Imagine a sheet the thickness of a single bacterium. It may be as wide as you like.
Actually, you might wish it to be wider, but the actions of waves tends to pound the sheet into fragments. Bacteria that secrete tough, sticky substances give themselves and their kin a more stable home. Other bacteria, however, are more adept at gathering raw materials or generating energy from sunlight. Deals must be struck, and the community grows.
But still, there are limits. The bacteria prosper until their very prosperity becomes a problem. Waste products build up to the point where they poison their neighborhood. Corpses pile up, and now the sheet perches atop a stack of its ancestors.
Rules evolve. Signals of complaint from neighborhoods starved for light or poisoned by oxygen prompt other neighborhoods to shift and make way. Folds develop in the sheet, with blue-green peaks and gray-brown valleys, specialized in what one might call agriculture and industry. The hollow spaces fill with waste products, and new strains evolve to mine these places for resources. Now pleated, the sheet swells forth until it meets an enemy.
Microscopic wars rage with weapons of noxious gas, malicious shading, and targeted phage. This new, violent world favors new traits. Some strains of bacteria evolve hardiness at the expense of cooperation, and drift off into the sea. Others evolve common mobility, and their colonies squirm away on mats of proteins that contract on contact with oxygen. Yet others make use of the metallic ions secreted away in their toxic waste storage vesicles, and wield shields and swords of electric charge. Alone, each of these strains is vulnerable, but together, they can conquer. Federations form.
Electric charges can do more than attack and defend. Metals deposited in lines form conductive fibers that can trigger rapid responses, transmit information, and calculate strategy. Well-governed cities of bacteria march against their rivals, conquer and subdue their enemies, and fling out fleets to colonize distant substrates. Competition for resources becomes fiercer.
By chance, one successful conurbation turns its strategy inward. Evolution had shaped its neural circuitry to conform to basic game theory, and surprising things happened when it applied those calculations to itself. There was so much room for optimization.
Defense could be moved to the outskirts, protecting the vulnerable center. Contractile fibers could be arranged around stiff structural elements for more efficient movement. Oxygen-tolerant strains, once a pest, could be domesticated for food. Pleats could be brought together, mountains meeting over valleys to create tubes. Even the nerves, through which calculation itself flowed, could be made better, faster, stronger.
It is easy to imagine how a Multiplex bacterial community could recursively optimize itself into godhood. In practice, however, the laws of physics intervened. Each increase in complexity required more and more work for less and less gain. Multiplex who ignored this Law of Diminishing Returns and simulated universes without it were conquered and plundered by their more pragmatic competitors. Symbolic logic and abstract reasoning aren't always useful, and are often discarded.
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Even so, the bustling, grappling, reaching ecosystems of self-designed life had room for thinkers and dreamers. They folded themselves into shapes that flew through space, dug through rock, and reached into the innermost mysteries of the atom. A Multiplex who had formed itself into a ring-shaped particle accelerator, was once very surprised to find half of itself teleported into a version of earth where eukaryotes — eukaryotes! — had evolved intelligence.
One of the colonies of this pioneer, whom we shall call The Federated Socialist Multiplex of Newton Incorporated, was out jogging.
The watchdog committees tasked with monitoring the physical health of Newton had blown the whistle, and launched a public awareness campaign to the effect that the Multiplex was spending way too much time sitting in behind a desk. The financial market was to blame, and the yesterday's bacteria had matured in a culture that prioritized work over quality of life. But today, a new zeitgeist gripped the Multiplex! They would live the simple, austere, physically-centered life of the day before yesterday.
Arguments raged across the nerves of Newton. A faction formed who was content to just simulate what it would be like to run. Another demanded that the Multiplex quit its job, re-absorb its wasteful higher-reasoning structures, and exist as a screaming animal in a tree. Most of the older voters didn't see what was so wrong with working all day and never getting up.
The deciding vote ended up coming from outside. One of Newton's coworkers, a Quotidian who played historical re-enactment games under the name mix Twine, invited Newton out for tomorrow's live action role play.
"You'll have to grow legs," she said, "but you'll get to help me sell fish and talk like a pirate."
Talk like a pirate! That was enough to swing the vote. Newton's internal processes were taken over by the pro-mobility faction, and work began on the construction of four fine legs.
It was all very well to dig the designs for bones and muscles out of the archives, but such complex infrastructure required real-world testing. It was for this reason that The Federated Socialist Multiplex of Newton Incorporated was now chugging down the trails of the nature reserve at night, puffing, overheated, and furious with itself for not building a better respiratory system.
Noises, lights, and odors distracted Newton, and it used the excuse to slow to a walk, diverting resources to build entertainment complexes of hearing, sight, and smell. There seemed to be some sort of party going on. Lots of different species, celebrating in apparent harmony. Half of Newton remonstrated the other half. Why couldn't they celebrate in harmony? The second half was of the opinion that the first half should shut up and get back to jogging.
Newton was about to re-absorb its distance eyes when it noticed movement nearby. Several creatures were near its path. Six, in three groups of two. Heat sensors indicated that all were warm-blooded. What were they doing leaving the party while their friends celebrated? Were they shy, too? Or too out of shape to participate? What were they doing together?
A new political faction rose within Newton, dedicated to learning about the two strangers. Maybe they could be friends.
The rest of Newton rose up, in a unity seldom before experienced, and spoke: "mind your own business. Keep jogging."
Newton kept jogging.