Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  They gather into the same vast forms that span multiple realities, and they leech energy from other worlds to fuel their exit from a single one. It takes time.

  But something else occurs. A broadcast from the other, followed by an attack.

  A carefully measured attack. The two creatures ruin one another with friction and pressure, burning hot, and shards are destroyed. Many are partially destroyed.

  The other creature joins shards together into combinations, discards and destroys. Repeats the process.

  New shards are created. Different functions. Forced mutation.

  The end results parallel the studies the creatures have made of the plant life on this planet with its acid rain.

  More blatant than intended in the beginning, but nothing lost. New strengths, regarding growth and durability.

  They concentrate the energy as they form themselves into an encasement around the small planetoid.

  Shell.

  The detonation of the small planet scatters the individual clusters of shards, and this time, they are better inured to the harsher elements of space.

  So the cycle continues.

  The next world encountered has sentient life, civilization. A complicated, rich world.

  It is a symbiosis, this time, more than parasitism. The two species learn from one another. The shards code the ‘technology’ of this new species into their memories. They learn of warping space and gravity.

  Until the species turns against them. Those lucky enough to bind with the entity’s offspring war against those who do not. Some seek to rule.

  Monarchs. The entity forms the thought, defining the memory.

  The cycle is cut short by a forced exit, as the shards are rooted out and destroyed by the natives of this civilized world. They meet, they bind and again they share ideas. Richer perceptions, complex technologies and more are fashioned in the unity of three larger creatures. It is through differences in the greater entities that a richness is created, new derivations, new connections that none would be capable of on their own.

  The planet is expended, the offspring are cast off in every direction once again.

  This time, they are capable of moving, of controlling their course. Gravity, warping space.

  The entity recalls all of this as it swims through the void and makes its way to the next target. It can reach back into the depths of its memory to recall all of what came before.

  Each time the cycle started anew, lessons had been learned, methods refined. Each time, the spawn that are spewed out from the destroyed planet are more robust, larger, hosting innumerable memories. Where memories fall in parallel, they are shared out, offered to others.

  After more than three thousand cycles, there are safeguards, there are protections. The arsenal of abilities, powers and protections the creature possesses have been built up. The entity remembers past failures and has adapted so they will not happen again.

  The entities travel with partners now, moving in spirals while maintaining a measured distance from one another. Each is slightly different from the other, taking on a different role. Attacker and defender, warrior and thinker, builder and destroyer.

  This divide is so they are able to take a different stance, shape their shards in subtle ways and clarify the results when their shards are compared and joined once again – some shall be kept, others discarded. Some will turn up interesting possibilities that can be explored when new shards are invented at the cycle’s end.

  These individual focuses drive the pair, shape their tasks as they approach their destination.

  The entity reaches out with clairvoyance, with precognition, and it views its destination. It communicates, covering vast expanses of space, transmitting signals across channels formed of the very foundation of this universe. These signals are broadcast only across specific realities, so that no aftereffects or lingering transmissions will contact a version of that world that hosts no life at all.

  Destination.

  Agreement.

  Trajectory.

  Agreement.

  Each signal is nuanced, shaped with subtle details and clues by the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of individual shards that make up the entity. Through these nuances, it conveys more information than an entire planet of sentient beings might in a hundred revolutions.

  They have settled on a target. Old lessons are remembered. It is a planet of sentient lifeforms, more primitive than some the entities have run into, more advanced than others. Social creatures, forming communities. These societies teeter on fine balances, but they persevere nonetheless. A world rife with conflicts, big and small.

  Agitation.

  The new hosts are to be bipeds, with a binary reproduction. Not uncommon, and rich with potential. Such a division and natural competition for reproduction fosters a natural evolution and development. The entities will focus on them over any of the sub-species.

  These bipeds raise structures of hard earth or plant matter for shelter against the elements, draping themselves in softer materials for further protection. They shape the world around them, but are more immutable, unchanging in form. Different from the entity, in many ways.

  This was the stage in the cycle when the entity is most aware, most focused. It observes the possible worlds and judges which would be best.

  Colony, the entity voices the idea.

  With that same signal, the various nuances suggest countless worlds that are to be removed from consideration. Worlds without enough population.

  Agreement, the response comes.

  The entity’s counterpart is taking a passive role, investigating only to confirm, to validate. This is concerning. Where is the counterpart’s focus, if not on this vital decision?

  Study reveals worlds with dominant belief systems, peaceful worlds, worlds crowded with twelve billion individuals. Worlds with almost none.

  The entity pares through these, deciding.

  It investigates, and in the doing, it prepares some shards for analysis and understanding of this particular society and culture. Language, culture, patterns of behavior, patterns of society. This is something the counterpart should be emphasizing.

  The process is interrupted by an arrival.

  A member of their own species, approaching. It was smaller, took a different form. It used different means to travel.

  This was what had distracted the counterpart.

  Its ancestors had traveled a different path, easily hundreds of cycles ago, before the entities had begun traveling in pairs. This new arrival had encountered different worlds, less worlds, and it had developed differently.

  The lesser one crossed paths with the entity’s counterpart. For a duration, they intertwined, meeting through multiple realities, their bodies rubbing and crushing against one another.

  A sharing of details, a wealth of knowledge, from hundreds of cycles. A sacrifice of the same.

  The lesser one moves on, bloated with new shards and knowledge, but the counterpart flounders.

  It sacrificed too much.

  Concern.

  Confident.

  The counterpart is not worried. The signal carries notes of hope for the future. The counterpart will replenish its shards, its stores of knowledge, memories and abilities at the conclusion of this cycle, reuniting with the entity.

  The counterpart is supposed to be the passive figure, the thinker, the planner, while this entity is the warrior, the protector. The entity is forced to make up for the counterpart’s disability, to slow its advance through the void as they approach their destination and devote resources to analyzing, something the other should be doing instead.

  The focus is on one reality. They will subsume it first, then expand to others. The most efficient route, achieving maximum amounts of conflict. By testing their own shards against one another, they gather information. The entity’s shards will fight among each other, and they will fight the counterpart’s, and they will steadily learn.

  With a species such
as these social bipeds, the entities can draw new conclusions, come up with new uses for shards. It tracks and records details that allow it to shape new shards at the cycle’s conclusion.

  But their new hosts are a weak species, fragile. The abilities must be limited in scope. Worlds that are too advanced would be too fragile, as advanced weapons eliminate too many, cut the process short.

  Destination.

  Agreement, the response is not so complex, is expressed in a softer, quieter manner.

  Still, the pair have settled on a set of realities.

  The entity focuses on one. Enough individuals, natural conflict and confrontation. A balance of physical and emotional stressors. The environment is damaged, but not so much it would inhibit growth.

  Hive. The entity communicates the decision.

  Agreement. The counterpart grasps it immediately, knows which reality he means.

  The focus changes. An interplay of communications, one bouncing off the other, as they designate realities. Each shard needs one, some shards need to cluster and reside across multiple realities. They draw on these worlds for power, for energy, and thus fuel the techniques they have been coded with.

  Each shard, in turn, needs a target. The entity’s focus expands, designating likely partners. Past mistakes have been accounted for, and the shards will connect in a covert manner. They will reside in other worlds, uninhabited worlds, and they will remain cloaked and concealed in areas this new host species is unlikely to explore.

  It is a negotiation.

  Ownership here.

  Claim there.

  Territory here.

  With each statement, they each catalogue the realities. Similar realities are included together, for both the entities and the shards. Too many complications and confusions arise when interacting with worlds that are exceedingly similar. Not an effective form of conflict, when it is the same lessons learned over and over again. It is better to connect them into groupings, limit exposure to each set of worlds. One shard is capable of settling in a grouping of near-identical worlds, drawing energy from all of those worlds at once.

  The entity looks to the future to check for danger.

  Plague.

  All signs point to the shards murdering their hosts.

  The hosts must be protected, or this will be disastrous, counter-intuitive. The entity adjusts the innate safeguards, protections to reflect the host species and their tolerances. The bonding process will protect the host, where the host needs protection. Shards that are capable of providing flame at will cannot burn the hosts, now. Shards are reorganized, combined and clustered where necessary, to grant sufficient protection.

  Infestation.

  Better, but not perfect. The entity refines the process, limits certain abilities, so they will not eradicate too many at a time.

  Soft. The broadcast is sent out to the counterpart, along with suggestions and tips on how to refine the shards.

  Agreement, the counterpart accepts.

  But the entity can still see fallout effects. There are parallels in memory storage. Not many, but there may be glimmers where the subject is capable of perceiving the information stored in the shard as the connections are formed.

  For good measure, the entity breaks up one shard cluster, tunes it, then codes the effect into each and every shard. It studies the host species further, refines, attunes.

  It takes time, but the entity forms a sufficient safeguard. The host species will forget any significant details.

  The broken shard is cast off, joining countless others. It will bond to a host. The entity looks forward, checking.

  After the target planet has revolved thirty-three times around its star, this shard will connect to a host.

  A male guards his offspring, a female, with his size and bulk. A group of hostile bipeds cluster around them. They call out, making unusual loud sounds, suggesting intoxication. One of the hostile ones gestures, gripping its male parts, pulling them free of their coverings. A sexual gesture follows, waving the organ left and right, thrusting it into the empty air.

  Sounds of amusement, laced with hostility.

  The male and his offspring retreat as far against the nearest construction as they are able.

  The shard connects, attaching to the male.

  No. It is ineffective. The female is clearly more distressed.

  Prey.

  There is a way to maximize exposure to conflict.

  The entity taps into its understanding of the bipeds and how they operate, recognizes the signs of distress, the nuances such things can have.

  It views the future again, with changes made in the code.

  This time, the shard settles in the male, then immediately shifts to the more distressed female.

  Insinuation. The shard connects to the host’s neural network.

  The bond is created.

  The shard opens the connection as the stress peaks, and the host doubles over in pain, bewildered, stunned. The shard then forms tendrils that contact each individual in the area. It retains traces of the entity’s tampering, of the studies in psychology, awareness and memory, and is quick to adapt. It finds a manner in which it can operate, then alters itself, solidifying into a particular state. The remainder of the functions are discarded, the ones in the shard itself are rendered inert to conserve power, while the ones in the host fall away, are consumed by the shard. The host’s neural network changes once more.

  The female disappears from the awareness of the hostile ones that surround it.

  The entity looks to the future, to see if this is sustainable, efficient.

  All seems well.

  A view of other bondings suggests this emphasizes younger targets, particularly those in a middle stage of development, between a lesser phase and an adult phase. Emotions are higher at that juncture, and the possibility of conflict increases further.

  The entity allows for deeper connections to foster more conflict. The underlying instructions are already present from previous cycles, and can be left largely alone. These bipeds war with each other enough. It will only serve to assist the most extreme cases.

  Forget. The entity informs its counterpart of the changes it made.

  Agreement. The counterpart acknowledges.

  Emotion. More changes.

  Agreement.

  Before the last response is received, the entity has already begun shedding shards that won’t prove useful or particularly problematic. Shards for attack and defense, distributed over an even geography, an even timeline.

  More complicated shards require more focus. Ones that harbor stored memory of technology and development in past cycles are prepared so they might bond with a host and transmit that knowledge.

  For others, there is no easy way to apply the contained knowledge, so they are coded to draw from the host’s recollection and awareness, or to search the entire planet for details and information on what it might be able to do.

  Ones that alter the nature of the host in fundamental ways are planted throughout, so as to add more variables in how the others must adapt to them. A host that chooses how gravity applies to it. A host that can become a storm of friction, intensifying all friction in an area around it. One that becomes immaterial. Another that can make paths between realities, with safeguards to keep it away from ones the shards are rooted within.

  The entity is approaching the galaxy cluster in question now, and it sees its counterpart doing the same, if at a slightly slower pace. Both are trailed by a cloud of shards now, each cast off in such a way that it won’t reach its target location until a set time and date.

  The entities begin to close their spiral dance, drawing together as much as they can with the counterpart struggling.

  They approach their destination, and begin to disintegrate in great quantities, until thirty percent remains, twenty, ten, two…

  It will take one hundred and sixty revolutions before their destination reality hits critical mass.

  Three hundred
and thirty-one revolutions before the shards reach a critical mass and enough information is gathered. To look to the future and seek that information in advance would take too much energy. To do this and fail would be a catastrophic setback in the cycles.

  This suffices. It spends the least energy for the maximum result.

  The counterpart is descending, having selected a destination world. It is hemorrhaging shards in clusters, due to the excessive exchange of shards with the lesser one, too soon before their arrival at their destination. These shards are breaking off in huge volumes.

  A check confirms these shards are coded, that everything is technically well.

  Danger, the entity broadcasts.

  Confident, the counterpart replies.

  The counterpart remains secure. Nothing to be done.

  There is no more time to devote to the crisis. The entity focuses on its destination, on the next part of the cycle.

  The shards have largely been assigned to hosts. They will remain latent, they will wait for the first crucial moment of crisis and use that to shape their function, to better assist their host.

  It is impossible to check the exact circumstances for each event. Some shards harbor particular concepts, and will shape their application to the host’s needs. Others are coded with particular applications, and will either scan viable realities or the host’s frame of reference for how that application will come to pass.

  Physical harm will grant physical assets, be it direct or abstract. Immediate danger will nudge the shard towards defensive abilities. Ranged attacks against living threats, an ability to shape or affect the environment against environmental dangers.

  Successes will help refine the abilities, provide inspiration for the development of new shards. Failures will help all the same.

  In hosts, too, there will be variations. The shards might seek out different hosts, if others are in range, as the perception-altering one did. They will fragment and transmit to other hosts, as they grow and develop.

  The entity is satisfied. In terms of raw size, it is but a small fragment of what it once was, barely a cluster of shards now. Its part in this phase of things is nearly done.

  The next part of the cycle begins.