YOU:

You knew?!

STAPH:

Of course! Most would never put two and two together, but I am a doctor, you know.

YOU:

I still don't get it, how is any of this possible?!

STAPH:

It's the nature of conceptual layers, an infinity of worlds within worlds.

YOU:

So...I've shrunk, somehow, I'm in a dead copy of my body, I'm talking to bacteria, and that's just...how things work? That's it?

STAPH:

Oh, goodness no, not like that! How would you even breathe if you'd shrunk to microbial scale?! Let's put it this way...your vessel is the basis for this zone, and its inhabitants are representations of its biota. Their existence, their manifested form and their fates are inexorably intertwined, but applied differently; adapted to divergent states of reality!

For instance, there are likely tens of billions of mindless, microbial staphylococcus teeming in your vessel as we speak, but here in our sub-conceptual biozone, there's only one little old me!

YOU:

Sssoo... what about where I came from? Is that an "adaptation" of something else? Is it real? A dream? A dust mote? Part of some monster??

STAPH:

Yes.

YOU:

YES?! Yes to wh...

STAPH:

Well, of course, that's only a partial list...but we're wasting enough time, here. If there's anything you'd like to do in town, or anything else you need here, we should really get moving!