Hive Mind

  Hive Mind

  A Warpmancer Short Story

  Nicholas Woode-Smith

  https://nicholaswoodesmith.com/

  Hive Mind is a short story side-story set in the Warpmancer

  Universe.

  Enter the 36th century by checking out Shadow, a thrilling action

  space opera available on Amazon.

  Check it out here!

  He was not. Then he was.

  He didn’t remember being born. But he did remember not

  knowing what to do afterwards. At the time, he didn’t even know

  he was a “he”. To be fair, he wasn’t. He was nothing. And like the

  nothing he was, he was conceived into nothing.

  The nothing eventually dispersed, leaving sensations. Cold,

  mostly. Stickiness, sliminess. A comforting ooze as he was expelled

  from the sacks that kept his kind’s young safe.

  Black, beady eyes all around. He didn’t know what to think of

  them. What do you think when you’ve neither known fear nor joy?

  He only felt an inward sensation at the sight of the beady black eyes

  through the inky void that surrounded him. He did not have a word

  for the sensation. Later, he would come to learn its word: curiousity.

  The comforting ooze dispersed. More cold. Colder than the cold

  before. He learnt a new sensation then. Discomfort. The cold wet

  did more than strip him of his comfort ooze. It cleared his vision.

  Beady black eyes, six-apiece, were located on dark-green bodies. Six

  eyes. Six appendages. He wasn’t like them. At least, he didn’t think

  so. He felt smaller. The beings before him moved their appendages,

  interacting with each other and the world around them. He felt no

  sensations to suggest he bore the same appendages.

  One being lifted him and an object to his side in its thin but hard

  arms. There was no pleasant squish like that of the ooze. The being’s

  appendages were hard and dry. He didn’t like them. Vibrations. The

  being was carrying him. He now faced the object in the appendages

  of the being. It was a slimy white. It looked like the ooze. He wanted

  to be near it – to seek solace from the hardness. Then the object

  moved. It squeaked and gurgled. And then spluttered. Yellow-green

  liquid trickled from the pulsating white mulchy thing. They stopped.

  The being dropped the object and then continued. He didn’t know

  why, but he felt another inward sensation then. If he had the ability,

  he felt that he would have wanted his eyes to droop.

  Visual sensations fluctuated in front of him as time went on. The

  vibrations from being carried by the being became harsher, more

  jagged. It leapt up and down, scaling walls, barely clinging onto his

  form. But he felt no fear – only discomfort that he did not know

  how to illustrate. Eventually, the vibrations settled. He felt

  weightless, barely noticing the jagged, hard appendage biting into

  him. He was placed down, once again, in comforting ooze. Then

  everything went black again. Nothing, something, and then nothing

  again.

  ❖

  Nothingness ceased. He felt something again. More things. His

  head was noisier. More sensations. Words for the sensations. A

  voice in his head. A soothing, but stern, female voice:

  ‘You are a worker. Work.’

  He opened his eyes. He knew what they were now. He looked

  down. Four appendages. Arms. Below them, two legs. Hard arms

  and legs. Jagged. A thought occurred to him. That being. That had

  been him. No, not him. Something like him. So, he wasn’t unique?

  He was one of many?

  The thought excited him. If there were more of him, then he

  could gain answers to the questions brewing in his mind.

  A squelch.

  He looked up. Beings, like him, were opening up the ooze. They

  dug through and allowed the humid air to touch his chitin. Excited,

  he opened his mandibles.

  Nothing.

  He had these thoughts. But how to articulate them? Frustrated,

  he made a sound, a series of clicks.

  Nothing.

  The beings like him threw the cold wet on him. The ooze

  disappeared. They then left. He followed.

  ‘You are a worker. Work.’

  He remembered the voice. He somehow understood what it

  meant. Instinctively, he followed one of the beings through the

  caverns. Unlike the beings, he looked around. The caverns were

  dark, but he could see. Wetness on all surfaces. Not cold wetness.

  Warm, humid. Moss grew where fleshy, pulsating bulbs did not.

  Hard material over rock in some places. The look of synthetic

  material. It didn’t look like it belonged. Some of the material bore

  text. All of it was haphazardly strewn around the cave system. It

  didn’t seem to belong, but the beings around him did not let that

  stop them from incorporating it into the environment, covering it

  with goo and fleshy tendrils.

  Humid air turned to cold. Not unpleasant cold like the cold wet,

  but a refreshing breeze. The caverns ended. Light. Outside the

  humid confines of the caverns, a colossal light almost blinded his

  two top eyes as they glanced up. With his bottom four, he examined

  everything before him.

  Activity. Beings like him scuttled around, doing all manner of

  hustle and bustle. Some carried objects. An unconscious thought

  told him that they were tools. The voice came again: “You are a

  worker. Work.”

  He went to a pile of the tools. Long, straight. They were made of

  the synthetic substance that dotted the caverns unnaturally. He

  lifted one up and glanced at his fellows with his own beady dark

  eyes. They were hitting rocks with the tool, chipping away different

  coloured rocks. This must be “work”.

  He imitated them.

  No one articulated their thoughts. They merely worked. A jolt in

  his shoulders as he drove the long, hard object into the rock. A click

  and a drilling sound. A rock fell from the other end of the tool.

  Another being like him collected it. No articulation. No

  communication.

  He was surrounded by his fellows. Countless of them. He was

  lonely. A feeling he had no theory to describe, but assailed him

  nonetheless.

  Surrounded by millions, but alone.

  ❖

  When he was hungry, he ate. Nobody taught him how. He just

  knew. When he was tired, he followed the beings like him to a

  cavern where they would remain stationary. Here, his loneliness felt

  more appropriate. That eased it, somehow. It made sense to be

  lonely when nobody else was awake. So, inappropriately, this made

  him less lonely. In the silence, he had his thoughts to himself. No

  clanging of tools, no chipping of rocks or jolts to his joints. Only

  the solace of an empty void to allow his mind to wander.

  A thought on the first day that assailed him above all the others

  was a sense of empathy. For if he was in this much pain from being

  unable t
o articulate the gestations of his mind, then all his kindred

  must be as well. They were just older. They were used to the pain.

  It did not occur to him then that maybe he should pity himself more.

  They had lived through this pain already. He was yet to experience

  it, but it would come. The growing pains of his – their – existence.

  His eyes did droop now. From sadness to begin, and then to a

  dreamless sleep. Thinking ceased, until he awoke.

  He was alone.

  “You are a worker. Work.”

  The voice was not a conscious one. It was an echo. An instinct.

  He stood up and walked towards the exit of the cavern. His fellows

  glanced at him as he exited, but then went back to work. They must

  also hear the voice. He felt some happiness at that. Something to

  connect them. While they may not speak to each other, the voice

  spoke to them all.

  He lifted the tool. He was a worker, he knew that much. He took

  it to the rock and jolted his shoulder once again. He worked.

  ❖

  Beings unlike him came and went around his fellows. He didn’t

  react to them for his fellows did not either. They were made of the

  material of the tool, but shinier. One glistened a silvery white,

  another shone a splendid black – as if he was caked in pleasant

  humidity.

  They walked around, examining the work. They articulated to

  each other. Initially, he thought the voices were in his head. Then

  he realised they came from the beings. He didn’t understand the

  words. He assumed they were words.

  Then, the beings unlike him left.

  With that peculiarity gone, his day fell back into the tedium of

  his reason for being.

  ❖

  He woke up alone once again. He didn’t know why he was always

  the last one awake. It was as if the others were woken up by

  something that decided to pass him by.

  He left the caverns and was glanced upon by his fellows once

  again. An inward sensation. His flesh below his many eyes warmed.

  Embarrassment. He picked up his tool and got to work once again.

  Today, cold wet fell from the sky. There was no blinding light

  above. Only grey. He didn’t like this day. It reminded him of when

  he was born. The thoughts made little sense then. He didn’t like

  remembering not being able to remember. The cold wet fell faster

  and harder. As one, his fellows downed tools and re-entered the

  caverns. He followed. They must also not like the cold wet.

  The chitinous group filed under the shelter of the cave. He

  glanced up as they entered their home. The cave wasn’t completely

  natural. While much of it was of dirt and rock, a substantial portion

  of it was constructed of the hard stuff that he and those like him

  gathered from the ground. Some of it was fashioned into objects,

  then smashed and crumpled to form a layer over the rock and dirt.

  They all arrived in the darkness of the cave overhang and then stood

  still. He blinked and glanced at his fellows. Nothing. They stood as

  still as the rock above and below them.

  He tried to say something. Nothing. He tried some more.

  Nothing, again.

  Frustration wracked him. His fellows were probably going

  through the same thing. Or maybe not? Maybe they were used to

  the silence. But they shouldn’t be. They must have been lonely.

  Tolerating the loneliness wasn’t good enough. They needed

  someone to connect to. Something more than the mutual voice in

  their heads.

  He strained, moving his limbs and face. And then he heard a

  sound. A click and a gurgle.

  Stunned, he paused. Then he realised the source. It was him. He

  had uttered the gurgle and click. He touched his mouth and tried

  again. A crackled nonsense word – but it was something. So, he

  made more sounds. He sang a mournful and excited song of clicks,

  guttural exclamations and crackles.

  Throughout this, he didn’t notice as his brethren separated from

  him, forming a circle surrounding him. There was a bang, a flash.

  The cold wet fell harder outside the cave. He was not deterred by

  the sudden noise or sight. He sang his song.

  Then he fell.

  A new sensation. A searing, vibrating and cold-hot feeling from

  the back of his head. His singing stopped. He blinked as yellow ooze

  blinded him. His yellow ooze. Everything went black.

  ❖

  Whispers without sound. A chattering without meaning. He was

  dragged across the unforgiving cave floors, scraped across scrap by

  two larger than him. He did not sing. Neither did anyone else. But

  he detected something. Imagined it, perhaps. A gaze by his kindred.

  A piercing and judging attention. He didn’t like it. He wanted to

  belong, to be interacted with – but not like this. His instincts told

  him that anything was better than this, even death.

  He fell with an expulsion of air from his lungs. He remained on

  his knees, held down only by the imagined attention he received.

  “Stand, drone.”

  The voice. But it sounded different. Same accent, same

  authoritative tone. What made it different? It echoed. He looked up

  and saw the source. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A

  pulsating, glowing mountain of flesh. Soft flesh with a golden hue.

  Through the darkness of the caverns, it glowed. It was paradise

  made manifest. He wanted to touch it, to protect it, to serve its every

  whim. But as he moved forward, he was physically restrained by his

  kin.

  “As I thought.”

  He cocked his head. The voice was coming from the beauty. It

  wasn’t in his head. He was hearing it and somehow understanding

  it.

  “I attempted to communicate to you in the same way I speak to

  all my children, but you did not respond. It seems, however, that

  you can hear me. Peculiar.”

  He stared agape, not daring to make words, nonsense or not.

  “You are a mutant,” the beauty stated, matter of factly. “You are

  of my brood, but have shown abnormalities. Your display today

  during the storm was a clear indication that you do not smell my

  pheromones. As such, you are not a part of my hive.”

  He barely understood any of this.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about do you?”

  His silence was answer enough.

  “You thought you were like all the rest, didn’t you?”

  He looked down, embarrassed.

  “My poor child. You aren’t like the rest of my brood. You’re a

  freak! You might look like them, but you can never be like them.

  They are my drones, my dutiful children, connected to the collective

  and me. They are always together. You – you are doomed to be

  alone. Call it maternal affection, but I can’t help but pity you. For

  some reason, you cannot sense the hive mind. For this, you can

  never belong here.”

  He looked up, mouthing wordlessly.

  “There is only space for one thinker in this hive. It is painful for

  me as a mother to throw out any of my children, but you are a

  danger to the hive. But…I will grant you one thing. My brood ha
ve

  achieved a unity that overcomes the need for names, but you, as an

  individual, need one.”

  There was a pause.

  “Peron. You can be called Peron.”

  ❖

  He was cold and wet. Flashes and bangs lit his path as the cold

  wet came down in torrents upon him. He ran, as he had never done

  before, from the caverns. The bigger ones that looked like him but

  were not like him threw him out of the cavern. His first thought was

  regret that he could no longer gaze upon his mother, the golden

  flesh, the Queen of the hive mind. His second was that of

  discomfort at the atmosphere. His third was fear, as they chased him

  away from his home.

  He ran without tiring. His chitinous legs could handle the strain

  with ease. What could not handle the strain was his mind. The

  thought hadn’t fully formed, but what was coming to dawn on the

  newly dubbed Peron was that he was truly alone.

  More bangs. A cacophony of cold wet pelting the ground. The

  light of the storm was all that illuminated his path. The explosions

  in the sky were deafening, but he didn’t hear them. He only heard

  words.

  “Mutant. Thinker. Peron.”

  He was not like those who he thought like him. He was a freak.

  He collapsed, tripping over some unknown object in the inky

  black. Tumbling, he wheeled, unfeeling.

  He splashed into a pool of cold wet. As he did, the cold wet from

  the sky began to abate. He lifted himself onto his knees.

  A flash illuminated the cold wet and he saw himself in the pool

  of black.

  Himself.

  He hit it. He punched the image of himself, causing a splash that

  subsided into ripples. Another flash revealed himself again.

  Chitin over brown flesh. Six beady, black eyes. Like everyone

  else. Like those he was not like. He was not like them. He was a

  freak. A lie. He punched himself. Again and again. For so long that

  he could no longer realise if he was hurting the cold wet or his real

  body. He didn’t care which. He wanted to die. Anything but not be

  a part of the hive. A hive he had never been a part of.

  Alone. Forever.

  His hands, chitin hands, bled through cracks as his attacks hit the

  rock underneath the pool of cold wet, as well as the chitin upon his

  own body that became victim to his torment. His hands were not

  good enough. With every flash, he saw himself again. He still looked