[geoschmo]

2399.9

I am tired. I am awake. I am cold. I am hot. I am…

The Hive was in chaos. The collective intelligence of two billion separate minds in continual contact with one another, each seeking explanation and direction, and receiving none. There was a constant stream of information, and no analysis. Billions of symptoms, but no diagnosis. All was confusion.

I am hungry. I am full. I am in sick. I am well. I am…

Hundreds of millions of hosts wandered aimlessly aimlessly about. Many millions simply sat and stared. They had the knowledge and most of the memories of their former selves, but had lost purpose. They remembered how to do things, but had lost their reason for doing them.

I am lost. I am wet. I am dry. I am…

Failing to receive the guidance that they sought, gradually the host beings began to revert to their fractured memories for information about what to do. One by one they began to resume their daily tasks. They began to care for themselves. Eating when they were hungry. Sleeping when they were tired. The workers returned to their plants, not exactly knowing why, but having nothing else to do they did what they had always done. The students returned to their schools and sat obediently at their desks staring at the front of the class, whether or not the teachers had returned. The teachers that did return stood at the front facing their students, or in front of empty classrooms in many cases, not knowing why. Even the artists returned to their workshops, though they had lost their reason for doing so, and no one was left to appreciate their works.

Where am I? Who am I? Why am I…

Gradually the chaotic stream of voices began to subside. It began to process the information that had been overwhelming it. It began to assign simple tasks to individual hosts. As a newborn brain begins to form neural pathways and organize sensory data, so to the Hive intelligence began to develop ordered pathways of communication. To prioritze the information it was receiveing. At first, it was concerned only with the health of it’s host bodies. Just as a single organism does not need to consciously “learn” how to get nutrients to it’s individual cells, so too The Hive instinctively handled these simple tasks. Those that were too young or too feeble to care for themselves were cared for by others, just as they had been when they were separate beings.

I. You. Me…

We.

We think. We act. We learn. We are...

The Hive had become a single entity. A single being made up of billions of individual beings, instead of merely billions of individual cells. It was still young, childlike in many ways, but it was self aware. It was sentient. It did not understand many things around it, but it had the collective memories and knowledge of billions of sentient organisms to draw on. It was getting better at processing the moment to moment sensory information and physical needs of its hosts now and could begin to devote more energy to retrieving and analyzing this memory data. It began to take notice of the world around it. And then a new thought emerged. A bit of curiosity bubbled to the surface. On half the planet every eye turned towards the heavens and noticed the tiny lights twinkling in the night. It saw the

stars…

The Hive knew the word. It knew that the stars were merely suns like the one they circled around, but that they were so far away that they appeared very tiny. Just as a mountain that from one hosts perspective was on the horizon would appear only to be a tiny hill. But to another host standing at the base of it would see how truely massive it was. The Hive knew there may be other planets circling these other suns. And it wondered. For the first time in it’s existence it felt a longing. For all these many months of learning to listen to the billions of voices it was hearing, it had now realized that all these voices were it’s own voices. It heard no others. It wondered if it were alone in the, what was the word?

universe…

For that was one piece of information it could not find in any of it’s hosts memories. It found many contradictory thoughts. But no host had hard facts that the Hive could analyze. Is there another out there? Another like us? Or are we the only one? For the first time, the Hive felt…

alone…