‘We’re talking about a passage from another kind of space. A place where philotes already are.’
<All in the same nonplace. No placeness in that place. No where-being. All hungry for whereness. All thirsty for pattern. All lonely for selfness.>
‘And you say that we’re made of the same things?’
<How could we have found you if you weren’t?>
Now he realized that the thing that talked to him in his mind was only using that body the way it used the Buggers. Symbiosis. A controlling parasite, possessing the whole Hive Queen system, using it.
<No. This is ugly, the terrible thing you’re thinking. We aren’t another thing. We’re this thing. We are the Hive Queen, just the way you’re the body. You say, My body, and yet you are your body, but you’re also possessor of the body. The Hive Queen is ourself, this body is me, not something else inside. I. I wasn’t anything until I found the imagining.>
‘Fine, I believe you. But where does it come from?’
<Can’t think of the place.>
‘You forget?’
<We mean that the place where it is can’t be thought of. If we could think of the place then they would already have thought of themselves and none of them would need to take the pattern we show.>
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
<Stop trying to look and think, then. This isn’t done with eyes.>
‘Then stop showing me anything, if it depends on another sense. Eyes are too important to humans. If I see anything, it’ll mask out anything but clear speech, and I don’t think there’s much of that at a queen-making.’
<How’s that?>
‘I’m still seeing something.’
<Your brain is turning it into seeing. >