The Web

On a small planet, in an equally small solar system, at the very edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, there was a forest, and at the very heart of that forest, there was a pond. This pond was the same as any other on the planet. It had the same liquid within and the same life around it. However, deep in the pond’s water lived a bacteria, dormant in the wild, peacefully existing and multiplying in their own little habitat. Throughout the years, animals came and drank from the pond, bacteria passing harmlessly through their digestive tracts. It sat dormant until the day everything changed.

In the late afternoon of a beautiful day, two creatures fought over a kill. The challenger gained the upper hand, bitting the leg of the first creature and drawing blood. The two battled across the pond’s shores until the challenger forced the first creature to retreat. The injured animal swam across the pond to escape from its attacker as the second animal turned to the meal it had just won. The defeated creature limped out of the pond, having dripped blood into the still waters and, more importantly, allowed the still waters to leak into its wounds.

As the injured creature nursed itself back to health, the bacteria in its wounds sank into its bloodstream, muscle tissue, and neurons. Over the next few weeks, as the infected creature healed and continued its daily life, the bacteria jumped from cell to cell, infecting them and forcing them to produce more of themselves and the cell’s normal proteins. The bacteria in the neurons started traveling up to the brain, avoiding the creature’s immune system as the infected cells multiplied and the infection spread up the leg and through the creature’s body. Four weeks after the initial fight, the bacteria reached the brain and began reprogramming the creature’s nervous system right from the top.

On the surface, the creature seemed healthy. It interacted with its own and other species the same way, hunting for food and eating, searching for shelter and sleeping, and managing its needs to keep itself alive. However, within the cells, the bacteria had transformed the creature into a massive factory, churning out more and more bacteria as the days went on. All that bacteria needed somewhere to go next. From its place in the creature’s mind, it sent millions and millions of bacteria to the mouth of the beast, infecting its saliva and allowing the animal to continue to live, waiting.

Months after the infection reached the mind of the first creature, another fight broke out. A challenger tried to take the creature’s well-earned meal, and the two clashed over the corpse of the fallen prey. However, this time, the first creature gained the upper hand, biting at the challenger, puncturing its skin with its teeth, and flooding the wounds with its saliva. The failed challenger ran, yelping and injured, into the forest as the victorious animal feasted on his prize. However, deep in the defeated creature’s wounds, bacteria found their way into their first nerve cell.

Both creatures continued to live, hunting, sleeping, and traveling their territory. However, as time passed, they realized something strange. New memories appeared in their mind that had not been there before. They could see creatures that hadn’t been near them and felt they instinctively knew more than before. Weeks after they first fought, the two met each other again, and it all became clear.

They could see out of each other’s eyes.

The two creatures had become one mind.

A Web

After this meeting, the two traveled together, fighting their enemies, hunting, and eating as one. Over time their numbers grew as challengers, prey, and other creatures escaped their claws but fell victim to the bacteria that invaded their wounds. Soon The Web had over a dozen bodies and continued to grow, taking control of the forest they had been born from and defeating all who stood against them.

However, there existed a challenger that they failed to overcome. One which the bacteria could never penetrate. These creatures, immune to the Web, invaded the forest and began decimating the Web’s numbers, driving them back and claiming their territory for themselves. The Web was on the defensive, unable to defeat this new enemy. As their numbers dwindled, it seemed the Web would be driven to extinction, and the bacteria would lose the numbers they had gathered from the wound of the first creature.

As the hope of the Web began to fade, salvation came from above. A strange thing descended from the skies above, landing in the forest that the Web had once ruled. Strange creatures with thick, oddly colored skin and objects in their hands exited the thing. From a distance, the Web watched these new creatures moving around the forest, looking at trees, dirt, and water, studying the planet’s life. As they looked around, one noticed a body of the Web watching them from a distance. Approaching slowly, the strange new creature held up an odd object.

A blinding light flashed, whipping the body into a panic. It charged the creature and leaped onto it. Thrashing wildly, it bit through the creature’s strange, tough skin, managing to draw blood before another object the creature carried blew out the body of the Web’s insides. The peculiar creature stood, clutching their wound, as the body of the Web slumped over dead on the forest floor.

The strange creature returned to the thing it had come out of and discussed the incident with the other creatures it had come with. However, deep under the torn, thick skin, through another layer of weaker softer skin, the bacteria had begun to penetrate the creature’s bloodstream and nervous system.

Weeks after the incident, as the Strange creatures….the aliens… had begun to… make camp around the thing… spaceship… that they came from. The alien that had been bitten by the body of the Web succumbed to the bacteria’s force.

Imagine for a second that you are an animal without higher intellect. The only thing you could do was think about food, sleep, and staying alive. Then, suddenly, with no warning, you gained the ability to think, reason, and understand. You not only knew that the points of light that had always been overhead were called stars, but there were planets with life surrounding those stars, and you knew how to build and fly spacecraft that could get you to those other worlds. You understood technology that had been strange and godlike to you just minutes before, and you knew how to make it.

At that moment, The Web transformed. It became more than a collection of beasts that used its base instincts to survive. It became a species that could think, learn, reason, and strategize.

Using their newfound intellect, the Web studied their memories of the battles with the immune creature. Using these findings, they learned how to fight and defend against them and drove the animals out of the forest. At the same time, they also learned about themselves. For the very first time in the existence of The Web, they knew how they had come into existence, how the bacteria in the pond had made their species possible, and how to more efficiently spread The Web over the remains of the planet not gifted with immunity. They ventured out of the forest that they had occupied since the beginning and began to bring more and more creatures into The Web.

Safe within the spaceship, the intelligent body of the Web tackled a different problem. Their studies of the bacteria and the bodies had informed them that when one body died, the knowledge held in that creature’s mind was divided and spread to the other members of The Web. With this knowledge, a new fear arose. What if the intelligent body died? Would the rest of The Web be able to handle the knowledge centralized in their minds?

They decided they couldn’t risk it and took action.

As the rest of the crew slept, the body of The Web extracted the bacteria from their own bloodstream. Isolating it, they injected it right at the base of the other creatures’ brains. Within hours, the entire crew had succumbed to The Web, increasing their mental capacity and chances of survival even further.

A few short months later, all creatures not immune to The Web had joined it. The immune ones were trapped in The Web’s Spacecraft for study. With the threats to the species’ survival on the planet done away with, The Web turned its mind to more complex threats to their life.

The knowledge bestowed onto The Web by their alien members brought knowledge of victory, protection from threats, and understanding of new threats beyond their previous comprehension. The Web was now aware that a large alliance of Alien Species controlled their Galaxy, The Inter-system Collective of Worlds. At any moment, this council could vote to destroy their planet, destroying their species forever. Beyond even this, there were also newly discovered natural threats. Their sun could enter a supernova, vaporizing their planet. A rouge star could pull their world out of orbit, hurtling them into space’s cold emptiness. Even threats such as meteors or other natural disasters could send The Web to its doom.

All these new threats to their species terrified The Web; being unable to solve the problem with their six intelligent bodies and hundreds of unintelligent ones, they were left with only one choice.

To go out into the rest of the galaxy and gather enough brainpower to find the solution.

The Web divided itself, splitting the intelligent and unintelligent bodies equally. Half would stay on their home planet and develop it, using their growing intelligence to study the problems in a safe environment. The other half would explore the galaxy on their spacecraft and spread to new territories. The plan was set in stone. They repaired the ship and loaded themselves onto it, discarding any item that wouldn’t serve The Web as a whole. With two hundred creatures living in a spacecraft designed for six, the ship exited the atmosphere of their home planet. Accelerating away, one-half of The Web entered the wider galaxy, looking for the solution to their own mortality.

Meanwhile, the other half began cutting down trees to build shelters. As they worked, a tree fell into a pond, splashing water out over the banks and disrupting the bacteria that had lived there dormant for decades. However, none of the Bacteria in the brain of The Web or the water of the pond knew that it was there, in that forest, on that planet, in that solar system.

That the life of the Milky Way Galaxy would change forever.