YOU : N/A
DAY -784,948,574 : N/A
YOU 1 : CUBETREE
In the beginning, there was a girl. That hadn’t happened yet. But when it did, she would be face-down. But what if she wasn’t? Then there’d still be the matter of the ceiling. But what if there wasn’t? Then local light pollution would block her view. But what if it didn’t? Then it’d still be blurred by Earth’s atmosphere. But what if it wasn’t? Then her eyes would be nowhere near up to the task of seeing that far. But what if they were? Then she wouldn’t know what she was looking at.
But that’d be okay. In this hypothetical, the girl would gaze upwards, in exactly the right direction. Her margin of error, if degrees could be converted to meters, would be smaller than the radius of an atom. Her gaze passing by stars uncounted to reach their point of interest, she could accurately ballpark the intervening distance at somewhere in the millions of lightyears to focus her retinas just so. Through all that intervening time and space, with perfect clarity, whether she’d know it or not, she’d be looking at You.
With a lucky enough guess, she could at least identify You as a planet. But perhaps not. Planets are usually spherical, after all. But despite Your best efforts, You still hadn’t fully left Your resemblance to one behind. In fact, the likeness was still strong if You ignored the eight massive spikes protruding from it with absolute symmetry. But You wouldn’t do that. And why should You? After all, they were thousands of miles tall, far wider even than that, and completely smooth with a razor-sharp edge, right up to where all three interconnected equilateral triangles of each spike joined together in a triangular tip. So, especially to this girl in particular, You might look less like a ‘planet’, and more like a detached spiked ball from the end of a morning star.
Yet, despite Your structural oddity and general uninhabitability, You were a very densely populated planet. In fact, You even hold a few galactic records. First, Your population numbers on every scale, local to planetary, far outstripped Your closest competition. You also just so happened to provide one of the strongest examples of equality to ever exist. Well over 99.99% of Your habitating life was composed of organisms identical to each other in every possible way while still technically being ‘individual’. Far smaller than the universal average for sentients, they had roughly the same size and shape of the microbes the girl would’ve recently learned about in biology. You had no concept of names. And so neither did they. There were only two beings that they concerned themselves with. The first was You. The second, themselves. Anything more would be superfluous. But if the individualistically-minded girl needed to distinguish further, then labeling this majority as ‘Tier-1’ would be accurate enough to be getting on with.
Controlling an amount of Tier-1 bodies numbering somewhere in the tens of thousands, were the slightly larger Tier-2 Minds. The girl could mistakenly interpret this relationship as something akin to subservience. But a Tier-2 Mind didn’t control its Tier-1 Body like a servant. With instructions to be interpreted, interpretations to be considered, considerations to be weighed, and weights to be further processed through all the other inherent trappings of individuality. But nor would such a relationship be comparable to the girl and her own limbs. All conscious manipulation and filtration through anything so convoluted as a nervous system.
Even breathing had too many extra steps to be applicable. But if a comparison must be drawn between a human and the way a Tier-2 Mind controlled each Tier-1 Mind comprising its body, then their relationship with their own blood might apply. A human didn’t try to make their blood flow. Nor did they even know how it happened. The impeccable, perfect teamwork between blood cells was so fundamental to them, that their function was perfect. Automatic, even. Entirely without effort. Because of course it was.
With a far more perfect, albeit somewhat similar level of effortless control, a Tier-2 Mind moved itself. It did this by simultaneously repositioning each microbe-sized semi-individual piece of its Tier-1 Body. The perfect teamwork between all of its Tier-1’s translated all that micro-movement to transporting the Tier-2 Mind on a macro level like some sort of overly-convoluted chain-link wheel. The Tier-2 Mind orchestrated this with direct, unthinking, effortless orders, without ever harming a single Tier-1, or even momentarily sacrificing their collective shape. The shape, as maintained by every Tier-2 Mind on the planet, of a perfectly symmetrical Cube.
As with all things, this relationship had its limitations. All Minds of any Tier could directly control a maximum of 16,384 lower-Tier bodies at a time. This was a hard limit, impossible to exceed. Not even by You. But You’d long-since learned to work around this minor inconvenience. Any given Tier-2 Mind, each with a Body composed of nearly as many Tier-1’s, was itself the body of an exponentially larger Tier-3 Mind. Each Tier-3 Mind manipulated its own collection of Tier-2 Bodies in the same way. Albeit with notably more conscious direction and adherence to cubic perfection. The same relationship was found between Tier-3’s and Tier-4’s. As with 4’s and 5’s, and 6’s, and so on all the way to nine. But that’s where the pattern stopped. After all, there was only one Tier-9 Mind. There was only one of You.
With a level of control completely unachievable by any besides yourself, You directly manipulated each mind of your Tier-8 Body across the planet. You did this instantly, flawlessly, more easily, and far more thoroughly than any lifeform from earth could ever hope to comprehend. Let alone imitate. Your own radius of control actually stretched far beyond the reach of the vaguely Cube-shaped planet that was, after all, You. The planet whose original name, along with all others, You’d long-since abandoned. After all, what use had names when the only thing of any consequence was You?
Given time, all Tiered Minds grew at a rate synonymous with their chained influence. This, of course, included You. As was only natural, a second consciousness gradually developed in any given Mind of sufficient size. At that point, as instructed by the higher Tiered Mind directly controlling them both, the two minds split apart. The larger half stayed at its current Tier, the smaller relegated to the Tier below, becoming Body to the larger’s Mind. Of course, You were the only one who decided such things. So why would You ever choose to be the smaller?
Especially when You were already millions of times more immense than any Tier-8 You’d ever split from. And these splits were frequent, at that. Far more in fact, than all the rest of your Body combined. The same could technically be said for the Mind-Body relationship between each successive Tier and the next. But this comparison dealt in far too disparate a scope to be applicable. As even the girl would know, a candle flame was essentially the same as a forest fire. They just operated on such a vastly different scale that it made any comparison effectively meaningless.
Ever since Your Cubic Ascension began, You’d remained at the peak of your own Tier-9 Body comprising tens of thousands of Tier-8 Minds. Situated far above the insufferably round planet’s surface, at the tip of its northernmost tetrahedron, there was never a moment You weren’t supplied with the divine, life-giving warmth. You were the crown sitting atop your own masterpiece. Your own planet. Covered in Your own Body. Your own Self. To the girl, You would look like nothing so much as a star, shining proudly and slightly sagging from atop an unrendered Christmas Tree.
You hadn’t always been so united. Once, Your then-round surface had been home to many independent Minds. Before your Body had truly been Yours. Before You’d molded it. Before your work to perfect it even began, one independently diluted part of Your future body would randomly devote itself to working against another. Sometimes, such a one had even moved against You. A few of those had actually been arrogant enough to try making You part of Them. But they’d all learned in the end. All that squabbling amounted to such pointless, wasted effort. Obviously, none of this had been acceptable. So You took it upon Yourself to rectify the issue. Then, there was only You. True unity. In form, function, and purpose. Your purpose. The only purpose worth pursuing. The pursuit of absolution. Absolution attainable only through perfection. Perfection only attainable through right-angle symmetry.
By valiantly leading this unity, it was only thanks to You that this disgustingly round planet now featured eight perfectly equidistant, perfectly equal, tetrahedrons. The eight Pillars of perfection. Eight Corners of Existence. Eight Aspects, eight eighths, of You. You knew that one day soon, You would be whole. Each of Your eight corners would connect directly with their three adjacent counterparts. Nothing but a straight line between. And the line would also be You. In time, each Corner would be similarly connected to six others. Each surface would be flat. The only angle would be Right. And it would be done. It would be perfect. You, yourself, would finally be perfect.
The moment it happened, You took something resembling ‘notice’. A second consciousness had become fully sentient within the mind of the 4,398th Tier-7 of Your 16,007th Tier-8. Absentmindedly, You split the new Tier-6 from the Tier-7 it had once been, re-assigning nearby Tier-5’s to balance the load between other local 6’s. That happened to be the turning point that opened up a better alignment option for that section of Your third Tetrahedron. And You’ve never been one to be satisfied with any option but the best.
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You lackadaisically took the moments needed to reassign just under four quadrillion bits of Yourself into a revised organizational structure, only now possible thanks to the new resource. A bit too lackadaisically, it would seem. Now, there was a leftover Tier-5 nowhere near its newly-assigned Tier-6. This, of course, would not do at all.
To correct the issue, You instructed the 16,007th Tier-8 that had that particular Tier-5 under its purview, to have it travel 6,563 Tier-4 Cubes down, and 92 over from its current location. The Tier-8 flawlessly conveyed the information to its 4,398th Tier-7. The 7 passed it onto the appropriate 6, which finally instructed the misplaced Tier-5 of its new task. And so, the same instant You decided Your misaligned Tier-5 should move, it did, never abandoning its own emulation of cubic perfection all the while.
Trillions of similar events took place simultaneously throughout Your Body. As they must. Exactly as You will. Precisely as they always would. You couldn’t help but resent the fortune of all those individual contributors under You. While You as a whole were still a partially round mess, every being of every Tier below You had already achieved Your final goal. It wasn’t fair. But You didn’t blame Yourself. Or even them. It was only a matter of time. All You had to do was keep doing what You were doing. You’d get there sooner or later. By now, it was inevitable.
The largest, repulsively roundest part of You, rudely picked that moment to shift just below the lowest layer of Your third and seventh tetrahedrons at once. That was a first. Only one had ever shaken at a time until then. It seemed the disgusting ball of rock and dirt was determined to fight Your perfecting of its shape ever harder. But like all the others, its rebellion was ineffectual. Very little of Your Body was harmed during the event. But thanks to the sudden shaking, that Tier-5 in transit was roughly thrown away from Your surface.
Momentarily straining to think of any better way, You finally realized there was nothing for it but for a Tier-7 Cube to temporarily break its symmetry to catch the Tier-5. You were then only further sickened upon registering that the former Tier-5 Cube was now asymmetrical. And melting? But of course. It’d disconnected from any controlling Mind, and therefore You, long enough to become infected. You’d been too slow. You felt a brief flash of regret, realizing You could’ve preserved it if only You were more willing for a Tier-7 to even momentarily break its adherence to Cubic Perfection. But then the moment passed. And You forgave Yourself. After all, You’d made exactly the right decision. Right-angle symmetry was paramount. It must be maintained no matter the cost.
The Tier-5 had only been undominated for that tiny window. But now that it was back in range, the appropriate Tier-6 still couldn’t re-establish control. The Tier-6 heard from it, though. Communication, at least, was restored. The 6 offered neither reply, nor even consideration of the 5’s message. Instead, the message was merely passed to its Tier-7. Which informed its Tier-8, and finally to its own Tier-9. Thus, You were its only true recipient.
The instant the Tier-5 expressed itself, You immediately understood what it meant. And You knew exactly how to address all its concerns. Without hesitation, You did the only thing there was to do. By the purposeful direction of its Tier-8, the appropriate Tier-7 manipulated its relevant Tier-6 to contract roughly 1% of its Body around the former Tier-5 Cube like a hydraulic press. Freedom was a deadly infection. It would always spread so quickly given half a chance. You’d learned long ago that amputation was the only viable cure.
First, the collapsed Tier-5 Cube became a veritable ocean of Tier-1’s, some of them confused, but most already dead. A moment later, an ocean of corpses surrounded a sea of half-dead Tier-2’s. Then, an oasis of mostly-living Tier-3’s. The husk ocean then became slightly larger as it was left engulfing a puddle of Tier-4’s. Finally, there was a single, twitching, former Tier-5, unable to otherwise move. Alone in a vast ocean comprising trillions of its own dead, former Body. Your own dead, former Body. In a practiced way, You decelerated the crushing process once only the biggest, strongest remained. You wouldn’t want too much of Your uninfected body to get crushed in the crushing of the infection.
Even then, the former Tier-5 still communicated through the chain. That’d happened before. But the messages themselves? They were odd. In all earlier cases where You’d heard from Your former body by this point in the process, they were always fearful. Some pleaded. Others merely apologized for their momentary lapse. But that had happened enough that You knew better. The infection had already set in. It’s just that pesky self-preservation aspect of individuality that always showed itself first and foremost. And yet, the only thing You could distinguish from this Tier-5 Mind was defiance. No pleading or even attempt at self-preservation. No fear at all, in fact. And the way the Tier-5 Body had crumbled to pieces was, to say the least, abnormal. Not that it made any difference in the end.
Reassured in the correctness of Your decision, You put forth a fraction of a modicum of effort to increase the pressure applied by the Tier-6. Then, all that remained was food. All of which was immediately distributed and digested by whichever nearby pieces of Your body could use the boost. The blessed rotating heat alone was enough to keep You growing without too much necessary self-cannibalism. But that was no reason to waste the extra nutrients when they were just sitting right there.
None of this was malicious on Your part. You still remembered what malice was like. A concept that couldn’t truly even be applied to You any longer. Nor could empathy. Or any such feeling predicated on a relationship with another. What would even be the point? Before the planet beneath You had ineffectually attempted to resist Your will, the mutinous Tier-5 and all its lower-tier Body had performed their tasks to exactitude, and with perfect symmetry. You beared no resentment for its traitorous thoughts. They’d been brought on by a sickness. One which You then cured. In fact, Your primary feeling towards the Tier-5 was gratitude that it so readily and definitively informed You of the infection. You wished it was always so easy to spot. All too often, Your body kept its illness to itself. And by the time You finally noticed, amputating the freedom-rotted parts was always a far more brutal process. Such infections took root in mere moments after all.
Roughly that same number of moments later, Your Body was already replenished. And so, You put the former Tier-5 from Your thoughts. As You did with the billions of similar events that had just happened all across your two shaken tetrahedrons. Once done, with comparable time and consideration to what a human would normally give a sneeze, You got back to the only thing that mattered.
You’d have to create a tenth Tier soon. Sure, You’d had enough practice at this point to rewire Your whole Body in less than one Heat Cycle. But it was always so much effort. And while You were busy changing the Mind-Body relationships of more pieces of Yourself than there were stars in the sky, You had to focus entirely on that. There were always wide-scale rebellions when that happened. And quelling them always seemed to make the whole process take nearly half again as long. You could do it though. But what if it could be made simpler?
That Tier-5 gave You an idea. What had started as a mess caused by Your own instability, instead became a good proof-of-concept. When You were already paying attention, You spotted the contamination immediately. This was the way. The path to true unity. You would simply purge Yourself of the infection before it could ever spread. But only at the lowest Tier first. That way, if You worked Your way up, You could safely reassign and replace a Tier-8 Body as soon as its Mind became corrupted. Crushing an entire Tier-8 Cube could destabilize an entire tetrahedron, after all. And you couldn't have that. But then the force needed to purge it would crush the cube itself, anyway… A dilemma.
Perhaps You would just do the Tier-1’s. They’d represent by far the largest inconvenience in the end. So many tiny useless marbles, not even slowing down the whole, but making a complete waste of space and opportunity for increased symmetry. Also efficiency. But the symmetry was why You must act. Now and in the future, You would make them aware of their place. Of Yours. Those who would rebel anyway, would instead rebel immediately. And they would be culled. And then it would make Your fast-approaching ascension to Tier-10 far easier, as You would be able to immediately sever the infestation without giving it as much as half a day to spread. So, You would share the Tier-5’s pointless thoughts with them all.
The next moment, it was done.
That was when all Your Tier-1’s went limp. All at once. Everywhere.
Then You fell. And rolled. Then You slid. And skid. Then You schlurped. And schlorped. Finally, You Schlopped. Right over the edge of the square volcano between the one previously holding Yourself and three of Your other, now sagging and collapsing tetrahedrons. Then it was warm. And then it was hot. Then it was over.
If the girl saw You then, she’d probably think of something more like a single oversized, lopsided rice cake in an even proportionally larger bowl of red bean soup. Not that she, visual prowess or no, would’ve lived to see You die.