The steady slapping of waves against my hull provided a useful tool for my initial attempts to make sense of everything. I could feel my oars moving mechanically, as they continuously splashed water with every stroke that moved the boat forwards. They weren’t actual arms, but they felt like it at the same time, a strange sense of synesthesia that allowed my brain to mostly interpret the alien input.

It wasn’t a perfect fit, depending on how I approached the sensation it either felt like I was on my stomach doing the breaststroke, or on my back doing a simultaneous backstroke. By itself it wasn’t that bad, but switching between the two perspectives made my nonexistent shoulders ache as it felt like they were suddenly bending in directions that they shouldn’t be. It had some implications for my future development as well. The human brain is pretty adaptable, something modern doctors already use when doing amputations that require moving nerves around. I’m hoping that as time goes on I’ll become more accustomed to my new body, but there are clearly multiple ways that those new associations can be made.

Is my hull my stomach? Is it my backside? Is it even, my butt? I snorted at the Nemo reference before returning to my contemplations. On one hand it probably didn’t matter much; I didn’t see myself as a secret transformer who would switch back and forth between human and wooden forms. I was a boat now, and eventually would come to accept my body in the form it actually was. However, having a workable mental map from my boat body to my old human body would help speed the process up, something that was quite appealing, stuck as I was in the dark with limited sensation.

Letting my subconscious mull the problem over, I turned my focus fully towards the one thing I could feel, the constant rowing rhythm of the oars. Even though the rowing was taking place autonomously, as time went on it became easier and easier to feel what was happening. I couldn’t stop rowing, as any attempt to do so was overridden by the command my passenger had given me to head towards Shellpin Bay. What I could do was experiment with every stroke, pulling a little harder or digging a little deeper into the water. I tried twisting the oars as they slid into the water, listening to the splashes they made as I tried to optimize their angle of entry. I flexed against the restrictions as much as I could, metaphorically encouraging blood to flow into sleeping arms. As I worked I paid attention to my passenger, but he seemed engrossed with his own activities, still idly humming as we moved along.

It worked, albeit slowly. As I practiced not only did I grow more connected with the oars, but I began to receive feedback from the rest of the boat as well. For the moment I had settled on envisioning myself doing the breaststroke, gliding forwards on my stomach and chest through the water. The main benefit it had over the backstroke was that it had me facing forwards, a small detail that nevertheless made me feel more comfortable with motion. It gave me a better mental model to work with as well. I didn’t actually know what I looked like, but I could picture a generic rowboat easily enough. Wooden planks running the length of my body, curved towards the bottom and held together by a central beam, the spine of the boat. A few planks set crosswise towards the top to act as seats and to keep the sides spaced out properly. Smaller pieces of wood running up and down the sides, ribs to add structural support. My human chest had ribs as well bones to keep the lungs and inner organs from collapsing into a muddled pile. They weren’t visible from the outside, but they could be felt, usually when my arm got trapped underneath my chest while trying to sleep, but I could remember other memories. Lying on the ground in the forest to watch a trail of ants go about their work, ignoring the sticks and stones poking into my chest. Draped over a one-time girlfriend’s legs at the beach, keeping her pinned while she read terrible jokes from a cheap magazine that somehow left us giggling. Swimming in Lake Michigan, the water just this side of freezing, where every breath was a shock to the system that reminded you what living was like.

That last memory in particular resonated, and even if I couldn’t feel the temperature, I was able to feel the waves dully impact against my prow, coming in at an angle as I worked my way towards Shellpin. I could make out the underlying currents of the ocean, tickling against my chest as they tugged back and forth, not the giant currents of the open ocean, but the ebb and surge of the ocean as it danced against the land, constantly rebounding against an immovable object. I felt myself smiling as my paddle shaped hands dipped into the water. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I had, one more sense to keep me grounded, to keep me sane. It wasn’t perfect, more a general sense of touch without any specificity, but it was better than nothing.

One downside I didn’t notice until a quarter hour later was the clash between my developing sense of proprioception and the location the [Listen] enchantment was located at. I was visualizing myself on my stomach doing a breaststroke, which worked well, except for the fact that it meant my nonexistent head should be located at the front of the boat. The enchantment, however, was tied to the stern which meant that everything I heard was heard from back there. It made everything feel slightly off and I resolved to ignore the sensation as much as possible until I acclimatized to it.

Pulling up my strange screen I decided to spend some more time going over it more carefully. I had done a quick skim earlier, just enough to acknowledge that I was a magical boat, but I had a lot more questions now about how it worked.

Rowboat

Autonomous Intelligence

Component Weight 120/750 Durability 10/10 Enchantments 3 Mana Saturation 15/10 Hull - Wood Listening

Navigation Oars - Wood Automation

It took a bit of staring at the nonexistent screen to really begin to make sense of it all. It didn’t help that every time I tried to figure out how exactly I was seeing something without eyes I got sidetracked. The screen was naturally in what I thought of as the center of my vision, but thinking about it too much led me to seeing off to my left or right, or forming a HUD on the top and bottom of my vision even though there was nothing actually separating the two locations. In some ways it was similar to unfocusing my eyes normally to see double, or closing an eye to see my nose, only instead of seeing more of something, I was inserting more nothing by not focusing properly. It was a trippy experience, and one I was happy to leave alone after it started giving me a headache and focus more on the information the window provided me with over the metaphysics of the window itself.

Besides confirming my new existence as a rowboat, the status screen had a whole bunch of useful information for me to work with. I might be controlling and feeling the rowboat, but I was probably the Autonomous Intelligence it mentioned up towards the top of the screen. Funny, how I was right earlier when I thought I might be an AI, even if I was wrong on what exactly AI stood for.

Of course, that meant my earlier concerns about evil societies taking advantage of trapped intelligences was on the table again, but there wasn’t all that much I could do at the moment about it. The wizard who had presumably stuck me here was able to give me commands I couldn’t disobey, and even if I could my options for communication were limited. I could maybe slap my oars around if I wasn’t in the middle of travelling somewhere, but that wasn’t the best option for conveying my nature as an intelligent being with a desire for self-determination. Even if I could somehow let him know, the odds weren’t good of things working out in my favor. If he did it intentionally, then my confirmation that he had enslaved the soul of a person wouldn’t change anything. If he did it unintentionally, then he could still be callous or evil enough not to care, or could simply choose not to believe me. After all, if it was an accident and his spell was now malfunctioning it seemed like it would be easier for him simply to erase it all and start over from scratch instead of believing that his spell somehow accidentally reincarnated another person. Heck, given I can only move my oars at the moment he could easily choose to restart his project as soon as I started waving the oars about freely, without even bothering to try and understand why.

I couldn’t even fully blame him in this hypothetical scenario either. People in general have a hard time feeling empathy or respect for others. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that we started treating babies like they felt pain when it was necessary to do medical procedures after all. So if the odds of my creator treating me like a person are low, that’s just a fact of life, one I can hopefully ignore by keeping my intelligence to myself until I can actually do something about my current situation.

Below my existence as an Autonomous Intelligence were the details that describe the physical and magical properties I possess. I’m a small wooden boat with wooden oars, both of which are listed as components. The system feels remarkably modular, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it were possible for me to gain new components, such as a sail, an anchor, or maybe even another set of oars. Those components likely contribute to my durability and weight with presumably better materials giving me more durability and lighter materials taking up less weight. The weight is listed out of a maximum, likely my displacement. If my cargo combined with my mass as a boat exceeds my displacement, then I sink. It looks like I have a pretty large margin of safety at the moment, although I can't be sure given my lack of units. It’s probably not pounds though, unless I have a halfling as a passenger. His voice sounded deep enough that I can’t help but think of him as an adult human, someone who should weigh more than 120 pounds. Unless the system only shows my weight against my carrying capacity and doesn’t let me know how much my passengers weigh? I’ll have to keep an eye out once we reach our destination and he disembarks.

While the left half of the screen is focused on my physical details, the right is all about magic. I currently have three enchantments affecting me, two on my hull and one on my oars. [Automation] and [Listen] are both straightforward enough. One allows my oars to move freely, and one allows me to hear, although there’s no details about limitations or capabilities. I can simply move or hear. The [Navigation] enchantment is more of a mystery. It’s likely what allows me to row towards Shellpin Bay, despite never having been there, but unlike the other two enchantments I don’t feel as if it’s a part of me. Even if the enchantments are on the boat itself, it feels like I’m the one rowing or hearing, but I have no clue where I’m navigating towards. It’s a force acting in opposition to me, preventing me from moving the oars any which way, only allowing me to row towards my mysterious destination. Once we arrive I’ll have to see what exactly changes about my situation, and in the future I can work on incorporating [Navigation] into my array of senses. It will just be harder to pull off since it’s not an ability I had before I died. Thank goodness for GPS is all I can say.

Of more concern is the mana saturation statistic. 15/10 is a worrying ratio, because it implies I’m drawing more mana than I can support. I don’t see a mana reservoir, or a drain per enchantment, but I still get the feeling that it’s a longer-term problem. The upside is that I’m currently carrying a wizard. Since he was the one who put all these enchantments on me, and since he wanted to do so, he either is willing to cover the upkeep or knows something I don’t about the consequences of not paying for them. The downside is that it’s one more reason for me to stay stuck here where I am, controlled and working for another person. One more problem I’ll have to figure out an answer for before I can be my own boat, wherever that might take me.