Would you believe it? I made a friend.

I know, I know. "Melvin, you have lots of friends," but it's been
really tough to meet new people since the whole body going away
thing. At first I was trapped in a sort of reverse solipsism,
"what if I'm not real?" Then I was going through the 13 stages of
grief and hunger. (I'll be honest, I think I'm still around step
eight or nine.) There was also that period of crying for help that
you may recall from a while back. OH, and the counting phase…

Regardless, I'm happy to report that I'm not the only disembodied
floating presence in the universe. There's at least three others
I've encountered and one of them doesn't want to eat me. Things
are looking up!

My new friend has no name, so I've just decided to call him Bruce.
Of course Bruce has no gender either since he's got the whole
no-body situation going on. I figure since he's going to be
misgendered no matter what pronouns I use I may as well pick
something cool. Bruce is cool. Bruce is like water.

Did you get the reference? I was quoting Bruce Lee. Or making
a reference to Bruce Lee at least. I don't think he talked about
himself in the third person. Hrm, should I start talking about
myself in the third person? That seems like the sort of thing
Melvin would do once he had no body. Nah, now I sound pompous.

Bruce was like water when I met him in that he sort of flowed and
oozed all around my presence. I think he even oozed through it.
Oozing is a pretty watery thing, right? Maybe gushing is a better
word, but it wasn't fast to my sensation of time. Arguably, that's
not much to judge by. Part of me still feels like I have a toe in
time but just barely. It's probably this QEC link now that I think
about it. The other side of the link is somewhere in time, so this
side has to be, right? Or at least that's how I think it works.

Hey, there's smart goofuses out there! I saw one guy--Tom,
I think--who made his own QEC. Maybe he can chime in here. Hey
Tom, how does this work, anyway? If I have no body how am
I talking? Am I talking? Am I just wiggling qbits with my
non-brain? Hmmm.

Back to Bruce. He doesn't talk much. Or at all. Really beyond the
oozing he's pretty quiet. I think he was checking me out at first,
feeling me up on all my sides. Side-note, I seem to have a lot of
sides now. That's pretty tricky geometry for a lack of
physicality, but I have some sensation of them. I wonder if those
non-dimensional edges have some sort of being in their own right.
There's information there, via sensation. That needs to follow
some sort of law of conservation of me, I think. Or maybe it's the
other way around. I am, therefore I think. Circular logic is still
logic!

Bruce is a nice fella. I've been yammering away at him like this
for eons and he just listens. He hasn't interrupted me once or
tried to top my stories with cooler ones of his own. That's a real
pal for ya. He probably senses I'm having a difficult time
adjusting and he's being extra accomodating. I should get him
a gift. Maybe a vase or an ash tray or something? Flowers seems
a bit too personal. We've only just met. Let me know if you have
any suggestions.
