The tentacle retreated from the glass, turned bright green, and stared. It didn’t have eyes exactly, but you know when you’re being stared at. Then all at once, the entire swarm ceased its performance and simply fell apart. The uncountable boids skittered across the floor and into piles that dotted the massive expanse before us. Then all at once, the piles rose from the ground, congealing into large, humanoid individuals – thousands of them – that then strode into the strange mist at the periphery of the enormous rotunda.

All but one.

It stood patiently as boids finalized their positions in its body. The assembled creature was a biped. Big, powerful. The outer boids formed layers of darkly armored plates. The way it was put together suggested that it could take any form it wanted, so diverse and varied were its building blocks. It was just like building blocks, actually, only sleeker and spacier. And alive. Perhaps its present configuration was just a mimic. A costume.

It stalked forward.

Patton backed smartly away from the membrane. “They’re gonna kill me as soon as they realize I’m not you. Tell him I’m your emotional support animal.”

The thing stopped just outside the wall and leaned in toward my face on the other side. Its broad, flattened head sat featurelessly atop neckless shoulders. The boids were integrated like puzzle pieces, with some variation in hue between them from black to dark grey. The outer edges on some boids were worn and ashy – this, I assumed was their default coloration. Breaking all of it up was a prong of shining, unmarred metal embedded in the center of its chest.

Seams ran smoothly across every surface where the boids met, and those on the “face” began to shift and move, opening and closing. Small moments of color burst outward wherever they moved, fading quickly. A slit pulled across the top of its face and from it came the lowest note I have ever heard.80 Then four smaller holes opened just below the first, playing a chord in the slightly higher register of a woodwind instrument, almost as if it was tuning itself. It bled air slowly through these holes, and I heard the sound of a voice – my voice – mimicked perfectly inside the breathy whisper.

“Is it talking to you?” asked Patton.

“Yes.”

“What’s it saying?”

I watched different-shaped channels and holes form and fade through several cycles, listening to the faraway voice that traveled over the wind. Then it stopped. Patton asked again. I turned to him and answered.

“It says ‘welcome back’.”

78 Pyrosomes are large underwater colonies of tiny invertebrates known as zooids that join together to form large, shapeshifting blobs.