WHERE AM I IN ALL OF THIS?

I. THE BEGINNING OF MAN

Man (or himself) began in the Bronze Age—or that was what this species had labelled the era of his second birth (he learned this in the Museum of Natural History once in a visit to London, 2016). His Mother hadn't spoken it to him (perhaps She hadn't spoken to any of Her children, for that matter); yet he felt Her words coursing in his very flesh, something about the very will—the very need—to survive. He felt it like a reflex, and it existed just as much as the physicality of his own body. A few million years spent in the mesocosm of space, floating as gently as the asteroid he rode on with his blood brethren, took him upon a blue marble that would eventually give him his borrowed time, name, and many, many spoken words.

He hadn't quite taken much in at his arrival—a boom of rock and ash as his vehicle shattered upon impact onto the blue marble (which was, in his opinion, quite misleadingly small in comparison to its physicality in the mesocosm, and more green than blue if anything), and he had no time to take in the surroundings, much less bid his brethren goodbye, having to scurry as if Man had wondered how many mites lay beneath a Stone. This was, for him and his blood, the Year 0. The dawn of an era that was very much spectacular—only nobody else can know it, because Mother had said it so (well, at least he knew it in his mind).

He was the only one who stayed and looked back at the crater that his vehicle had created, not knowing what was life beyond floating amongst the stars. Truthfully, he had missed the quiet of the abyss—here was so loud, so many colours of sorts, whereas the mesocosm contained nothing but nothing and nothing, and he felt he could explode just by the mere feeling of dirt beneath his legs. Still, this was his life now; this was what Mother had prepared him for—no matter how brief, for he'd only spent a blink in Her presence—and everything was now up to his very hands (or claws, the equivalent of it at this moment)—he could live, or he could spend the rest of his life wishing he was back in the comforting blackness above, yearning for what would never come to him.

(He hasn't yet learned of space rockets and astronauts and, as a matter of fact, it would take another 4500 years for humanity to invent it.)

The courage that pushed him to the river stream surprised him; he was not quite alone in this world. Mother had taught him everything he needed—for example, upon seeing some sort of mammal quite unlike him, he knew of every cavity of its skull, every hole (ew!) or crevice or weakness he could wiggle himself into. Then there was the matter of—hear this—brain matter, how he very much liked to feast upon it (without every encountering it himself), how it was crucial for him to rid of it in this head cavity before he took control of a Host; something he understood to be his new vehicle. This Host, his Mother told, was anything he could like, though preferably suitable to aid their cause.

Funnily enough, Mother hadn't taught him what came after painstakingly chewing away the "brain matter" that was frankly infinite amounts of times his size. After he looked upon his new vehicle's reflection—a smith of unkempt hair, having mistakenly swallowed him for a piece of bread—he realized that, much like those he would live with for many years of his life, Mother had never exactly told him what he was meant to do, except to "aid their cause". Now, as She had not specified when or even if he should do it at all, he spent many a millennia in this borrowed body, trying to find the reason why he was sent upon a blue-and-green marble to aid a cause he could not see.

---

II. THE MATTER OF FACT

Dylac met Vanja five-hundred years later, just as Dylac arrived in the Middle East for a change of scene for a few decades—they'd invited Dylac on this "conquest" further down in such dry lands, and Dylac was convinced it was surely the blue-green-sandy-brown marble now—who knows how many adjectives he would have to add to that later? By this time, he has amassed quite a few thousand languages, and has been keeping track his time here in the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt.

Vanja was—well, to put it the nicest way—the strangest crab Dylac has ever known, perhaps much stranger than he was (and he knew himself to be quite the strange crab). While Dylac moved quite moderately around the marble, Vanja moved like the moon, often in excited utterances of conquests, riches, and Large Figures of Authority. By now, having amassed an impressive amount of offensive weapons, Vanja had extended their hand to take Dylac as their baggage-carrier. Vanja had told him it was because camels were exceedingly expensive, but Dylac would like to think that was Vanja's way of asking for his companionship.

Besides Vanja's strange shenanigans—they were almost a pharaoh once—Dylac had taken this time to observe the evolution of Afro-Asiatic languages, and cope with the consequences of his vehicle's natural tendency to become thirsty (he was stationed in the vastness of dry lands, after all). Vanja had returned to their shared cavern after their conquest upon Nubia, and the victory reminded Dylac of the question he had pondered for almost five centuries.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'd like to take down our Mother," Vanja's voice echoed into the cave, in the midst of showing Dylac their newly acquired wealth and weapons. The Vanja now was twenty centimetres or so shorter—but back then, Vanja had to duck to enter the cave. It was at that moment that Dylac was... well, a little put off, to say the least—unrelated to their height.

"Why?" they asked again, after showing off the last sword.

"I do not know, Vanja. Actually, your answer made me much more concerned."

"Why? You think I'm not good enough?" Vanja grumbled—if they had not been friends, perhaps that conclusion was the end for Dylac. It's fortunate that they were—and are—friends, and continue to be, so Vanja did not raise their sword that night.

"No, of course not. What I had meant was—well, see," Dylac squinted, "Our purpose here is—"

"To divide and conquer!" Vanja bellowed, and the raise of their sword almost made Dylac explode out of his head.

"No! Well—yes, in your own words. I suppose it is to divide and conquer," Dylac muttered glumly, wondering perhaps he was the only one with this strange crisis. 

He had five hundred years now to think of it, but he's not quite sure how to approach it. Was that really all to his purpose—to divide and conquer? To turn this marble red with the flesh and teeth of his brethren? He knew how (he'd accidentally unleashed a mass infection in the Americas), and he knew why. But was that truly all there is? Why was he sent here—why he of all crabs?

"You're having an identity crisis," Vanja suddenly turned sympathetic, "You don't know where you belong in all of this."

"I suppose, yes."

Vanja's thump on his back nearly sent him flying across Egypt. Dylac tried not to groan at Vanja's method of assurance.

"Well, I'll tell ya, I know every crab had asked this question before. What they were meant to do, here they were in all of this. Not me, though—I know what I'm doing," Vanja huffed their last statement, "But that's just it, isn't it? Nobody is meant to know where they are in this. You have to give yourself one. It takes time. It won't come to you immediately. But it'll come to you, soon. Me, I knew it straight away. I want to be strong. I want to surpass everything there is. Next, I will destroy the moon. Then I will challenge Mother. You'll figure it out."

Dylac wished he had it as easy as Vanja—their purpose was to become something that was beyond God, and he watched quite jealously as Vanja finished conquest after conquest. Not like he wanted to go on conquests of his own—he just wanted to know what he was meant to do.

---

III. WHERE AM I IN ALL OF THIS?

For the next few millennia, Dylac pondered of this question again and again, trying to find what it meant to be a parasite on a vehicle. He'd made Atlantis into a crabhaven, fought many wars and hid away from many, changed history and let it happen, learnt every language there is to know. He'd met all sorts of crabs, who seemed to know what they were doing; many were keen to find their brethren their vehicles, some were so staunchly against it they hadn't found themselves a vehicle at all. Some did not want to do anything with this Invasion and tucked themselves away to blend into the background, some were Warlords who keenly assimilated the species into every living being there is on this marble. 

Years spent studying the education system—sometimes posing as a schoolboy, wondering why the curriculum was so horribly outdated for such an advanced species—he learnt that this wasn't just a crab problem. His vehicle—the humans, as they called themselves—also had such intricate thought processes of themselves that they will spend years upon years trying to find Where They Were in All of This. And, like Vanja, some of them seemed to know what they wanted quite early on—others, quite like Dylac, would not find it until they were well into their decades.

Dylac pondered whether perhaps it was his vehicle's fault that he hadn't quite solved this question—he knew of a few crabs that had a sudden mentality change once they had their vehicles—but is it so when he encountered just as many crabs that couldn't answer the question? Even when Dylac consulted his brethren who seemed so sure of what they wanted to do, several of them looked at him emptily, and said that they did not quite know what they were doing.

The vastness of the marble made it all more confusing; he knew there were many planetary bodies in the mesocosm, but who could have known that marbles had their own parasites and cultures? Even as Dylac learnt and caught up with it all, observed everything there is to see and know, there were still things that surprised him. The evolutions especially were a subject of fascination; who knew that this species (humans) was capable of not only updating their knowledge, but also strive to advance into something that had not yet existed? Dylac had seen, by his own eyes, the Wheel turn into a Locomotive. His own kind was not like that at all—they were to divide and conquer, and there was truly nothing else to evolve to.

Yet, despite knowing this fact, advancement and evolution was not quite the answer Dylac was looking for. 

---

IV. NOTHING AT ALL

There were a few things Dylac had taken note of—first of all, humans love to fight. He'd collected so many maps all over the years, every single one of them with such drastically different borders. The latter part of the 20th century was most concerning of all—the borders seemed to change all the time, so much so that Dylac had camped out in the Arctics, lest the meddling revealed him to be a parasite (he was sure the cold had shrunk his flesh part so much, but maybe that was wishful thinking). In essence, to divide and conquer was, in fact, not just a crab thing.

(Were humans a parasite?)

The second thing was the fact that, after almost five millennia later, he never truly had the urge to change his vehicle, nor had he much urge to meddle with the species. He was quite fine with observing them from afar, and found humor in collecting their creations and learning their languages. He has, by now, amassed a few hundred thousand languages—many of them extinct, and immortalized by his memory; and though he could single-handedly aid the human understanding of themselves, he found that it was more entertaining to see them inaccurately picture their own past.

It was the year two-thousand something, and Vanja had just returned from their attempt to assassinate a president of sorts—something Dylac understood to be such a difficult task that he hadn't seen Vanja return in such defeat. They had browsed through Dylac's ever-growing storage room, laughing over things they'd collected a millennia ago. It was in this moment that Dylac realized the answer to the question he'd been asking for centuries—and it was so unspectacular that he still reeled over from how bizarre it was.

"You've collected so much shit," Vanja laughed, having now accustomed to various swear words, "You've got Van Gogh in here."

"You noticed. Did you kill him?"

"Maybe," Vanja answered—something Dylac learned about Vanja was that they would not pass up the opportunity to say that they have changed the course of history, "Just saying."

Then they'd went on about tasting different wines Dylac has collected—the millennium-old Roman wine almost made them both explode out of their vehicles' heads—and after poring over a few million scriptures, Vanja laughed at Dylac in his meticulous (though methodically haphazard) record of the blue-and-green-and-sand-marble throughout the years.

"Do you know how many scientists would die to know this? Not even—you know how everything would change if they see some of this stuff?"

"I do. I simply choose not to."

"You're crazy. You're not going to do anything but observe it all as it unfolds."

It was at this moment that Dylac almost slipped his leaning upon the oldest Bronze Age weapon known to man and realized where he was in the middle of it all.

Truly, he had already finished what his Mother had told him—he had already aided their cause. He was here, after all, inside a vehicle. His first and foremost responsibility was already done almost five millennia ago, and here he was only realizing it now. Now he could do anything—in fact he has been doing much of anything and everything in the past lifetime—and here he was, so worried sick about trying to appease something he has already completed.

His purpose was to be—and that was it, that was all his Mother ever taught him. He already had his vehicle; he needn't do anything more, and preferably not less. Sure, he could go to more extreme lengths and "aid their cause" by finding his fellow brethren vehicles—but he'd already done it. He had his vehicle. Anything more than that was his own choice, and Vanja was quite right.

Vanja seemed delighted to hear that he had found his purpose: to observe it all as it unfolds. After all, both of them had finished their responsibilities. Well, the way Vanja puts it was that Dylac was going to "do nothing", but wasn't that already exciting enough? To traverse through this blue-green-sand-marble was enough a purpose. To want more was alright, but to settle was just as well. He had already lived up to his responsibility by being here; and, although missing a few beers, the place he was meant to be in was right here, right now.

(He supplemented the missing beers with a trip to the store with Vanja.)