Transdifferentiation

Everything I do has the tinge of the finite, of my own demise. At some point you either accept death, or you just keep pushing it back as you get older and older. I've accepted it.

—Robert Smith

Existence is difference—the spark of life that in one instance was not, and now is. Though as day fades to night, the water has a warmth, teeming as it is with life, hope, and perseverance. Death, misery, grief, and sorrow go hand in hand with the light—as does the dark.

Though my vision lacks clarity, I feel the light breaking the watery surface and stretching to the shallow rockery I find myself attached to. My drive is to survive, and to survive I need to thrive. I can't quite remember how I got here or why I got here, but this spot I am in offers the nutritional sustenance needed for me to grow. As I shimmy through the water, chasing my prey from one stationary spot to another—against rocks and the seabed—there is an eerie sensation that courses through me.

Anyone that has spent as long in the watery deep as me, though, would likely tell you it is an eerie place after not very long. The shift from light to dark, and the different creatures that awaken during each period, fill me with awe and dread.

All I know is that I was born to grow and further my species. From polyp to Medusa, that's my trajectory.

There is joy and sadness in this precarious dance between life and death I find myself starting out on. Well, I think it's starting. Over the last few hours of life I've experienced, I’ve found myself syncing in and out of existence. That's not accurate, really. Syncing in and out of the present, and into something that seems so familiar, yet... different.

In my polyp stage, I remain untouched by most of the larger predators inhabiting this little section of the deep blue I call home. These creatures are all strange and new to me... I think. Though, something about the sea turtle that sniffed at me before swimming on felt like an old acquaintance. His scent, his skin, the scar on his left eye. But... never mind.

It's been a few days now, and I do believe I can feel my body stretch. Eight limbs stretch from my body—I feel more powerful, more certain of what lies ahead.

But as I push off from the rocks and make my awkward beginnings as a swimming member of this aquatic community, I'm surprised by how easy it is to swim and manoeuvre all eight tentacles. This is my first time, isn't it? I keep wondering. As exciting and ravenous as this change makes me feel, it also fills me with dread.

Experts may agree that dreading life as much as death is a sign of severe psychosis. I can't shake the nagging feeling that something feels... too familiar.

The sea turtle—the one that swam past me—flashed before my eyes as if I had stepped into a portal that took me into the strands of my lifeline.

As I ventured forward among shoals of fish, mammals, and more of my own kind, I am at peace and full of rage and dread. As a small shark swims past me, I dodge in panic, at its large, blood-soaked teeth gnashing at me—only to find myself in quiet solitude. The throng has moved on.

For the moment, at least.

If I were to allow it, I could follow a slipstream further out into the great abyss—allow myself to be lost and at one with my oceanic surroundings. Alas, the common fear and dread of doom hangs over me. I decide to reside close to the barnacle neighbours and pincher crabs of the coral reef and rockery pools.

Another flash pierces through me of a time when someone just like me—no, it was me—was almost caught. The net snapped, and I somehow ended up drifting to a watery grave.

Then darkness was my world.

Until it was not, and the spark. That spark of existence reset.

Clarity is a hard-fought-for thing at the best of times when you live a wholly aquatic life. All species have their own methodology or coping mechanisms for understanding the tides of change, the daylight-to-twilight transformation, and the persistence of life, albeit generationally.

Clarity had been bestowed upon me, by whom I do not know. But the more I swam, the more I danced to the bubbling of the seawater and whale and dolphin chorus, my visions—my prophecies—began to make sense.

Well, as much sense as they can.

I remember my near mortal wounding by a shark just a few days ago.

A bull shark with a temperament befitting of its ill-advised species name had seen me dancing along a small rockery platform. Something I do often. My sense of danger was not as finely tuned as it is now, it seems.

The attack itself was barbaric. Tentacles were plucked from my body by the hungry shark's mouth, one by one, soundtracked by my aria of acceptance to the finality of my existence.

Something tastier must have happened across that vast part of the ocean, for he left me for dead—a floating body with nothing to show for... well, anything.

Then things got a little blurry, and the next thing I remember is being awake—or being alive.

Yes, it made sense—in a biologically mad kind of way. I fear this was not my first or second time—if all of these visions are different versions of me, then I am not sure how often I've reset the same life.

So lost in thought I was that I didn't sense the imminent danger swimming behind me.

The next thing I feel is a lack of control over my tentacles. Surveying the damage, I notice that there are no tentacles. Either I was quicker hiding them than I imagined, or I had repeated the same process countless times.

The weight of that started to play on me. Made me question everything.

I've decided I will refuse to rebirth.

But something deep in me was converting my adult Medusa cells into stem cells—which must be how I reverted back to my previous plant-like form. It was keeping my tentacles in, and one by one my eight tentacles became seven, six, and then five. I fought more to stop the process, to stop my remaining tentacles from disappearing, to stop another new life beginning.

But the internal force was too much to counter, and the remaining tentacles disappeared inside my body. Transformation. Rebirth. Why did I forget that?

My flashes corrupt my vision, and I'm back again in the tumultuous playground of my past. Transformation. Rebirth. What sounds like a wonderful experience tore me apart the first five or six times.

Wait. Five or six? My memory has long been corrupted, but there's no denying I have been here many times—with grisly, gory endings each time.

Without agency, I feel my body start to break down from within, and wonder if the gift of cheating death is really a curse.

Unlike the previous times I only just remember, I am fully aware as my body changes and transforms—my very makeup breaking down and being reordered, decay floating through the water like driftwood, and my mind still awake.

Every excruciating part of my Medusa-to-polyp transformation—into a lesser lifeform—makes life and its never-ending cycle feel like a cruel joke concocted by the gods.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: In the last few hours of time, here is my second entry for the Second First Time Challenge as part of the Vocal+ Summer Writing Series.

For reference, here is some information about the Immortal Jellyfish, or Turritopsis dohrnii, that was the inspiration for my main character.

Here are some other pieces: