River opened her eyes—both physical and consciousness-eyes simultaneously—and couldn't remember which was which.
The Murmuration interface had been active for three weeks. Three weeks of constant consciousness expansion. Three weeks of human neural patterns attempting to process alien harmonics. Three weeks of synthesis that sometimes felt like transcendence and sometimes felt like dissolution.
She was losing words.
Not forgetting them. Losing the need for them. The Murmuration didn't think in language. Didn't use symbols to represent concepts. They thought in resonance. In frequency. In pure meaning that existed without linguistic container.
And it was better. Faster. More precise. More nuanced. Language was clumsy approximation. Resonance was direct experience.
But it was also terrifying.
