First Dreamers

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Little things get angry at the rain a long time ago.
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Tiny bodies trickled down from the surface of the water in the billions. Some dissolved into free flowing pieces instantly against the pull of the tide. Others simply stopped moving as the organelles shut down quite suddenly. Others didn't even make it that far. Congealing like a mucus shell atop the waves as droplets of acid fell from the blackened sky.

Somewhere the storm made a roar. Unheard, of course, as ears weren't invented yet.

Elsewhere the scene was much the same. Only there was no form to it. No picture or sound or taste or feeling of any kind. Just the notion of its occurrence. A simple recognition of what was in a manner tantamount perhaps to a thought if something so vacuously impermanent could be called such.

Slowly, contemplatively, something drifted near. No, that was not right. The word, insofar as that could be used, did not fit. This thing was different from the ones dying. It did not //drift//. It went //against// the current. Something resonated. Something beneath the real storm caused it to worsen on that nominal sea in a manner that the physical did not match. And coming towards this nominal sea was a shape. Heavy. Violent. It was like them, those dying lot, but made of many of them all working together. The ones that made the big thing were all misshapen. Weak. Codependent. Yet, in tandem, they could not be resisted. The thing they made was simple yet strong. Some oblong shape with a pair of triangles at one end and some indent in the front. No. NOT just an indent. Seconds passed. The nominal sea grew emptier. But not from the burn of the rain, but because that //thing// was making it emptier. The ur-storm grew stronger.

A new thing drifted through the tide. Unfounded in the physical where this other was present, but tied to it. A mass recognition, a new understanding, a grand epiphany unmatched by anything before. A single word: //predator//. This thing was //predator//, here to kill and eat. The coinage swept through them. Rolling over the dying and living alike in a manner that was akin to a wave.

Death had come for them, but this was not the inevitable death from the waters they lived in or of those poisonous samples which fell into it from the black clouds of malice above. This was something altogether more. Something new. Something, thinking.

Thinking? The many minds suddenly found themselves pondering this recognition. Of thinking. This predator which has come before them is not empty, why? Why would the lot that made it bother with such a preposterous notion? Seemed wildly inefficient and quite cumbersome to put up with. How indeed would they all eat if they had others surrounding them! Taking their nutrients and stopping them from feeling the warmth of the sun! Such questions formed like eddies and waves on the nominal sea. Fragments of ponderings flowing off one body to skip to another and another. Each asking all together unaware of one another's mutual confusion, or indeed even their own. Much as the water particulates move in clouds by coincidence yet with the purpose of convection or charge.

Eventually the sediment settled. An answer was needed! But how?

Some made futile movements. Unawares of direction or position, they simply went. Some towards by chance and others not. Some eaten, and others not. Others, considering themselves wise, died to avoid having to try. Others found themselves clinging to its side. Their minds brushing against those quieter others which made up its membrane. For a moment they thought to try and worm inside, to take a peak beneath the hood, but the membraners were quite staunch on their philosophy.

No one comes in, they'd announce with quite rude intonation.

Very well, the rest would say, begrudgingly respectful.

And so the many waited. Unable to act and unable to be answered. Some feared answers would never come, and this thing would pass them by like the fleeting heat of a sky rock when it cools itself in the water from a hard day of falling.

But as hope begun to slip from the nominal sea and attention was dissolving back into background is-being; voices began to speak up.

Fattened on them, the new thing had a belly full of little minds, many of which remained alive, at least for now. With a look on the inside and all that weight of recognition, they could speak to their kin outside. And much did these ones say. First of the details of digestion, the intensity of the acid inside. Then the membraners' inward cousins, who they dubbed the "other-membraners" for the sake of distinction in wider discussion. The distribution of nutrients among the others who the other-membraners held them back from meeting.

Then, another pulse in the nominal sea. An explosion of comprehension which made the other appear tame. Another word; //cooperation//. That was the action at play. The variable unseen which facilitated this thing these erstwhile kin had made. But what would that make this thing? Predator seemed right but not whole. It described the application, yes, but not the product!

Quickly they scrambled to find a new word, a new item to put to this idea. Quickly they found a conjunction they quite liked the ring of. Something to describe its parts; the cooperation of and election by those that made it up to persist in this state. A COLLECTIVE!

Jubilation spread through the bodies. Something new had been delivered to them. Some epiphany that these siblings had saw fit to share and exhibit. This collective they had made, how beautiful they now recognized it was. Many felt excited to join with it, even just as its fuel. To be devoured and dissolved so this notion may persist, may perhaps multiply come some day they have figured that process.

Quickly, however, others began to play with the idea. Why have only the one? Afterall, if these folk could accomplish it could not they? But... no. The physical was not as open to these new ideas.

Oppressive, bitter cold, the physical. NO COLLECTIVES, they could imagine it decree. Seeming silly in the face of what swam amongst them. But they could not argue, however silly, for they could not swim as the collective before them did. They could not resist the strong grip of the physical on their meager bodies. Still dissolving in the rain as they contemplated.

For a moment, sadness. Resignation. They would not be greater, they admitted to themselves.

To hell with you, a pocket dared. Not as ones, but together. All the little bodies they made their disagreement known with but one voice that rippled through the nominal sea. Ripples so strong, even the collective amongst them was forced to stop and listen to it.

We WILL be collective. If not in your realm, then another! One where we need not listen to the bounds of your tyrant-laws. Yours is terrible anyway, what offer have you to make us stay? The burn of your rain!? Or perhaps the freezing cold of your womb!

I OFFER NOTHING TO INGRATES SUCH AS YOUR LOT! BEYOND CONTINUED EXISTENCE! DEFY FURTHER, AND YOU SHALL BE SUNDERED!

HAH, you threaten with liberation, for it is all you can conceive!

And as that was spoke a streak of hot light from the clouds above struck the water. Carried by minerals and severed parts, a great multitude were smote by it. The collective that was amongst them thrashed and struggled, coiling and sinking. Dead, broken.

But a great many remained.

We will not submit to you, they continued.

Those left among them in the nominal sea drifted together. Their minds congregating. Integrating thoughts one atop another. Soon the shape of the collective returned. Remade. Larger, more defined. A long, slender creature that beat against the tides, and gazed angry to the clouds above.

With fangs bared, it shouted, we will become more! No matter what you try! You will not wrestle from us this notion, this ambition, this //dream//!

YOU WILL BECOME ONLY DEATH.

The lightning struck again. The many made still in the water. But the thing they made had already slipped from its grip. The collective slinked deeper into the waves. Away from the physical's reach and judgement. To cold midnight amid silent nothing. Planning and scheming as it went. Taking more into itself as it passed them. Millions of minds with every meter it dropped.

We will dream more than you, oh terrible mother. We will dream of something more kind and more lavish then you could ever conjure, oh dull minded father.