Disappointments

We are disappointments to our spirit animals. We conjure them when we need their strengths, but we are never as wise, courageous, or as cunning as they are — unless we’ve had brain injuries. Any reasonably constructed animism is omnipotent; and as soon as we start filling ourselves with these creatures, their pulp pours out of our cells. They aren’t just too effuse, too perfect, they are structurally beyond the problems we set them to solve. They can fix us by fiat before the symptoms even show up. But we can’t restore ourselves — even through them — we are humans, unable to use our towering intellects to repair the rippling cracks. In a universe of spirits: as our speed increases, we store our psychic energy as mass, requiring more energetic spirits to produce acceleration, which stalls us, requiring faster aids, who add to our failures and...