4 – Light

4 – LightMore questions that these boring concrete hallways can't answer, I could fill several pages with them by now. As the weird person I was the first thing that came to my mind when musing about all the things I didn't know was Occam's Razor. 'Occam's razor is a principle of theory construction or evaluation according to which, other things equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more.' That means the simplest answer is usually the right one. Based on that, my standing theory about my situation is that I somehow spent a few millennia as a soul then somehow got transplanted into this body which was suspiciously geared towards infiltration and such. A cold breeze swept across the hallway and I shivered a bit. My looted clothes, if they can be called that, at least protected my privates from the chilly wind. Why was there wind in an underground hallway anyways? My aimless walk turned into a slow jog as I followed the direction the breeze came from. It wasn't natural, that I knew as it tasted the same artificial air as before but colder like it was flowing through an AC. After five turns in these maddening hallways, I was glad I didn't sprint, that would have been a waste of energy I decided as I looked through the crack in the wall and into something that could be called a ventilation shaft. I mean you usually didn't just make a vertical shaft from the same damn concrete and call it a ventilation shaft. I would have thought I was something else were it not for the sign next to it. Let's dismiss the fact that the crack was probably not a mistake but a feature if it had a sign next to it for now. I could read the sign, surprisingly. It was like those anime openings, a bunch of languages cobbled together without much sense and afterwards it made to sound somewhat like Latin. I'm sure the Romans would be turning in their graves were they to read this thing. Still the meaning 'Ventilation' and 'Beware' I could understand even if one was somewhat French and the other similar to the German word 'Achtung' meaning danger. I think I've read a linguistic study once where they predicted that in the future the most dominant human languages would combine into a sort of global language for humanity. Back then I thought it was unlikely, almost everyone spoke English already in the second millennium so why would they need a language like this? I got distracted again. It was a bad habit, not too bad now but it didn't help when I got distracted by noticing a bee through my window while studying for my physics exam. That wouldn't be too bad but I spent the next 8 hours sitting in front of my computer and researching how the ecosystem on earth would crumble if bees disappeared suddenly. I had to take physics the next semester. Now looking at this shaft, heh. There isn't much light here but I can still see somewhat well, so not seeing either the bottom or the top of this two-meter-wide shaft doesn't bode well. Am I somewhere far underground as I feared? I stood there wondering how the hell could I climb up the concrete wall before I realized I was a damned tentacle monster. With a thought, the fingers on one of my hands morphed into snow-white claws, well tendrils that I shaped like claws. I didn't know how sharp or tough they were if I wasn't trying to break down biomatter with them so this was as good a time as any to test. The answer was both disappointing and expected. Turns out my flesh-eating eldritch tentacles weren't made to claw through concrete.Not that it would matter if I knew how to replicate something that could claw through concrete. With a grimace, I stabbed my fingers into the wall inside the shaft and felt the displaced concrete shift under my skin. I pushed it out of my fingers and tossed them outside my body around my elbow. Tiny threadlike tendrils materialized inside my arms to guide them through, they shifted them through my human flesh and bones like they weren't even there and without harming them. It was infinitely fascinating to a sci-fi nerd like me and technobabble like 'phase-shifting' and such were already flooding my mind. I stuck my other hand into the wall like the first and repeated the process, followed by both of my feet. Good thing I didn't find a shoe or I would have to leave it here. I wasn't much of an athlete but I had obligatory sports courses in college and the 'strength and fitness' one could be completed by going to weekly wall-climbing training. Which I did. That was the second time I realized humans could get sore in their finger muscles. Still, it gave me the courage to now attempt climbing this vertical concrete wall with only the gaping darkness below me and the flickering light slipping through a few cracks as my company. So it proved more useful than most of my other compulsory subjects. Right hand, left leg, left hand, right leg. Repeat. That was my world for the next few hours. I hope. My internal clock wasn't too reliable at the best of times. Looking down I could see the small marks I left on the wall trailing far below me and getting swallowed by the darkness. I've climbed far I think. Now if there was a damned exit. My body didn't tire over the climb as I thought it would, wall climbing was exhausting, but whenever I felt soreness or tiredness seep in I instinctually draw on my stored energy and refreshed myself. The soreness went away and I felt like I'd just drank two energy drinks. I considered the downsides of 'healing' my soreness but realized I could just replicate muscles just as easily as I shifted between my forms. The only reason I still looked mostly like myself from my previous life was probably familiarity, it was comforting to be back in my 'own' skin. That was the reason I didn't give myself more muscles than a bodybuilder on steroids would have. I liked being pretty, which might be the reason I didn't replicate my birthmarks. My face might also be a slightly bit different. I was never an artist in my previous life but I realized why painters said a painting is never finished. I could play around with this 'character creation' forever and I would. It was fun. While thinking about that I noticed the light seeping through the cracks above me was different. Not flickering and its shade was darker. Not the cold led-like lights that were used all around this maze. With a new surge of energy infusing my body I accelerated my climbing and got to digging through the cracked wall once I got there. I was starting to get impatient a few minutes later when I only managed to dig a head-wide opening through the twenty-centimetre-thick concrete. Wasn't I like an octopus? with no bones and tentacles and all that? Patting myself mentally on the back at my genius idea I shifted myself wholly into my 'eldritch form'. Damn, that sounds so edgy. Well unless I shout 'Eldritch Form: TRANSFORMATION' every time I do this it is manageable. It was only an idea but it worked better than expected. When only one of my tendrils reached through the hole I got the idea to try and reabsorb all of my mass on this side. It worked like a wonder. My mood wasn't the least bit dampened as my now lone tendril flopped to the cold floor. With a thought the tendril expanded and I stood there, naked as the day I was born, once again. Rest in peace clothes, you have served me well. Now where did that light come from?