germ and vern have never had parental figures of any kind. they have no traceable origins whatsoever, their fingerprints and dna are almost exactly the same and their genetics match nobody but eachother. they are somehow able to communicate entirely without any use of language or physical gestures or anything for that matter, seeming as though they automatically know what the other wants or needs. they compare this to the concept of intuition, although they do prefer tangible conversation.

they are their consciousness rather than the body. while you could make this argument for any other living and thinking being, people's perception of themselves are more based on their physical being and how they present themselves. this is not the case here. there is a large disconnect between the physical form and their true internal self, as the truth is the two of them have existed for as long as life has been on earth. this is where the concept of their true internal self comes in as they have been living through continuous reincarnation and they have lived possibly millions of lives. with every time their physical form dies they are released and simply reincarnated into something else.

their "true" forms are stars in space, supposedly. this state of being is one that they could never properly articulate due to the fact that they are both dead and alive at the same time, thinking with neither words nor pictures, and using the aforementioned communication with the entire lack of language both human or animal alike. in this state they are unable to see, hear, feel, touch, taste, or smell. the only sense is awareness of their own and and the other's existence. they communcate and come to an agreement on which physical form they choose to take next. there are no limits. they have been hundred year old trees, they have been insects with hour long lifespans. they have been molecules. they have been dinosaurs. they have been viruses.
their very first physical form came to be when life very first began on earth - a single bacteria, which split in two.

there are some "side effects" to their tangibility, although not exactly serious or inconvenient - the biggest being that due to their "link", when one of them dies the other one automatically does as well. the other's death is not instant, but happens very soon afterwards. once they die, there cannot be any physical evidence of their bodies left over. any carcasses of theirs completely disappear very soon after they have left their bodies in ways that are completely unexplainable. this does not include posessions or things they have created per se, only their physical self. for example, once they as humans die, their house will still be there. all their possessions will stay the same. their clothes will even be left in exactly the spot that they died, the body simply will not be there anymore. its unsure what will happen to photos, though ... this complete lack of evidence also extends to offspring, which they are both completely infertile and always have been in every past life.
they also seem to have something going on preventing them from being too far away from each other for too long. being apart for a whole 24 hours gives them both a headache and brain fog which only gets more intense as time goes on. they dont actually know what would happen if they stayed apart for a *long* time as they have no reason to try. they dont have any desire to separate from eachother and will most definitely be living in the same house together until their lives as people end, so its not like theyre consciously preventing anything.
they have never been thouroughly examined by any sort of doctors within the entire history of doctors existing simply because there are defnitiely some very strange things going on biologically and they do not want to be the subject of research. they consider it to be very lucky that neither of them have any health conditions that would require any sort of testing.

they were humans one other time before now, in the era of when the black death was at its peak. they were frail little white children in an orphanage in england, and they *both* got the sickness and died quite soon after they had just begun living this life.
they considered that to be the worst life they had ever lived and agreed to never be humans ever again. of course, when choosing what to be next, they dont have any control over the location of a species that is spread across the entire earth. ideally they wouldnt have been peasants in europe. nobody would willingly choose that! maybe they would have thought otherwise if they had been living somewhere in the west, though there's no way they would have ever known that. they didnt even have a concept of continents or countries until *this* current human life, simply climates.
as life itself went on with the centuries, humanity and the earth grew and changed. germ and vern, somewhat recently, decided to be housecats. they were loved and cared for like they had never felt in any way before. it was their first time being cherished pets rather than fish in a cramped pond or dogs made to sleep outside or maybe some fruit flies about to get swatted, just for example. and this experience altered their ideas of humans as a whole, because they were constantly intrigued with what was going on around them. because clearly, the people they saw around them were not dying of severe illnesses. they decided to give human life a second chance.
(after they were millipedes. that's where they got their last name from. if they hadnt been millipedes before humans their last name would have been something like "kot-pręgowany" .., and that just doesnt work.)

its interesting to consider the types of people they are now. beings who have lived millions of lives, considered to be "immortal" in a way, having firsthand knowledge on forms of life which no scientists could *ever* be able to gain in the history of humanity, are currently arguing about which tv channel is going to stay on while they eat their dinner.
there are billions of possibilites of what they could have become as humans. and yet, they turned out to be autistic and queer. isnt that beautiful?

vern wishes for the sweet release of a "true" death. this is why humanity plagues him so. even in what he considers to be his "simple mind" - that before now - he was still lethargic and gloomy. but now his existence will be permanently tainted by the human mind. the level of intelligence and consciousness of a human is miles beyond that of anything else, and that is exactly why he uses the term "simple mind".
(... as compared to his first time as a human, back then his only thought was the great physical suffering he was dealing with so he didnt actually get much of a chance to genuinely sit down and think. he considers his intellect at that time to be entirely equal to that of a rodent. it's odd to think back to that time, he and germ looked completely different. there's no way you would have ever been able to tell they were the same people.)
his existence's entire circumstances, whether or not this constant cycle of life was something every other living being was going through, the meaning of life as a whole, nihilism, etc, etc. these are all things vern had never had the mental capacity to ever consider. all he knew previously was that the cycle was happening, he was unhappy, and that he wanted to just be put to rest. nowadays he wishes he and germ never chose to try human life again because even when he *does* revert back to an animal's level of intelligence, its going to linger. when he returns to his simple state of being as a star, he's going to remember the idea that there is no meaning to anything and that this cycle is never going to amount to anything.

this is exactly the reason why vern is so upset with germ. germ is *not* going to be affected by the human mind like vern will. he's never been affected in any way by this constant cycle of reincarnation. he knows its happening - its not like hes oblivious, but it just does not stick with him. its more of a simple fact to him. vern is going to be stuck pondering and hoping for an end forever and germ is going to just go on and build the nest. gather the food. engage in the courtship rituals. drink water from the stream. vern is going to stay curled up in the corner. you know?
germ occassionally does spiral in the idea of never, ever, ever being able to be with stef again after this, but its not something that is constantly lingering in his mind.

is it possible to be suicidal with the knowledge that suicide is not going to put an end to anything?

you have to come to peace with the current moment. there is beauty which only humans are able to experience.

what could it be like to live just one single life? to be able to say "you only live once"? to *want* to make the most of everything? to value relationships with other people?

this life is but a fleeting moment and theres no doubt you are going to mourn it once its over. dont wish it away

[the concepts of consiousness in nothingness and "i think therefore i am" are things ive been thinking about since i was a small child, ever since i had the ability to think about the fact that i could think. i dont know where i wouldve heard that phrase when i was that young but it's been lingering ever since. ive never read any philosophy books although maybe i should.]