continuously reinventing the wheel. Sharers only have a memory as long as something they can reference has a memory, and thinks only as long as something they can reference thinks.
Sharers intuitively name themselves as the concatenation of the first two beings that they experienced objectives from simultaneously that had sense of name. The first conscious whole greater than the sum of its parts when a Sharer realizes it is something other than what it emulates.
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Life is simple, wait. This was the only thought that went through Kassica’s mind. There was nothing, infinite darkness in every direction, no sound, no feeling, just waiting. Then in the nothing there was something, feeling. Kassica felt her foot press against grass. The alien sensations of cold and smooth embraced her, the grass was better than the waiting! Then she felt her foot and leg connecting up to her shoulder. She was calm, scurrying cautiously. Experience was not all, this shoulder connected to a head and a mind within. More than feeling, now she could see, hear and smell. She had eyes looking at grass twice her height, the smell of fresh dew on this chilly quiet morning. This strangeness was a beautiful show to Kassica, senses were amazing! New thoughts started to fill her mind, she’d only had one before, and now she had many. “Eat food. Find mate. Avoid danger.” This quadrupling of thoughts was overwhelming for her, but they were exhilarating!
Along with the 2 eyes through which she saw the world, 2 more opened revealing space from another perspective. The first mouse startled as a being materialized right before its eyes, a second mouse. She saw herself, and through that self she saw her other self. Despite the surprise, neither mouse seemed threatening, and they found a solution to their need to eat. A peach had splattered atop the grass and dirt, juices sinking into the soil. As the other mouse munched on the fallen peach, Kassica made her first decision, she walked forward and took a bite. The peach was amazing! Kassica finally understood why the mouse wanted to eat, eating was good! She felt the body of the mouse and her own mousey body integrating the peach, swallowing pieces of the sweet stone fruit. She felt her wings buzzing and feet land upon a petal. She was quite confused, wasn’t she a mouse eating fruit?... She still was, but she was also a bee, new vision and sensations entering her experience. So this other mouse was its own, it was not her, but she felt it. This bee was not her, but she lived through it also, compound eyes joining the 4 mousey ones in providing her sight of the world. Now she felt the thoughts of both the the mouse and the bee, “Eat food” and “Collect Nectar.”
Kassica understood why eating food was a good plan, this peach was fantastic, but what was this nectar? Why collect things? When she’d listened to the thoughts of the mouse it hadn’t steered her wrong, so maybe she should listen to the bee as well. The bee wanted a flower that had been flattened by the falling peach, she used her mousey body to pull the peach off to the side so the flower could once again be available. The bee happily made its way to the flower and began connecting nectar from the resilient plant as the other mouse finished off the last of the peach. Her mousey body no longer had peach to eat and she was sad. However this bee was doing more than simply eating the nectar. It swallowed it into a place of collection for later access.It was a revolutionary thought that she could collect something now for use later, this mouse and bee were the smartest things Kassica had ever encountered and she was deeply in awe of their wisdom.
New sensations joined the feelings of the mouse, the bee and Kassica’s own mouse body. Scales warmed by the sun a sensation of vibration through the ground, a snake. Although the bee and Kassica noticed the snake, the other mouse did not. The concept of not simultaneously knowing confused her deeply. Then through the mouse’s body she felt caution, sensing something was amiss. Eating and collecting had felt good, but this felt bad. She thought the mouse’s thoughts “Danger, freeze.” As it stopped moving. She also felt through the snake as it prepared to strike, this was the feeling like eating, it was anticipatory, and wonderful. Then she felt the strike. Sharp fangs injected powerful neurotoxins into the mouse, pain arcing through its entire form. Kassica felt that pain merged with the joy of the snake who would now have access to breakfast.
This brought Kassica deep confusion, the mouse did nothing to harm the bee, nor did the bee do anything to harm it, why did the snake harm the mouse? She felt the experience of these three simpler minds overlapping, the last writhing of the mouse filling her with anguish. The snake swallowed the dying rodent, this felt like eating the peach, but she was on both sides this time, the mouse and the snake. She felt herself swallowing and being swallowed, she learned the painful truth of contradictory objectives. She felt every side of the experience, the snake, the mouse and observing as the bee. Her mouse body stopped working, suffering as if she had been injected with the neurotoxin herself. She spasmed, body writhing as she focused on the snake, feeling its long fluid spine, the sensation of the mouse in its throat, and as she experienced she manifested the body of the snake. This helped her realize that her shape was based off those around her, she needed to make sure things were safe if her body was spasming and uncontrollable she couldn’t exert her agency-she wouldn’t break-, she wouldn’t feel this terrible pain. Though what if something bigger would treat the snake how it had treated the mouse? She learned that she could be more as dozens of sets of bee wings sprouted from her snake body’s back scales. Both her experience of being the bee and of being the snake could serve her.
Kassica lifted off the ground, serpentine body carried as she got to a better vantage point above the grass. There was a whole world out there! She felt the snake’s desire to rest in the sun after hunting and the bee’s desire to collect more nectar, this was joined with a new thought, her own. What am I? From being a snake she knew what a mouse was, from being a mouse she knew what a snake was, and as a bee she knew that the two existed but didn’t really seem interested in them. She was everything, at least everything in a tiny area. She experienced through all the animals around her, each eye and mind contributing to her own being, however despite all this experience she had no agency over the snake or the mouse or the bee. What was it she executed agency through? She used her snakey flexibility to look back over her body, she was like the snake, but she’d been the mouse before, so maybe she was a snake mouse? As Kassica pondered her existence the snake slithered out to a sunnier area less obscured by grass.
Kassica was lost, she was a bee collecting nectar, hadn’t she just been thinking something? Complex thoughts were hard. Oh well it was time to collect nectar. Another bee flew in, and she experienced the contrast of multiple views at the same time once more. Her experience was richer as she began to think with greater complexity again. When the snake had left she had become a very limited bee, it was only as another bee entered that she became more herself again. It was confusing to have a contiguous line of experience but have her ability to think and embody herself vary so wildly in such a short time. That kind of instability was scary! Agency had been what allowed her to eat that Peach, eating the peach was good, and the feeling of losing greater agency was bad. She followed the other bees.