“And so, if I don’t check in with you every ten minutes, you know to get Beck to activate the Backdoor.”
“Understood.”
After everyone else finished their dinner, I continued eating to get ready to lay more eggs. Beatrice stayed behind, and I instructed her on emergency procedures. After all, I was nowhere near finished experimenting with B-boxes or even with my memories.
Granted, I absolutely didn’t want to dive back into that hellhole unnecessarily. But that didn’t take away the fact that being able to constantly access my memories in an instant would be an awesome power. I had to assume that working with my memories in any way from now had the potential to trap me there again, hence the emergency procedures I was setting up with Beatrice.
“Now that that’s all settled let’s talk eggs.”
“Understood. For a broad overview, I have actually found there to be several issues with the hive’s expansion. I have given the matter much thought while… helping Bess improve her leadership capabilities.”
“Honestly, there are too many issues to resolve in the immediate future. For one, there is an imbalance in numbers even still. There are simply too many construction drones compared to the amount of wax being produced. For now, that problem is alleviated by the inefficiency of Bess’ command, but as she improves, we will have many idle construction drones.”
“Even if that’s true, I can’t make wax drones yet. I guess I could just make Simple Workers who could use the rotation system….”
“That is precisely the problem. The matter with the construction and wax work is indicative of a larger issue, which is an imbalance of broad and highly specialized labor. As we grow, we will require more helping hands, similar to the construction workers. And yet, the only specialized workers we can create are construction and gathering drones.”
“That’s not all. Food will become an issue for the higher class individuals such as yourself.”
“Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She cocked her head in confusion, “Hm? I simply mean that bees such as yourself or those with refined tastes, such as Bella, will be struggling in the near future. After all, so much time has passed. Whatever drying or aging or salting processes have long since been diminishing in usefulness for some time now.”
Fuck. The food had tasted ridiculously salty today… Belle must’ve been trying to mask the rotting taste, for my sake.
“We’ve gotta find a new food source then! It’s not ideal, but maybe….”
Bella had long since been experimenting with cooking, though without much success. If more bees were on the job, maybe we could figure out an easy way to make fire. Should be pretty easy with Mind. And if we were going to cook, we needed food to cook.
And what source of meat happened to be abundant in the forest?
“You want to eat… those? Those repugnant squirrels?”
“Not just that. We need the food source to be abundant. Replenishable.”
Beatrice sported a look of disgust. Who could blame her? The idea was seriously nasty, but it was better than eating rotten meat, in my opinion.
“...Farming? I… do not think we have the manpower or resources to support such an endeavor. If we were to do so, it would only work for a very small number….” Her face took on a thoughtful look, “Though I suppose only a few bees care….”
“It’s not perfectly efficient, but I would really really really really like to not eat rotten meat if I can help it.”
“Even so. I will try to think of a way to please you, Mother, but it will simply not be possible in my estimation. The amount of resources and labor required… not to mention you yourself eat more than several bees combined, by a wide margin. Though only yourself, Bella, and maybe a couple other bees would partake, the volume of food you need to consume to expand the hive in a reasonable manner would simply be impossible to cultivate as we are.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
…
I hate other worlds. Why, if I were back on Earth, I could use this inordinate amount of power and social status to have the highest quality squirrels served to me on a daily basis!
“Then we need to revive this forest as soon as possible. Edible plants, more animals. Ideally, even flowers. That’s the only way we’ll be able to handle the food issues.”
“That is part of the problem, Mother. Though our current workforce covers our basic tasks and some extras, there is plenty more that needs to be done. Revival of the forest with your water-transport suggestion is one such task that our workers are not numerous enough for yet. And this is where my primary concern comes in: How much longer can we keep up this system of desired work? I will say that allowing each bee to follow their personality to whatever task they feel inclined towards is inspired, but what happens when there are jobs that need to be done that nobody gravitates towards? Using the forest revival example, say you birth a hundred new Simple Workers and they all move towards a job but not towards the revival of the forest. What then? Do we pull the bees away, forcing them to do tasks they are not suited for?”
“In that case, what do you suggest?”
“For one thing, we need to expand our repertoire of specialized drones. Acquire wax-making drones and so on so we never need to concern ourselves with basic tasks being undermanned. Additionally, begin creating specific tasks that need to be done, regardless of desire. I fear that Simple Workers cannot continue doing only what suits them most. Our proposed scale simply does not allow it.”
“Hold on. Expanding the repertoire? So you want me to upgrade my Egg Laying Ability?”
A crisp nod confirmed it. Well, it was a reasonable request. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sold on how to evolve the Ability in the first place. Were there some conditions that had to be fulfilled? Did it upgrade after I hatched a certain number of eggs? The first upgrade hadn’t revealed much, but it did seem to be somewhat flexible. It was likely that as long as I kept hatching eggs that were a balance of quantity and quality, then the Ability would progress.
Although…
“All of these thoughts are important, but in that case, I’d say that for now, we should focus mainly on upgrading the Ability. So, how about this. Tell me some ideas for numbers. How many Simple Workers would be good? How many Gathering Drones? I’ll lay rapid-fire until the Ability levels up, then immediately make eggs of the new types I get.”
“Very well. Considering the options… I would say we absolutely need more gathering drones. In preparation for the possibility of squirrel farming, we would need a huge volume of feed for the livestock as well, and only the rotting corpses gathered by the gatherers fit the bill. As much as I would like to, Bess is creating a devastating constraint on the number of construction drones. Unless you or I begin taking over for extra construction drones, creating more would not work for now.”
“Which leaves Simple Warriors and Workers. Especially with the birth of the Valkybees, military power is not a concern at the moment. Regardless, expanding our military forces is never a bad idea. Tentatively I would advise doubling the number of Simple Warriors by birthing 16 more, but I would caution that the warriors may end up consuming all of our food supplies. Simple Workers are always a good resource, and we never know when one with relevant and unique talents may sprout up. I would posit birthing as many Simple Workers as possible.”
“Give me a general order of importance. I don’t want to go too overboard with hatching before the level-up.”
“In that case, I would form an order of Gathering Drones, Simple Workers, Simple Warriors, and Construction Drones. There are some stipulations, though, such as not birthing too many Gathering Drones as to become idle and being cautious with the number of warriors.”
We continued planning for a while, but from there, I was mostly ready. Finally, after so long, I continued my sacred duty of being an egg-laying machine, puking up Drone after Drone after Drone, with the occasional Worker or Warrior thrown in for good measure.
And as I puked, I thought. At any moment, our newfound stability could crumble under the weight of starvation or the like. I’d have to get started on the forest revitalization project as soon as possible, but to do so, I wanted to be better. Stronger. Who knew what sorts of danger would approach if the forest started coming back to life? Hell, what if the humans that had burned it down in the first place got upset that we had undone all their hard work?
Fiddling with the B-box System turned things around. Best leave the memory stuff until after I was doing a less important job, so what else could I do with the thing?
Well, maybe I could do math with a B-box. Keeping track of the different numbers of bees doing each type of work was getting annoying, and I wouldn’t have time to constantly be fiddling with the Mind percentages.
I formed a blank box and gave it the simple task of counting. How many trees were in this particular area? 24. Ooh! What a useful tool, if a simple one. Counting was a basic function and not one that took a long time. But doing it with this B-box was like typing the question into a calculator and getting an exact answer. Except that calculator was my brain. And speaking of…
I adjusted the box to do simple arithmetic. Then algebra. Then I just poured in every mathematic process I knew about. Now it was like having a smartphone all over again! Even if that phone was actually just me doing the thinking, the conscious separation made it feel like no effort was needed whatsoever. Best of all, it was completely automatic! All I had to do was think, ‘hm, I wonder what 1701 divided by 9789 is?’ and bam! Brainpower of mine that was now completely dedicated to the task spat out 0.1737664725 blah blah blah. This was taking mental math to a whole new level!
Were the possibilities endless? Any task I was capable of doing with my thoughts could theoretically be automated.
I thought back to earlier in the day. In the clearing with the Valkybees, I had noticed Beelzebub analyzing Belial’s movements almost instinctively. Maybe I could do something like that? Like how chess players could calculate several moves in advance, but for everything going on around me, or something along those lines.
In theory, all I would have to do is analyze the possible outcomes of an action, like in chess. The problem with doing that in real time is that calculating all of those possibilities would take way too long and interfere with actual planning and decision-making. In a strategy game, that might work, but not in real life, where there was no limit to possible actions.
But with B-boxes…
I was on a roll now! Honestly, as long as I had Mind to spare, I could just try a bunch of different B-box ideas and see what sticks. I’d cap myself at spending no more than 40% on B-boxes for the time being.
Actually… On that note, let's recurse. Why not have a B-box dedicated to generating ideas for B-boxes? That way, I could focus on implementing and experimenting with them instead of wasting time trying to think of more ideas.
And with that, I continued designing terrifying, useful, and terribly convenient mental powers. While vomiting bee eggs, of course. Tomorrow I would use my incredible psychic abilities for even more impressive feats.
Like sprinkling water all over the place.