JINJIALIN:
the transient planet
"...they don't realize that this sense of 'self' is an illusion."
Two jinjialinians drifting through their invisible oceanic cities, welcoming to each other in their ambivalence.
The pair of Jinjialinians collide!
The surface tension of their outer membranes of each organism simultaneously ruptures and reforms, now as a single membrane.
The internal carteliginous structures of each Jinjialinian stays intact throughout the collision, allowing them to each remain roughly the same shape as they were before impact. However, their organs and makeup are probably very different now, even if their shapes remain the same.
"The people of Jinjialin possess bodies unlike the bodies of the people of any other planet. They are like soft balloons, or maybe like jellyfish floating through the air, transparent and loose. The surface of the Jinjialinians is membranous, like a cell's outermost layer. When two membranes touch, they can merge into one.
"When two Jinjialinians encounter each other, parts of their bodies briefly merge and mix the materials inside. When they separate, the materials are redistributed. Thus, the people do not care much about their physical bodies. Even they cannot tell how much of their current bodies come from strangers they met along the road. They believe that they are still themselves, and it’s no big deal to exchange some materials.
"But they don’t realize that this sense of “self” is an illusion. At the moment when two of them merge, the two original selves cease to exist. They become a combined person, and, when separated, two new persons. The new persons do not know all that transpired before their encounter and each believes that the self is the self, never having changed at all."
- Hao Jingfang, Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. Macmillan, 2016
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Editors Note
This is all I could find about this planet besides a record in the ISL ledgers. However, also based on that record, Jinjialin lacks the requisite reserves of carbon or similiar molecules for the formation of life. Barring a major terraforming or other natural terrestrial recomposition event, it seems unlikely that any lifeform could develop or thrive here, leading me to question the straightforwardness of the document above.
All I can say is that this text seems to have originated from somewhere in the Melky Wee Galaxy. More specifically from an obscure science fiction anthology from the pre-sundeath age. I get paid slightly less than 13 floogles per quintex to publish these sites so frankly I'm not going to go any farther than speculation, but I would wager that the description above says more about the world of the author than anything else. Perhaps it was a culture with an abundance of expression but very little grounding them in the individuality that it allowed. Ah, the information age. An exciting time to read about, but I'm sure it was chaotic as hell to live in.