It was dark. Like the pitch-black night of a starless galaxy. He felt an oppressive weight bearing down on him, as if he was being held fast by an inert mass—a cloak formed from the myriad consciousness of countless human beings from the past, present and future all fighting to surface within him. He tried to move. But his body had no form as yet. “Try not to panic, just let it happen,” Marsha had told him.

The darkness slowly lifted. Flashes of light flickered at the edges of his peripheral vision. He knew it was his mind creating the light, millions of nerve endings, synapsis firing as they spidered across his neural pathways. Pathways without direction as yet. Pain lanced through him. Like the bite of a thousand fire ants as the rawness of his feelings swept over him. He knew the framework of his very being was being formed from his thoughts. And then the memories rolled in.

Dark, thick waves swamping his mind. The pain of birth, and more fragmented pain as his network of cerebral consciousness began to spread further; encompassing his life and more. It crowded in, layering minute by minute, filling the void, and as the fragments coalesced other memories occupied the empty spaces—memories from further back. A time inhabited by those that came before.

Flashes of interlinked thoughts flared like blazing comets across his evolving cortex, snatches of conversation with the woman, the one that had guided their evolution through the years. Conversations between her and his father while they were both linked through the transfusions carried out beneath the house in the swamp. The knowledge accrued through the bloodline. Knowledge that would never be lost. As long as their lifeblood was passed down through the generations, from their forbearers and into their future. All he had to do was let his mind float free, while the time passed.

And when the time was right he would emerge into the light to begin their work again. As the streams of previous memories flooded into him, he became aware of their presence, the very essence of their souls… the creatures that he had held so dear in his previous life. His precious Dogos.