Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The first slice hits my tongue, and the world just stops.

Not like the System stops it. Like I stop caring about anything else. The porccuitio is still warm, the fat just barely starting to firm up at the edges where the heat’s been bleeding off, and I wrap my whole mouth around it and just inhale. The meat is dense and rich, and there’s this layer of something herby underneath, rosemary maybe, and the salt crust cracks between my scales in a way that sends a shiver straight down my spine.

I am, without exaggeration, the happiest creature that has ever existed.

I notice the System is quiet for once, which is its own kind of blessing, because I don’t want old mate’s commentary. I don’t want dry observations. I want this. Just this. The grease running down my chin, the way the fat dissolves into this creamy nothing on my tongue.

By the fourth slice, I’m making sounds I didn’t know I could make. Little hissing purrs, half-whistles through my fangs. I’m coiled in a pile on top of the butcher paper, tail flicking against the concrete in a rhythm that has absolutely no purpose other than joy, and there’s nothing left but grease stains and the hollow, beautiful ache of being completely full.

I lie there for a long moment. Staring at the ceiling of the alley. My belly is distended in a way that should be uncomfortable but is actually just proof that I’ve done something right with my evening.

[System: Mate, you look like you’ve just had a religious experience.]

You’re goddamn right I have.

[System: Reckon that’s the most enthusiasm I’ve seen out of you since the whole reincarnation thing. Good on ya.]

I let out a long, satisfied hiss and start unwinding myself from the butcher paper. The grease is already cooling on my scales, going tacky, and I can feel the weight of everything I’ve eaten sitting warm and heavy in my gut. It’s the best feeling in the world. Better than the System. Better than evolution points. Better than sex? nah never had that; wouldn’t know.

But right now, none of that matters. What matters is that my glassy snake eyelids’ slits are getting heavy and my body is doing that thing where every muscle just decides to stop being a muscle,

I truly am a noodle now.

I drag myself off the butcher paper, leaving a greasy smear across the concrete, and start looking for somewhere to crash. The alley’s got a few options: a stack of wooden crates near the back wall, a gap underneath a dumpster that smells like it could kill me, and a drainage grate that leads down into the maintenance tunnels. The crates are too exposed. The dumpster is a biohazard. The grate is great; it looks like a great nap spot.

I slip through the bars easily enough when you’re a snake the width of a garden hose and drop maybe two feet into a service crawlspace that runs parallel to the main sewer line. It’s dry, which is a miracle, and there’s a layer of old insulation foam that’s been shoved into one corner by some maintenance worker who clearly gave up on life. I burrow into it.

The foam moulds around me like a nest. It’s warm from the pipes running overhead, and the sound of water moving through the main line is this low, constant hum that does something to my brain. Something good.

I should get up, shut down. I’m an absolute idiot. I’ve earned this.

I have no idea what time it is. No idea what day it is. Up above, through layers of concrete and steel and whatever other garbage this city is built on, there’s a whole world of neon and hover cars and judges, construction workers living their best lives on a schedule. Down here, time doesn’t exist. Time is a surface-dweller problem.

My tongue flicks out once, twice, tasting the air. Dust. Old copper. The faintest trace of something sweet and decayed from deeper in the tunnels. Nothing threatening. Nothing close.

[System: Oath, Good idea. Setting up camp, I’ll get the roof!]

Old mate, I’m in a food coma. You eat the roo, you weirdo.

I’m already halfway gone.

[System: Fair enough. Reckon you’ve earned it. That porccuito was a proper feed. IP tally’s looking solid too, by the way. Not that you care right now.]

I don’t care right now. I care about nothing. My belly is full. My scales are warm. The insulation foam smells like nothing and everything, and it’s the most comfortable thing I’ve ever been in.

I let my head drop, and my coils loosen, and I just. I’m out before the System finishes whatever it was going to say.

The sleep is black and warm and absolute, and for a while there’s nothing no dreams, no System, no city, no snake body- just the blissful void of a creature that has eaten itself into a coma.

Then something wakes me up, something in my brain that’s going off like angry fireworks.

Not a sound. Not a smell. Something deeper than that, something wired into the base of my skull like a fishing hook pulling on a line. It’s this tingling pressure behind my eyes, this urgent, crawling itch that says.

Get up, get up, get up.

With the same relentless insistence as needing to piss at three in the morning. Except I don’t need to piss. My bladder is a non-issue. I’m a snake. I don’t even have one of those in the traditional sense.

But the feeling is there, and it’s getting worse by the second. It’s not pain. It’s worse than pain. It’s urgency. Pure, directionless, biological urgency, like every cell in my body has collectively decided there’s something I need to go find and they’re not going to let me sleep until I do.

I jolt out of the insulation foam so fast I leave a frisbee-shaped divot in it. Scales scrape against concrete as I uncoil and whip my head around, tongue flicking, tasting nothing but dust and old pipes. The crawlspace is exactly the same as it was. Dark. Quiet. Warm. Nothing’s changed.