Chapter 2

I'm … alive? Fuck.

My senses disappeared one after another. I lost the ability to hear, to smell, to see. I stopped breathing. My heart stopped beating. I saw nothing but darkness. Yet no matter how much time passed, my sense of self didn't disappear. I was waiting for the blissful and icy abyss of nothing, and, while there was nothing around me, I still existed. Why did I survive? Don't tell me, am I in a coma?

Time continued to pass, and all I had was my thoughts. I felt no desire. I felt nothing at all except the passage of time, and even that started to blur pretty quickly. My mind seemed to wax and wane as I floated along in the infinite nothing. Perhaps this was my afterlife. Perhaps this was the punishment I faced for living a despicable life. If that was the case, perhaps it wasn't so bad. I didn't want anything to do with anyone, so an existence of eternal loneliness didn't feel so bad.

I had nothing to do but reflect upon my life. I thought about my time as a young teen, carrying my drugged-up and drunk mother to bed after she'd passed out from a night of partying. I remembered scrounging for food so I could feed my younger sister. I remembered stealing just so that I could eat. Some people in my life had been generous, while others had treated me poorly.

I remembered the day my mother left for Las Vegas and came back with her husband. Rather than add stability to our home, he was a deadbeat who hit me whenever he got drunk. When he was done beating me, he'd hit Mom around too. The only one he ever treated properly was my little sister. I had never understood why she got a pass. Well, I did now.

After getting caught pickpocketing one day, a gang offered me a place among them. I left without hesitation. Only later did I regret leaving my sister, but I knew that if I stayed there, I would end up dead. The next three years were a series of crimes. I killed a few people. I robbed a few places. I didn't have sex until I was eighteen. I had broken into a mansion trying to get rich quickly. The owner of that mansion was a woman.

I caught her in the shower. She should have screamed and freaked out. Instead, she just smirked and continued to shower. I should have run as my friends did. Instead, I stood there and watched. When she noticed a tent forming in my pants, she gestured with her finger, and soon I was fucking her in the shower.

It turned out she was a college professor. Her husband was some CEO who didn't spend any time with her, and she was lonely. She told me that I had two options. One, she could show the cameras recording my break-in and I could go to jail, or two, she could pay me a salary if I acted as her sex buddy. I would have taken the second option even if she hadn't threatened me.

Over that year, she taught me everything about sex. She was quite freaky too, being a woman in her sexual prime. She also helped me finish my GED and then get accepted to her college. I owed her a lot. One day, she told me she had gotten pregnant. I was far too young, but I decided I'd take responsibility. She didn't give me that chance. The next thing I knew, she'd aborted the baby. That didn't end our relationship right there, but I felt betrayed.

Perhaps that was why, when I came home and found a young teenage girl in the pool, I had come onto her. We ended up having sex, only to be caught by the professor herself. Of course, the girl was her daughter, and she was furious. That ended our relationship, but I continued to bang her daughter. That's also when I started to date other women. I eventually managed to leave the gang, get clean, and start a new life as a college student.

Then, a few weeks before I finally graduated, I returned home, a mistake that cost me my life. I thought about everything that had led me up until my death. My life was filled with regret, and my death had been far too soon and sudden. I would do things differently if I was given a choice. I'd start by distrusting everyone. When even your little sister could stab you in the back, why bother trusting anyone else?

More time passed.

I can't stay like this forever. I'll go insane.

I didn't appear to sleep or get tired. That didn't rule out being in a coma. However, I had to do something. Lamenting over a life unlived wasn't doing me any good. I had already spent … how long had it been? I didn't even know. It wasn't like there was a day or night cycle. It was just time.

Should I try meditation?

I knew a girl in college who was really into yoga. She was fit and looked hot in those tight yoga pants. She looked even better out of them. Plus, she could bend into all kinds of positions. What happened to her? Ah, that was right, I slept with her roommate and she kicked me out. Well, her roommate let me put it in her ass, so it wasn't like I regretted it.

Either way, to get into those tight yoga pants, I had spent some time with her learning under her yoga instructor. Well, I had to scope him out to make sure he wasn't banging my girl. He was banging half the girls there, and, after a little bit of alcohol, he gave up his entire game. Of course, I recorded his confession and showed it to my girlfriend. She was so disgusted with him that she jumped into my lap. I did end up learning a bit about relaxation and meditation before our relationship fell apart, though.

I decided to use some of that meditation right now. Perhaps it was exactly what I needed to pull me out of this coma. Better yet, if it allowed me to finally die, it'd be for the best. In truth though, now that I was thinking clearer and wasn't dying from blood loss, I honestly would rather live. After thinking through my life, I still had too much to live for. If I pulled through somehow, I'd change my life. No, I wouldn't find God. I wasn't going to be a good man from now on. If my near death taught me anything, it was that I was far too nice. I should have been twice the dick and three times the asshole.

Why is this meditation barely doing anything?

After trying it for a while, I found myself getting annoyed. I did feel something, but it was slight. It felt like a small surge of energy. It was almost nonexistent, but the more I meditated, the more I was sure it was there. In this space of infinite nothing, where I felt nothing, it was the only feeling I had, so I clung to it. I would constantly meditate, trying to bring about that energetic feeling. It was always fleeting, nearly illusory, but it was all I had to pass the time, so I stuck to it.

My life existed like this for a time. I couldn't tell you how long that time was, but I could tell you the moment that time changed.

Congratulations! You have reached level 2.

You have unlocked the skill Selective Permeability.

Huh? Levels?

It wasn't like text appeared in my vision, or an announcement buzzed in my ear. It was just that I was made aware of this. What was with this sudden game mechanic? Don't tell me, do I have a status?

Name: ???

Evolution Level: 2

Species: Autotrophic Prokaryote

HP: 2/2

Stamina: 2/2

Attack: 0

Mana: 0

Defense: 0

Agility: 0

Skills:

Stamina Skill: Chemosynthesis

Storage Skill: Selective Permeability

What is all this now?

As soon as I thought of status, a list of things went flowing through my mind. I was an … autotrophic prokaryote? The words felt a bit familiar. I had learned them in my college courses on biology. I had gone to school to become a nurse. What? It was a field of predominately women. I'd have done very well as a nurse. Most of them would be looking to marry a doctor, but, in the meantime, they'd settle for fucking a fellow nurse.

Either way, auto meant self, and trophic was a reference to energy, so an autotroph was an organism that made its own energy. It was also a prokaryote; that was a type of cell, like bacteria and archaebacteria. They were simple and tiny bacteria. I was a single-celled microscopic plant, although even calling me that was being generous.

What was with that 2 HP too? Didn't that mean if I got hit by basically anything, I was going to die? I leveled, so I assumed that's why I had 2 HP now, but it still felt way too small. Even a brutal RPG usually started you with a hundred. Furthermore, I had no attack, defense, or agility. I was a vegetable!

I had two skills as well. One of those skills was called Chemosynthesis. If I recalled correctly, this skill allowed an organism to create energy using chemicals. Was that what I had been doing when I was meditating? I was spamming a skill? I'd also just unlocked a new skill known as Selective Permeability. The exterior of a cell was surrounded by a membrane of fat and protein called a plasma membrane. They were called selectively permeable because the organism could choose what passed into the cell. It'd be like a person being able to choose what their skin absorbed at will, or deciding what to put in their mouth and swallow.

If I am selectively permeable, then wouldn't that mean that I was permeable before?

If my previous existence prevented me from selecting the materials entering my body, then it was no wonder that I was struggling with Chemosynthesis. Chemosynthesis required someone to uptake a chemical and process it to derive energy. If I couldn't choose what crossed my plasma membrane, then I could only move a limited amount of material in and out of my cells. If I could move material more reliably, then couldn't I use Chemosynthesis more reliably? As I thought it over, I decided to try to activate Selective Permeability.

Come on, filter out the things you don't need, and only absorb what is useful to you.

At that moment, I felt a strange change in my body. It was like the composition of my body was shifting slightly. I immediately started Chemosynthesis. My meditation technique came into use as I imagined using the products inside me to produce energy. I felt my body invigorate. A search for energy blew through me. However, the longer I ran Chemosynthesis, the more I felt a strange acidic burning inside me. Something felt like it was off.

That's right! Metabolic waste!

I had to get rid of the bad stuff I was creating in the process of Chemosynthesis. With a thought, I adjusted my permeability to allow waste to leave. The acidic burning subsided and I let out a sigh of relief, if a cell could be said to release a sigh. I continued to chemosynthesize, and my body produced more energy. The lethargic feelings I previously had started to go as I continuously produced energy. In the past, I'd slipped in and out of consciousness countless times. I realized that was my body going into stasis as a result of the lack of energy.

With my energy production stabilized, my mind was finally starting to work again, and, with my mind functioning, I came to realize many things. I had become a cell, the smallest living organism in this world. Yet I recalled the phrasing in my status menu. It called this an evolution level. In other words, I was capable of change. Would I be able to return to being a human? Did I even want to? All I knew was that I couldn't remain as a single-celled organism. I had to change, and I had a long way to go.