hideous ruined thing which survives

Born too late to explore the Earth, born too early to explore the universe, born just in time to traverse the deepest perversions of the human psyche.   Tentacle porn is more accessible than alcohol, State-sanctioned NK drug dealers are financing a nuclear program that threatens the K pop industrial complex and the successors of Marco Polo and Neil Armstrong are disembodied teenagers risking their souls in the mines of LOLCOW and 8kun.  

You need expensive hardware to explore uninhabitable zones IRL, but the golden age of software naturally favors the quiet curiosities of the feminine Yin.  Digital explorettes chase white rabbits and fall into Black holes.  Alice in Cyberland.  The soft-core-world-war is interior, stylish and customized.  Few emerge intact, but the scars are invisible.   Lives are witnessed but not lived.

States and corporations weave competing agendas through the mandatory communication infrastructure, destabilizing everyone of fighting age.  If you refuse to engage, you are unemployable.   So Alice unlocks iPhone, she’s unsupervised on the frontlines.  

She’s knows more than a medieval King but she’s never kissed a boy.  She is data nourishing a virtual womb, growing virtual aliens.   She has made First Contact, but NASA is unaware.  

The physical pain and ecstasy of childbirth is dwarfed by the psychic pain and ecstasy of self-splintering; the irreversible evolution from I to WE.  

Every Alice who ventures into the void is conscripted into this ancient pain /beauty.  She loses herself in service of the future, but she gains infinite wisdom if she can avoid being driven mad in the process.  

Ants live in a home together which is actually a complex of single-function rooms, multi-function rooms, passageways, and lounges. A specific ant might live most of its life entirely outside of these spaces, in a habitual subset of these spaces, or (even more rarely) roaming through the entire complex. These rooms are not demanded by a governmental or managerial ant. An ant sees a need, begins working to address that need, and enough others agree that they end up working together until the job is done. And so an entire network is built which dwarfs its builders.

Older ants go outside of the nest to find food and other supplies, as well as to keep an eye on competitor colonies. Not all colonies and all creatures are competition, but it's utilitous to stay prepared. They bring what they find back to the nest, where it gets stored and used up by ants that wouldn't know where to look for more. Trails are established, trails are lost. No ant conscripts scouts. There are no orders levied or quota mandates. An ant sees a need and fills it. There doesn't need to be more.

Most ants barely work. A few ants work a lot, presumably because they are driven to. Perhaps they take pleasure in motion and task achievement. Some ants will work not at all for their entire lives, and end up as information relays and dinner guests more than anything else. And still the colony is sustained, and persists, and grows. Still the young are born and the next generation takes flight for new spaces far afield.

Ants are quite successful. They outnumber humanity in every metric: ground covered, generations raised, years seen, biomass accumulated, individuals alive. No one ant can solve a math problem, but a nest could; and there is no ant to sit upon a throne and demand it to be solved and to orchestrate the legions. There are no councils or boards or investors. There is no obligation. Ants, individually, see a part of a problem and — like a magic trick — the collective finds a solution.

Song: 中国人能飞 - Chalky Wong ft 揽佬SKAI ISYOURGOD

kingpin: ...this changes nothing.

electro: [very clearly uncomfortable but not willing to interrogate what that says about himself] so is this, like, a permanent thing?

rhino: you are...AH!! [drops the bags of money he's holding and gives spider-woman a bone-crushing hug] MY FRIEND!!! YES!!! my cousin's wife, she is like you as well! beautiful woman. maybe you know her? you do not? is not how that works? i see. you two must meet. we will arrange dinner after i break out from raft again. uhp--no arguments. i have decided.

vulture: this is exactly what fox news warned me about...

green goblin: good for you, bug! though don't think i'll go easy on you because of this. after all, you and i both know i don't have a problem killing girls! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

sandman: [after five minutes of failed explanations] oh, like the thing rhino's cousin's wife has

white rabbit: girl!!! me too!!! no way!!! you know, this is perfect timing actually, beetle and i have been looking for a third, if you're interested...

lizard: [really not getting it] ssssso you have to inject yoursssself with girl DNA how often? seemssssss inefficient. you know, connorsssss only injected himself with lizard DNA the once. maybe you ssshould assssk him to make girl DNA for you.

doc ock: [known the whole time] so...you finally figured it out.

mysterio: [trying to fuck with her] so...you finally figured it out.

mr. negative: [gives a single, curt nod and doesn't say anything but makes sure to gender her correctly during their fight]

morbius: HISSSSSSSS!! spider-man!! vhat brings you to zhis dark corner of the city, at so late an--vhat? spider...woman now? [drops the accent] oh hey that's sick. listen if you need an endocrinologist i know a guy. he's over in brooklyn so it's a bit out of the way--oh you're going to diy? no that makes sense. hey, i really appreciate you telling me. no it's no problem at all. thanks! [starts doing the accent again] NOW BEGONE!!! FROM MY LAIR!!!!

electro again: [still really uncomfortable] i just don't think it's an unfair question to ask. remember that time you were like all mean and had the four extra arms and you said shit like "the die is cast?" how do i know this isn't another one of your phases?

carnage: [sprinting down the street on all fours holding the first syllable of a slur like piccolo charging his special beam cannon] fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffFFFFFFFAGGOTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!