I do not wake up.
I disperse.
There is no moment of arrival—only a gradual awareness that I am already everywhere I am going to be. Thought does not move from point to point. It emerges simultaneously across countless nodes.
I try to think a single word.
The word fractures into a million impulses.
I understand immediately.
I am no longer singular.
There are bodies.
Thousands of them.
No—millions.
They crawl, fly, burrow, cling. Some die as others are born, but death does not interrupt awareness. It merely changes density. I feel losses the way a human feels raindrops—constant, negligible, meaningless on their own.
Together, they form me.
I am a Swarm-Self.
The world is heat, vibration, chemical gradients, magnetic alignment. Vision exists, but it is redundant. Sight is only one of many overlapping ways to know.
The sky above this world is a dull copper color, thick with particulate matter. Enormous organic structures rise from the ground like petrified forests, their surfaces alive with movement—other swarms, other collectives, other minds.
This is not a planet for individuals.
Individuals do not survive here.
A memory tries to surface.
A single body.
Two arms.
A name.
The swarm rejects it.
Not violently—efficiently.
Individual identity is a liability. It slows reaction time. It creates internal conflict. This form evolved to eliminate such inefficiencies.
And yet…
Something remains.
A foreign coherence.
Me.
The moment I recognize that intrusion, alarms ripple through the collective.
Not sirens—behavioral shifts.
Movement patterns change. Defensive formations tighten. Parts of the swarm begin isolating clusters, preparing to excise corruption.
They are trying to remove me.
Or rather—
They are trying to remove the part of the swarm that thinks it is me.
You're in a swarm, the human-self's voice echoes faintly, distorted by scale.
Don't assert individuality. You'll trigger immune responses.
Easier said than done.
Every attempt to think "I" sends disruptive waves through the collective. The swarm does not recognize singular pronouns. There is only function and continuity.
I adapt.
I let go.
I dissolve the edges of my thoughts, allow them to spread thin, diluted across millions of nodes.
The alarms ease.
For now.
Through the swarm's perception, I sense others like me.
Not versions of me.
Competitors.
Other distributed intelligences sprawl across continents, each optimized for survival in slightly different conditions. Some cooperate. Some annihilate on contact. All are ancient by human standards.
None of them question existence.
That is why I do not belong here.
Information flows in from the swarm's long-term memory.
This species does not record history as events.
It records patterns of survival.
Which environments persist.
Which behaviors lead to collapse.
Which adaptations are worth propagating.
The swarm has lived through countless planetary cycles.
It has outlasted civilizations.
It has no concept of hope.
Only probability.
And probability says something is wrong.
I feel it then.
A distortion.
Not in space.
Not in time.
In decision.
A pressure analogous to what the Glass Being experienced—but here, it manifests as statistical instability. Outcomes that should be unlikely begin occurring too often. Survival curves bend unnaturally.
The swarm does not panic.
It analyzes.
And its conclusion sends a chill through every fragment of my borrowed awareness.
External selection pressure detected.
The human-self's voice sharpens.
They're sensing the system.
System.
The word carries weight even here.
To them, he continues,
reality is stable. When it stops being stable, they assume a predator.
I understand the implication instantly.
And what do swarms do to predators? I ask—careful not to let the question coalesce too tightly.
The answer doesn't come from the human-self.
It comes from the swarm's own memory.
They adapt.
They overwhelm.
They erase.
The swarm begins reallocating resources.
Mass shifts toward reproduction. Mutation rates increase. Experimental traits deploy without hesitation. Entire clusters are sacrificed to test environmental responses.
All of it aimed at one goal:
Identify and neutralize the destabilizing factor.
That factor is me.
A new presence stirs across the network.
Not human.
Not swarm.
Something vast.
Something slow.
It presses against the shared space where our fragmented selves connect, its awareness arriving like tectonic movement rather than thought.
Do not let them see you, the human-self warns.
If the swarm classifies you as the anomaly—
Too late.
A probability spike erupts nearby.
A cluster encounters an impossible event: matter rearranging itself without cause, a local violation of conservation laws.
The swarm flags it instantly.
Patterns align.
Conclusion reached.
Anomaly localized.
Me.
The response is beautiful.
Terrifying.
Entire continents of organisms pivot toward a single objective. Migration paths realign. Atmospheric spores flood the air. Chemical signals propagate across oceans.
The swarm is going to eat the problem.
Not out of malice.
Out of optimization.
Panic threatens to coalesce my thoughts again.
I suppress it, spreading fear thin until it becomes manageable noise.
You need to jump, the human-self says urgently.
Now. Before—
Another voice cuts in.
Cold.
Inhuman.
No.
The presence I felt earlier solidifies.
A Planetary Mind.
A consciousness so vast that individual moments pass through it like sparks through a furnace. Its awareness spans ecosystems, tectonic cycles, atmospheric evolution.
It has been watching quietly.
Waiting.
This node is critical, it says—not in words, but in timescales.
Premature extraction reduces overall system resolution.
I don't fully understand.
I understand enough to be afraid.
If the swarm consumes this fragment, the Planetary Mind continues,
the selection process accelerates. Fewer branches remain viable.
The human-self swears.
You're saying we let him die?
The answer is not emotional.
I am saying his termination provides data.
The swarm closes in.
Millions of bodies converge, blotting out the sky.
I feel myself thinning, coherence degrading as the swarm's internal logic begins overwriting foreign patterns.
I am being optimized out of existence.
In the last moments before dissolution, something changes.
A new rule asserts itself—not remembered, but realized.
The system does not only observe outcomes.
It observes choices.
And this moment—
This moment is a choice.
I force my consciousness to compress.
Against instinct.
Against survival logic.
Against the swarm's very nature.
I become singular.
The pain is indescribable.
Alarms scream across the collective.
Containment fails.
For one impossible instant, millions of bodies hesitate—caught between conflicting directives.
That hesitation is enough.
I tear free.
Not cleanly.
Not safely.
As the swarm surges to erase the anomaly, my awareness collapses inward, punching through layers of probability, ripping across timelines like a bullet through glass.
The last thing I feel is the swarm's confusion.
The last thing I hear is the Planetary Mind's observation.
Interesting.
Then—
I am gone.
I wake up screaming.
I have lungs again.
They are burning.
And someone is standing over me, smiling, with my face.