Manning returned himself from his walkabout to the cavern in which he lived. The cavern was very old and Manning knew that it had been used over and over again as a home by humans, mountain lions, and various other animals over the centuries. He loved the cavern. It was part of him and he was part of it. It sat in the base of a large set of mesas in a desert than had been called Sedonia several centuries ago. That was before the wars. Nothing much had happened in his desert during the century and a half of war that had occurred several hundred years ago, but like the rest of the continent it had suffered from the nuclear and biologic fallout from the weapons that had been used. As a result of this the desert, which had been thought of by most as a barren wasteland then, became a real barren wasteland. Most of the life had disappeared there and like everywhere the basic chemistry and genetics of life, both human and animal, had been altered. After a long time, life slowly returned to the desert, as it had to other places on earth.
New species sprang up based using altered DNA and began to evolve to suit its surroundings. The desert was more populated than it had been in many centuries. There were various flowering plants that displayed wild colors. Multi trunked carnivorous cacti, and heat resistant fungi that spread across the red desert floor in large patches of green and blue. There were lizards that never needed to drink, snakes whose diameter at adulthood was one inch, but whose length could grow to twenty feet, a nasty animal that was similar to a wild boar or javelina but grew up to a thousand pounds.
Humans had also evolved in previously unimagined ways. This evolution could be expressed in multiple stages in a single person’s lifetime which made the notion of living what had previously been a normal lifestyle impossible. A person couldn’t grow up, go to college, get a job, find a nice girl, raise kids, and take over the company when they might mutate from the traditional human form to that of a large moth over the course of a year! People developed different physical and mental capabilities and requirements than humans had previously possessed and this, along with the constant evolution of form, had caused most people to live more like an early wandering caveman or an animal than like that of say, a twentieth century human.
Manning had matured quickly and developed exceptional mental facilities. He had an advanced intellectual capability that exceeded anything that had been previously known. Of course, he wasn’t the only person with this ability, but he was exceptional in this regard. He was born in human form as most humans still were, and experienced his first transformation when he was six years old. At that age he had the intellectual capabilities of a twenty year old genius. His first transformation was into a form that was a cross between his human form and that of a tree. His skin became bark-like and small branches sprouted on his body. He could still walk, but sitting or bending became very difficult for him. He didn’t eat much, but as one might expect, he required a lot of sunlight and water. He had maintained this form until he was twelve years old.
There were other transformations and forms over the years. His most recent had been a return to an almost entirely human form. The only real difference was that he had developed distinctly simian features. His facial structure and posture were very ape like and he sprouted a coat of hair similar to those seen on various exotic breeds or marmots. He also began to notice an ability to move things kinetically with his mind, start fires, and even get impressions of others thoughts. He wasn’t sure what to make of those.
As he wandered through the country, meeting other proto-humans from time to time, he practiced using these new found skills until he became expert with them. Over time these powers began to increase and it became second nature for him to use them in his everyday movements. He also began to perceive something totally alien to him. Not exactly voices, at least not voices travelling through air, but perceptions of other consciousness’. These were different than the impressions he received from other proto-humans minds, these seemed more….cosmic. As if he was tapping into a stream of thoughts of a vast number of beings spread throughout the cosmos. As he wandered, the perception became stronger and he spent more time each day in a kind of fugue state communing with them. He was compelled to take himself somewhere that he could be alone, undistracted and continue to explore this new connection.
He headed into the desert and continued his wandering, stopping several times a day for a while to ‘tune’ as he began to think of it. He noticed that he was growing progressively less needy of food or water, and never seemed to feel any change in state. His body temperature seemed to remain constant whether it was a hot afternoon or the middle of a cold desert night. He was impervious to his surroundings. One day, walking through the desert, he heard noises following him. As he turned and looked, there atop a boulder was a desert puma. This cat was about fifteen feet long, stood around five feet at the shoulder, and Manning estimated its weight at around eight hundred pounds. It had large claws and when it opened its mouth to growl at him, displayed four large saber teeth. Manning stood still as the cat leapt off of the rock and approached him in a stealthy crouch. Manning wasn’t sure what to do, having never encountered an animal such as this before, but his natural abilities kicked in and he found himself controlling the cat’s thoughts. He ordered the cat to walk with him and to never harm him. The animal shook its head and was clearly confused by this, but rose into a normal walk and moved to Manning’s side. The two of them travelled together for the next few days, the cat guarding Manning during his reveries and Manning occasionally signalling the big animal to go ahead and hunt, but to rejoin him later.
Several days later he came to the cavern. He had been thinking about finding somewhere to settle for a while but hadn’t really imagined what kind of place that might entail. Being new to the desert the thought of a cavern had not occurred to him. As he and the cat skirted the large mesa they came to the mouth of the cavern. He couldn’t tell how big it was or whether there might be anything inside so he ordered the cat to scout it for him. The puma disappeared into the cavern and returned several minutes later. Manning sensed from the animal that it had found no other creatures in the cavern, but there had been scents of mice and snakes, which was to be expected. He entered the relative coolness of the cavern and found himself a comfortable seat and began to tune.
The time spent tuning increased everyday. There was a total lack of any need for food or water now, leaving him virtually every minute of the day and night to tune if he so desired. His fugue states were intoxicating. He was now able to recognize different entities when he encountered them and in time he realized that they were actually transmitting information to him. He was beginning to perceive histories of other worlds and cultures, family histories, clan histories, folklore, everything! He found that when he was not tuning he remembered the information that had been transmitted to him and his powerful intellect was able to organize the information in such a way that he could associate it with the disparate entities with whom he was communing.
One day, Manning had decided to take a walk. He had spent a few hours moving around the mesa in ever widening concentric circles taking in the landscape and flora. Encountering small animals and reptiles here and there, even stooping to examine various rocks and geological formations. He returned to the cavern and experienced an odd sensation of tumbling into unconsciousness. It only lasted for an instant and when he opened his eyes he was seated in his normal spot on the cavern floor. He wasn’t sure what happened. After checking himself for injury he tried to stand. He couldn’t. Try as he might he seemed to be glued to the cavern floor and could not stand up. He swallowed and breathed slowly attempting not to panic. He thought about the last few hours and his walk and suddenly realized that he had never left the cavern! His walk had been a purely psychological or spiritual experience, not a physical one! Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t actually left his spot for at least a month!
As he felt about his legs and butt he realized that his body was actually melding with the rock that he was sitting on. He had fused with the rock below him. As he examined his legs and feet he saw that the skin had grown hard and seemed to be calcifying. He was transforming to rock! Considering the balance that nature seemed to maintain, this made a weird kind of sense to him. It explained the mind reading and the tuning to some extent, perhaps not the overall purpose of the tuning, but the mental abilities as compensation for the loss of human form and mobility. Presumably even as he morphed to rock, he would survive and even thrive because of those mental abilities, his lack of need for food or water, his imperviousness to the elements. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but it didn’t matter. He had no control over this and a lifetime of transformation and taught him to adapt.
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