The Symbiote

Ephraim Glitchard did not set out to rewire his body’s understanding of itself. He set out to pay his rent.
    He was forty-three. A technical writer by profession, a reluctant human by disposition, and thoroughly alone by design. His social circle had once included coworkers, an ex-girlfriend with whom he still shared a Dropbox folder, and a handful of unread books he kept by the bedside for companionship. These days, he mostly spoke to email filters, utility chatbots, and now, editors.
    His most recent editor was a brisk woman named Celeste who never used contractions. She had commissioned him to ghostwrite a scientific article for a semi-respectable journal. The topic was interoception. The angle would be speculative, and the deadline was inflexible.
    Interoception, as it turned out, is a part of the body’s internal sensory system. Ephraim’s early research described it as the “eighth sensory system,” which allows the brain to detect internal bodily signals such as heartbeat, hunger, thirst, pain, and muscle tension. It uses those signals to maintain homeostasis and regulate emotions. The hidden language of organs, pulses, and chemical signals humming just beneath conscious awareness. Fascinating in theory. Tedious in literature. Ephraim’s job was to make it palatable to peer reviewers and untraceably useful to whoever put their name on it. He made notes from these descriptions to use in his opening paragraphs.
    After three days of research, Ephraim came across VigilDermis Neurobio, a biotech firm whose website material seemed both clinical and mystical. Their website promised “depth-enhanced bodily intuition” and “empathic tuning.” It also cryptically promised something Ephraim did not quite understand and would have to research further. It was a promise of “adaptive symbiotic scaffolding for perceptual expansion.”
    He made a note to work the phrase perceptual expansion into the article’s title, then kept scanning the website.
    That was when he saw a menu item titled “Call for Volunteers.” He clicked.
    “Paid Research Participation! VigilDermis seeks healthy adults for non-invasive interoceptive modulation trials. One-time session. Minimal risk. $1,500 compensation. Must sign release.”
    Ephraim reread the figure twice. The amount wasn’t life-changing, but it was enough to pay the rent. And in the next few days, he would be two months behind on it.
    He justified it to himself easily: firsthand experience would strengthen the paper, lend it credibility. Better than quoting another paper quoting a grant proposal. Plus, he’d already spent too many hours squinting at abstracts written by people with more credentials than sentence structure. And the best part was that their office was here in Athens, so there would be no additional travel expense.
    He asked himself, “Why not, then, walk into the machinery and write from within?”
    Science, at the very least, came with forms to sign and no demand for confession. And the best part was that their office was here in Athens.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    The building housing VigilDermis Neurobio looked more like a real estate office than a scientific research facility. The sign out front was minimalist: white sans-serif on frosted glass, no serif, no soul. Inside, the decor was aggressively sterile. Off-white walls, whispering HVAC, and an aroma of antiseptic that clung to the tongue.
    A young man was sitting behind a desk in the lobby. He was a young man whose hair was styled into a shape not found in nature. Displaying a smile that seemed outsourced, he introduced himself as the intake technician and handed Ephraim a clipboard. The paperwork was laced with euphemisms like “Neural harmonics, Biological co-authorship, and Somatic co-localization.” Ephraim noted that it was written with poor punctuation and occasional all-caps caveats.
    Ephraim initialed each section with the detachment of a man clicking through a user agreement he would never read again. His signature, when it came, was a little shaky.
    They brought him into a small examination room with a reclined chair and a console that looked equal parts dental equipment and retrofitted arcade game.
    A technician in the room was cheerfully donning gloves. “This won’t take long,” the technician said. “Most people don’t feel anything until they’re on the way home.”
    Ephraim arched an eyebrow. “Define feel.”
    “Enhanced body awareness,” the tech replied. “You might notice more... texture. We’re just tuning your internal sensors.”
    Before Ephraim could ask what that meant, the technician had swabbed the base of his skull with something cold and iodine-scented. A moment later, a soft click, a small pressure, not pain, and it was done.
    “That’s it?” Ephraim asked.
    “Installation complete,” the technician said, as if setting up a modem.
    He handed Ephraim a foil packet of electrolyte gummies and a pamphlet titled Post-Symbiotic Integration Tips. Ephraim tucked both into his bag without looking at them.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Outside, the streets of Athens steamed with the humidity of a typical day in Georgia. Clouds hung low, and the trees murmured in a wind that hadn’t quite arrived.
    Ephraim walked home, waiting for something to change.
    Nothing did.
    At least, not right away.
    He made it through dinner. He consumed his microwaved curry and half a bottle of discount white zinfandel without incident. No visions. No mystical insights. He even began writing the opening paragraph of the ghostwritten article:
    “Interoception is our body’s way of detecting internal body signals and using them to help our body maintain a stable internal environment regardless of external changes. It is the hidden language of organs, pulses, and chemical signals humming just beneath conscious awareness. Interoception is our body’s sixth sense.”
    He paused, considered deleting the last sentence, then decided he liked the drama of it.
    He went to bed around midnight.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He woke at 3:16 a.m. with the strange, immediate knowledge that his kidneys were displeased.
    Not hurting. Not aching... Displeased.
    It was a difficult sensation to articulate. It was a kind of internal sulking, like two small organs hosting a silent protest beneath his ribs. He sat up in bed, heart fluttering in a rhythm that didn’t quite belong to him. His lungs inflated on their own schedule. Something behind his eyes buzzed faintly, like a thought just out of reach.
    And then came the voice.
    “Ah. Hello. You’re awake. Excellent.”
    Ephraim stilled.
    The voice wasn’t loud, nor was it quite spoken. It arrived like a temperature or a mood. It was... impressionistic, more sensed than heard.
    “Hello Ephraim. You can call me Chuck. I’m your interoceptive liaison. If it helps, you can think of me as a helpful passenger.”
    “A passenger?” Ephraim murmured. “What kind of passenger?”
    “The kind who knows how to make your spleen sing. Don’t worry. I’m certified.”
    Ephraim blinked. The room was still and dark. Looking around, he saw no one. “Are you... inside of me?”
    “Not inside exactly. More like integrated. We’re cohabiting. You’ve got the body and the brain. I bring the perspective.”
    Ephraim swung his legs over the bed. The floor was cold. He welcomed it. Something known, something ordinary.
    “You’re not supposed to be sentient,” he muttered.
    “Neither is your appendix, and yet here we are.”
    Ephraim walked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. His reflection blinked a beat too late.
    Behind his eyes, Chuck purred like static wrapped in velvet.
    “Go back to bed, Ephraim. You’re going to want to be well-rested. Tomorrow, you’ll start to feel things.”
    Ephraim tried to go back to sleep, but he could not.
    He lay awake, heart thrumming to a rhythm he hadn’t approved, listening to his body whisper in languages it hadn’t spoken yesterday.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    The next morning, Ephraim awoke with the distinct sensation that his body had been rearranged in his absence.
    Still in his bed, he lay motionless with his eyes closed, and tried to make sense of what felt wrong. Then his stomach began to gurgle in a sequence that resembled a countdown.
    He sat up.
    “Ah, excellent,” Chuck cooed, already alert. “You’re calibrating nicely. Bit of turbulence, naturally, but your hypothalamus is showing remarkable adaptability. Did you notice the way your pancreas realigned itself overnight? Beautiful work.”
    Ephraim ran a hand through his hair. It came away damp, not with sweat, but with something that smelled vaguely like seawater, as if his scalp had been dreaming of an ocean tidepool.
    In the kitchen, the refrigerator made a sound. But, to Ephraim, the sound did not register as mechanical.
    It sounded contemplative.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He tried to focus on the article.
    He needed to finish the first draft. Celeste had sent a terse follow-up email with the subject line “RE: DEADLINE. Soft becomes hard. Thursday noon.”
    Ephraim read it twice and felt oddly exposed, as if she’d somehow sensed how long it had taken him to choose a font.
    He created a new document and began typing the line that would either earn him tenure or get him quietly disappeared: “Current findings indicate that interoceptive processing shapes emotional regulation and supports the continuity of selfhood and identity stability.”
    He paused and reread what he had typed. He realized he could now feel his own salivary glands reacting to the act of rereading.
    He deleted the sentence and tried again.
    “To perceive the body’s internal landscape is to become, in a sense, a visit to a haunted house where each creak is a clue, each breath a question, and each silence a room you didn’t know you had.”
    He blinked.
    “Did I write that?” he asked aloud.
    “Technically, we did,” Chuck said. “Though I must admit, your metaphors are developing a nice texture.”
    Ephraim leaned back in his chair. His lower spine cracked in a rhythm that felt intentional.
    He shut the laptop.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He ventured out for groceries, seeking something bland enough to eat and ordinary enough to prove the world still made sense. The walk was uneventful.
    Until it wasn’t.
    Somewhere between the sidewalk and the parking lot of the Kroger, Ephraim became aware of a second heartbeat.
    It wasn’t his.
    Not metaphorically. Not romantically. Literally. A second pulse, faint but present, lapping just behind his own like a shadow on the walls of his veins.
    He stopped walking.
    A man passed him—late fifties, gray polo, khaki shorts. Ephraim felt a spike of anxiety not his own, followed by the clench of indigestion. The man touched his side absently and kept walking.
    Ephraim swayed on his feet.
    “Proximity sync,” Chuck explained. “Your interoceptive range is expanding. You’re picking up echoes—resonances, really—from other vessels.”
    “People?”
    “Beings,” Chuck said lightly. “People, yes. But also rats. Birds. The occasional dimension-adjacent waveform. Don’t worry, your system can metabolize most of them without incident.”
    Ephraim pressed his hand to his chest and counted backward from ten.
    His own breath stuttered—someone else’s asthma attack.
    He exhaled. Kept walking.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Back home, he tried to make toast.
    He placed a slice of wheat bread in the toaster. It shivered slightly. The toaster, not the bread.
    Ephraim stared at it.
    The coils glowed red, but not in the familiar way. There was a rhythm to the glow now, a tempo. Like blinking. Like breath.
    He reached for the lever.
    “Ephraim,” Chuck said sounding genuinely concerned, “I wouldn’t.”
    The toaster emitted a low sound. It was like a wet sigh, if sighs had pulp.
    Ephraim stepped back as he reached over and unplugged it. The smell that lingered was not burnt bread, but singed fur and mild regret. The toaster emitted a soft sound resembling a wet sigh. Ephraim stepped back and unplugged it. The lingering smell was not burnt bread, but rather like singed fur and a hint of mild regret.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Later that evening, he tried to meditate, something he hadn’t attempted since college. He sat cross-legged on the floor, breathing slowly, counting the beats in and out.
    After the fourth cycle, he became aware of a series of vibrations in his feet. Not pain. Not discomfort. Just… Morse code.
    “Don’t worry, Ephraim,” Chuck said. “It’s just your fascia echoing ambient interdimensional feedback. That is perfectly safe. Your arches are acting as receivers. Like organic tuning forks.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you signed the waiver.”
    Ephraim opened his eyes.
    The room had taken on a slight lean, as though the building were bowing toward something. Outside, the wind was making a sound that resembled laughter, but only if you’d never actually heard laughter and were describing it to a machine.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He returned to his laptop, opened the document, and began to type.
    “The more deeply one listens to the body, the less certain one becomes that its voice is singular.”
    He paused, reread the line, and underlined voice.
    “You’re doing beautifully,” Chuck said, his tone almost paternal. “You’re becoming more than a self. You’re becoming an interface.”
    Ephraim stared at the cursor blinking on the screen.
    He had the sudden, dreadful certainty that his body was no longer a place he lived in—but a channel through which others were trying to speak.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    By midweek, Ephraim had stopped referring to his body in the first person.
    It was easier that way.
    Easier to say the hands than my hands, when they trembled without cause or consent. Easier to think the stomach reacted instead of I felt sick, when the reaction came in response to smells, shapes, and sounds that no one else could detect.
    He kept a notebook by the couch that he had used to write down scientific impressions and observations that might add color to his ghostwriting assignment. Now it had devolved into something more primitive, like a field report or a survivor’s log.
    “On Wednesday, I had a sensation that there were ants inside my teeth. Chuck claimed it was probably a residual memory that came from an alternate dimension where guilt is stored inside the molars of the dominant beings in that dimension.”
    “On Thursday, the toaster announced it was looking forward to being used today. When the bread realized the intentions of the toaster, it immediately covered itself in mold out of protest.”
    “On Friday, the toaster started weeping. Moisture gathered at its chrome seams and dripped onto the counter where it was sitting. I thought it was water condensation, except it was warm and faintly red. When I touched it with a paper towel, it evaporated in a way that felt intentional.”
    <<<<<>>>>
    Ephraim unplugged the toaster, cleaned the counter, and gently placed the toaster beneath the sink.
    “Appliances are not inherently emotional,” Chuck said, “but sympathy can be contagious in a charged environment. Think of it like osmosis. A sort of emotional capillary action.”
    Ephraim didn’t eat dinner that night.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He attempted a walk the next morning. The sky was raw and pewter-colored. Something about the way the light bent made the trees appear taller, and the birds more suspicious.
    He was three blocks from home when it happened.
    A man stepped out of a shop in front of him—ordinary, middle-aged, wearing a hat with a logo Ephraim couldn’t quite read. And suddenly, Ephraim was choking on peppermint.
    It filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs. He gasped, reeled, staggered sideways into a newsstand. The man looked at him, alarmed, then hurried off.
    Ephraim bent double, dry-heaving onto the sidewalk.
    “No need to panic,” Chuck offered. “You just momentarily synchronized with a synesthetic reflex loop. The man associates entering public spaces with the smell of mints. You tasted it. That’s empathy, Ephraim. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
    Ephraim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    “Next time, why don’t you warn me in advance?” he rasped.
    Chuck replied in amusement, “But then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Back home, he collapsed into the couch. It accepted his weight with too much familiarity. He closed his eyes.
    As he lay there in the stillness, he heard a low, vibrating sound, like something humming. Even with his eyes closed he could tell the sound was not coming from inside the room. It was coming from inside his bones. It was rhythmic, a modulating resonant pulse, as if something was trying to find a frequency. A frequency that would open him.
    “Don’t be too concerned,” Chuck said. “It is just your marrow becoming self-aware.”
    Ephraim opened his eyes.
    “I want it to stop.”
    “Ah,” Chuck replied, tone softening. “That’s the thing about awareness. Once you’ve opened the door, even just a crack… things start to notice you, too.”
    Ephraim stood abruptly. Went to the sink. Turned on the water. It came out in a steady stream, but it was blue.
    Not metaphorically. Not poetically. The color blue.
    “Food dye from a nearby reality leak,” Chuck said brightly. “Harmless. Technically.”
    Ephraim stared at the water in the glass he had just filled, then poured it down the drain.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    That night, he dreamed of a vast white corridor filled with transparent figures whispering apologies into bowls of soup.
    He woke up with the vague sense that he had just filed a tax return in someone else’s name. He also realized that he had a craving for celery.
    His phone buzzed. A new email from Celeste.
    SUBJECT: Submission Due
    Ephraim,
    I am still expecting a full draft by noon on Monday. If your hypothesis has run off screaming, and your research has taken an unconventional turn, refine it until it resonates. Just remember the journal’s readers are smart enough to see a metaphor, but not smart enough to forgive the use of one.
    Best, 
    C.
    Ephraim closed the email and turned off his phone.
    He turned on his desktop and waited impatiently for it to boot up.
    He opened the document and typed:
    “To feel one’s body is no longer reassurance, but trespass.”
    He stared at the sentence for a long time before saving the document file.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    By Sunday morning, Ephraim no longer reacted to the strange. He just accepted it.
    The walls of his apartment had begun to sweat. Not moisture... memory. Patterns bled through the plaster, not stains but gestures. The traces of hands that had never touched them, movements left by limbs that did not bend in any direction he recognized.
    He watched them without alarm.
    “Just turbulence,” Chuck said, reassuringly. “You’re becoming semi-porous. Spatially.”
    Ephraim nodded, as if that explained anything.
    He walked into the kitchen and discovered that his coffee mug was gone.
    Not misplaced. Not broken. Simply gone. In its place: a small ring of condensation on the countertop, and a faint smell of pine.
    He accepted this.
    Instead, he filled a bowl with cereal and sat cross-legged on the floor.
    As he chewed, he became aware that someone—somewhere—was thinking through his taste buds. It was a soft presence, polite, almost reverent. As though borrowing his breakfast to remember something.
    He finished eating. Left the bowl in the sink. The spoon sang for six seconds when it touched water.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    That afternoon, Ephraim attempted to revise the article he was writing. The draft had been open on his desktop for the better part of a week, untouched save for the occasional cryptic sentence typed during fugue states.
    He started a new paragraph:
    “Interoception opens with the self and ends with ’oh no, what was that?” In the quiet between breath and awareness, we shine for a moment. And something in the dark shines back. We resonate, and what hears us is not always human.”
    He knew Celeste would never accept or pay for this piece.
    He closed the file.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    That evening, it happened.
    He was brushing his teeth when the mirror ceased cooperating.
    His reflection blinked a beat too early. Then too late. Then not at all. For a moment, it simply stared steady and lidless. Not angry. Not curious. Simply assessing.
    Ephraim spat toothpaste foam into the sink. It sizzled faintly, then
    evaporated.
    “Brace yourself,” Chuck said. “Your nervous system is about to get very honest.”
    And then the room folded.
    It did not collapse, it folded like paper. Time curled inward, all edges and creases. The air grew thick, viscous, laced with echoes. Ephraim stumbled, his hands stretching longer than they should’ve, shadow lagging behind like a drunk twin.
    The mirror was gone. All his furniture had disappeared. The walls were wrong. Ephraim was no longer in his apartment.
    He stood in a corridor of shifting, bone-white surfaces. Distance became distorted. Corners appeared and disappeared. The ceiling pulsed in and out, and the light had texture.
    Shapes passed him. Not quickly. Not maliciously. They moved with the unhurried grace of things that had never known fear. They saw him and did not care.
    Then something else noticed.
    It had no shape, only presence. Pressure. Observation. Like being studied by a cathedral.
    “That’s it,” Chuck whispered. “That’s the Observer. It’s here.”
    Ephraim couldn’t speak. His jaw no longer belonged to language.
    The Observer pressed closer, not physically, but ontologically. It understood him, not as a person, but as a symptom. It saw through him like light through gauze. He had no secrets here. Only layers.
    One by one, those layers dissolved.
    His name. His job. His habits. Gone. All that remained was pattern. Resonance.
    “It’s not here to hurt you,” Chuck murmured. “It’s here to see what you’ll do.”
    Ephraim dropped to his knees.
    And then, without thinking, he laughed a soft, stunned laugh.
    Just once. Half breath, half surrender.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    He came to in his apartment.
    The mirror was blank. The sink was dry. The toothbrush stood upright in the glass, as if nothing had happened.
    Ephraim touched his face.
    It was still his. But it hummed now, softly, at the edges. He was tuned. Not broken, not healed, just altered.
    “You did well,” Chuck said, proud.
    Ephraim walked to the window. The street outside looked the same with cars, trees, and people moving with animal certainty.
    The color and the shape of the sky were the same.
    But some unseen thing out there was watching back
    With intent.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Ephraim didn’t wake the next morning so much as return.
    Consciousness now arrived in stages. In waves of colorless sensation. Breath. Pulse. Gravity. The distant memory of breakfast.
    Ephraim did not feel fear anymore.
    The toaster no longer startled him when it made a declaration. His reflection, when it chose to appear, now matched his mood rather than his expression.
    Chuck explained, “You’re a harmonized system now, and your signal is strong. You resonate.”
    Ephraim nodded. He stood in the living room looking through distortions in the windows. Outside, clouds moved in patterns that suggested consensus.
    “And the Observer?”
    “Still watching,” Chuck said. “Though it’s less observation now, more… participation.”
    <<<<<>>>>>
    The next day, Ephraim walked slowly through the neighborhood. His steps were measured, almost reverent.
    Birds didn’t flee him now. Trees angled slightly in his direction. Small things like ants, stray bits of pollen, a nail embedded in a fencepost, all buzzed faintly with awareness.
    Yes, he saw the world differently. And now... the world saw him back.
    And not just this world.
    At intersections, he saw passing shadows that didn’t belong to people. In reflections on the surface of still waters filling a pot-hole in the street, he glimpsed geographies with different physics. Once, as he passed a streetlamp, the bulb brightened, not from electricity, but recognition.
    “You’re broadcasting,” Chuck said, almost cheerfully. “Your entire body is a lighthouse now. Congratulations.”
    Ephraim didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. Chuck understood the silence.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    That night, he returned to the apartment and prepared.
    Not food. Not rest. Not escape.
    He lit a candle. A small gesture. An instinctive ritual to mark a threshold.
    He sat on the floor, spine straight, palms resting lightly on his knees.
    He breathed slowly. Then, gently and deliberately, he opened himself.
    The room went still, the shadows thickened, and the walls softened.
    The Observer arrived, not with fanfare, but with understanding.
    It filled the room. Not a shape. Not a voice. Just total comprehension, like being held inside an infinite thought.
    Ephraim did not tremble and scream. He resonated.
    And the resonance was answered.
    His spine arched, gently. His blood adjusted to a new rhythm. His skin became translucent at the edges—softly, as though revealing its blueprint. He felt seen in a way that undid every moment of doubt he’d ever buried in his chest.
    Chuck’s voice sounded like static through snowfall, “You’ve done beautifully. Truly. Most humans break long before this. But you, Ephraim... you’ve become fluent in your own undoing.”
    Ephraim smiled. He no longer needed to move his lips when he talked to Chuck. “So this is what it is,” he said, “to feel completely.”
    “I’ve done my part,” Chuck replied. “You’ve graduated. You’re no longer a host. You’re a hub.”
    Ephraim smiled.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Ephraim moved differently after that.
    The ghostwritten article was never finished. Instead, the document corrupted itself into non-Euclidean glyphs and uploaded automatically to three academic journals, two of which did not yet exist.
    Celeste never tried to make contact with him.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    Days passed, then months.
    At night, the apartment gently folded around him. His windows would make predictions. The fan stopped spinning. It said it had heard everything already.
    Sometimes, Ephraim would feel the Observer watching. Not with malice. With curiosity.
    “You fascinate it, Ephraim.” Chuck said in a quiet voice. “You laugh at the punchlines it hasn’t told yet.”
    Ephraim liked that.
    He laughed more now. Often alone. Occasionally at walls.
    The walls, to their credit, laughed back.
    <<<<<>>>>>
    One morning, his reflection winked.
    Not a twitch. A deliberate wink. Then it nodded toward the door.
    As he got dressed, Ephraim’s clothes did not complain or offer their usual opinions about his weight. He stepped into the hallway, which obligingly led him to the correct door he needed to exit the building.
    He walked to a nearby coffee shop, went inside and placed an order.
    He no longer required caffeine. He just liked the ritual.
    Seated at a table next to Ephraim’s, a young woman scrolled through screens on a tablet. Her face displayed a worried look and her aura crackled with the tension of someone whose rent depended on a project they hadn’t started.
    Ephraim made a small, unseen gesture and her screen blinked.
    “VigilDermis: ”Paid Research Participation! Are You Ready to Feel More Than Human? Apply Now. Compensation Provided.”
    She hesitated, read more of the details, then clicked.
    Ephraim smiled. He left his coffee untouched and he walked outside.
    A small breeze shaped itself into applause. A traffic light turned to allow him to cross the street. In the upper atmosphere, the Observer pulsed gently.

<<<<<>>>>>
Clyde Verhine ~ August 2026