Zoom out. Maintain third person. For God's sake, Ariel, you are not a mouse. But I am. I know how to groom my fur. I have been pregnant a number of times (I don't think she can count, but I can. I'm not sure if she has language, but I have. I can count things in memories perhaps she doesn't even know she has). I remember the aching feeling of giving birth, like pushing on a new bruise. I know I am going to die here, but surely I can't know what death is? Only elephants understand death.... Where did I read that? I've got no idea how long I've been here, but I want to get out. Let me out! I try to scream but all I hear is the fast breath of the mouse, her heart beating instead of mine.
What do I do now? I know how to make myself calm in these situations. I've stood on crowded tube trains and in lifts thinking Not long now, and Breathe. But my consciousness has merged with this one and I know, because she knows, that this is danger; that it is imperative to escape now. But we can't move. Shit, shit, shit. How do I get out of here? Where's all the information Mr. Y said he saw on the edges of his vision? As I think that, something like a computer desktop snaps into focus. Now I can see what the mouse sees—a vast chamber warped by the plastic and browned by its tint (although she doesn't understand that, and believes she is somewhere she has never been before because even the scent is different in this plastic box)—but with an overlay: a console on which I can make choices. It's hard to describe what this looks like, since I have no idea how it works. It feels like a computer desktop but everything on it is unfamiliar. I don't know how to navigate it. But it does seem that when I call for it, it will come. And presumably it will get me out of here.
In the top right-hand corner of my vision is a blue square that twinkles when I look (think?) at it. The rest of the "screen" is layered with small milky squares, each one very faintly showing a landscape I don't recognize. It's like a hundred science documentaries playing on the same screen. What are these images? As I glance over each one it becomes momentarily brighter, like a link on the Internet, and I realize (I don't know how) that I can choose to jump into one of them: presumably to perform what Lumas termed Pedesis. But I don't want to do that. I need to get out of here—out of the Troposphere—and re-lease the mouse from her trap. I look over the milky images again. One of them intrigues me more than the others: The landscape seems extraterrestrial. But—oh no—the moment my thoughts rest on it and I think This looks interesting something begins to happen. I'm blurring—that's the only verb I can think of—out of this reality and into another one. I think Stop! I didn't mean it! But it's too late.
At least I'm not trapped anymore.
Now my paws pad over a cold, hard surface. I feel my back end sway as my paws touch the ground top-right; back-left; top-left; back-right. I have a tail that I can move! This seems both familiar and unfamiliar to me: something I've always had; something I once had a long time ago. The pale concrete below me (and I feel myself putting my own word on that, concrete) is ice-cube (ditto) cold, and I walk faster on it because of that. But I am warm enough. I have only just left my nest and the memory of so much fur, and the smell of my family (I'm translating as I go, here, and "family" is the closest I can get to this memory sense of togetherness and connectedness) soothes me like hot syrup (ditto). I am a mouse again (I think). But I am free.
There's something between my back legs: familiar to this mouse but not to me. It feels odd, like my tail, but while my tail is like an extra limb, this new thing feels powered-up like a clitoris, but there's more of it, and it extends from my stomach to somewhere outside of me. It tingles now as hot liquid comes out of it and hits the concrete. And I'm thinking that this will keep others away, and I've always done it because of this. My fur twitches with abstract nouns, an untranslatable, nonhuman sense of pride, property, future planning, and a constant, musky desire for violence—my claws in the backs of my small, pale rivals, ripping their flesh—and sex. Perhaps that's what I live for most of alclass="underline" the way my brain trembles and softens as this clitoris-like cock moves in and out of the warm, tight hole in another being, and the feeling of oozing sweetness that eventually spreads in my stomach, back, legs, and throat, so sweet that I fall over, clutching her, she, whoever. I have desires—perhaps that's all I am—but I don't seem to dwell on them. My mind isn't equivalent to I want, I want. It's more like I've got, I've got. Only one thing is bothering me, as I wander around this space, with its bins on wheels that are bigger than me. Where is she? One down. One missing. One gone. I might not be able to count but I can certainly subtract. It's not fucking good.
Even I'm shocked at the idea that a mouse would swear until I realize that these are my thoughts merged with his: his feelings in my language. I should be trying to get out, but the feeling of being here, being him, is almost addictive. Everything about him is charged. Even his/my whiskers vibrate with electricity and anticipation, like live wires coming out of my face. He's moving now, so much lighter on his feet than I ever can be on mine, and it's like being on a fairground ride. We move over the concrete towards the other bin and I know where I'm going but at the same time I don't know, and every movement is a surprise. It's like being the driver and the passenger all at once. And there's something so sure about these movements, and the sensation I'm now feeling: the sensation of biting into a stale piece of bread, marinated in rain—a piece of bread I recognize as being stale because I threw it out, but which now seems delicious: a savory taste, like Marmite on toast.
But I do have to get out of here. This mouse is fine, but the other one isn't. She's in a trap I set and I have to get her out of it. I think Console! like I'm playing Space Invaders or starring in an SF film and yes, the thing appears, filming over my vision. I plan to ignore the milky images but then two things happen at once: In the vision behind the console—the mouse's vision—I see an orange blur, like a smear of marmalade; and in the console I see one square in which the image displayed is not like an alien landscape, one square in which there's a gray mouse sitting by a bin wheel eating bread. That's me. Something is looking at me.
Now it all becomes confusing. My mouse has seen the orange cat and it's as if we've both had an injection of icy cold water and gone onto high alert. It's fear, but a kind of fear I'm not used to. Death, death, death is coming. Fuck. My whole insides have turned to this icy mush and I have to run; I have to hide.... But hang on. The icy water is solidifying. I'm freezing into place. I know (some level of knowing that I haven't experienced before) that I have to keep still now. And I, Ariel, want to just get out of here but some instinct I didn't know I had—some mouse-instinct mapped onto my own—sees that there's also a doorway (gray, official) hovering over the cat. It makes me focus on the milky square with the statue-mouse in it, the square belonging to the cat, who is looking at the frozen sugar-mouse, whose terror I can feel in the tiny trembling in my own/our own body, and I think Switch! Switch!