Hive Mind: A Warpmancer Short Story
Date: 2018-01-18 01:00:04+00:00
Description: When you're all alone, all you can do is think... Peron thinks a lot. It is all he can do. He wants to talk. But there's nobody to talk to. Surrounded by millions, but alone. Why? Because he's a freak. It isn't that nobody wants to talk to him, it is that he's the only one who can. Peron is a Gleran - a humanoid insect living in a hive alongside countless like him. Peron feels a strong connection to the hive. It's his family, after all. But in his efforts to talk with his family, he may end up hurting himself more than anything else. Hive Mind is a magnificently melancholic exploration into th
Publisher: Independently published
Rights: All rights reserved (#2121741333944818)

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 to 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 have
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
too much like those unlike him. He was still a lie.

A flash revealed an object near the cold wet. A shard of hard
material. It glinted in the flash.

Peron grasped it with his weakening hand. His vision was
blurring. He swayed from side to side. In brief reflections
illuminated by lightning flashes, he saw from the corner of his eye
one like him lifting a shard of metal to his face. His vision blurred,
and he swayed.

Everything went black.

❖

This cold wet was not bad compared to that night, Peron noted.

It was calm. It did not pour from the ink-black sky. It lay quietly on
the soft green below. Peron did not like the cold wet, usually, but
did not mind this, for some reason. The wet felt pleasant upon his
feet as he trudged across the field, bearing bruises from the night
before.

Peron had failed to wound himself severely. His exhaustion had
gotten the better of him and he had dropped the shard. When he
had finally awoken, caked in mud and dirt, he glanced at the shard
and considered finishing what he started. But he didn’t. He walked
away.

This walking took him far away. He didn’t know where. He
simultaneously feared and desired that he would stumble upon the
hive. But he was lost. He had no idea where it was. And even then,
he should never return. They would not accept him. An instinct
within him told him to obey the Queen, even in this.

So, he walked. That’s all there was to it. Never had he had a
destination and that hadn’t changed now. No goal. Only wandering.

When he felt the pang of hunger, he found grubs and plants to eat.

He did this mechanically, his hive-wrought brain dominating him
with instinct. He didn’t feel he wanted to eat. He did it because it
was the thing to do. Maybe that was something that connected him
to the hive? That thought made him long for it even more. He
longed for the routine, those who looked like him, the sense of
belonging – even if in silence. But above all, he longed for the

Queen. Even as she had spurned him, cursing him with a
meaningless name made up on the spot, he loved her as only one
without a choice could.

That made him hate her.

All too often, when we long for something enough, we begin to
hate it for its spurning us. If we didn’t love it, we wouldn’t hate it
for keeping us away. Peron experienced this now, as he made his
way across the green caked in cold-wet.

This was an alien world. There were no caves and very little hard,
shiny stuff. It was green. made up of rolling landscapes with sparse
large plants. Blocking the horizon, only barely, were small hills.

Peron’s journey to nowhere took him over these hills. It had been
but a day but it had felt like a lifetime.

The landscape had not changed. Occasionally, Peron would spot
an oddity. Sometimes, there was hard material like that he had
gathered at the hive. It wasn’t in chunks, though. It was in different
shapes and smooth. Plants grew over some of these oddities. Peron
ate the plants to sustain his instinctual urges. They were bland. Not
as good as the grubs he occasionally found.

As the light in the sky was beginning to fade and Peron felt the
cold start to set in, he spotted the largest oddity of all. Just past a
hillock, he saw an expanse of catacombs. No, not catacombs.

Something else. He proceeded.

At the outskirts of the oddity, he saw how plant-life had
entrenched itself into the crevices of the oddities. Cracks suggested
that this was not meant to be the case. The lush green foliage looked
alien on the hard rock surfaces. Further to the centre of the expanse
of oddities, Peron saw the most peculiar thing of all. It was crafted
of smooth, shining material, dominating the horizon in the shape of
the eggs where his kind were born. He approached it, in awe.

The towering oddities were sparser here, leaving a field of lush
green surrounding the egg. As he reached it, he saw his reflection,
but was too in awe of the construct to find disgust in himself.

He touched it. Smooth, cold. But a pleasant cold. The oddity
showed none of the signs of decay that Peron had become
accustomed to on this world. It was pristine. For the first time in
what seemed a long time, his thoughts were not of the hive and the

Queen. All that he thought of was this colossus, this wondrous
object that shone in the light.

He walked across its edge, his hand never leaving it surface. Then
he felt a dent. He investigated it and heard a click and slide. A hole
opened where previously there had been none. Peron sniffed. Stale
air escaped the structure’s empty black innards. Then it was no
longer black. White light blinded Peron as it blared into life. Pops
echoed from across the structure as the black subsided to reveal
clean, white and silver tunnels within.

Peron held in his breath. Nothing. After the sounds had stopped
and the lights were lit, there were no more sounds but the wind
calmly blowing in the background. With curiousity overwhelming
trepidation, he entered the structure.

Clang, clang, clang.

His chitinous feet rang out on the hard floors. The air was cold,
but Peron didn’t mind. He was too entranced with the novelty of
everything around him. Nothing was this smooth in the hive. He
stroked his hand across the wall, taking in the texture.

A beep.

The wall opened. On the other side of the hole, Peron saw even
more oddities. Blinking lights of various colours, many he had never
seen before. A large square dominated the space, made of a smooth
material that he had never seen before. He reached to stroke it, but
as he touched it, it sprang to life.

Peron jumped back, but only a little.

The square went from black to a light blue, with white symbols
scattered across it. Next to a set of symbols was something he did
recognise, however. It was one like him. But what was it doing inside
the square?

Peron reached to touch it. And then the square changed. In it,
those like him moved around working. Peron didn’t try to
communicate with them. But what were they doing here?

A bodiless voice started speaking, but Peron didn’t understand
the words. He listened intently, presuming that the
incomprehensible narrator was describing something about those
like him. He could not help but want to know more. He felt a
crushing oppression at not being able to understand the voice. It
was as bad as not being able to communicate with those like him.

Without any possibility of doing that, he now desperately wanted to
at least learn about himself and those like him who he could never
connect with.

But the voice was meaningless, and as Peron watched those like
him move on the square, he could not help but stand completely
frozen, as he wept without tears.

❖

Language is a tool to be used. To be learnt. Comparable to how

Peron had learnt to use the drill that had been his tool at the hive,
he began to learn the language of the voice. As he learnt the
language of the voice, he was then able to connect it to symbols on
the square – what he learnt was called a screen. Learning these
symbols, he was then able to enable more of his education. He
found symbols that led him to educational videos. With these, he
was able to learn more and more.

He did not count the days. His only measurement was the
immeasurable level of competence he was gaining in this language.

Sitting or standing, his eyes darted across the screen – absorbing
everything.

Through this screen, he learnt what he was. The narrators, who
he learnt were not like him, but much softer and varied looking,
called his kind Gleran. Peron could not help but note the irony that
he had to learn about what he was from someone unlike him. But
he was thankful to these beings. They had left this trove of
knowledge for him. While seemingly gone from this world, their
memory enabled him to learn. It gave him a purpose. While he was
unable to truly be like his kind and communicate with the hive, his
mind was able to be put to other things.

With no preoccupation with the whims of the Queen, he was
able to absorb information faster, better… A Gleran brain, when
not dealing with the innumerable orders of the hive, was more than
capable of learning the complex ideas of other races. What a waste
that they could not think…usually.

As ashamed as he was of the insult the Queen had levelled at
him, thinker, it was all he did now. He thought about the world. The
oddities – which he came to learn were called buildings, contained
in a town. His place in all of this. The hive…

The last always saddened him, and it was at times like these that
he envied the humans’ – the beings from the screen – ability to cry.

When they were sad, they changed expression so dramatically, as
warm-wet fell from their eyes. Glerans couldn’t do that. Initially,

Peron thought this for the best. But then realised that Glerans
couldn’t cry because they didn’t feel the need to do so. They didn’t
feel anything. But Peron did. And he wanted to cry.

The more he learnt from the videos, the wider the world looked,
and the sadder he became. But it was better than before. The
sadness wasn’t crushing anymore. It was informed. This made it
seem better. It seemed justified.

He longed for more as he learnt about more. He longed for the
world on the screen, a vibrant world of people who talked to each
other. He longed to be human, to have others like him who could
communicate without being considered freaks. But above all else,
he still longed for the hive.

Logically, he knew that the hive was not attainable nor desirable.

It had spurned him. He was not like them. He just shared a similar
looking shell. But something deeper drew him to his birth place. His
thoughts told him to stop longing for a void that hated him, but his
gut told him to love the Queen, to get back to work.

He only ventured out of the server facility, what he found the
egg-shaped building to be called, when he was hungry. It was not
difficult to find sustenance. As he had learnt from videos, Glerans
were hardy and could eat almost anything organic to sustain
themselves. The humans seemed to admire his kind. Glerans were
tougher, sturdier. They could move faster. Withstand more pain and
torment. Peron didn’t feel any pride from this.

He admired the humans. He envied them. He loved them.

Without even speaking to or being near any of human, he felt a close
bond to them. They taught him. They spoke to him, even if
indirectly. They entertained him. The humans on the screen gave his
overly developed insect mind meaning.

The sun was setting on this unknown day as he re-entered the
facility, chewing on a root. He was excited. He had a new set of
videos to watch.

He did as he had done many times before, sitting cross legged
with his bottom pair of arms crossed as he used the controls to
select which video he wanted to view.

He picked the new video. While his understanding of the
symbols was still crude, he was able to make out the title to be:

“Hostilities Rise”.

Sounded exciting. He hoped it was an entertainment video, like
some he had watched before. Those were the best nights – gnawing
on a root while humans from long ago performed for him.

The video started but was not an entertainment vid. It had the
format of what Peron recognised to be news footage. The symbols
of a news channel appeared, red and blue with a few words that

Peron still didn’t understand. He was a little disappointed, but didn’t
let that get him down. News footage could also be exciting. It had
been his best way of learning about the humans that had lived here
before.

A human with long-dark hair appeared. It was a usual figure in
the news footage. It was normally prim and neat. Peron dared think
it looked pretty. But its calm and immaculate façade was gone now.

It looked worried, terrified even. Condensation collected on its
brow. Its outfit was dishevelled. Flames in the background.

“This is an emergency report for Colony Vulzthan Prime. Gleran
drones, recently peaceful, have attacked the settlement. Previously
primitive, they are now armed with energy weapons. Militia forces
are keeping them at bay, but can’t forever. We need to evacuate…”

She was crying now. She had never done that before.

“Vulzthan is lost. Protect your families. Go!”

Screams. Those like him, Glerans, charging onto the screen.

Flashes. Black.

Peron sat still as the interface asked if he was ready for the next
video. He just stared, as the light of the room dimmed to save energy

– with only the silent screen to illuminate him in the darkness that
ensued.

❖

The Queen had taken everything from him. But she had given
him life. But he was an accident. But she had spared him. But out
of mockery, not mercy.

She was his Queen.

She was his enslaver.

She hated him.

He loved her.

He hated that he loved her.

He loved the humans. She had killed the humans.

His kind had killed the only people he had ever felt a connection
with. The brown and green horde had fell upon those who had
taught him everything, without him ever even needing to ask them
to do so. As he scoured the archives, he could find nothing in the
servers past the date of that news footage. He hoped that they had
somehow escaped, but he knew better. His hive was strong. The

Queen was perfect. Glerans like him, she might spare. But human
interlopers? They would be crushed – utterly.

But his kind didn’t do this. They couldn’t be blamed. They didn’t
act. They served, completely. Could someone without choice be
blamed for their actions? Could a tool be blamed for the actions of
its user?

Peron did not hate the Glerans. He did not hate the hive. The
hive was his. The Glerans were his kin.

Peron hated the Queen.

She was the reason behind everything. She was his mother. The
voice in his head. The reason he wanted to work. The reason why
he was a Gleran. The reason he was not like the rest of his kind. He
was a freak by no fault of his own. It was all her fault. She controlled
his kin. Kept them slaves to pheromones.

She had killed his love.

He would kill her.

Without the hive mind, his people could be free. Without the
pheromone network, they could be like him. He would no longer
be a freak. He would no longer be the only thinker. This is what

Peron had learned in his fevered studying of the human files on his
species.

As his knowledge of the human symbols grew, he was able to
move from videos to writings. He consumed dossiers on the Gleran
hive, learning everything he could about himself and his kind. The
humans knew a lot about Glerans, and he could fill in the blanks.

What he had learnt was that Glerans were controlled using
pheromones emitted by the Queen. The Queen would spread these
pheromones through a network of drones, infecting each other with
her will. Gleran brains were large and developed, perfectly able to
process countless signals and pheromone orders at once. Peron
wanted to ensure that his kin’s brains could be put to better use.

From the human archives, he learnt more than just about the
lives of his kin and humans themselves, he learnt about death and
violence. He had had the intuitive sense of death before. The
cocoon in which he had grown up had instilled such primitive basics
in him already.

But the human archives on history, war and weapons had taught
him how to cause death. Now, he fell asleep and dreamt of stabbing
the Queen that he still could not help but love and hate. He
imagined the golden slime that would ooze out of her hulking husk.

The glow would cease. That mesmerising, irresistible golden glow.

He would cry. He would want to die. But it had to be done. He
loved her, and hated her for it.

In the human archives, he found an explanation for why the

Glerans refused to work in the cold-wet, the rain. He also realised
why he instinctively hated water. It interfered with the pheromones.

It blocked the Queen’s orders.

Peron hated the cold-wet. But he would use it. He would use it,
and every weapon at his disposal to free his people.

❖

He was lucky, and unlucky.

Lucky, because he had the gift of thought from birth.

Unlucky, because of the same reason.

His kin were the opposite.

Once stripped of the servitude to the Queen, the hive would be
without purpose or will. But it was for the best. Peron would guide
them.

He had found some paper and pens in the settlement, and was
sketching out a curriculum to help his kin adapt to the world without
their Queen. It was much harder than his plan to slay the Queen
herself. But it was possible. It would be hard, but it was worth it for
those like him. For him to have someone to talk to.

He still did not count the days, but noted that many nights passed
while he prepared. He was not anxious to get started. He was used
to the longing by now. And the hive wasn’t going anywhere.

He had finished all the videos and materials within the town. He
knew as much as he could. He knew about planets far away. Wars
hundreds of years old. Weapons of mass destruction. Medicine to
heal. Poisons to kill. At least three human languages. Now, without
any temptation of extra knowledge to hold him back, he prepared.

Taking stock of the town, he scavenged all the materials he could
to use in his plan. Sticks and metal shards became a spear and knife.

Abandoned machinery became traps and gadgets. The flag of the
settlement, a white, red and blue tri-colour, was draped over his
shoulders. Glerans didn’t wear clothes, but he felt he had to for this.

For the humans who had died. He would wear their colours as
human warriors had done millennia ago. This would be their
revenge against their murderer.

Eventually, as he tightened the last bolt and tossed the cube he
had made into a sack, he swung it onto his shoulders. With one final
look at the egg which had given him so much meaning in this void,
he turned away and walked towards the sunset, where he now knew
from human maps, towards his home – the hive.

❖

The hive had grown. Only now did Peron realise how long he
had been away. The small piles of rock and scrap that had previously
surrounded the catacombs had grown into a wall. Peron guessed it
to be around three to four metres tall. With his newly made
telescope, Peron scouted out interspersed Glerans along the wall –
watching. They stood still as statues. The Gleran drone way. As the
sun continued to set, their details blurred, leaving only a silhouette.

Peron didn’t think he would have known they were there if he had
not seen them in the light beforehand. They blended perfectly into
the black.

Peron had not anticipated this. Why would the hive become
reinforced? For him? No, the Queen did not expect him to even
survive his exile. This was for something else. But regardless of what
it was, it could not sway him. He had to act now. This changed
nothing.

Under cover of darkness, he crawled towards the wall of the
reinforced hive. The spear in his one hand and the strap of his sack
in the other slowed him down, but they were both essential for his
mission. There was no commotion as he reached the outskirts of his
old home. The darkness had sufficiently hidden him. While skilled
in many things, Glerans did not have good night-vision. Peron made
up for his lack of it with planning. Glerans relied on pheromones
for much of their path-finding, but Peron used his memory.

He felt the wall. It was solid. Metal. Some of his ore had probably
contributed to its construction. He felt an involuntary pang of pride
at that.

He moved along the edge, feeling for an opening. Eventually, he
found one. The wall was incomplete. But the opening revealed a
warrior. Peron had only seen the larger of his kind once before.

They were stockier, with thicker chitin than most. He feared them.

Holding his breath, he stabbed his spear silently into the ground, so
he could use all four of his arms. He took a small bottle out of his
sack.

He really hoped this would work.

In one sudden movement, he rounded the corner and threw
water onto the warrior. It spasmed and then charged. Peron dodged
the attack, allowing the warrior to run head first into the corner of
the unfinished wall. It fell, unconscious.

Peron had no way of knowing if the warrior had successfully sent
pheromones to the hive. But he could not stop now. Even if it
hadn’t worked, the noise may still have alerted nearby guards.

He picked up his spear and ran through the opening,
remembering the layout of the courtyard to make it into the
catacombs.

As he ran, he was able to dodge a line of warriors and drones
who had been sent to investigate. They did not notice him.

Phase 1 complete.

The air flow changed as he entered the cave system. It was still
very much the same as he remembered. Musty, the smell of soil and
slime. While he had grown to love the human architecture, this felt
more like home. He could not help but find the most comfort in a
cave.

He stuck to the dirt, avoiding the clanking metal plates that were
scattered around the hive. Making his way into a smaller tunnel, he
watched for drones and then ascended to a higher level of the hive.

The air flow of the cave did not come solely from the main entrance.

There had to be a ventilation system. A way of allowing all the
recipients of the hive to breathe. A way of spreading something
airborne – fast.

As he arrived at the next level of tunnels, he heard footfalls. He
rounded a corner to hide. Two drones scurried by him, not noticing.

He let them pass and then continued.

An airduct. He hoped there was a central one that connected to
all the others. If not, his plan was not a failure but would be harder
to implement.

He followed the air. As he searched, it became stronger. He was
thankful for the wind. It was now audible, taking him to the airduct.

He found it. A hole in the roof upon this mound. A strategic
point for him to enact phase 2 of his plan.

He unslung his sack and took out what he needed. A special
metal container filled with water, containing some holes. Liquid
nitrogen. A plasma cooker he had salvaged and fixed.

He hoped this would work.

He placed the plasma cooker in a spot that he felt was receiving
the most air flow. He then placed the container over it. He turned
the cooker on and allowed the water to boil. Steam started to rise
from the holes that he had placed around the edge of the container.

The container had two sections. An inner core filled with water up
to a lip which led to a dry section that had holes at its bottom. It
was designed so that the water would not spill out of the holes.

Steam, however…

But he didn’t want the steam to rise. He wanted it to sink. He
poured the liquid nitrogen into the container. The steam started to
sink as it became fog. Just a bit, but then more. It was working…

His vision blurred, and his head stung as he was beaten over the
head. He fell, knocking over his apparatus and turning off the
cooker.

A warrior stood above him. It had hit him with its bare fist. But

Peron’s chitin enforced head was enough to help him survive the
blow. He dodged as the warrior went in for another attack. Fog was
seeping down the airduct, but wasn’t affecting Peron’s attacker.

Peron tried to dodge to the side, but it was too late as the warrior
barrelled into him, beating at his face. Peron was barely able to bring
his arms up to block the attack. The onslaught didn’t stop. Peron
saw red, as his vision began to blur. The pain…

It stopped.

The warrior slumped to the floor, a metal shard knife buried in
the crack of soft flesh between chitin plates.

Peron felt sick. Even sicker now that he ignored the guilt that
was brewing inside of him so that he could fix his apparatus. As he
finished setting up the apparatus again, he gave himself time to
mourn the death he had caused.

❖

Chilling cold wet all around. He struggled to see further than a
few metres through the dense grey. Other Glerans were just
wandering or stone still silhouettes. He avoided them, not to risk
another confrontation, but it seemed his strategy had worked. While
he had run out of water sooner than he had thought, it soon began
to rain. Taking advantage of the timely unpleasantness, Peron used
salvaged rods, his sack and other knick-knacks to make a rain
catcher, leading into his contraption.

Before he could be sniffed out by any more additional warriors,
he left the airduct. Just below the top level, the hive was awash with
fog. Glerans were still active, but were different. Their actions
seemed aimless. Some just stood still. Others just walked in arbitrary
directions. None noticed him. Or, at least, didn’t act on it.

From part memory and part guesswork, Peron made his way
through the winding vertical labyrinth. He had only been to the core
once before, and had been unconscious for some of the trip, but
there was something instinctual in this navigation.

He didn’t need pheromone receptors to be a part of this hive. He
was born into it. That was sufficient. The pheromones were chains.

They were not necessary for the hive or the species. Assured of that,

Peron rounded another corner and was met by eight warriors.

He recoiled, but then steadied himself. None of them were
moving. The thick fog coated them. Without any pheromones, they
were inactive. Peron shook his head, in the manner he had seen
humans do. These mighty warriors, one of which he had so
needlessly had to slay, could be so much more. The Queen’s
dominance held them back. Made them into mindless puppets. But
they had potential. Peron would help them.

Peron strode past the warriors, bearing only his spear.

Across the barrier – a splendid golden glow struck Peron, almost
sending him reeling. He wanted to bow. To prostrate himself. He
fell to his knees, barely catching himself by sinking the butt of his
spear into the ground and lifting himself up.

“You survived?”

The question was nonchalant, yet sounded glorious. The tone
itself made Peron want to cry, it angered and elated him. He
simultaneously wanted to worship it and die from it.

The golden pustule in this rock opening quivered with
amusement. Its gargantuan slimy husk sent shivers down Peron’s
spine as he restrained himself from sinking any lower to the ground.

“You have blinded me, my child.”

Guilt wracked Peron’s being.

“Whatever you did, it worked. You blinded your mother’s many
eyes. Your siblings were my senses, and you blotted them out. Did
you kill them all? You killed your brother. The warrior. You stabbed
him. You know that killed him? Do you understand death?”

Peron was about to respond in the affirmative.

“No. You don’t. You can’t understand death. You’ve never died.

I have. I have died a million times over. I died today – one hundred
times. I died thousands when the humans arrived. Hundreds of
thousands when the Xank sought my allegiance. I have experienced
the cold bite of death – over, and over, and over.”

She paused.

“You regret killing the warrior?”

“Y…yes,” Peron was able to stammer.

“You speak the human tongue?”

The voice, so splendid before, seemed to quiver with surprise.

“Yes,” Peron answered. Clearer. He stood up straight, holding
his head high.

“The humans…” the Queen’s voice filled with poison, “have
killed me 8476 times.”

“You killed them all.”

“I defended the hive!”

“You enslaved the hive!”

A pause. Long. The golden glow no longer seemed so strong.

“Do you really think that?” the Queen whispered in Peron’s
head.

Peron’s silence was his answer. He sensed that she was somehow
shaking her non-existent head.

“You think that my children are all like you? Despite what I told
you? You are a thinker, Peron. You are a mutant. You aren’t a

Gleran. Without me, they are nothing but statues. They are better
dead than without their queen.”

“Liar.”

“Why would I lie?”

“To stop me.”

“From doing what?”

She didn’t notice as Peron approached her. Couldn’t notice. She
had been thoroughly blinded. The fog blocked all her means to see.

It would be an easy kill. Peron’s spear was sharp. It was sturdy. The

Queen’s flesh was weak. Between his people’s freedom, and his
belonging, there was only a thin layer of gold-tinted translucent skin.

Pulsing, splendid, wonderful, loveable. Hateable. Detestable.

Peron felt bile rise in his stomach.

He loved her. He hated her.

He loved the humans, who had apparently killed so many of his
kind. The humans who had killed those like him. The humans he
had never met. The humans he could not meet because they were
dead.

Instinct subsided. The love he felt for her became colder. It did
not disappear. It was too ingrained for that. But he focused. He
focused on his hatred for her. The hatred that was initially wrought
from the love imposed upon him. He remembered the red. The
blindness before the guilt. He didn’t feel his attack then. The warrior
had died, and Peron had cried. Peron breathed, and shut everything
out.

Black. A searing fire in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t
know how to. Impact. Pressure on his spear. Not good enough. He
pushed. He heard screaming. The Queen? No. Himself. His eyes
were closed, but that only highlighted the feeling. The sickening
resistance of flesh. It broke too easily.

The screaming eventually stopped.

He opened his eyes.

The gold was fading. The once magnificent husk was deflating.

“I’m not afraid to die, my child.”

The voice was neither fearful nor splendid. It was a sincere,
honest, tired tone.

“I have faced death… more than you ever will. This…this is
relief. But, for the hive…for the hive I cannot die.”

“You will die so the hive can live – truly live.”

“You think, thinker, but there is not much knowing. You have
doomed your family. I don’t curse you for what you have done. You
have cursed yourself already. You will be alone. Alone among
billions. Forever. I did not wish for things to end up this way. I lived
for the hive…if you truly loved it, you would have let it go.”

Peron did not respond as the final light was put out. He did not
withdraw his spear, as it fell to the ground with a clunk of metal on
stone. The translucent flesh of the Queen was deflating, as goo
oozed out around the cadaver of Peron’s mother.

Peron fell to his knees. He didn’t cry. He could not cry. For all
his wish to be human, he could not be. He screamed, his four arms
lying limp at his sides. He screamed as much as his mandibles, ill
suited for speaking, quivered under the strain.

He felt no relief. No joy. No satisfaction. Neither did he feel
remorse. Nor guilt. He only screamed, because he could do nothing
else. Until he could no longer do even that. Then he did nothing.

❖

The Gleran eyes were black. Blacker than what they were meant
to be. There was no awareness. No inkling of thought behind those
blank eyes. The Glerans, warrior and drone, stood as statues. They
did not move. Only much later did they finally collapse, as they
starved to death without any ability to feed themselves.

Peron learnt two things. That the Gleran brain, despite its
immense complexity and capacity, was no match for the natural
order. A brain, no matter its size, was useless if not fulfilling its
function. For the Glerans, that function was nothing but the
reception and implementation of pheromone signals. Without that,
it had no purpose.

The second thing Peron learnt was that the Queen had never lied
to him.

He had been a danger to the hive. She had been right to exile
him.

When he had become an outcast, he never thought he could feel
worse. He did now. Rather than the feeling of acid burning a hole
in his chest, longing for something he could not ever achieve, he
now felt nothing. There was nothing to long for. The hive was dead.

He had killed it.

There was nothing he could ever do to change that. Nothing he
could do to reconcile himself. There was no hive to reconcile with.

With a feeling of unfathomable void within himself, Peron left
the hive and the living statues that now inhabited it. He never
returned.

❖

There had been other humans here. Peron found towns that
dwarfed the settlement he had previously inhabited. These cities, as
they were called, lay dead. Peron initially thought this the work of
the hive, but footage found in the local eggs revealed a darker truth.

The dark, metal figures from before. Small, orange creatures that
looked awfully like the fluffy creatures that Peron saw fly and nest
around the ruins. Armies of them, descending upon the humans and
slaughtering them. In this city, only the surveillance footage of
hidden cameras witnessed the slaughter. It was over seconds after
the first human screamed. In some, they fought back. But these were
not warriors. They were soft. They were fleshy, weak humans. For
all their individuality, their free will, their intelligence that had so
enamoured them to Peron – they died like vermin. There was little
difference between the Glerans dying by slumping over from
starvation, and the humans dying from blood spraying from their
bodies. The humans screamed. The Glerans did nothing. But it had
the same result. Both died. There was nothing either could do.

Eventually, Peron reached a boundless horizon of cold wet. He
sat down, crossing his legs and gazed out – across the edge of this
world.

This was the end…

A dot appeared in the setting sun. A black speck, growing in the
orb of crimson.

It approached, becoming larger and more detailed.

Peron had only seen them in videos – a space ship. A white and
blue metal marvel speeding across the cold wet, leaving streaks and
making waves.

With a sudden jolt, the space ship stopped at the shore, its nose
facing him. He blinked interchangeably with his six eyes. The ship
lowered itself, sending the cold wet below vibrating. It stopped
upon the surface, as the front opened and a ramp extended.

A human exited. He wore a blue jacket over an impressive belly.

His short beard and longer hair were both a reddish-brown. Peron
did not stand. He just watched him as he approached.

The human smiled. Peron noted that the man was carrying a gun
at his side. Guns were rare on Vulzthan, but Peron knew about them
from videos.

“I am Captain Edmund Rex. Can I confirm that I am indeed the
first human to make contact on this planet?”

Before Peron could respond, Edmund’s face went red and he
covered it with his hand.

“What by Terra am I saying? If this is a first contact, you’d not
be able to understand me.”

“I understand you,” Peron responded.

Edmund’s eyes lit up, but then went dull.

“Oh, so I’m not the first human here…”

“No. But you are the only human I’ve seen here.”

“Um…how then do you know…never mind, probably Exanoid
traders or whatever. Actually – what are you, anyway? You an

Enque?”

Peron shook his head.

“Can’t be a Gleran,” Edmund muttered to himself, trying to
figure things out. “Glerans can’t talk.”

“You know about Glerans?”

“This and that. Lots of them on the Fringe. The traders make
deals with Queens and ship them across the galaxy to spread their
reach. The hives tend to keep to themselves. Why? Don’t tell me
you’re some sort of mutant Gleran.”

“I’m not a Gleran,” Peron answered, honestly.

“What are you then?”

Peron paused, thinking. He leant his chin on his on fist to
support it. Finally, he looked up.

“I’m Peron. And I’m a Thinker.”

“Must be stressful…”

Peron’s look of incredulity signalled Edmund to explain.

“Thinkin’. Like, I think sometimes, but I’m not expected to do it
all the time. I gotta take a break. But if you a thinker, that’s all you
do. Not meaning anything bad by it. Different strokes for different
folks.”

Peron was silent and then answered, completely sincerely.

“I like thinking.”

Edmund smiled.

“Always good to like what you doin’… hey, I got an idea. I’m
not much of a thinker myself. My ship is big and as empty as my
noggin. This planet has had first contact already. So gonna need to
think about where to go next. But I’m not that good at thinkin’, you
see. So, maybe, you want to tag along?”

Peron didn’t respond for a little while. Edmund waited, the salty
wind pushing around his long hair. Peron blinked the salt away.

“I’d like that.”

Edmund grinned. “That’s great! Well, no point waiting around.

Let’s go!”

Note from the Author

It is said that you should write what you know. The great
limitation of that advice is pretty clear. If Tolkien had written about
what he had known and experienced, we wouldn’t have had a

Middle Earth of elves, orcs, dark lords, magic rings and countless
other fantasy themes that we take for granted today. As interesting
as it may have been by itself, I think we are all thankful that we
received Lord of the Rings rather than just a story about Tolkien’s
life as a linguist and English professor.

In my own writing, I have also diverted from this creed of writing
what you know. I’m not going to pretend that it is due to some vastly
superior creativity, however. I might not be writing about my
explicit experiences, but I am writing about something I know –
usually.

Even when writing from the perspective of aliens, there is always
something distinctly human about them. They either exemplify a
human trait, like a propensity for commerce (like the Exanoids), or
the confusion of an individual. When writing from the perspective
of Edals (like Re’lien) or Zangorians (like Leri), I can always base
them in something human. Because they basically are.

When writing Hive Mind, I initially wanted to avoid basing the

Glerans on anything human. They are ants. They are bees. They are
insects – the most inhuman thing that you can be. But, despite my
efforts to achieve the impossible, I do feel that I humanised Peron.

This is seen in Peron’s affinity for the humans he has never met.

This highlights his alien-ness through his desperation to belong to
something. As well as wanting to belong, Peron also strives for an
ideology of individualism. This duality of desire is probably Peron’s
most human trait.

All of us have held twin desires sometime in our lives. We’ve had
to choose. Sometimes, we can’t even do that. Other times, we make
a choice and fail to achieve either. Peron wanted to belong and
wanted to be alone in his belonging. Instead, he could never belong

– but neither is he alone anymore.

For those wanting to know what happened to Peron between
now and his escapades with Leri nuro Zeruit in the main series, I
may write more about him. Peron is old. A lot older than we think.

He has seen a lot and has thought a lot.

I’m not going to say what he did in that time. Maybe because I
don’t even know, and I can only write what I know. What I do hope
is that, for at least a time, he found some sense of belonging – as
impossible as that may be. But while he may never have his family
ever again – he did find a friend. And that is worth all the hives on
the Fringe.

I hope you enjoyed Hive Mind. Don’t stop reading now!

You can meet Peron again in the rest of the Warpmancer

Series.

Start your journey now with Shadow, the first book in the Warpmancer Series.

Copyright © 2017

Warpmancer Universe

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or
dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior written permission of the publisher and the
copyright owner.