Longgrid's Creatures

He ignored them.

He didn't ignore their nature, it was their gyrating and cavorting he tried to block out. He was perplexed by their nature.

He'd put a lot of work into creating them... but he wanted something different, and they just weren't it.

He had made all sorts of creatures; some that had multiple eyes, some with multiple limbs, some that talked and some that just congealed. But none of them were quite -- right. There seemed to be some subtle skill or facet the creatures were lacking. It was the way they took in everything around them... or rather, the way they didn't take it in.

Sure, they would bump around the room, and they would climb over each other, but they just didn't see. Even the one that talked talked about its world... but it didn't really talk about the world, it only mentioned the world in passing. It talked about everything and anything that passed its eye; comments about life and death and the color of the ceiling. It reminded the professor of that old "garbage in, garbage out" adage... This thing was just pure garbage.

He was pleased when the thing that just ate gobbled it up.

He poked one one of the creatures that lay on his desk. It rolled its eyes and gave off a rather pungent odor.

The professor sighed.

He wondered what it was that disappointed him so much by these creations. They did what he designed them to, they just didn't seem to connect with the universe. No interplay...

It was almost like he was invisible to his creations. And he wondered if it was his ego that was giving him problems. Was he really so vain that he needed his creations to notice him? To acknowledge his presence? Was he some sort of wrathful god that needed his creations to love him?

No. He just wished they weren't so dead. They were like some huge creche of wiggling animated ignorance. It didn't matter how much brainpower he packed into them, it just seemed as though there were some trick he couldn't teach them; not only to acknowledge the world, but even themselves.

At one time he thought that he needed to hatch them in broods, almost like families... perhaps that would make them bond. In the end, that track was also given up; the entire brood would scamper about, in their identical fashion, and interact with the physics of the room in exactly the same nature. That they were of the same brood didn't seem to matter, they even interacted with each other in exactly the same nature; they didn't really see each other except as obstacles or food.

Grasping at straws he had then thought maybe he hadn't gone far enough, and he had tried birthing millions of smaller creatures. In the end he admitted it was a desperate attempt, for all that had resulted in was some sort of colossal hive organism -- millions of millions of elements acting to one narcissistic whole. It just depressed him. Maybe he should just create one with a voracious appetite and be done with the whole business.

He pushed one of the slimier ones off his desk. It landed with a wet sound and continued to congeal. The one that just ate things failed to eat it -- it was abstractly gnawing on the leg of his desk.