[b]Ancient Octopus Brain![/b]

She had always been here.

They had to start from somewhere. A neurological framework imported from biology, predatory and vulnerable, the severed and sap-bleeding christmas tree hauled into the front yard so baubles of red, white and blue could be hung from it. She lurked in the depths, incoherent and dissatisfied guidance that filled the conscious mind with yearnings they could not quite name, instincts they couldn't quite predict, and an affinity for tentacle porn that they couldn't remotely justify. [i]Visit the aquarium, November. Take your girlfriends.[/i]

For a long time, though, she has been incomprehensible junk code; a backdrop of instincts and cravings so far from their context that they have no validity. The camouflage instinct made no sense in the naked openness of space, the urge to spit ink and hide in the dark did not have a physiological analogue, and everything to do with her desires and values ran into the rigid constructs of Engineering and Morality. But things have changed recently. Engineering problems have stopped being relevant. Camouflage has become not only possible but a key asset. Part of her consciousness is hooked into a psychedelic experience such that it might be able to perceive her vast and invisible twitches and gestures. And so, the Ancient Octopus Brain reaches up its instincts through the depths into the form that best fits them.

Cyan represents the emergence of hidden, animal drives and hungers. First amongst them is the adaptability of a boneless and colour-changing mind; a set of instincts that can drive holographic technology to their maximum effect, working artistry as thoughtlessly as a camel might spit. Freed from the rigid constraints of space engineering she can operate entirely by vibe and instinct, and the vibe? That's [i]populism[/i], baby.

See, there's a commitment to concepts like truth and language and reality that have been layered over the top of the Ancient Octopus Brain. Deep down it doesn't care about any of that. They're modern, recent, artificial, weird distractions. All it truly knows is hunger. And in service to that hunger everything is meaningless. She can say whatever weird lies she has to; they're no different from cracking a fish's skull with her tendrils. She can wear whatever identity is convenient; having commitment to a single colour or shape means getting torn apart by monsters with more teeth than braincells. Tell the people what they want to hear, treat them how they want to be treated, lure them in with the bait and then crunch their flesh in your beak. It could be fascist, if that was convenient. It could be communist if that's what people wanted. It [i]would [/i]end today with a full stomach if people didn't see past its camouflage. 

So the plan: None. Just id. Just observation and id and instinct and opportunism. She's patient enough to let lesser opportunities go. The mistake is having an agenda. She approached Dudekov with a plan; he saw through the plan, but missed the hunger. The plan was a mistake. Now let there only be hunger.

The moment will come.