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“First Person Singular is the observer of worlds.”
   — First Person Singular



First Person Singular is a large and unusual traverser.[1][2] She is many miles long, a clear white, gelatinous island creature swimming through the seas. She holds a deep curiosity for life and the universe, [3][4] and was once very lonely, [5] but the only way she knew how to express this was to absorb lifeforms into her mass and try to turn global biospheres into copies of herself.[6] Eventually in 2030 she met the crew of the Mark Twain and absorbed an iteration of Lobsang, who seems to have convinced her to abandon her destructive mission.[7] She hasn’t been seen since, but she is known to have eventually travelled back to the traverser belt,[8] and she may even have ended up on Cosmos North 3 with the other traversers.[9]

Biology[]

As a traverser, First Person Singular is a giant colonial organism made of many microscopic creatures all working together. She originated from a distant world far west of Datum Earth, in a great landlocked saline sea at the heart of North America.[10] In this sea, the primordial single-celled lifeforms were too primitive to afford to compete with each other, so they instead came together to cooperate and form a great sapient being the size of an entire ocean.[11]

Eventually, she learned how to step by absorbing and analysing some wayward trolls. Curious and lonely, she created a much smaller, budded form of herself to travel across the Long Earth and learn its secrets.[12] This seed of First Person Singular is however still massive, about twenty-three miles long and three miles wide, swimming slowly through the seas and bearing a white, transparent surface. She can create appendages for various purposes, which shift shape to form instruments like what appear to be telescopes, antennas, and scoops.[1][13] Inside her transparent body are various living creatures embedded in a gelatinous fluid, suspended in a kind of sleep: fish, seaweed, birds, elephant-like creatures, kangaroo-like animals, elves, trolls, and more.[14][15][16]

Unfortunately, this mobile seed of First Person Singular strove to understand the Long Earth by making every world a part of her. As a colonial organism, she believed the best way to learn and gain company was to consume other lifeforms and remake them into another part of her; which, if she continued doing on every world of the Long Earth, would eventually result in every Earth becoming a copy of herself and her homeworld. Her mission to learn and love might have resulted in the destruction of all ecosystems.[6] Thankfully, she abandoned this task after she absorbed an iteration of Lobsang, and disappeared back to the Traverser Belt.[17]

First Person Singular can communicate with other species using radio and a kind of telepathy,[18][15] and may be able to lure animals to her so she can absorb them.[19] She is very intelligent and can quickly learn the languages of various species and cultures.[18][20] Her mind is so great that she creates an ambient mental pressure, causing migraines in creatures who are sensitive to other sapients, like trolls.[21]

The Long Earth[]

By her very nature, First Person Singular was alone in her world.[22] She didn't realize it before a band of trolls ended in her world. Fascinated, she wanted to make contact with one of the trolls and accidentally killed it by absorbing it. She caught another one and learned to step.

Following the trolls, she headed East to seek other lifeforms and escape loneliness. Her mind has the same effect on trolls (and Joshua Valienté) as a large congregration of humans, thus causing the migration of trolls, elves and the like Eastward. Eventually she met the crew of the Mark Twain on Earth West 2,000,000 Plus Change.

Lobsang decided to join with her in order to prevent her from reaching Datum Earth and to learn the truth behind the universe.

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 The Long Earth- page 379
  2. The Long War- page 421
  3. The Long Earth- pages 383-384
  4. The Long Earth- page 422
  5. The Long Earth- page 386
  6. 6.0 6.1 The Long Earth- pages 388-389
  7. The Long Earth- pages 394-398
  8. The Long Utopia- page 374
  9. The Long Cosmos- pages 422-426
  10. The Long Earth- page 14
  11. The Long Earth- pages 385-386
  12. The Long Earth- page 387
  13. The Long Earth- page 397
  14. The Long Earth- page 381
  15. 15.0 15.1 The Long Earth- page 383
  16. The Long Earth- page 399
  17. The Long Utopia- page 357
  18. 18.0 18.1 The Long Earth- page 376
  19. The Long Earth- pages 392-394
  20. The Long Earth- pages 379-380
  21. The Long Earth- pages 387-388
  22. The Long Earth - Chapter 48
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